After the look at various fan works, it’s time to get back to the professional works. This time out, Airwolf, specfically, the series’ fourth season.

Airwolf debuted in 1984 on CBS, were it ran until 1986, and starred Jan-Michael Vincent as Stringfellow Hawke, Ernest Borgnine as Dominic Santini, Alex Cord as Michael “Archangel” Coldsmith-Briggs III, and, starting in the second season, Jean Bruce Scott as Caitlin O’Shannessy. Airwolf was part of a wave of TV series built around high-tech, almost super, vehicles. The wave had been building easily since 007 drove his heavily Q-modified Aston-Martin DB-V in Goldfinger, climaxing in 1982 with the film adaptation of Craig Thomas’ Firefox and the Glen A. Larson TV series, Knight Rider. In 1983, the film Blue Thunder was released to theatres and was centrered around the police use of a military helicopter. The following year, a TV series spin off of Blue Thunder aired as well as Airwolfe.

The difference between the two super-helicopter series was in their use. Blue Thunder still had the military/militarized chopper in police hands. With Airwolf, the one-of-a-kind helicopter was strictly military, and taken by Hawke as collateral to ensure that Archangel and the secret agency, the Firm, would keep their word in finding Stringfellow’s missing brother, St. John, who was Missing-In-Action in Vietnam. Airwolf also was moody, sombre, and serious.

A typical episode of Airwolf could go one of three directions. The first is Airwolf and its crew being given a mission by Archangel to complete, either flying Airwolf in on stealth or going undercover using Dom’s company, Santini Air. The second is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting involved in local affairs or machinations within the Firm. The third is Hawke following up on news of St. John or of a friend who might know of his brother’s location. No matter the initial direction, the climax would be a helicopter dogfight involving Airwolf and the villain of the episode. Once in a while, Soviet MiGs would be part of the fight, just to demonstrate how much Airwolf could punch up.

The series lasted three seasons on CBS. Ratings had been low despite attempts to bolster them, and the influence of Miami Vice could be seen as part of the changes. With other factors involved, CBS cancelled the series in 1986. However, the cable station USA Network was expanding to a 24 hour format and needed new programming, so it picked up Airwolf for second run syndication and commissioned a fourth season, airing in 1987. With the changes necessitated by the change of both network and production company, the fourth season is more a remake of Airwolf than a continuation.

With one exception, none of the original cast appeared. The exception is Jan-Michael Vincent, who appeared in the first episode of the season, “Blackjack”. The episode gave Stringfellow’s quest to find his brother closure, with St. John working for the Company as an agent. The new cast comprised of Barry Van Dyke as St. John Hawke, Geraint Wyn Davies as Mike Rivers, Michele Scarabelli as Dom’s niece, Jo Santini, and Anthony Sherwood as Jason Locke.

With a reduced budget, other changes occurred. The shooting location is most obvious. There are far more pine trees and much fewer deserts thanks to the move to Vancouver. Airwolf’s hiding spot got more detail as the series relied less on Santini Air exterior shots. Stock footage from the previous three seasons were used of Airwolf in action, though editing allowed for new ways to show the air battles despite the limitation.

The nature of episode plots tended towards missions for the Company, allowing for Locke to join the team in Airwolf. With all four members of the team capable of handling at least one aspect of flying the helicopter, either as pilot or flight engineer, the characters could split off to do more work on the ground, avoiding the lack of new aerial Airwolf scenes. There is still some in-fighting at the Company, in part because Locke is keeping Airwolf away from the agency for his own purposes.

The tone is the biggest change. The first three seasons, even with the influence of Miami Vice forcing its way in, was moody, dark without being grim, reflecting Stringfellow’s emotions. The action is stylized. The fourth season is a straight up action series, losing the mood of the previous seasons.

Why treat the fourth season as a remake? The time between being cancelled on CBS and being aired on the USA Network is under a year and the episode “Blackjack” hands off the series to the new cast. That would imply that the series continued. However, with a drastic change of cast and approach, the fourth season of Airwolf is closer to being Star Trek: The Next Generation than a hypothetical fourth season of the original Star Trek. Wrapping up String’s quest to find his brother was a nod to continuity, providing closure to the first three seasons. Afterwards, the series is more about using Airwolf on missions, a complete change from the original approach. Unlike ST: TNG, there wasn’t the time between the seasons to allow for a gap.

Season four of Airwolf is a unique case. It was meant to be a continuation of the series, but with the drastic change of cast, the fourth season became its own entity in the shadow of the original. It’s not a bad season, but it couldn’t live up to what had passed before it.

Wrapping up the look a fan works, at least for now, Lost in Translation will examine a series from the Black Pants Legion, Tex Talks BattleTech.

Today’s BattleTech is a massive franchise consisting of a tabletop wargame and a tabletop RPG from Catalyst Labs, a popular online multi-player video game developed by Harebrained Schemes, and many novels covering the range of history of the setting. The game was first released as Battledroids in 1984 by FASA. The game was renamed after Lucasfilm reminded the company that “Droid” wasn’t FASA’s trademark. The second edition was renamed to BattleTech and had corrections and more advanced rules, including a way for players to create their own BattleMechs, the kings of the battlefield.

The second edition, the first under the BattleTech name, introduced a galaxy at war, with the 3035 Succession Wars. The five great houses, Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth, Kurita of the Draconis Combine, Laio of the Capellan Confederation, Marek of the Free Worlds League, and Davion of the Federated Suns. The initial BattleMechs provided were licensed from the designer of the mecha for Super Dinemsion Fortress Macross, Crusher Joe, and Fang of the Sun: Dougram. As the game line increased with supplements, Technical Readout: 3025 added more designs, some of which were also licensed from the mentioned anime.

The third edition came out in 1992. However, problems were looming. Harmony Gold, the studio that adapted three separate anime series – Super Dinemsion Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Squadron Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA – into the series RoboTech noticed that FASA was using mecha from Macross. The result of the lawsuit turned a large number of BattleMechs being removed from the game in 1996; those ‘Mechs became known as the Unseen. However, FASA was already advancing the setting’s time line, having released Technical Readout: 3050 with more new designs for BattleMech, AeroFighters, and conventional vehicles.

Since the game is based on BattleMechs battling each other, any peace in the setting could only be short-lived. For 3050, a new threat appeared, one that allowed FASA to use new BattleMech designs on the covers of their games. From beyond the Periphery came the Clans to reclaim Earth from the Inner Sphere barbarians. Lost in Translation covered this in some detail in the review of the BattleTech cartoon. The Clan Invasion looked to be unstoppable with their advanced weapons technology outstripped anything the Inner Sphere had. Two events caused the Clans to stumble. The first was the loss of the Khans of the invading Clans, taken out by a lone pilot, Tyra Miraborg, who A-winged her Aerospace Fighter into the bridge of a Clan warship.

The other event was ComStar calling out the Clans to Tukayyid for a proxy fight for possession of Earth. Until 3055, ComStar was the quasi-religious corporation that had the monopoly on interstellar communication. No one expected ComStar to have a vast horde of Star League-era BattleMechs, least of all the Clans. No one expect ComStar to survive with green pilots and soldiers. When the smoke cleared, though, on May 20, 3052, Tukayyid was in the hands of ComStar and the invading Clans were defeated.

The fallout of the Battle of Tukayyid was that the Clan Invasion was stalled for fifteen years, giving the Inner Sphere time to figure out what to do. ComStar underwent a schism, with the more religious of the corporation upset with what happened and splintered off to become the Word of Blake, named after the founder of ComStar. To the Great Houses’ credit, they saw an out that would cut off the Clans from further invading once the fifteen year moratorium ended. The Second Star League formed. Without the pressure of the Clan Invasion, the Lyran part of the Federated Commonwealth started a civil war, resulting in the polity splitting into the Federated Commonwealth and the Lyran Alliance.

The Second Star League didn’t last long. While the idea was sound, the implementation didn’t take into account the existing tensions between the Great Houses. After seven years, the Second Star League dissolved. The Word of Blake, feeling betrayed by, well, everyone, began their Jihad to punish everyone responsible for the Second Star League’s failure.

All of the above is just scratching the surface. FASA and, later, Catalyst Game Labs have produced a number of sourcebooks and novels that go into far greater detail. The setting’s vast history is a draw for fans of the game. It’s possible to play in any era, and the setting’s timeline is still being advanced.

The Tex Talks BattleTech series is a love letter to a game from such a fan. Tex started the series because of how much fun he had with the game and wanted to do something light with it. The first Tex Talk was on Tex’s favourite BattleMech, the Awesome. He followed up with the assault ‘Mech, the Atlas. He then turned it over to the fanbase on what to cover next. As with any Internet poll, the results were predictable. There’s always a so-ugly-it’s-cute item in any setting and in BattleTech, that role falls to the UrbanMech, a light ‘Mech that is essentially the Volkswagen Beetle of BattleTech, though Beetles could outrun one. Despite the Urbie’s performance, Tex treated the ‘Mech the same as he did the Awesome and Atlas, though with far more memes.

The turning point came May 20, 2019 with a special Tex Talk “remembering” the Battle of Tukayyid, with Tex giving a historical overview of the battle for Earth with insight on where both sides made mistakes. Tex does more than just restate the results of the fight; he gets into the tactics, the psychology of both the Clans and of the ComGuards, and adds his own opinions on why the battle ended the way it did.

The special was just a hint of what was to come. Tex and his team then took on the main event in the BattleTech setting, the one that set off all the Succession Wars, the Clan Invasion, the Word of Blake Jihad – the Amaris Civil War that ended the original Star League. Tex went back to the source material, spread across a number of sourcebooks and websites, to put together a 3+ hour presentation split into two videos to cover the build up, the war itself, and the fallout.

Again, Tex goes beyond the text, adding insights on everyone involved and analyzes why the Star League fell and what could have been done to prevent it. The videos can act as an intro for any new player to understand why the galaxy is constantly at war.

Tex’s video have a light touch, with humour to keep a potentially dry subject interesting. Tex himself is a voice made of well-aged whiskey. There are meme and running gags. Some, like calling ComStar “Space AT&T” are based on what the corporation does. Others are based on quirks of the various Houses, such as the Lyran use of assault ‘Mechs, the heaviest of the heavies, to do scouting.

Tex Talks BattleTech is a labour of love for Tex and his crew. They know the setting and have the sourcebooks on hand if they don’t remember a detail. Fans have been sending in more sourcebooks and other items, including painted miniatures of various BattleMechs. The videos don’t just do the surface details; Tex and his team get into details and analysis over several sources, working out the whys behind the whats, then adds a layer of humour on top.