Tonight's episode: Give It Up, Princess Desciption: Trailer: Looks like we're going to be getting a bit Adrian, and bigger focus on Ryo and the conflict between Misaki and Teku.
Sexy android!!! That was a fun episode. I'm glad they're making us laugh a lot in addition to the adventure.
Any ideas who or what "agent zero" may be? Maybe a chemical agent, a la "agent orange"? It was sort of implied to be six, but that seems very unlikely. Even if he was some elaborate double/triple agent, he wouldn't even remember and it doesn't gel with his personality either.
It continues to feel weird to have all this plotting revolving around the Tabor-sized hole in the narrative, so much driven by Tabor in his absence. Tabor didn't really play that big a role in the story when he was around, yet now that he's gone, they treat him like he was retroactively more important than he was. Odd that the Android was all "not yet" about reverting to her shipboard persona. I didn't have the impression before that it was something she specifically had to turn on and off, like Data's emotion chip in First Contact -- just that it was a matter of choice to "be herself" when she was among friends. Maybe she's just a method actress? Also, where did she get the second upgrade chip that she offered the other android? Or is it that the chips are standard tech and the program on them is what's important? Maybe she copied her upgrade program onto another chip? But if it's a function of software rather than hardware, then "humanized" androids should be able to transmit the upgrade to androids all over the galaxy, instead of needing to meet them in person to give them the chips. Anyone have access to a guest cast list for this episode? I can't find one, and there are two actors who look familiar to me -- the one who played Ambrosia and the one who played Adrian's guard friend who arrested him and Five. Speaking of actors, I'm really impressed by Andrew Moodie, who plays Ryo's advisor Teku. He projects such dignity, intelligence, calm, and strength of character. The way Teku's rivalry with Misaki is going, though, I fear he may not be around much longer. (Although Moodie also has a recurring role on Orphan Black this season, as Rachel Duncan's advisor Simon Frontenac.) I took that final shot to suggest that Six was in danger from Agent Zero, since Commander Nieman was talking about deploying Agent Zero against the rebel colonies, including the one Six is on. Six is the leader of the movement Nieman wants to wipe out, which is why Nieman was studying his image while talking about destroying the movement. Anyway, the name "Agent Zero" suggests a biological or chemical weapon to me, like Agent Orange. Nieman said the colonies need to be wiped out entirely, and it's unlikely that a single individual could do that.
Tabor: as their handler, it stand to reason that he had good contacts within Ferrous corporation. Probably a decent way to deliver the location of the shipyard to the Raza. I guess that David Hewlett wasn't available so the Adrian character was invented as a work around, which is working reasonably well. Guest actors: Ambrosia is Anna Hopkins, I don't know who the Guard is. Agreed that Ryo's advisor is an impressive actor, at least in this role. I'm not betting against his character either, it's 50/50 if he or Misaki come out on top. Either or both may end up turning on Ryo, as well. We know things aren't going to end well for Ishida, one way or another, but how isn't so predictable. I guess you're right that Niemann was talking about a biological or chemical agent. I wonder if Six is going to survive that. If he does, I'm guessing that almost all the rest of his present colony will be wiped out so he can return to the Raza with a vengeance. That Ferrous shipyard won't be in business for much longer, I think.
Ah, okay -- it's on Arrow that I've seen her before. Though I had to look her up to remind me of that. I think my memory's starting to go. Last night, I was thinking about the actress who played Nyx, and it took me forever to remember that her name is Melanie Liburd. I could remember the names of everyone else in the cast, but not her, though it suddenly came to me after a while. Okay, it's an unusual surname, but I couldn't remember her first name either.
I was going to suggest Berlin from Defiance for Anna Hopkins. Ambrosia's guard is the reigning UFC middleweight champion (MMA) Michael Bisping. IMBd does show a few roles mostly in action shows before this. opps wrong guard
I lost interest in that show after the first season or so. I probably saw one or two episodes she was in, but not enough that I'd remember her from that.
I hope that's the case. Last episode had Future Five's cryptic rundown of several events, and her mentioning ''the double deception'' had me worried for Six...''you mean he's still not who he thinks he is? Good grief!'' The Ishida arc just isn't working for me. I cared about Four's plight, and struggle to see the truth of his father's murder resolved, but my interest in him doesn't transfer over to his reclaimed empire. Oddly, Ferrous, Mikkei and their re-occurring on screen representatives Cmdrs Truffault and Neimen, feel more interesting than anything Ishida related-save for the s2 finale that put Ryo out front and involved in the larger galactic scene. I guess that pretty much explains my lack of interest. While the 2 corps have played a role in the plight of our crew since the beginning, Ryo's empire hasn't been as developed to me. Who exactly is Pyr and why should I care that they are at war with Ishida?
"The double deception" made me think about Derrick Moss - it still is entirely unclear why the CEO of a large corporation would stoop to do an infiltration mission himself. As for Ishida, I guess the point is that Ryo/Four is now an enemy of the rest and his actions are setting him ever further towards a major confrontation with Two.
I agree about Zairon being underdeveloped. We don't see much outside the throne room. Once Ryo got his memory back, he's become less interesting. I guess the mystery about him was more interesting than he is.
I dunno, wanting to personally avenge his wife seems like a good enough explanation. Sure, a lot of corporate CEOs would be sociopaths who would just see their wives as trophies, but we know One/Derrick was a caring guy at heart, and also kind of an impulsive doofus at times. Still, the very plausibility of that explanation could make it a good red herring for something else. Honestly, I never found him that interesting. I always felt he was too much of a stereotype -- he's the Asian guy, so of course he's a stoic martial artist. Oh, and it turns out he's part of a bizarrely feudal, medieval-style imperial court even though he's in space in the future. Really, where did that notion come from? This is mostly a corporate-ruled future, and Japan has plenty of modern, high-tech corporations, so why not have Zairon be something more along those lines, instead of all this exoticizing anachronism?
Mallozzi is a fan of (Japanese) anime, which is where the anachronism is probably coming from. I found Four to be an interesting character, very believable as part of a hardened band of mercenaries/criminals, yet with some positive sides as well. Now that he is a villain, he is still a human being and it's telling that he wasn't the leader on the Raza (besides Two, also Six and even One showed more leadership than him) so now he's actually struggling to fill the shoes of an emperor. By making him one of the villains (allthough Ferrous still seems far worse, probably Dwarf Star as well), it also means that the inevitable confrontation with his ex-friends will have an impact that such stories rarely have.
What anime, though? There's a ton of anime that depicts the modern, high-tech, corporate Japan, like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, etc. I've seen a lot more modernity and futurism in anime than medievalism. And it still just feels too much like the antiquated Orientalist cliche of '60s and '70s TV that all non-Western cultures are quaint and traditionalist and eternally trapped in the past. I have to question why he chose to emphasize that aspect of Japanese culture instead of its more forward-looking aspects. Sure, there's potential to the character, but the racially problematical elements get in the way of that.
Anything with Four and his homeworld is just cringe-inducing to me. They have no budget to actually show his empire doing anything (they can't even show the empire!), so it's all exposition while everyone stands around. And all the writing for this storyline has been so on-the-nose and perfunctory. How exactly does he rule the empire if all he does is execute people who fail to meet expectations?
Which is Teku's whole argument -- that he can't rule it effectively if that's all he does. But Ryo is too much of a thug to understand that. Maybe Four could've understood it before he restored Ryo's memories, but whatever borderline decency Four had has been pretty much overwhelmed by Ryo's brutality. And it doesn't help that Misaki is pushing him further to the dark side.
I get the impression that the corporate territories are just one part of a much wider human civilisation, with many powerful nation states like Zairon, it's just that Zairon happens to border the corporation. IIRC there's also been some mention of a League of independent worlds which is implied to be able to collectively rival the corporations in terms of military power. As for why Zairon is the way it is: monarchies typically couch themselves in ancient traditions an regalia. Mostly to hearken back to an age of perceived greatness. It's not that unusual. Indeed, the older and more entrenched a dynasty becomes, the more they rely on such things to justify their authority (superficially at least.) Even today the Queen still occasionally rides in a horse drawn carriage and a lot of the ceremonial military uniforms are straight out of the 18th & 19th century. Some even older. From a meta perspective: it's probably mostly just an aesthetic choice to distinguish this sovereign nation from the corporate authorities and to show non-western culture made it into space.
Mikkei is that modern Japanese (or maybe Chinese, allthough it does feel more Japanese to me) mega-corp in the Dark Matter world, a counterpart to US-feeling Ferrous, probably supposed-to-refer-to-Germany Traugott and Russian Volkov-Rusi. As for the anime he is fan of, I'm not aware of all of it but he mentioned for example Cowboy Bebop and Code Geass. The latter he calls part of a "swords in space" genre. I don't mind that the show only has reports on the situation in and around Zairon (for which they indeed don't have near the budget, in any case). It's focused on the Raza, not on the empires and the corporations. It's important to show that Ryo is in over his head, though.