Star Trek: Both Hands Full - Fourth Edition by John Erik Ege - HTML preview

STAR TREK: TOS
“All Our Yesterdays” episode 78, written by Jean Lisette Aroeste. This episode gives us a time portal, a “gateway” to the past, similar to the Guardian of time only it required a necessary and complicated acclimation process to enable people to stay in the times they went to, which also guaranteed that they wouldn’t return to their present. (Plot contrivance, more than likely, but we will consider it a quirk of their technology. (They sent criminals into their past, putting them in remote places, which seems not very bright. Umm, I’m a bad guy and you send me back in time…. Assuming I am a smart bad guy, Lex Luther smart, and I know history, I can exact my revenge on my persecutors before they’re ever born. It would be better just to open a portal to another planet and let the the criminals colonize it and eek out an existence, like we did in Australia. And surely it would take less energy to open a portal to another planet than open one in a previous time. But, what do I know?)) The portal was run by a Librarian, Atoz, A-to-Z, if you missed it. Rumor has it that this author was a Librarian. Umm.

“Is There No Truth in Beauty” written by Jean Lisette Aroeste. This is an episode of hope, in the sense that the script was written by Jean and submitted, unsolicited, and she made it! (Yeah, Jean.) She wrote “All Our Yesterdays” as well, proving that she understood Star Trek. This episode introduces the species, the Medusans, non-corporeal beings, who are believed to have the most beautiful minds in the Universe, and yet, were a human to gaze upon them with out a protective visor they would be driven instantly mad.

“That Which Survives” episode 69, story by Michael Richards. Aren’t you tired of seeing the Federation discovering an old outpost with technology superior to Star Fleet and yet, you never see that technology employed in the future? Me, too. So, I resurrected Losira, a computer agent manifested from technology created by a race known as the Kalandans. (It saved me from naming my computer Isis, which has been over done in science fiction in general.) The Losira computer agent is really never thoroughly addressed in the original episode, other than to say she is an image of the last known remaining Kalandan. And that she is extremely beautiful. (The actress that played Losira, Lee Meriwether, was Miss America.) Is she the first Star Trek hologram? Is she real flesh and blood? Is she a robot? If she is a hologram, working on similar principles as the holograms on the holodeck of the Enterprise, then it plays consistent with Star Trek history. Perhaps the Kalandan technology gave Star Fleet the idea for holographic emitters that simulate real matter, giving it substance, but maintaining its ethereal quality. What’s great about Losira is that she’s beautiful and deadly and with a hundred years of Star Fleet research to improve on her, she is now capable of learning. Scary.

STAR TREK: TNG
“The Pegasus” episode 164, written by Ronald D Moore. (Oh, and directed by Levar Burton!) This is episode explains why Star Fleet doesn’t use cloaking devices, a question that had always plagued me. Kirk stole one, we should have one, and that’s that. Anyway, that’s all history now. And this is where Admiral Eric Pressman enters my story. You don’t really think he sat on his bum for ten or thirteen years, wringing his hands that he lost the prototype, do you? Do you really suppose that the Pegasus was his only test ship? Good, since we’re on the same page what else do you think he has up his sleeves?

“First Duty” episode 119, written by Ronald Moore and Naren Shankar. Oh, poor Wesley Crusher. And Locarno is Paris. Well, at least, he is played by the same actor, so what if… and it fits the time line and makes sense to keep this as an important sub plot in how Garcia and Jaxa’s relationship continues to unfold. And poor Garcia, always got some chaos going on, it seems.

“Contagion” episode 37, written by Steven Gerber and Beth Woods. This is Picard on an archaeological find of the century, only it happens to be in Romulan space. The Iconians, “demons of air and darkness” don’t use starships and transporter, but instead, use gateways. (Hello, SG 1! (At least they are good humored about it and reference Trek in their episodes. (I especially like it when Major Carter whistles the theme to her own show while in the lift with MacGuyver and he asks her what’s that tune and she shrugs it off as if she didn’t know. Nice.)) The Iconian gateway may be just one of a dozen variations on wormhole technology, only this one doesn’t seem to require a gate to arrive at a foreign destination. Picard manages to escape the Iconian base before it blows up by stepping through the gateway to the Romulan ship that is in orbit. The gate had been cycling through a number of locations, which suggest you can go, but you need another gateway to return. One of the back ground worlds that cycles though looks like Greek or Egyptian Ruins, which adds to Star Gate flavor. (And when you consider Gary Seven’s transporter seems to operate more like this than a transporter and the fact that his cat is named Isis, it solidifies the Egyptian theme.)
“The Next Phase” episode 124, written by Ronald D Moore. This episode, Trek time Stardate 45892.4 reveals that the Federation has suspected the the Klingons have been working on an inerphase cloak, capable of hiding ships inside of planets, as well making them practically immune to modern weaponry. It is sufficiently vague on when and how the Klingons were developing it, what their issues might be, so it fits nicely with the development of the Starburst project. It also reveals that the Romulans were also working on interphase cloaks. Both of these should be a violation of the treaty, no?

STAR TREK MOVIES
Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn.
This was a great film. The only thing keeping it from being a great film was one small touch to the Genesis explosion scene. Okay, think back to the battle scene. Kahn has activated the Genesis device. The Enterprise is limping along, trying to get away. Spock rushes down to fix the engines. Khan is cursing Kirk and laughing at him. “Ha ha ha, you can’t get away.” And then you see Kirk get away and the Gensis explosion. What is missing you ask? I am glad you asked. What is missing is that we don’t get to see Kahn’s face when the Enterprise jumps to warp. I want to see his face, I want to see the superior intellect being stunned, or angry beyond belief because once again Kirk has beaten him, and that Kahn has ultimately failed in everything he has done and maybe even see a tinge of regret or realization that perhaps he wasn’t all that, and then we can blow him up. We have to see the moral revelation that revenge is self destructive. That would have made the perfect movie. But what do I know about these things?! Now, notice the Genesis device was detonated inside a Nebula. Nebulas are pretty big things, if I’m not mistaken, but this one bomb turned the entire nebula into a functioning solar system. That’s a pretty big bomb, not to mention SMART. So, since nothing else has worked against the Borg, why not resurrect the G-Device and kick some Borg butt?

Oh, wait. That’s what I did. Enjoy! If we go by my notes, and original drafts, I can prove that I had this g-device protype in writing before the star trek novelist brought out their prototype that can turn gas giants into stars, “wildfire” and I can even show that I had written garcia with his mental companions before the new Battlestar Galactica aired, which I love by the way, but here’s the deal, I’m really getting annoyed seeing my ideas in my notebooks and journals ending up in movies because I’m not managing to get my work out there. I mean, yeah, it’s nice, because hey, it was obviously that I shared a clever enough idea with good people and it worked for them… It’s just that I want to play, too!J Who would have thought it would take Simon and Schuster several years to get back to me on a “Yes” or a “No.” I get it, they’re swamped, busy, and I’ve yet to produce anything sufficient to get their attention… But, ultimately, I admit, that’s not why I wrote this. I wrote it because I want to write and this obsessive compulsive disorder won’t let me sleep and if you’re reading this draft, I assume you read the other drafts, and liked them sufficiently to stick with me this far. And to that end, I am grateful. (I admit bias, but I really think “A Touch of Greatness,” and “Another Piece of the Action, were strong stories. Simon and Schuster, hello!)