#voltronarchives

SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES - Between the Lines

There's a lot going on for me right now, so devoting the brain power needed to complete any more Nina Season 2 analysis is more than I have right now. (This is the bulk of content currently at @shannonmuirvoltronpages which goes in-depth with my rich VOLTRON history)

But I also promised new content too, along the lines of what I did on the site I can no longer access. So I am going to give you a commentary about the VOLTRON FORCE episode that just begs and pleads for fans to try to step in and fill the gaps, and that's "Flash Forms Go!".

We know from early episodes that Lance has been the secret liaison between the Garrison and Arus. But why him over Lance or Hunk? Some of it is very likely skill. But there's a very telling scene that happens (after another telling scene, honestly).

Right before this, there is a scene that feels out of context where Lance is getting out aggressions on a holo-Lotor with an intensity we have not seen before or since. It is so out of tone with the rest of this series, yet much closer to the Lance of the 1984 series, if we presume they have similar backstories.

Soon after, Lance and Allura have a talk that is just them. Lance is still blowing off steam about Daniel. They have an exchange where Lance insists he was never that reckless, and Allura very firmly tells him he was worse. He looks at her. She smiles weakly to try and soften the blow, but doesn't back down.

This immediately begs the question: what happened in that time period he was secretly working with her and Hunk and Pidge to set up things where they are now? Obviously, his recklessness wasn't such that Allura quit working with him, but it is something she is bound and determined not to let him forget. Her continued conversation seems to imply she is trying to get him to focus his energies into the positive with Daniel and not the negative.

Since the show doesn't answer what happened, it just sits there with so many possibilities. There is so much untold about this series missing four year gap, from how Wade seemed to brainwash everyone at the opening ceremony right up to when Daniel is recruited.

I think, even going back to the 1984 show, were the moments from which fan fiction began. The need to explain between the lines to make sense of the things left in a show that an individual might otherwise like.

However, I don't think that a well-developed story necessarily takes it away the drive for fan-fiction entirely. I think that is why the VLD fandom tends to be more relationship focused with their fiction, because unlike the prior iteration, they have less unexplained plot gaps to focus on.

SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES - The Premise for "Lotaria" from 1985

** DISCLAIMER: As mentioned elsewhere, we did continue working on a Season 2 between sending off the original premises to World Events Productions and ultimately hearing from Marc Handler in 1986. The airing of the 20 American produced episodes in October 1985, along with finally seeing the 2-part episode about Coran's son in reruns, made substantial changes to some of our development and we tried to work to adjust accordingly while working on Season 2. As a result, some of the Season 1 files do not directly reflect what World Events Productions received and instead reflect the adjustments we tried to make after the fact. The screenshot samples shown here for Episode 13 reflect such changes. The original no longer exists for that episode. **

I cannot go too in depth here because my sister Lesley actually created Lotaria. I can address that we did have to make tweaks because there were a lot of overlaps with what Lotaria was intended to do (massive Nina Season 1 spoilers) with what Merla actually does in the show. You'll see that with the remaining Season 1 premises I unveil, but since the episodes had already aired while we were doing the Nina Season 2 notes, Lotaria became important in a different way.

You notice the sketch is more backstory than anything else. Again, this was largely me describing my sister's notes.

SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES - THE INFATUATED MISADVENTURES OF PIDGE IN THE 1984 SHOW

Last post, I talked about where seeds seemed to be planted for potential long term relationships in the 20 U.S. produced episodes for Lance and Hunk.

Now, let's talk about what those same 20 episodes do with Pidge, and how it seems to support Lance being set up to grow for a more serious relationship if the right person found him.

Both Lance and Pidge, in the original 52 episodes, regularly seem to compete for kisses from Princess Allura out on the balcony. Pidge usually gets kissed by the mice instead, except the one time Pidge saves Allura's life from a near death sleep by threatening Haggar and Lotor with a hand grenade (see "The Sleeping Princess"). Apparently, that's what it took for Nanny to be okay with it... but once was enough.

In the 20 U.S. produced episodes, there are instances where Lance and Pidge react to the same woman initially, but their overall responses diverge.

Omnia in "The Traitor" is the first of these. Lance starts out referring to her as a dream, but once he understands the magnitude of her problems, gets to work on the problem and in fact chews out the others for just standing around. Once they've agreed on a plan, Allura complements Omnia on being a very courageous woman, and Pidge follows with "And pretty, too!". Lance is standing right next to him staring off with intent into space, and looking at the staging, it seems to be in Omnia's direction. Pidge's comment just seems so out of place in such a serious moment - and also, up until now, something one would have expected from Lance.

This scenario repeats itself a couple episodes later in "Take a Robot to Lunch," the episode that introduces Mary Ann the pacifist scientist. The Voltron Force is taken by Coran to meet one of the Galaxy's greatest scientists, not being told the scientist is female and without Coran correcting when the pronoun "he" is used.

Which results in a lot of confusion when they are introduced.

Lance comments in a surprise it is a woman. If you look at his overall conversation, especially Lance's conversation with Coran as she leaves discussing that she is a "very special lady" and Coran explains her convictions, this is not a case of flirting but respect. Major growth for Lance.

Meanwhile, Pidge upon meeting another scientist only seems to be able to manage "She's pretty!"

Um, okay... I suppose. It doesn't bother me quite so much with Omnia, because maybe it gets to that point where he is getting interested in other women besides the somewhat fairytale qualities of Princess Allura.

SHANNON MUIR'S VOLTRON PAGES - The Original Cerulian (Cerulean) Quadrant Map of the Denubian (Danubian) Galaxy from 1985

These notes are the biggest piece of evidence that at thirteen, I was struggling with figuring out some words by how things sound, and thereby why the Galaxy was mispelled.

I had not learned at that point Cerulean was a shade of blue. Therefore, I kept ending up with the spelling Cerulian. You can also see that I struggle with it on the name of the ruler of Titus, who is introduced in "Summit Meeting" in canon.

Note that I have always spelled the scientist on Caspia as Marianne, others name her Mary Ann.

Also of note is that despite our take on some things in Nina Season 1, the concept of Zarkon's wife (Lotor's Mom) being deceased didn't sit well with us. It fits with the ongoing strong women being a thing. Note that we did set up a planet ruled by Zarkon's ex-wife. Having said that I don't remember actually getting around to doing anything with it in the Nina Season 2 stuff. Probably one of the things reduced to just an unexplored title. I'll keep an eye out if planet Goleb or the name Madra pops up in the notes.

I spoke at length at VOLTCON 2024 regarding the work my sister and I did when we were young and sent (twice) to World Events Productions in the 1980s. Articles from the archives had Peter Keefe talking about how kids requests had been incorporated into the new episodes. Our story, and the spiritual alignments between Omnia (shown above) and Nina, were addressed as part of the lingering question if something that we know was submitted and something that aligned with that same intent actually appearing. I really want to reiterate that I don't know, and never will know, if the work my sister and I did played any influence into this. But the influence on us cannot be discounted.

That anticipation as to who she might be, especially when both names end on the same syllable, completely shocked us. I did not go into detail at VOLTCON 2024 about the confusion and disappointment that followed when the names were not identical, but throughout the episode she looked and acted like we would have expected Nina to be.

After we knew the show was over from Marc Handler's 1986 letter, I don't think we gave much thought to Nina again until the 1990s when I took a trip to Missouri. Being in St. Louis for a convention brought old ideas to light and I begin to wonder if VOLTRON in general could be adapted to novels as ROBOTECH successfully had been. I played around converting the Nina stories to prose for a bit, but abandoned that.

And so, after that point, I really did not give much though to any of it after posting my site in 1996 and heading to Los Angeles. Even though VOLTRON: THE THIRD DIMENSION, which was five years later in time, it became pretty clear that they had started the board over and while my mind might have briefly flirted with the idea, the starmap ultimately took center stage. I didn't watch VOLTRON FORCE consistently when it initially aired (short version, I actually was employed for the company that owned the cable network that aired it) so I felt a bit torn. I would see the whole series in 2020, but we will get back to that.

VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER obviously had its own continuity and I watched it on its own merits. But I had a very odd dream the night after seeing the finale. Lance from the VLD finale is staring off into space and I think was saying something about wishing you were here. He got back one sentence: "I've always been here." That Lance turned to face Nina with Altean markings.

Definitely wasn't expecting that, but didn't pay much other attention other than I thought maybe my subconscious wanted to deal with something.

When I didn't have much else to do, I discovered VOLTRON FORCE was available online. So I began watching all the episodes. I noticed Lance no longer seemed to have that ongoing interest in women, but he seemed to be harboring a lot of anger, and the series never addressed why even in an aside. Like VOLTRON: THE THIRD DIMENSION, it did another take five years later. So what happened to this Lance in the past five years? I began to wonder about that. And then when the series ended on its cliffhanger, like others who became invested I wondered about where things went from there.

I think that's what opened the door to two ideas simultaneously - beginning to recognize the Nina/Omnia similarities and utilizing her canon character to try and answer those questions. As I worked, the parallels between Omnia and Lance's backgrounds became more apparent. I wondered why Joran's name was only different than Coran's by one letter, especially when Coran was supposed to have been Nina's father, and how annoyingly odd it was to have a guest character so closely named to a semi-regular.

That's how I started to make some of the connections I have talked about more recently, with the VOLTRON FORCE fanfiction I started writing as part of helping get through a dark time. Helping my sister pack up everything in our family home and seeing the original writings for the first time in many, many years when we got the Apple II the premises were originally written on to load just proved even more of an eye opener.

Here are screenshot of the 2011 site frozen in time, after Peter Keefe's memorial service.

What is shown here is a love letter to how the show impacted my life. However, as new iterations appeared and opportunities did not emerge for me to be involved in them despite my professional credits, I became convinced my time with VOLTRON was over.

To my eternal thanks, the LET'S VOLTRON PODCAST and VOLTCON changed all that.

Now, moving on to why this Tumblr site exists. My interactions at VOLTCON have taught me people still have many questions about the site and its legacy. My history with a lot of the VOLTRON fandom seems to begin with knowing my connection to the THIRD DIMENSION starmap. They don't know what came before. So I wanted to create a venue where people can interact and ask questions, especially since I cannot update that site but the server is still live.

Emotionally, the two things that impacted me most in recent years were the selling of my childhood home where this website was originally built and posted, and another traumatic event in early 2025 from which we were fortunately spared (unlike many others) and became a massive wakeup call about preserving VOLTRON fandom history.

(Rest behind a more tag to allow those who might be triggered by fire evacuation stories to not read further)