Come on Mike - can you seriously not cringe at episode 13?! I mean, flashback episodes are seldom the highlight of any series, but that one really does mess things around a lot. There's also still the Prof Hagen/Lamia/Shiro Hagen triad which remains confused when you actually think about it hard.I think someone else has mentioned this recently, but - why does the Imperial Master decide to attack Earth? According to the early episodes, he doesn't care about Earth's destruction - only Lamia's. As Lamia isn't on Earth, why bother going there in person, no less? Why not send another battlecruiser to do the job, or use his fortress to assault the Callinian planet? I suppose you could argue "destiny" or "whim" but it does seem very random.As for the Jupiter "glitch" - well, science fiction it may be, but at the time the series was written enough was known about Jupiter being a great big ball of hydrogen and storms that it's a fairly big glitch! It's not one an adult watcher with any knowledge of astronomy can really ignore.Which is a shame, because a lot of the other astronomy is spot on - not sure about snow storms on Pluto mind you, I don't think it has the atmosphere or the wind for that, but at least it was portrayed as being cold and without a breathable atmosphere. Mars was well done, as was the positioning of the asteroid belt. The black hole though, that didn't really work,and even Disney made theirs nastier! There are also some inconsistencies over how much power they have left in that episode - one minute they barely have enough for a laser blast, the next they can fire X-Impulse.These are not, of course, issues I had with the show when I was a kid. I couldn't have cared less about the Imperial Master's motivation, I just wanted to see things get blown up! There is no doubt that it was, and in many ways remains, a unique series for its day with a great soundtrack and pretty mature themes and acting. Otherwise, after all, you wouldn't be sat at your computer reading this post, now would you?!
