u/Robert_B_Marks

The 24 hour limit has passed...um...and...um...so, here's the thing. I've done almost no research whatsoever on the home front. That's not zero research, but very little. So, this is probably going to be on the short side...

But let's get to business, and get started with the intro: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And here we go for what may be the shortest one of these I've ever written...

Logistics failures

On the military side, we have Tanya's world start its own version of Stalingrad, with one of its problems being the supplies just running out. And this passes the sniff test with flying colours, particularly when you look at the German army in WW2.

One of the things about the Wehrmacht and its command was that it really didn't understand logistics. They honestly believed that the answer to "We've got enough supplies for X number of days, during which you can get Y number of kilometers," was "Well, then we'll get to Y in fewer days!"...and this apparently is one of the things that helps explain Barbarossa. In the short campaigns of the early war it wasn't too bad, but once you got past 1941 and hostilities that couldn't be ended in a matter of months, it was an albatross around their necks.

Vague victory conditions

I've talked about this before - the leadership saying that they just want to "win the war" with little idea of what this looks like passes the sniff test, and this lack of an understanding of grand strategy was something that dogged the German army from Moltke the Elder onwards. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, the Germans in WW1 didn't even have victory conditions when they invaded Belgium.

The home front

Sure, I guess it passes the sniff test? Again, as I said at the beginning, this isn't an aspect of military history that I've researched much about. Ian Kershaw in his book The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany and Gerhard Weinberg in A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II both talk about the German home front supporting Hitler's regime more or less until the Russians crossed the German border, but that doesn't quite relate to what we see in this episode. I'm sure there are historians who would have plenty to say about it, but unfortunately I'm not one of them.

And that's it for this week. Sorry it's not longer.

Right...so, here's the thing. I've done almost no research whatsoever on the home front. That's not zero research, but very little. So, this is probably going to be on the short side...

But let's get to business, and get started with the intro: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And here we go for what may be the shortest one of these I've ever written...

Logistics failures

On the military side, we have Tanya's world start its own version of Stalingrad, with one of its problems being the supplies just running out. And this passes the sniff test with flying colours, particularly when you look at the German army in WW2.

One of the things about the Wehrmacht and its command was that it really didn't understand logistics. They honestly believed that the answer to "We've got enough supplies for X number of days, during which you can get Y number of kilometers," was "Well, then we'll get to Y in fewer days!"...and this apparently is one of the things that helps explain Barbarossa. In the short campaigns of the early war it wasn't too bad, but once you got past 1941 and hostilities that couldn't be ended in a matter of months, it was an albatross around their necks.

Vague victory conditions

I've talked about this before - the leadership saying that they just want to "win the war" with little idea of what this looks like passes the sniff test, and this lack of an understanding of grand strategy was something that dogged the German army from Moltke the Elder onwards. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, the Germans in WW1 didn't even have victory conditions when they invaded Belgium.

The home front

Sure, I guess it passes the sniff test? Again, as I said at the beginning, this isn't an aspect of military history that I've researched much about. Ian Kershaw in his book The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany and Gerhard Weinberg in A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II both talk about the German home front supporting Hitler's regime more or less until the Russians crossed the German border, but that doesn't quite relate to what we see in this episode. I'm sure there are historians who would have plenty to say about it, but unfortunately I'm not one of them.

And that's it for this week. Sorry it's not longer.

The twenty-four hour limit has just passed, so here we go!

First, the usual intro: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And let's begin...

Using a general as a decoy

We see Zettour use himself as a decoy, on the grounds that since he's a high value target, the enemy will shift their assault towards him. I'm not sure any commander in their right mind in our world would have done it quite this way, but this isn't our world, so this passes the sniff test.

And, there is a history of using commanders as decoys. The one that comes immediately to mind is General George Patton in WW2, where prior to D-Day an entire phony invasion force was built around him, with bogus communications and even inflatable tanks. The goal was to convince the Germans that the Allies would be landing at Calais, and having Patton make public appearances helped sell the ruse.

And even high value targets have been used as decoys in military history. Another WW2 example, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, had the Japanese aircraft carriers (which by this time were empty of planes) used to decoy Admiral Halsey's air support away from Leyte on a wild goose chase. The end result was the world's last battleship-on-battleship battle.

So, what Zettour does probably crosses the line into utter insanity, but it IS something that could happen in a world war.

Assuming that Tanya will figure out the new plan

Adding to Zettour's recklessness, we see him set out with the assumption that Tanya will put together the clues and figure out what he wants and what needs to be done. And, this passes the sniff test. It was also a major issue in the German Army right up to the end of WW2 that helped lose it two world wars.

It all comes down to Moltke the Elder, who realized that battlefields were getting large and complex enough that orders given by command could be obsolete by the time they arrived. Moltke's answer to this was to forget trying to control the strategic side in any serious way at all - instead, armies would be given very general orders ("go to location X by this route and break through"), with the understanding that once the army got there and broke through, everybody would figure out what to do next.

This was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it made the German army extremely flexible on the tactical level. On the other hand, Germany entered both world wars without even a concept of grand strategy. And this could work very well (as it does with Tanya here), or it could work very badly (the entire advance to the Marne in 1914 is less a cohesive German army advancing in a plan as it is several German armies advancing while sharing the same operational areas and occasionally the same goals, but not often - it's EXTREMELY entertaining reading for many of the wrong reasons).

Air units buggering off to do something else

Sadly what we see here with the Unified mage unit just deciding to leave the operation and chase something else passes the sniff test with flying colours. Inter-service rivalry was (and is) a very real thing. It could be extreme as the Luftwaffe treating the Kriegsmarine like the enemy and deciding not to give the Bismarck any air support, or it could be as low level as fighter escorts deciding that chasing the enemy fighters was more interesting than actually escorting the bombers (a big problem during the strategic bombing campaign in WW2). One of the problems the Allies had in the preparations for D-Day was that Arthur "Bomber" Harris, commander of Bomber Command, had become obsessed with bombing Berlin, and was outright refusing to task any bombers to actual strategic targets like French railway junctions (as I recall, Churchill managed to force a compromise).

So, the Unified Task Force mages just buggering off in the middle of the battle to do something else? It fits.

Tanya's bayonet charge

Failing to deal with the Federation mages using her normal bag of tricks, we see Tanya resort to a good, old fashioned bayonet charge. And this passes the sniff test.

As much as some theorists like to argue that things like trenches and machine guns made the shock charge obsolete, reality has never agreed with this. There has always been value in being able to stick a long knife to your rifle and turn it into a spear for poking enemies in front of you.

In WW1, the main weapons used to clear trenches by the British Army were bayonets and grenades. The tendency of soldiers to resort to them (which makes a LOT of sense once you see all the twists and turns in a real WW1 trench system) became so common that the British army found itself re-issuing a number of bayonet training manuals, along with a reminder that rifles can shoot too. WW2 saw fewer bayonet charges, but they did happen (as I recall, my fellow Canadians carried out at least one charge in Sicily in 1943).

So, Tanya doing one? Absolutely a thing that could happen.

...and that's all that comes to mind for now...looking forward to the next episode.

Right! Just watched the episode, so here we go...

First, the usual intro: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And let's begin...

Using a general as a decoy

We see Zettour use himself as a decoy, on the grounds that since he's a high value target, the enemy will shift their assault towards him. I'm not sure any commander in their right mind in our world would have done it quite this way, but this isn't our world, so this passes the sniff test.

And, there is a history of using commanders as decoys. The one that comes immediately to mind is General George Patton in WW2, where prior to D-Day an entire phony invasion force was built around him, with bogus communications and even inflatable tanks. The goal was to convince the Germans that the Allies would be landing at Calais, and having Patton make public appearances helped sell the ruse.

And even high value targets have been used as decoys in military history. Another WW2 example, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, had the Japanese aircraft carriers (which by this time were empty of planes) used to decoy Admiral Halsey's air support away from Leyte on a wild goose chase. The end result was the world's last battleship-on-battleship battle.

So, what Zettour does probably crosses the line into utter insanity, but it IS something that could happen in a world war.

Assuming that Tanya will figure out the new plan

Adding to Zettour's recklessness, we see him set out with the assumption that Tanya will put together the clues and figure out what he wants and what needs to be done. And, this passes the sniff test. It was also a major issue in the German Army right up to the end of WW2 that helped lose it two world wars.

It all comes down to Moltke the Elder, who realized that battlefields were getting large and complex enough that orders given by command could be obsolete by the time they arrived. Moltke's answer to this was to forget trying to control the strategic side in any serious way at all - instead, armies would be given very general orders ("go to location X by this route and break through"), with the understanding that once the army got there and broke through, everybody would figure out what to do next.

This was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it made the German army extremely flexible on the tactical level. On the other hand, Germany entered both world wars without even a concept of grand strategy. And this could work very well (as it does with Tanya here), or it could work very badly (the entire advance to the Marne in 1914 is less a cohesive German army advancing in a plan as it is several German armies advancing while sharing the same operational areas and occasionally the same goals, but not often - it's EXTREMELY entertaining reading for many of the wrong reasons).

Air units buggering off to do something else

Sadly what we see here with the Unified mage unit just deciding to leave the operation and chase something else passes the sniff test with flying colours. Inter-service rivalry was (and is) a very real thing. It could be extreme as the Luftwaffe treating the Kriegsmarine like the enemy and deciding not to give the Bismarck any air support, or it could be as low level as fighter escorts deciding that chasing the enemy fighters was more interesting than actually escorting the bombers (a big problem during the strategic bombing campaign in WW2). One of the problems the Allies had in the preparations for D-Day was that Arthur "Bomber" Harris, commander of Bomber Command, had become obsessed with bombing Berlin, and was outright refusing to task any bombers to actual strategic targets like French railway junctions (as I recall, Churchill managed to force a compromise).

So, the Unified Task Force mages just buggering off in the middle of the battle to do something else? It fits.

Tanya's bayonet charge

Failing to deal with the Federation mages using her normal bag of tricks, we see Tanya resort to a good, old fashioned bayonet charge. And this passes the sniff test.

As much as some theorists like to argue that things like trenches and machine guns made the shock charge obsolete, reality has never agreed with this. There has always been value in being able to stick a long knife to your rifle and turn it into a spear for poking enemies in front of you.

In WW1, the main weapons used to clear trenches by the British Army were bayonets and grenades. The tendency of soldiers to resort to them (which makes a LOT of sense once you see all the twists and turns in a real WW1 trench system) became so common that the British army found itself re-issuing a number of bayonet training manuals, along with a reminder that rifles can shoot too. WW2 saw fewer bayonet charges, but they did happen (as I recall, my fellow Canadians carried out at least one charge in Sicily in 1943).

So, Tanya doing one? Absolutely a thing that could happen.

...and that's all that comes to mind for now...looking forward to the next episode.

(Damn - I need to remember those spoiler rules. Anyway, reposted with a spoiler warning.)

Taking inspiration from a clueless commentator on another subreddit who suggested that if I thought I could write better, I should do it myself (I am, in fact, a published author who just released a science fiction novel set in the future of the Artemis program), I've been thinking about how I would have written this story, if I had been the screenwriter.

So, here is my outline for "Human Best Friend" - I am aiming here to keep the character arcs intact:

PRE-CREDITS

The crew are getting restless, with a major negotiation with the Rodaxians only two weeks away. As they are passing near the Cesnar system, Pike authorizes shore leave at the Cesnar Grand Resort, with a warning that the atmosphere creates intoxication, and orders the primary bridge crew to take a week off if they are not going to the planet. As the shuttle leaves with Pike, Uhura, Ortegas, Scott, Una, M'Bega, and Chapel, a desperate message is handed to La'an - the ship's computer has been hacked.

ACT 1

Scotty and Ortegas wake up in a room with no memory of the past twenty-four hours, and a cast on Ortegas' arm. They are handed a letter from Dendru to give to Pike that the Rodaxians have moved up the peace conference, and will be arriving by the end of the day. As they make their way to Uhura's party to try to find Pike, they pass a small group of Rodaxians in the hallway.

On the ship, Spock receives a message from Kirk. Kirk is on his way to leave on Cesnar, but has just discovered that the Enterprise is in the area, and wants to know if Spock would mind a visit. Spock agrees, as La'an has returned to duty against orders to chase down the computer hack. Kirk arrives, and he and Spock begin a game of three-dimensional chess.

La'an finally discovers what information was accessed when the computer was hacked: navigation and communications. Specifically, somebody now knows that that ship is in orbit around Cesnar, and that the Captain is on leave on the planet.

ACT 2

After Uhura mentions them catching a dragon bomb right after arriving at the party (with a high enough dose to induce amnesia), Scott and Ortegas follow the trail to Pike, who is getting a tattoo. He tells them to prepare the shuttle and get the crew together who are needed for the negotiations. As they leave, he tells the tattoo artist to hurry up.

Kirk and Spock play three-dimensional chess. As they play, Kirk tells Spock that he's been told that he's been nominated for early promotion to Captain, and asked about his preferences for potential commands. He also tells Spock that he's concerned about being too inexperienced and not ready to be a Captain. Spock is reserved - Kirk can clearly see that something is bothering him, but Spock won't open up about it.

La'an contacts security at the Cesnar Grand Resort, only to have her concerns handwaved away. During the discussion, the security officer she's talking to can't help himself and asks her "Aren't you supposed to be on leave?" La'an finishes the call with a chilling realization: the resort security is involved in the hacking.

On the planet, Scott and Ortegas go to prepare the shuttle, only to find that the shuttle is missing, and they were the ones to check it out.

ACT 3

Ortegas and Scotty go to Uhura's party and borrow the tricorder she smuggled onto the planet, and are joined by Chapel in the search for the shuttle. They locate the shuttle on a rooftop far from the main centre of resort, but with a band of thieves getting ready to loot it. Chapel steps forward and bluffs them into leaving with medically precise threats. Scotty and Ortegas are astounded, and ask her if she's okay. She tells them that she's been frustrated at the distance from her husband, and it felt good to take it out on the thieves. They then recover the shuttle.

On the ship, Spock opens up to Kirk about his own issues, talking about his career in Starfleet and how it separates him from other Vulcans.

La'an is trying to contact Pike on the planet without success when she learns that he's on the shuttle returning to the ship. She goes to meet the shuttle, only to be asked if arrangements have been made for the arrival of the Rodaxian ambassadors. La'an is stunned, because she had no idea they were coming in the first place.

The Rodaxians arrive and Scotty and Ortegas work on fixing the shuttle. They have a heart-to-heart, and then they find a bomb.

ACT 4

Ortegas contacts security about the bomb. La'an is venting to Spock and Kirk when she gets the call, and they rush to the shuttle bay.

Once there, they find the data chip with a message from them in case something happened: they had gone to maintain the shuttle at the resort when they discovered the bomb. They had contacted the resort security, but security refused to believe them. Fearing that something was wrong, they had hidden the shuttle in a place where an explosion would cause the fewest casualties, and hidden the key to the shuttle in a fake cast. They finish the recording by saying that they're on their way to Uhura's party to tell Pike, and that under no circumstances must the shuttle be allowed to return to the ship.

La'an recognizes the bomb as a type that will explode if Scotty drops it or moves it too much. Scotty has an idea - beam him from his location in the ship to the transporter pad, separate him and the bomb in the buffer, and bring him out while beaming the bomb into space.

As he is one of the few people with the technical knowledge to do this, Spock races to the transporter room, followed by Kirk, who notices something that both Spock and Scotty missed. Together, they carry out the transport, and the bomb explodes in space.

EPILOGUE

In a conference room, La'an explains to the Rodaxian delegates that a Rodaxian splinter group hoping to sabotage the talks had infiltrated the resort's security and used their data to hack the ship, getting the information they needed to plant the bomb and send a faked message from the resort asking to move up the talks. Pike tells the delegates that due to this breach of security, all his crew have been recalled from shore leave, and the resort will be removed from Starfleet's approved list of leave locations.

On a shuttle heading back to the Farragut, Kirk looks over the paperwork he's been given for early promotion. He places the Enterprise at the top of his list of preferred commands.

On the bridge, Ortegas gets a red light while flying. She calls somebody to take over while she takes a break, and goes down to engineering to visit Scotty.

END

And that's what I would write if I was writing this episode. Kirk now has a point, the bomb fits properly into the narrative, and the characters act like actual Starfleet officers.

The twenty-four hour limit has passed, so, here we go...

First, the usual: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And now we get to look at Tanya's version of Verdun...or Kursk...possibly. A lot of aspects of this that I want to comment on, so we'll start with...

The Civilian government reassigning officers

We start the episode with Zettour being reassigned, apparently by the civilian leadership. In most armies, this wouldn't pass the sniff test, but this is taking its cues from the German Army, and in WW1 and before, this was a sort of thing that could happen. The Great General Staff is sort of bizarre in just how powerless it was in some key aspects - it didn't, for example, write doctrine, nor did it make a number of decisions on military hardware. Much of this power was concentrated in the War Ministry, including the assignment of senior officers. So, the civilian leadership deciding to kick Zettour to the Eastern Front is something that could very well have happened.

Tanya's unit being used even though exhausted

Sadly, what we see here with Tanya's unit just having been through hell and being told they're going to work even harder passes the sniff test with flying colours. This was a major problem with both the German and French armies in WW1 - units would not be taken off the front lines, but just kept there until they were used up. Perhaps the worst was Verdun, where units were rotated into that hell until they had suffered a certain percentage of casualties (I don't remember the percentage offhand), and then somebody else would be rotated in. So, the army deciding that Tanya's force was still good to fight despite not getting anything resembling a real rest is quite plausible here.

Pinning the enemy around a city while you have other units acting

I don't think it will surprise anybody that the battle plan Tanya comes up with passes the sniff test. Both Stalingrad and Kursk operated under this model (although this was the Russians doing it to the Germans rather than the other way around). But, even though Tanya's plan is probably closer to the Russians at Kursk, the comparison I want to make here is actually with Verdun...

Unexpected escalation

What we see once Tanya's unit takes its position is a much stronger reaction from the enemy than expected. This passes the sniff test - no surprise there - but this is also the sort of thing that can have major ramifications later on. There is still a great deal of debate over Falkenhayn's original plan for Verdun, with some taking him at his word that it was an attempt to bleed the French army dry, while others believe that this was a later excuse due to the bloodbath, and the original intention was to capture the city. Regardless, what was supposed to become a limited operation for the Germans exploded into an ongoing bloodletting that bled both the Germans and the French nearly to the breaking point. And neither felt that they could withdraw.

I don't know if we are going to see a Verdun play out here (honestly, I haven't read the particular light novel this is based on, and at this point the series is channelling WW2 far more than WW1, so it's probably a Kursk), but it is Verdun that this entire situation brings to my mind (I mean, I am a WW1 specialist).

Artillery placement

Here we come to the one place where the episode fails the sniff test. I'm not talking about the Federation firing into its own troops (a standard tactic in WW1 was the creeping, or rolling, barrage which is a curtain of artillery fire directly in front of an advance used to screen it from enemy action, so dangerously close artillery fire is quite common). What I'm talking about is where the Federation artillery is placed, which is utter nonsense.

The range of artillery is measured in miles. Now, it may be a nice visual to see the artillery at the back of the oncoming troops, but there is no military reason for it to be that close to the front lines. In fact, artillery is so important in warfare, particularly the warfare of the world wars, that you would keep it behind the lines to protect it, and that includes hiding it when you're not using it (so what Tanya's unit does with concealing their artillery until it's time to use it is pretty plausible).

Or, put another way, if you can see the enemy artillery on the battlefield, the enemy has massively screwed up (and done you a big favour by making it easy to destroy it).

"Operation Andromeda"

This is a minor quibble that has nothing whatsoever to do with the sniff test, but Tanya really gets wrong what the name of this operation would be referencing. Officers at this time would probably have had some degree of Classical education, and very little astronomy - so while Tanya sees the name as referring to a far away galaxy (with lightsabers, and Jedi!), it's almost certainly a reference to Greek mythology. That said, when you look at the mythology, it is a bit baffling as to why they chose that name (Andromeda was a princess who had to be rescued from sacrifice by Perseus - if you want an entertaining retelling of this, watch the original Clash of the Titans - and Zettour's defensive plan is created after the operation is named), but that's a different matter entirely.

And that's it for now. Looking forward to next week!

Funnily enough, I actually got to watch this episode nice and (relatively) early today! So, here we go...

First, the usual: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And now we get to look at Tanya's version of Verdun...or Kursk...possibly. A lot of aspects of this that I want to comment on, so we'll start with...

The Civilian government reassigning officers

We start the episode with Zettour being reassigned, apparently by the civilian leadership. In most armies, this wouldn't pass the sniff test, but this is taking its cues from the German Army, and in WW1 and before, this was a sort of thing that could happen. The Great General Staff is sort of bizarre in just how powerless it was in some key aspects - it didn't, for example, write doctrine, nor did it make a number of decisions on military hardware. Much of this power was concentrated in the War Ministry, including the assignment of senior officers. So, the civilian leadership deciding to kick Zettour to the Eastern Front is something that could very well have happened.

Tanya's unit being used even though exhausted

Sadly, what we see here with Tanya's unit just having been through hell and being told they're going to work even harder passes the sniff test with flying colours. This was a major problem with both the German and French armies in WW1 - units would not be taken off the front lines, but just kept there until they were used up. Perhaps the worst was Verdun, where units were rotated into that hell until they had suffered a certain percentage of casualties (I don't remember the percentage offhand), and then somebody else would be rotated in. So, the army deciding that Tanya's force was still good to fight despite not getting anything resembling a real rest is quite plausible here.

Pinning the enemy around a city while you have other units acting

I don't think it will surprise anybody that the battle plan Tanya comes up with passes the sniff test. Both Stalingrad and Kursk operated under this model (although this was the Russians doing it to the Germans rather than the other way around). But, even though Tanya's plan is probably closer to the Russians at Kursk, the comparison I want to make here is actually with Verdun...

Unexpected escalation

What we see once Tanya's unit takes its position is a much stronger reaction from the enemy than expected. This passes the sniff test - no surprise there - but this is also the sort of thing that can have major ramifications later on. There is still a great deal of debate over Falkenhayn's original plan for Verdun, with some taking him at his word that it was an attempt to bleed the French army dry, while others believe that this was a later excuse due to the bloodbath, and the original intention was to capture the city. Regardless, what was supposed to become a limited operation for the Germans exploded into an ongoing bloodletting that bled both the Germans and the French nearly to the breaking point. And neither felt that they could withdraw.

I don't know if we are going to see a Verdun play out here (honestly, I haven't read the particular light novel this is based on, and at this point the series is channelling WW2 far more than WW1, so it's probably a Kursk), but it is Verdun that this entire situation brings to my mind (I mean, I am a WW1 specialist).

Artillery placement

Here we come to the one place where the episode fails the sniff test. I'm not talking about the Federation firing into its own troops (a standard tactic in WW1 was the creeping, or rolling, barrage which is a curtain of artillery fire directly in front of an advance used to screen it from enemy action, so dangerously close artillery fire is quite common). What I'm talking about is where the Federation artillery is placed, which is utter nonsense.

The range of artillery is measured in miles. Now, it may be a nice visual to see the artillery at the back of the oncoming troops, but there is no military reason for it to be that close to the front lines. In fact, artillery is so important in warfare, particularly the warfare of the world wars, that you would keep it behind the lines to protect it, and that includes hiding it when you're not using it (so what Tanya's unit does with concealing their artillery until it's time to use it is pretty plausible).

Or, put another way, if you can see the enemy artillery on the battlefield, the enemy has massively screwed up (and done you a big favour by making it easy to destroy it).

"Operation Andromeda"

This is a minor quibble that has nothing whatsoever to do with the sniff test, but Tanya really gets wrong what the name of this operation would be referencing. Officers at this time would probably have had some degree of Classical education, and very little astronomy - so while Tanya sees the name as referring to a far away galaxy (with lightsabers, and Jedi!), it's almost certainly a reference to Greek mythology. That said, when you look at the mythology, it is a bit baffling as to why they chose that name (Andromeda was a princess who had to be rescued from sacrifice by Perseus - if you want an entertaining retelling of this, watch the original Clash of the Titans - and Zettour's defensive plan is created after the operation is named), but that's a different matter entirely.

And that's it for now. Looking forward to next week!

(Reposted due to running afoul of the spoiler rules...sorry mods - I thought I had managed to be spoiler free, but one slipped in.)

So, been thinking about this since the episode aired (and had a chaotic enough time over the last few days that this is my first chance to put it into writing)...but, I think that SNW made a major misstep by producing an episode that was effectively R-rated horror.

Now, to be clear, I liked the episode (or at least, what I saw of it - Cogeco cable screwed up the schedule, and so the DVR recording cut out right as Kirk was about to call Carol). I was honestly worried that it would end up being something played out like zombies, and it wasn't. It channelled Event Horizon, gave us some truly grisly moments, and gave us some good character work. It was one of the better episodes.

I just don't think it was an episode that should have been done in Star Trek.

Here's the thing: Star Trek started out as a family show. Now, that doesn't mean that it was a show for children - it means it was a show that children could watch. It was mostly for the adults, but the kids would get something out of it too...and they did.

Kids watched Star Trek (I know, I was one of them back in the 1980s), and they were inspired by it. People became scientists, engineers, and astronauts because they watched Star Trek as a kid. I doubt that this was the original intention of the show - there probably weren't discussions happening during pre-production about how the show will inspire children. But, regardless, that was the result, and it has been a part of what Star Trek is since the 1960s.

What we have with this episode is a Star Trek that is no longer a family show. To be clear, this was a trend as far back as the first season of Discovery, which had moments of gore and coarse language. But I've never seen it go this far before. No parent in their right mind would allow a child to watch this episode. And, as parent with small children, that doesn't sit right with me.

Now, to be clear, you can do horror in a family show - Doctor Who mastered this on a weekly basis (hell, one of the jokes about Doctor Who was that kids would hide behind the couch and watch it...and then it found a way to make the shadows behind the couch terrifying as well). Star Trek has done horror, and still been a family show. But, not any more.

And, I think because of this, it has lost one of the things that made it special. Star Trek was inspirational - it could inspire young minds to follow where it led. But with this episode, we now have a SNW series that young minds can't be inspired by, because it's no longer something they can watch in the first place.

My thoughts, anyway, for what they're worth.

Right...24 hour limit has passed, so let's get this posted here!

Usual introduction: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And today, we get to look at Tanya's version of Operation Market Garden...

Planning to encircle and destroying an enemy army

Sort of obvious, but this passes the sniff test with flying colours. For all that Schlieffen gets guff for focusing on encirclement in his Cannae (which, despite the title, is mostly about the Franco-Prussian War), this is a standard strategy and tactic that pretty much everybody uses when it comes to manoeuvre warfare. Schlieffen's concern was in regards to how to fight a battle of annihilation when you have inferior force numbers in comparison to your enemy, which was very relevant for pre-WW1 Germany. There's a lot to say on this, but I'm afraid I'm going to beg off and say that since Tanya's world is not our world, her Schlieffen is not our Schlieffen, and if you want to learn about Schlieffen and encirclement, go find my introduction and read it. So, let's talk about Tanya's world, because the use of paratroopers is exactly right - they're light infantry that you put behind enemy lines to take and hold tactically important locations until reinforcement can arrive.

Driving an entire unit deep into enemy lines without interference

Passes the sniff test, no question. The problem that arose in Market Garden came down to a fatal combination of small geography (which meant that the armoured column had to use a specific route) and intelligence failures that resulted in much stronger resistance than expected. As a result, the relief column got bogged down, and the paratroopers couldn't hold out long enough. But, the Eastern Front never had a problem with the geography being too small - quite the opposite, in fact. So, intelligence finding a route into enemy territory for a relief column is quite possible.

(That said, my favourite example of armoured penetration of this nature comes from the battle of Kursk, in Dennis Showalter's book Armor and Blood - a German column just drove through Russian lines by acting like they were supposed to be there. By the time somebody noticed that they were the wrong tanks, the Russian tank column was so close to the German one that what erupted was functionally a knife and pistol fight between armoured columns. The Germans won, continued on...and then they were bombed into tiny bits by the Luftwaffe.)

Preventing the enemy from escaping by taking out their headquarters

This probably passes the sniff test, but I do have a reservation that is probably not is not for the reason you might think - honestly, I'm just not sure that whether the enemy command is intact would make a decisive difference in a case like this. Lots of successful encirclements in history with the enemy command intact - they just get rounded up and captured/destroyed with the rest of the rest of the army (see Paulus at Stalingrad for an example).

Fighting on the battlefield to get the best peace terms possible

Passes the sniff test with flying colours. This is how wars work. The more enemy territory you can be holding and the more damage you have inflicted when the bullets stop flying, the more favourable the terms you are likely to receive. It is an unfortunate fact that intense fighting will often happen right before a ceasefire, just to hold the most advantageous ground once it has started.

The politicians refusing peace terms and demanding more victories

We're more into the political side here, but this also passes the sniff test. The thing is that this is almost certainly not based on a German example, but a Japanese one (and I'm not surprised by this at all, coming from a Japanese series).

The Japanese called it "victory disease" - a tendency to become arrogant after early victories and lose sight of reality as the war continued. This was a major part of the downfall of the Japanese Empire in WW2. The Japanese managed some truly stunning early victories, and convinced themselves that they were unstoppable. This is not a sound grounds for planning strategy, and it bit them hard in the hindquarters.

So, for Carlo Zen to give Tanya's Germany victory disease makes plenty of sense - it's probably part of the Japanese military psyche at this point. Now, I'm being a bit vague here, but that's mainly because while I have read about the War in the Pacific (and I would strongly recommend Ian W. Toll's Pacific War trilogy if you want to learn about it), it's not one I've studied extensively to any degree, and it's also quite late and I'm tired enough that it's getting hard to think. But, I do want to look at one last aspect of this...

The Empire not figuring out its war aims until years in

This passes the sniff test, and it was a big issue for Germany in WW1. As strange as it may sound, Germany invaded Belgium in 1914 without having figured out its war aims beyond "beat France and Russia."

Unlike Tanya's Empire, it didn't take years to figure them out. But, the political decision of whether Germany even wanted to keep Belgium after it had occupied it was made weeks after the war started. And, as much as the Kaiser gets blamed for how the war started (and the man was to diplomacy what a guillotine is to a sore throat), it was the German civilian government that turned it into a war of conquest for Germany in regards to Belgium and France, and that was only after the lines had solidified in the West.

r/Anime Exclusive: Rebuilding railways

When I wrote this last night, it was late, and something interesting slipped my mind. It is now morning, I am more awake, and the work I have to do is REALLY boring...so, I'm going to add something here...

We have a reference to logistics issues caused by needing to rebuild the railroads in enemy territory. This passes the sniff test, for a reason that makes for (at least what I think is) really interesting trivia - it's not just a problem of having to repair battle damage. If Tanya's world is anything like ours, the Empire would have to re-lay the entire line.

The problem was that while Europe had more or less standardized on a single gauge of railroad, Russia was using a different gauge. And this meant that to use the rail lines that were in place to move supplies to its troops in WW2, Germany would have to load up the supplies in Germany, take them to the Russian border, unload them at the end of the European lines, load them onto new cars on the Russian lines, and then take them the rest of the way. And, all Russia had to do to make this even more difficult was destroy its rail cars during its retreat (which I'm fairly sure they did, but don't quote me on that).

And what this meant was that to move supplies from Germany to the Eastern Front without disruption, Germany would have to literally rebuild the Russian railroad lines in the European gauge. As I said, if Tanya's world is anything like ours, the Empire has the same problem, and is literally having to re-lay thousands of miles of track.

And that's it for this episode!

Right...let's get started.

Usual introduction: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

And today, we get to look at Tanya's version of Operation Market Garden...

Planning to encircle and destroying an enemy army

Sort of obvious, but this passes the sniff test with flying colours. For all that Schlieffen gets guff for focusing on encirclement in his Cannae (which, despite the title, is mostly about the Franco-Prussian War), this is a standard strategy and tactic that pretty much everybody uses when it comes to manoeuvre warfare. Schlieffen's concern was in regards to how to fight a battle of annihilation when you have inferior force numbers in comparison to your enemy, which was very relevant for pre-WW1 Germany. There's a lot to say on this, but I'm afraid I'm going to beg off and say that since Tanya's world is not our world, her Schlieffen is not our Schlieffen, and if you want to learn about Schlieffen and encirclement, go find my introduction and read it. So, let's talk about Tanya's world, because the use of paratroopers is exactly right - they're light infantry that you put behind enemy lines to take and hold tactically important locations until reinforcement can arrive.

Driving an entire unit deep into enemy lines without interference

Passes the sniff test, no question. The problem that arose in Market Garden came down to a fatal combination of small geography (which meant that the armoured column had to use a specific route) and intelligence failures that resulted in much stronger resistance than expected. As a result, the relief column got bogged down, and the paratroopers couldn't hold out long enough. But, the Eastern Front never had a problem with the geography being too small - quite the opposite, in fact. So, intelligence finding a route into enemy territory for a relief column is quite possible.

(That said, my favourite example of armoured penetration of this nature comes from the battle of Kursk, in Dennis Showalter's book Armor and Blood - a German column just drove through Russian lines by acting like they were supposed to be there. By the time somebody noticed that they were the wrong tanks, the Russian tank column was so close to the German one that what erupted was functionally a knife and pistol fight between armoured columns. The Germans won, continued on...and then they were bombed into tiny bits by the Luftwaffe.)

Preventing the enemy from escaping by taking out their headquarters

This probably passes the sniff test, but I do have a reservation that is probably not is not for the reason you might think - honestly, I'm just not sure that whether the enemy command is intact would make a decisive difference in a case like this. Lots of successful encirclements in history with the enemy command intact - they just get rounded up and captured/destroyed with the rest of the rest of the army (see Paulus at Stalingrad for an example).

Fighting on the battlefield to get the best peace terms possible

Passes the sniff test with flying colours. This is how wars work. The more enemy territory you can be holding and the more damage you have inflicted when the bullets stop flying, the more favourable the terms you are likely to receive. It is an unfortunate fact that intense fighting will often happen right before a ceasefire, just to hold the most advantageous ground once it has started.

The politicians refusing peace terms and demanding more victories

We're more into the political side here, but this also passes the sniff test. The thing is that this is almost certainly not based on a German example, but a Japanese one (and I'm not surprised by this at all, coming from a Japanese series).

The Japanese called it "victory disease" - a tendency to become arrogant after early victories and lose sight of reality as the war continued. This was a major part of the downfall of the Japanese Empire in WW2. The Japanese managed some truly stunning early victories, and convinced themselves that they were unstoppable. This is not a sound grounds for planning strategy, and it bit them hard in the hindquarters.

So, for Carlo Zen to give Tanya's Germany victory disease makes plenty of sense - it's probably part of the Japanese military psyche at this point. Now, I'm being a bit vague here, but that's mainly because while I have read about the War in the Pacific (and I would strongly recommend Ian W. Toll's Pacific War trilogy if you want to learn about it), it's not one I've studied extensively to any degree, and it's also quite late and I'm tired enough that it's getting hard to think. But, I do want to look at one last aspect of this...

The Empire not figuring out its war aims until years in

This passes the sniff test, and it was a big issue for Germany in WW1. As strange as it may sound, Germany invaded Belgium in 1914 without having figured out its war aims beyond "beat France and Russia."

Unlike Tanya's Empire, it didn't take years to figure them out. But, the political decision of whether Germany even wanted to keep Belgium after it had occupied it was made weeks after the war started. And, as much as the Kaiser gets blamed for how the war started (and the man was to diplomacy what a guillotine is to a sore throat), it was the German civilian government that turned it into a war of conquest for Germany in regards to Belgium and France, and that was only after the lines had solidified in the West.

And that's it for this episode!

You know what? Screw it - I'm going to make my own list, right here and now! Also, I'm going to give it it's own thread, because this a fascinating subject in a show with 60 years of continuity.

In no particular order:

• David Marcus in Star Trek II - not just that Kirk had a son we never knew about, but that it was his dedication to his career that made Carol Marcus tell him to stay away (and Kirk respected it). It means that Kirk spent much of his time on the Enterprise as a father who had to choose between family and the stars, and would never get to watch his son grow up because of the choice he made.

• Kirk in the Nexus, Star Trek: Generations. This is actually a retcon - the TNG episode "Relics" established that Kirk was still alive when Scotty went into retirement. But, it closes off his character wonderfully, and we get to see that the tug-of-war between family and the lure of the stars never ended.

• Klingon makeover, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In the original series, the Klingons were great antagonists on the page who never looked like an alien great power on the screen. They really did come across as actors in yellowface/brownface wearing silly clothes. But, TMP changed that in a single scene - we had truly alien looking Klingons speaking an alien language, and dressed in clothes that actually looked the part. They looked almost nothing like they had in the original series, and the change was done with no explanation, but it was such a good change, I can't remember anybody complaining.

• Klingons as a proud warrior race, TNG. The Klingons in the original series and original cast movies were an expy of the Cold War Soviets, but they never really got that much development beyond that. It was Ron Moore who gave them a rewrite into a proud warrior race and fleshed them out. It's rather amazing just how much of Star Trek continuity actually comes from TNG - with the Klingons, we got a culture with its own rituals and even religion, which contradicted the sneaky Soviet-style Klingons of the original series, but replaced it with something I would argue is both iconic and timeless.

• Starbases as space stations, original cast movies and onwards. The original series did a lot with its budget, but it was a limited one. Starbases were presented as names, and in the rare cases where you might see one, it was a station on a planet. But, with the movies, we got starbases that were the massive space stations one would expect for an interstellar federation - places where you could properly service a starship.

• Sybok, Star Trek V. What Michael Burnham botched, Sybok did right. We learned that Spock had a brother, one he never spoke of because he was the "black sheep" of the family. Both struggled with their emotions, but while Spock did everything he could to be a logical Vulcan, Sybok rejected all of it. It's a great contrast, particuarly as Spock and Sybok are presented as very much opposite sides of the same coin.

And that's my list. Actual retcons that made things better, and in most cases, we couldn't think of Star Trek every being without.

The 24 hour limit has passed, so it's time to get this posted here!

And, before we get started, the usual opening and disclaimer: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

So, let's get started...

Not as much tactical stuff to talk about this episode, but lots of diplomacy, and that has its part in warfare as well. Most of this passes the sniff test, but there's definitely some things to tease out and discuss (some obvious, some less so, but I'll try to keep it interesting)...

Supplies and partisans

We start with the problem of supply shortages made worse by sabotage, and this absolutely happens. Some famous examples are out there, but I want to talk about coffee...because the one thing they haven't mentioned in this show is blockades, and this is absolutely a scenario where the Empire would be under one, which would cause tremendous shortages both in the field and on the home front. And, in our Great War, one of the casualties of the blockade against Germany was coffee - Germans ended up making this sort of coffee out of acorns to fill the gap, which was apparently pretty terrible.

(And one of these days, I'll track down a recipe and try it...because I'm a masoschist?)

Nationalists vs Communists

Passes the sniff test with flying colours. People will tolerate a lot from their political masters when they have to fight for their homeland, and hating the Communist Party while fighting for Russia was a pretty common experience in the Red Army in WW2. Officers who had literally been starved in gulags would come back and serve with distinction. I believe it's called the "rally to the flag" phenomenon.

That said, it really depended on the populace feeling as though one side was a greater evil than the other. Antony Beevor's recent book on the Russian Civil War highlighted the degree to which both sides of the conflict acted like a foreign occupying power, and the victory went to the one that was less incompetent in the field. And this brings me to...

Civilian governments in occupied areas

Another thing that passes the sniff test. Puppet governments are nothing new (I think Napoleon tried to implement one in Spain). There are dimensions to this, particularly that appeared in the First World War, that this show isn't exploring, which is a pity. Imperial Germany did work towards national sovereignty of a number of ethnicities on the Eastern Front during the negotiations for the Brest-Litovsk treaty, but very little of it was due to an effort to "make friends". Instead, it really came down to two pieces of grand strategy: the first was to carve as much out of the Russian Empire as possible and prevent their resurgence after the war; the second was to position Germany as the reasonable party for peace talks based on President Wilson's 14 points (which included self-determination for the many ethnic groups scattered around Europe). It is notable that Germany held no such considerations for either France or Belgium (and keeping Belgium became one of their war aims within weeks of the war starting).

So, this was an extra dimension that would have been nice to see in the show, but wasn't actually there (again, though, as per the ground rules, this lack is NOT a justification for criticism).

This idea of self-determination caused a LOT of trouble in the defeated nations after WW1. The victors went on to a decade of prosperity, but in Eastern Europe there was a level of unprecedented ethnic strife that helped create the lead-up to the Second World War.

With allies like these...

We see a situation between Tanya's version of Britain and Russia where Britain is happy to ally with the "devil" while hoping that the Federation and the Empire just wipe each other out, while the Federation is happy to have Tanya's version of Britain on their side as a friend rather than an enemy. Half of this passes the sniff test, while half of it really doesn't.

The Soviets playing for time through alliances of convenience was part of their ideology. Marxism/Leninism held that there would be a massive global war between Communism and Capitalism (with Communism winning, albeit probably after massive losses), which Russia would be fighting...but while this conflict was inevitable, nothing said that this had to happen right now...or in the near future. It could, in fact, happen years from now, once the Soviet Union is properly ready for it. So, the Nazi-Soviet partnership on the Russian side was very much Stalin buying time before he had to fight and destroy Germany (which WAS his plan), and better to have Britain as an ally than an enemy until Russia was ready to take them down. So, this attitude from the Federation makes historical sense, and passes the sniff test.

The attitude from "Churbill" (seriously?), on the other hand, does not make sense or pass the sniff test. Now, Britain has a long history of using their own power to maintain a balance in Europe. So for centuries, British alliances in European wars were based on propping up the weaker side to keep the stronger from dominating. And, Tanya's Britain doesn't want to have to fight a strong Communist Russia later, so wanting them to be worn down makes sense...so long as they aren't fighting together as allies. Once they're fighting together in the same war, it's British resources being expended, British loans being taken out, etc., and they're not going to prolong the war by kneecapping their allies. So, this is an attitude that would make sense if Tanya's Britain was watching from the sidelines as a neutral state, but not as a belligerent, and they ARE a belligerent.

Summing up...

We have a stinger where Idola, Tanya's version of Italy, has a proposal for their Imperial allies, but I'm going to save discussing that for next week when we see what that proposal actually is. I am going to comment on the members of the Imperial high command being war buddies from a war 30 years ago, though - in real life, this was the actual situation going into WW1. Germany had fought the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, and then had a long peace that lasted over 40 years. And this did create a problem for all of the major powers, in that technology was changing, and they had theories about what this would mean on the battlefield, but they didn't have any battlefields to properly test it on. The best they could do was send observers to somebody else's war to see what happened (and this is how you get Britain and Germany both writing official histories of the Russo-Japanese War). So, you had armies commanded by men with very real battlefield experience, but what was effectively brand new technology and in some cases untested tactics (for example, the machine gun as an offensive - as opposed to defensive - weapon, was only first properly tested in the Russo-Japanese War...prior to that, there was a lot of skepticism because the things were heavy enough to require multiple people just to move them from one place to another).

But, that wraps up this week's discussion - nice to see the political side for a change, and looking forward to next week.

So, with the 24 hour rule in the Anime subreddit,, along with me being able to knock off for the day early, you're getting this here first...

And, before we get started, the usual opening and disclaimer: I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to our standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

So, let's get started...

Not as much tactical stuff to talk about this episode, but lots of diplomacy, and that has its part in warfare as well. Most of this passes the sniff test, but there's definitely some things to tease out and discuss (some obvious, some less so, but I'll try to keep it interesting)...

Supplies and partisans

We start with the problem of supply shortages made worse by sabotage, and this absolutely happens. Some famous examples are out there, but I want to talk about coffee...because the one thing they haven't mentioned in this show is blockades, and this is absolutely a scenario where the Empire would be under one, which would cause tremendous shortages both in the field and on the home front. And, in our Great War, one of the casualties of the blockade against Germany was coffee - Germans ended up making this sort of coffee out of acorns to fill the gap, which was apparently pretty terrible.

(And one of these days, I'll track down a recipe and try it...because I'm a masoschist?)

Nationalists vs Communists

Passes the sniff test with flying colours. People will tolerate a lot from their political masters when they have to fight for their homeland, and hating the Communist Party while fighting for Russia was a pretty common experience in the Red Army in WW2. Officers who had literally been starved in gulags would come back and serve with distinction. I believe it's called the "rally to the flag" phenomenon.

That said, it really depended on the populace feeling as though one side was a greater evil than the other. Antony Beevor's recent book on the Russian Civil War highlighted the degree to which both sides of the conflict acted like a foreign occupying power, and the victory went to the one that was less incompetent in the field. And this brings me to...

Civilian governments in occupied areas

Another thing that passes the sniff test. Puppet governments are nothing new (I think Napoleon tried to implement one in Spain). There are dimensions to this, particularly that appeared in the First World War, that this show isn't exploring, which is a pity. Imperial Germany did work towards national sovereignty of a number of ethnicities on the Eastern Front during the negotiations for the Brest-Litovsk treaty, but very little of it was due to an effort to "make friends". Instead, it really came down to two pieces of grand strategy: the first was to carve as much out of the Russian Empire as possible and prevent their resurgence after the war; the second was to position Germany as the reasonable party for peace talks based on President Wilson's 14 points (which included self-determination for the many ethnic groups scattered around Europe). It is notable that Germany held no such considerations for either France or Belgium (and keeping Belgium became one of their war aims within weeks of the war starting).

So, this was an extra dimension that would have been nice to see in the show, but wasn't actually there (again, though, as per the ground rules, this lack is NOT a justification for criticism).

This idea of self-determination caused a LOT of trouble in the defeated nations after WW1. The victors went on to a decade of prosperity, but in Eastern Europe there was a level of unprecedented ethnic strife that helped create the lead-up to the Second World War.

With allies like these...

We see a situation between Tanya's version of Britain and Russia where Britain is happy to ally with the "devil" while hoping that the Federation and the Empire just wipe each other out, while the Federation is happy to have Tanya's version of Britain on their side as a friend rather than an enemy. Half of this passes the sniff test, while half of it really doesn't.

The Soviets playing for time through alliances of convenience was part of their ideology. Marxism/Leninism held that there would be a massive global war between Communism and Capitalism (with Communism winning, albeit probably after massive losses), which Russia would be fighting...but while this conflict was inevitable, nothing said that this had to happen right now...or in the near future. It could, in fact, happen years from now, once the Soviet Union is properly ready for it. So, the Nazi-Soviet partnership on the Russian side was very much Stalin buying time before he had to fight and destroy Germany (which WAS his plan), and better to have Britain as an ally than an enemy until Russia was ready to take them down. So, this attitude from the Federation makes historical sense, and passes the sniff test.

The attitude from "Churbill" (seriously?), on the other hand, does not make sense or pass the sniff test. Now, Britain has a long history of using their own power to maintain a balance in Europe. So for centuries, British alliances in European wars were based on propping up the weaker side to keep the stronger from dominating. And, Tanya's Britain doesn't want to have to fight a strong Communist Russia later, so wanting them to be worn down makes sense...so long as they aren't fighting together as allies. Once they're fighting together in the same war, it's British resources being expended, British loans being taken out, etc., and they're not going to prolong the war by kneecapping their allies. So, this is an attitude that would make sense if Tanya's Britain was watching from the sidelines as a neutral state, but not as a belligerent, and they ARE a belligerent.

Summing up...

We have a stinger where Idola, Tanya's version of Italy, has a proposal for their Imperial allies, but I'm going to save discussing that for next week when we see what that proposal actually is. I am going to comment on the members of the Imperial high command being war buddies from a war 30 years ago, though - in real life, this was the actual situation going into WW1. Germany had fought the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, and then had a long peace that lasted over 40 years. And this did create a problem for all of the major powers, in that technology was changing, and they had theories about what this would mean on the battlefield, but they didn't have any battlefields to properly test it on. The best they could do was send observers to somebody else's war to see what happened (and this is how you get Britain and Germany both writing official histories of the Russo-Japanese War). So, you had armies commanded by men with very real battlefield experience, but what was effectively brand new technology and in some cases untested tactics (for example, the machine gun as an offensive - as opposed to defensive - weapon, was only first properly tested in the Russo-Japanese War...prior to that, there was a lot of skepticism because the things were heavy enough to require multiple people just to move them from one place to another).

But, that wraps up this week's discussion - nice to see the political side for a change, and looking forward to next week.

EDIT: A quick correction - as somebody pointed out, I was actual wrong about General Zhukov being caught up in Stalin's great purge. The man I was thinking of was Konstantin Rokossovsky. Sorry about that.

(Reposted due to accidentally falling afoul of the 24 hour rule.)

First, to the mods: this has unmarked spoilers, and I'm sorry, but that's just not avoidable here for this discussion. I would literally have to put the entire post into a spoiler block otherwise, so I've marked it in the title, and I'm going to beg your indulgence for this one.

Second, to everybody else, the time has come, and I want to do this while it's still fresh in my head! As for who I am, I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to what will be a standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

So, let's get started...

Chaos on the battlefield

We start with Tanya's combined arms unit getting into a lot of trouble, and making a lot of basic mistakes. This passes the sniff test. Attrition can put the losing side into a situation where they're shortening training, or putting a class of recruits into the battlefield just to have warm bodies there to fill in the ranks. The worst case of this in WW1 arguably happened after August 1914, where the attrition on all three sides was so bad that the level of tactics dropped to sheer basics for the First Battle of Ypres, just because raw recruits had to be pressed into action (on the German side, this became known as "the slaughter of the innocents").

We do have rather bad misuse of the term "elastic defence" (and I wonder if this is a translation issue) - in reality, elastic defence did allow positions to be abandoned as required, to be retaken during counter attacks, so as far as I can tell, the use of the term here is wrong. What this does get right, though, is a phenomenon that occurred with German tactical doctrine in WW1, where officers were expected to show initiative, but enlisted men or common soldiers were NOT - if they were separated from their unit, they were to attach themselves to the nearest officer and follow orders. So, the men just staying in that trench and not moving out unless an officer told them to is what they could be expected to do in the our world, and quite possibly what they were supposed to do in Tanya's.

Now, here's the thing about that initiative, and this brings me to a certain reconnaissance mission that leads to an MIA - in our world, the Imperial German Army gave a lot of leeway to officers for disregarding orders to pursue an opportunity so long as it worked. If it didn't, the army would throw the book at them. So, Tanya's reaction to the mission and in the aftermath is pretty on point.

The purged commie mages being restored to the army and expected to fight

This passes the sniff test with flying colours - this actually happened to the Soviet army in the 1930s - the officer ranks were purged, many of them were sent to gulags (setting Soviet armoured warfare back by years, as this included the Soviet tank theorists). Once the war against Nazi Germany started, these officers were restored to the army, and many of them served with distinction (General Zhukov was one of them, in fact).

Size and speed on the Eastern Front

Tanya has a statement that the size of the Eastern Front has made their speed ineffective, which is an odd complaint, and this one I think is iffy on the "sniff test". The thing about the Eastern Front in both world wars is that it never bogged down the way the Western Front did in WW1, so it was one of the theatres in which manoeuvre warfare could be properly practiced. Or, put another way, it was the front where speed could always make a difference. The problem that the size of the front created was that it made knockout blows almost impossible (the Russians/Federation can always trade land for time and rebuild their forces). So, her complaint is a bit misplaced.

That said, her statement on the weather is very accurate (and one of the reasons the T-34 tracks were so wide was to deal with the muddy season).

The defensive battle on Tanya's position

There's a part of me that wants to say that this doesn't pass the sniff test, because in both world wars the Eastern Front really wasn't known for piecemeal attacks (this isn't to say that they didn't happen, but large offensives were much more the rule). However, as I said at the top, Tanya's war not resembling WW1 or WW2 is NOT grounds for criticism. What happens in it is fine, Tanya's reaction is fine. A world war can work this way.

Military equipment

So, this is one place where to a degree, the show does not pass the "sniff test." The problem is not the presence of airplanes or tanks - these would absolutely be present, and since Tanya's empire is on the defensive, they would have to invest heavily in this technology. The problem is that what we're seeing is WW2 tanks and planes, and Tanya's world would NOT be using those.

And, the big reason comes down to the influences on those tanks and planes, which came out of the interwar period in the 1920s and 30s as the lessons of the Great War were mulled over and officers theorists out how they should be used. Tanya's world is in the middle of its first world war - the influences on later design are happening, and the our real world designs didn't have to deal with the magical equivalent of attack helicopters. So, this equipment should be a lot more primitive, and I would expect the tanks of Tanya's world to have a much more prominent anti-aircraft component.

Bodies resting where they lay

Absolutely passes the sniff test. There are a few reasons why this was the practice - the first comes down to how difficult it can be to locate bodies on a WW1 or WW2 battlefield, and the sheer lack of time an army has to do anything other than bury them in a makeshift cemetery nearby. But, the big discussion of repatriating bodies happened after the First World War, and this was a difficult one - millions of men were buried far from home in cemeteries in Europe. However, if one nation repatriated its dead, then it set a precedent where ALL could. So, in part to avoid the chaos this would cause, the decision was made that no war dead would be repatriated, and each nation's cemeteries would be consolidated where needed.

This is the human cost of the war, right there. I'm glad it showed up.

And that's it for episode 1 - looking forward to episode 2!

(Originally posted on the Anime subreddit.)

First, to the mods: this has unmarked spoilers, and I'm sorry, but that's just not avoidable here for this discussion. I would literally have to put the entire post into a spoiler block otherwise, so I've marked it in the title, and I'm going to beg your indulgence for this one.

Second, to everybody else, the time has come, and I want to do this while it's still fresh in my head! As for who I am, I am a trained military historian - I hold a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada with a defended thesis on the development of British Cavalry Doctrine, and I recently published some of my research in a new introduction to my little publishing company's edition of Schlieffen's Cannae (due to self promotion rules, I can't provide the link here, but if you're interested in it, PM me and I'll send it to you).

What I'm going to look at is how well this episode passes the "sniff test" for how a world war works. And here we get to what will be a standard disclaimer: Tanya's world is not our world, her world war is not either of ours. Something happening in Tanya's war that didn't happen in ours (or vice versa) is NOT by itself cause for criticism.

So, let's get started...

Chaos on the battlefield

We start with Tanya's combined arms unit getting into a lot of trouble, and making a lot of basic mistakes. This passes the sniff test. Attrition can put the losing side into a situation where they're shortening training, or putting a class of recruits into the battlefield just to have warm bodies there to fill in the ranks. The worst case of this in WW1 arguably happened after August 1914, where the attrition on all three sides was so bad that the level of tactics dropped to sheer basics for the First Battle of Ypres, just because raw recruits had to be pressed into action (on the German side, this became known as "the slaughter of the innocents").

We do have rather bad misuse of the term "elastic defence" (and I wonder if this is a translation issue) - in reality, elastic defence did allow positions to be abandoned as required, to be retaken during counter attacks, so as far as I can tell, the use of the term here is wrong. What this does get right, though, is a phenomenon that occurred with German tactical doctrine in WW1, where officers were expected to show initiative, but enlisted men or common soldiers were NOT - if they were separated from their unit, they were to attach themselves to the nearest officer and follow orders. So, the men just staying in that trench and not moving out unless an officer told them to is what they could be expected to do in the our world, and quite possibly what they were supposed to do in Tanya's.

Now, here's the thing about that initiative, and this brings me to a certain reconnaissance mission that leads to an MIA - in our world, the Imperial German Army gave a lot of leeway to officers for disregarding orders to pursue an opportunity so long as it worked. If it didn't, the army would throw the book at them. So, Tanya's reaction to the mission and in the aftermath is pretty on point.

The purged commie mages being restored to the army and expected to fight

This passes the sniff test with flying colours - this actually happened to the Soviet army in the 1930s - the officer ranks were purged, many of them were sent to gulags (setting Soviet armoured warfare back by years, as this included the Soviet tank theorists). Once the war against Nazi Germany started, these officers were restored to the army, and many of them served with distinction (General Zhukov was one of them, in fact).

Size and speed on the Eastern Front

Tanya has a statement that the size of the Eastern Front has made their speed ineffective, which is an odd complaint, and this one I think is iffy on the "sniff test". The thing about the Eastern Front in both world wars is that it never bogged down the way the Western Front did in WW1, so it was one of the theatres in which manoeuvre warfare could be properly practiced. Or, put another way, it was the front where speed could always make a difference. The problem that the size of the front created was that it made knockout blows almost impossible (the Russians/Federation can always trade land for time and rebuild their forces). So, her complaint is a bit misplaced.

That said, her statement on the weather is very accurate (and one of the reasons the T-34 tracks were so wide was to deal with the muddy season).

The defensive battle on Tanya's position

There's a part of me that wants to say that this doesn't pass the sniff test, because in both world wars the Eastern Front really wasn't known for piecemeal attacks (this isn't to say that they didn't happen, but large offensives were much more the rule). However, as I said at the top, Tanya's war not resembling WW1 or WW2 is NOT grounds for criticism. What happens in it is fine, Tanya's reaction is fine. A world war can work this way.

Military equipment

So, this is one place where to a degree, the show does not pass the "sniff test." The problem is not the presence of airplanes or tanks - these would absolutely be present, and since Tanya's empire is on the defensive, they would have to invest heavily in this technology. The problem is that what we're seeing is WW2 tanks and planes, and Tanya's world would NOT be using those.

And, the big reason comes down to the influences on those tanks and planes, which came out of the interwar period in the 1920s and 30s as the lessons of the Great War were mulled over and officers theorists out how they should be used. Tanya's world is in the middle of its first world war - the influences on later design are happening, and the our real world designs didn't have to deal with the magical equivalent of attack helicopters. So, this equipment should be a lot more primitive, and I would expect the tanks of Tanya's world to have a much more prominent anti-aircraft component.

Bodies resting where they lay

Absolutely passes the sniff test. There are a few reasons why this was the practice - the first comes down to how difficult it can be to locate bodies on a WW1 or WW2 battlefield, and the sheer lack of time an army has to do anything other than bury them in a makeshift cemetery nearby. But, the big discussion of repatriating bodies happened after the First World War, and this was a difficult one - millions of men were buried far from home in cemeteries in Europe. However, if one nation repatriated its dead, then it set a precedent where ALL could. So, in part to avoid the chaos this would cause, the decision was made that no war dead would be repatriated, and each nation's cemeteries would be consolidated where needed.

This is the human cost of the war, right there. I'm glad it showed up.

And that's it for episode 1 - looking forward to episode 2!

I'm finally getting around to reading my copy of Clive Barker's Weaveworld, and there's an interesting reference to the cenobites (here they're called "the surgeons") that suggests a rather interesting Hellraiser story to be told.

(For context, Weaveworld was published in 1987, which is the same year that Hellraiser came out.)

The backstory of a monster (who doesn't last very long) is that he was a necromancer who was trying to seduce one of the main antagonists. In his efforts to impress her he summoned the cenobites, who "were not impressed." They chased him around the city until they caught him more or less at the feet of his love interest, who could do nothing to protect him, at which point they filleted him. When "all that was left of him was blood," he begged her to take his soul, and she did.

Am I the only one who would love to see this fleshed out into a proper Hellraiser story? Seriously, I'd love to see what happens when Pinhead shows up and "is not impressed."

I took a bit of a break from horror, so I completely missed that the 2022 remake existed until starting to get into puzzle boxes this year - long story, but my wife got me a Suizu Lament Configuration ("such sights to show you" not included) for Father's Day, which led to me renting the remake off Prime and checking it out at last.

So, I've been mulling over the movie (I liked it a lot), and I have thoughts I would like to share...

The Cenobites

The Cenobites in the first two movies are fascinating in large part because they're really more of an environmental hazard than anything else. They're not going to seek you out - you have to come to them, and you (or somebody near you) has to work pretty hard to make it happen. They're not actually demons, exactly...they don't care about the state of your soul, or punishing you for your sins, or tempting you into sin/perversion. They've got a very specific sense of fun, and if you manage to summon them, they show you their idea of a good time. And that's about it. The horror emerges from innocent people being pulled into their orbit by those who went through the effort to summon them.

The problem with this is that there's not a lot you can do with cenobites staying as the equivalent of a supernatural sinkhole in a series based around them (imagine Tremors if to get a graboid to attack you, you had to hire a marching band and jump up and down while singing the entire score of H.M.S. Pinafore...not a lot of movie there). They have to take on new roles so that new stories can happen involving them. So, even though Clive Barker was supposedly heavily involved with the story for Bloodline, by the fourth movie they had already started drifting into more familiar "demon" territory (which, in turn, make them less interesting).

There's a return to basics in this, and I really like that. Once again, the Cenobites aren't really demons. They're back to having their own sense of good fun, and inflicting it on others. The big change is that in order to get a boon, you have trick people into opening the puzzle box, so they are taking innocents. But, while this is a pretty large change from the modus operandi of the original cenobites from the first two movies, it's still in line with how the series works: the horror still comes from innocent people being pulled into the world of the puzzle box. And, when the cenobites take somebody, they're still showing them their idea of a good time. So, different, but it works.

The Puzzle Box

Mixed feelings about this. The original is probably perfection as a horror movie device. If the box brings damnation, it also forces that damnation to be self-inflicted. It is intricate, difficult to solve, and moves in ways that are physically impossible for an ancient puzzle box to move. It feels mystical, and opening it feels like a revelation.

The new Lament Configuration (to be clear, I'm talking about the first of the six configurations in the movie)...is a type of Rubik's cube called a "Skewb Cube" (and if somebody would make Lament Configuration stickers for it, they'd probably do some brisk business with them). It does a single thing that a Skewb Cube can't (extending on two sides when you put your finger in the hole), but this doesn't feel like something impossible...just something nobody has built yet. And, this really just de-mystifies it.

The thing is, though, in-story this makes sense. The puzzle box isn't just a gateway to the Labyrinth for those dedicated enough to solve it, it's a booby trap for marking sacrifices to earn a boon from Leviathan. It's a cenobite-in-a-box (like a jack-in-a-box, but far more surprising). It doesn't work in-story if it's difficult to open.

Now, the moments where the box changes from one configuration to the other is nicely otherworldly, but otherwise, I think they went too far in the other direction. The Rubik's/Skewb cube Lament Configuration is REALLY underwhelming.

Credit where it's due: nice designs, though.

Themes

The movie is about addiction, and this isn't news to anybody who has watched it or read about it. Now, I'm not (and have never been) an addict, so I can't speak from personal experience, but it seemed to me that this did a really good job of depicting that horrific experience. And, the scene that really stood out to me on this was the moment where Pinhead responds to Riley trying to throw away the box by triggering it in her hand, marking Riley as the next victim and giving her a "you or somebody else" ultimatum. Pinhead (the addiction) won't let Riley just quit...it forces a proverbial relapse.

Anyway, I thought it was a great scene that drove home the theme of addiction and the struggle against it in the movie.

Performances

The performances were good, but holy shit...Jamie Clayton just knocked Pinhead out of the park. When she was on screen, I couldn't look away - her performance was that compelling. Her Pinhead managed to stand alongside Doug Bradley's with distinction, and I want to see more of her in the role.

But What Next?

There's talk of a sequel, and part of me thinks that maybe, just maybe, there shouldn't be one. The problem is the same that dogged the original film series: the cenobites are back to being the equivalent of a supernatural environmental hazard, and this means that any story keeping this aspect of them must rely on finding ways to bring characters into their orbit. This doesn't mean that there aren't ways of doing that, but it will get old pretty quickly, and they told the story of "hedonist manipulates a bunch of people into getting taken by cenobites" quite thoroughly. So, maybe it would be better to get one good story where the cenobites are back to their more interesting selves than to have multiple stories where they drift back into being demons.

Either way, I really liked this movie, and if somebody makes Lament Configuration Skewb Cube stickers, I'd probably be interested...