2 replies to this topic

[RL Nice]

I heard some pretty bad things aboutBattleTech: The Animated Series. Of course, my curiosity got the better of me, and I started watching the show on YouTube. It's typical 90's cheese, but I was surprised (and impressed) that the show wasn't as inaccurate to canon as I was afraid it would be. Case in point, I paid careful attention every time a Clanner spoke, and the only one that I caught speaking with contractions was an Inner Sphere MechWarrior who was captured as a bondsman and passed a Trial of Position to become a fully fledged Clan warrior.

That being said, I did catch some mistakes with canon. Mind you, I've only read a handful of sourcebooks set from the Succession Wars to the Clan Invasion, one novel (Decision at Thunder Rift) and a decent (but not all-encompassing) amount of sarna.net. I have a sense of the overall mythos of the BattleTech universe, but not specific details, so if the show makes some mistake with uniforms or exact dates, I won't spot it.

Out of curiosity, I want to know all the canon mistakes made by the show. The few I've caught so far are:

• BattleMech cockpits and the interiors of DropShips and JumpShips are large and spacious. In a few episodes, multiple people even ride in a single BattleMech's cockpit! Not sure if passengers are able to move from a docked DropShip to a JumpShip.
  
• Characters frequently use Enhanced Imaging without any adverse side effects.
  
• Major one: A Clan MechWarrior refers to her Mad Dog as a Vulture.
  
• Not really a canon goof, but that same MechWarrior bids that she will enter the following battle with her lasers disabled, but she uses them anyways.
  
• Takashi Kurita looks nothing like his sarna.net portrait.
  
• The "Trial of Possession" between the Wolf and Jade Falcon Elementals for the Star League base amounts to nothing more than a disorganized brawl that starts up every time the two Clans meet.
  
• The computer in the Star League base states that Aleksandr Kerensky founded the Clans. Not only should the computer not know that, since the SLDF was reformed into the Clans long after they left the Inner Sphere, but Aleksandr Kerensky did not found the Clans. It was his son, Nicholas who founded the Clans, after Aleksandr had died.
  
• Haven't paid that much attention, but I don't think any of the characters wear cooling vests while piloting 'Mechs.
  
• In one episode, characters are able to hijack a 'Mech quite easily, in spite of the neurohelmet security system (though, to be fair, the same thing happens in Decision at Thunder Rift, a much more canonical source).
  
• I believe I saw a Mad Dog do a 180° torso twist once.
  
• Not a single one of the Lyran characters pilots an Atlas.

I'm well aware that the cartoon exists in-universe as a poorly reviewed FedCom propaganda vid, but FASA presumably retconned the show that way because it failed like it did.

I'd like the other, more veteran BT fans here to tell me what else the show got wrong. And if possible, cite where the canonical information comes from (yeah, yeah, I know this isn't Wikipedia, but I'd like to know anyway). Sources published after the series aired, of course, don't count.

Also worth noting: I'm not finished watching the series yet. I'm currently on episode 11.

Edited by RL Nice, 14 January 2013 - 06:04 PM.

[Stormwolf]

I was actually planning on doing a ep by ep review if I ever got the time to do it.
The errors and plotholes would ofcourse play a major part.

[Pariah Devalis]

At that point in time, Clan machines (and probably the repurposed Axemam) had no need for a security system as Clanners do not tend to steal mechs.

But, yeah. I sat down and watched all of the episodes back to back out of a sick desire to see if my brain could handle all that Malthus. It could not.

I think you covered all the major points, though. Except for the one where the Sphereoids used Enhanced Imaging, too. AFAIK, they never develop that until the Wobblies in the Jihad.