A few notes on Colonel Caldwell, since the issue's come up elsethread:
He was always intended to be a bit of a cipher; he's a faceless The Man compared to the fendanes that make up most of the TSAB. More George Hammond than Jack O'Neill, the Jean-Luc Picard to our Jim Kirk. He avoids fen politics for obvious reasons, and a lot of them consider him to be more than a bit of a stick-in-the-mud by-the-book Herbert. He isn't, he just plays one on TV. He's the US Government's Face in Space, and right now, that Face is mildly disapproving of all the ruckus you young whippersnappers are getting up to. Not that -he- necessarily disapproves - witness his covert acquiescence to Marsden making off with a few scrapped Tomcats and such - but he's constrained by his duty in how he can express that, and he takes that duty seriously.
If you can get past that, he's a fairly decent guy; most of the TSAB staff really like him because he - from their point of view - Gets It, even though he still has to enforce the rules and come down on them sometimes. Most Fen have never seen that side of him, and Marsden is sworn never to mention the three occasions on which they have shared a beer.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
He was always intended to be a bit of a cipher; he's a faceless The Man compared to the fendanes that make up most of the TSAB. More George Hammond than Jack O'Neill, the Jean-Luc Picard to our Jim Kirk. He avoids fen politics for obvious reasons, and a lot of them consider him to be more than a bit of a stick-in-the-mud by-the-book Herbert. He isn't, he just plays one on TV. He's the US Government's Face in Space, and right now, that Face is mildly disapproving of all the ruckus you young whippersnappers are getting up to. Not that -he- necessarily disapproves - witness his covert acquiescence to Marsden making off with a few scrapped Tomcats and such - but he's constrained by his duty in how he can express that, and he takes that duty seriously.
If you can get past that, he's a fairly decent guy; most of the TSAB staff really like him because he - from their point of view - Gets It, even though he still has to enforce the rules and come down on them sometimes. Most Fen have never seen that side of him, and Marsden is sworn never to mention the three occasions on which they have shared a beer.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.