#voltron 1980s

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SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES - NINA SEASON 2 SPECIAL "The Will to Survive" (Part 2 of 4)

** NOTE: The "Nina Season 2" items are largely unfinished premises from ideas being worked on after sending our 21 episodes and art to World Events Productions in the summer of 1985. We iterated on them consistently until receiving Marc Handler's letter in March of 1986. As such I cannot identify when each individual piece was worked on, so all are credited as 1986. These do accurately reflect characters and situations as depicted in the 20 U.S. produced VOLTRON episodes from the Fall of 1985 and our attempts to bring those events in line with our chronology. Nina's own history remained unaltered, and as such this will create some awkward half-finished situations such as Coran's romantic relationship status. Understand that these are being provided as a historical glimpse into the status of VOLTRON fan fiction in the 1980s. **

This sequence tries to set the tone of what the Voltron Force is still doing on Arus in peacetime. It's rather stilted but I can see what we are trying to work on here.

These storylines are aware of what has transpired in the 20 U.S. produced episodes that were made for the show, and take the attitude that Nina Season 1 comes right after, followed by this. Based on what was produced, we know that Alfor more or less gave his blessing for Keith and Allura to be together (even if Nanny and Coran might not quite agree). Allura sees Nina as mother and wife to Lance and is trying to feel out her next steps in life. Nanny is still dead set on Allura becoming exactly what Nanny thinks Allura should be.

Elsewhere, Lance has stepped in to try and keep the orphanage running and has enlisted Keith's help to break up a fight between a couple of teenagers. Since motherhood is taking more of Nina's time, and she wouldn't have any desire to leave Arus and her newfound family, Lance is trying his best to support his wife and make himself useful. I suppose you can argue Keith is trying to do the same since he would not want to leave.

The rest of this section explains a space chess board in excruciating detail. Hunk and Pidge are playing a game of it. Hunk struggles and would like someone to teach him. Pidge volunteers when they have spare time. Hunk gripes they never have spare time (even in peace) but doesn't get the chance to explain why.

More on what is going on in the next section.

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SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES - Comparing the Start of "Flight of the White Lion" to the premise counterpart "The New Planet Doom"

** Disclosure to people familiar with the official starmap: everything you see here was written before the WEP starmap partnership so you may see planet names and locations that are NOT on that map. Example is Merla's homeworld which has a different name on the THIRD DIMENSION starmap, and according to the 30th anniversary book she hails from the middle universe. **

The longform treatment "Flight of the White Lion" (which is the actual name of a later premise in this set) was featured at one time on the SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES. For reasons unknown to me, some time after I lost access to the site, these were removed.

Now that I have screenshots of the original 1985 premises, I am going to take the luxury of comparing the contents of the two.

As you can see, there is not much to the Episode 1 premise for "The New Planet Doom". You absolutely have to remember the new 20 episodes have not aired yet, and the end of the original 52 Lion episodes made it clear Doom would have to rebuild. So that's where we started from. Instead of Cossak filling Mogor's shoes, we have this Wrath of Doom character. We spend a lot of time describing and setting up the character (love the voice direction notes!) and don't really set up much action other than we need a Robeast fight where Lance is somehow captured and separated from Red Lion.

As I have pointed out in other posts, I tended to be a character writer. Also, we figured the producers were the Robeast experts.

The remaining screen grabs are of my text file from the same sequence as it used to be posted on the site. I addressed the setup problem by having a summit meeting that reintroduces a lot of people and tied up some hanging plots, now that I knew in 1993 the show was over. Pidge gets to reunite with Anga, who didn't die in VOLTRON. Hunk follows up with Twyla and we see how she's getting along. Lance meets up with one of the few female characters I think he logically might have gotten together with if the American adaptation continued (since she died in GoLion), and that is Farla of Lyra; this setup takes her off the table when he learns she's married.

You will notice that neither Omnia nor Joran are here, despite Hunk seeing the orphans again from the American produced episodes. Looking back, this likely was more due to the fact that Omnia had struck chords too close to Nina, even though we didn't fully understand it then. I have another post about how I wouldn't start looking at that situation different until 2020.

A lot of time is spent on the summit setup, and then really quickly Wrath of Doom attacks in the longform premise, capturing Lance and taking him away separately. Again, this is not addressed with exceptionally long detail.

The next segments contain a lot more detail and have a lot more discussion attached. Still working on how to handle that.

[shannonmuirvoltronpages]

SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES - A Story of Two Sisters

The website has carried the name SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES because the Starmap was solely Shannon's work, and Shannon did the coding and put the website up. As such, I (Shannon) have evolved as the sole face of all of this work.

But what often gets lost along the way is that it all began with two sisters interested in telling stories. The VOLTRON universe in particular captivated them, with its mix of fantasy and science fiction, and evoking memories of Japan where they had spent their childhoods. The work in recrafting the original Japanese animated series was so well done they did not detect it was a dub, despite being very aware that BATTLE OF THE PLANETS that had aired in the United States had been on the air in Japan just a few years earlier, as they actually viewed it when they lived there.

Had they realized it was a well-reworked dub, history might have gone very differently.

The younger of the two sisters invented a White Lion, and as lions in the VOLTRON universe need pilots, turned to her older sister to create that character. That story has been talked about at length elsewhere.

The untold part of that story is how things were for those sisters in 1984 and 1985. They had come to a new city after their father retired from the Navy, and knew next to no one. Even with their father's family in the area, they had not had much contact due to their father being stationed outside the continental United States. Making friends was difficult, especially after experiencing the repeated heartbreak of making and losing friends to living as children in the military life. In particular for the older sister, her interests were not the same as the preteens in her new town, and she did not fit in.

The time period in which the White Lion and its pilot were created was in early 1985. There was a lot of personal upheaval in the family, stemming from their mother's side of the family. Looking back, it is arguable that they created their own hero out of reaction to what was going on around them, a hero that they kept fighting for and championing until they received acknowledgement. Again, the details of this have been told elsewhere in multiple mediums.

Speaking for myself, what happened with VOLTRON changed my life, but not in the way you expect. I told my teachers who had me share with my classes. It didn't win me friends, but I did get teased less. Somehow, it made me untouchable to most people. Though I had a really terrible time with some underclassmen the following year, enough that a teacher had to get involved. That was a double edged sword for me, because I also learned from that experience about teachers and mentors who want to take credit for all your successes and then when you find they won't respect you for who you are because you did not become what they felt you should. I worked hard for everything I did, though I do not discount the times for my teachers supporting me. But there are lines that can be crossed, something I would have rather not have learned about at fifteen.

I made a statement that was unscripted during my VOLTCON 2024 panel I have spent a lot of the past year thinking about. It was a statement about the importance of seeing ourselves. Even if this journey with the two sisters and VOLTRON did not end as they expected, being seen was enough. It got them motivated enough to try again, and lightning did strike twice, shaping both their lives further.

Some readers may recognize my sister as Lesley, the founder of the TRULY OUTRAGEOUS! JEM MAILING LIST, one of the longest running email (and later forums) on the Internet devoted to the animated series JEM. This year, it celebrated 40 years, just one year behind VOLTRON. While discussing that is beyond the scope of those pages, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge that none of that would exist without what preceded it with VOLTRON.

Over the years, Lesley has continued to be on this journey in subtle ways. I could not be where I am without her. They say a lot of stories have unsung heroes. I don't want her to be mine.