Respect Your Elders
| Star Traks: Boldly Gone | |
| Episode name | Respect Your Elders |
|---|---|
| Season | 2 |
| Episode number | 3 |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker, Anthony Butler |
| Year | 2500 |
| Stardate | 175218 |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | Domestic Tranquility [BG] |
| Next in series | Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch [BG] |
| Previous in timeline | Domestic Tranquility [BG] |
| Next in timeline | Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch [BG] |
As Captain Reginald Bain's 70th birthday approaches, he and the USS Anomaly crew find out the hard way that age is relative.
Summary
Less than a week before Captain Reginald Bain’s 70th birthday, the USS Anomaly is searching for any sign of the resistance to the Associates in the Andromeda Galaxy. With Tovar now gestating 237 squid babies in small individual growths all over his body, Lieutenant Shelly Marsden is working to create a custom anti-gravity generator, so he can sit down and lay down without crushing the babies. Prosak wonders if perhaps the Anomaly crew should look to integrate themselves into Andromedan society rather than trying to take on the Associates.
Another ship approaches the Anomaly and tries to lock onto it with a tractor beam while also repeatedly hailing. Ensign Hector Arroyo evades as best he can. Tovar answers the hail, which demands to know how they have a ship and why they are up past their bedtime. The aliens, the Nabusari, scold Bain for taking out a ship full of young ones even though he is almost an adult. They grab the Anomaly with their tractor beam finally and beam off the entire crew.
Bain rematerializes in an office on the Nabusari homeworld with Clophil, who explains that once Bain turns 70 and passes a test to get his pilot’s license, he can have the Anomaly back. Until then, Clophil will take care of him. The rest of the crew, meanwhile, have all been sent to a daycare facility, where they have been diapered and trapped in the Nabusari equivalent of baby exersaucers. Marsden and most of the crew begin plotting their escape, but Prosak is content with this new state of affairs.
With four days to go until Bain’s 70th birthday. Clophil takes him home and sets Bain’s up in a bedroom that had once belonged to Clophil’s son. Clophil comes in with Tovar, who is being held unconscious in a stasis tube, and demands to know if Bain is responsible for Tovar’s pregnancy. Bain explains what occurred, which relieves Clophil, who says that he knew Bain was an upstanding youth. Tovar is to be kept unconscious until the squidlings hatch, at which point they will all be adopted by Nabusari. He offers to take Bain out to a special dinner and asks Bain to call him “Dad.”
At the day care center, Sujill comes in to feed Marsden and the others and get them down for their name. The crew plays along until they are released from their exersaucers, then they tackle Sujill and knock her out. In another room, Polnuc is able to get free from his saucer and releases Dr. Natalia Kasyov and then Prosak, who then locks him into hers.
Clophil takes Bain to the Maturity Training Zone (aka The Mall), where Nabusari youth go to socialize free of adult supervision. Bain asks how the Nabusari are able remain free of the Associates, and Clophil says that they have a mutually-beneficial understanding. They talk a bit about parenting. Clophil apparently missed a lot of his children’s childhoods because of his job.
Back at the daycare center, Marsden, Lieutenant Gworos, and Ensign Yonk are exploring the facility, when they hear singing from the room they recently left. Sujill has freed herself and somehow brainwashed the crew into enjoying sing-along time. Marsden, Gworos, and Yonk run for it before they can be caught. Prosak threatens Kasyov, ordering her to get back in her exersaucer. Kasyov flees, and runs out into the hall where she collides with Marsden and the others. Gworos tackles two approaching Nabusari, clearing the way for Marsden, Kasyov, Gworos, and Yonk to escape the day care facility.
They hide in the forests around the Nabusari city for the next couple of days as Bain spends most of his time at the Maturity Training Zone. Marsden eventually finds Bain there and tells him what’s actually been happening to the crew. He tells Marsden to keep hiding and that he has a plan.
The next morning Bain asks Clophil to take him to the Anomaly for a walk-through before he takes his pilot’s exam. Clophil agrees but says it will have to be later in the morning because he has to go to work. Once Clophil is gone, Bain locates the hospital where Tovar is and goes to visit. While the staff isn’t looking, he attaches one of his commpips to Tovar’s stasis tube. Later, up in the Anomaly with Clophil, Bain is able to program the ship to beam up Tovar, Marsden, Gworos, Yonk, and Kasyov once Bain and Clophil leave.
The next morning, Bain awakens to find himself held in a chair by a force field on a shuttle being flown by Clophil. He doesn’t want Bain to leave and says that he wants to be a family again, clearly now convinced that Bain is his child.
On the Anomaly, Advill, the pilot’s license tester arrives, but Bain is not there. Marsden goes to the bridge pretending to be Bain. As she takes the ship out of the Nabusari spacedock, Tovar (now awake and wearing anti-grav pants to protect the squidlings) and Kasyov leave the Anomaly in the Shuttlecraft Gnork to track down Bain. Tovar fires on Clophil’s shuttle, causing the power to flicker long enough for Bain to get free. He easily overpowers Clophil and puts him in the chair with the force field. They take Clophil’s shuttle to a nearby hospital and drop him off with a note explaining his mental state, then us the Gnork to rendezvous with the Anomaly just as Marsden is completing the pilot’s exam and returning to the Nabusari spacedock.
Bain receives word that he passed his pilot’s exam, and Marsden beams up the remaining Anomaly crew from the day care facility just before Bain takes the ship to warp and leaves the system.
A couple of days later, Prosak has missed her last couple shifts. Bain goes to see her and reassures her that they will succeed in finding the resistance and getting back to the Milky Way. Despite tell Bain that she has every confidence in him, Prosak still believes they are doomed.
Featuring
- Captain Reginald Bain
- Commander Prosak
- Lieutenant Commander Tovar
- Lieutenant Shelly Marsden
- Dr. Natalia Kasyov
- Dr. Fred Nooney
- Ensign Hector Arroyo