Star Traks 2
| Star Traks: The Original Series | |
| Episode name | Star Traks 2: Sorry, Wrong Number |
|---|---|
| Season | |
| Episode number | |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker |
| Year | 2372 |
| Stardate | 49818 |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | Belch-O-Rama [TRK] |
| Next in series | Star Traks 3 [TRK] |
| Previous in timeline | Belch-O-Rama [TRK] |
| Next in timeline | Star Traks 3 [TRK] |
After Captain Alexander Rydell mysteriously vanishes from the USS Secondprize, Commander Travis Dillon and the rest of the Secondprize crew must find him and deal with temporal distortions that are ripping apart time and space. This one's got psychopaths, gender-swapping, and a homage to a cult 60's TV series other than Star Trek.
Summary
Admiral Thomas Wagner sends the USS Secondprize to Ugilious home of the Joegonots, one of the most feared species in the galaxy (they're feared mainly because they are incredibly revolting). The Joegonots have kidnapped Dr. Robert Tulson, a renown scientist and one of Captain Alexander Rydell's professors at Starfleet Academy. The Joegonots have requested that Rydell specifically come to negotiate with them, most likely due to the fact that he insulted their Grand Leech at a diplomatic dinner a few months earlier.
No one is happy with the orders, but the Secondprize gets underway all the same. En route, the ship begins to suffer a number of mechanical failures. Someone is so unhappy with the orders that they have resorted to sabotage. As the ship approaches Ugilious, Captain Rydell is incapacitated by an incident with his replicator, leaving Commander Travis Dillon to deal with the Joegonots. Things go badly, and Rydell is narrowly able to get to the bridge in time to save the ship. He leads an away team down to Ugilious comprised of himself, Dillon, Lieutenant Commander Jaroch, Lieutenant Patricia Hawkins, Ensign Emily Sullivan, and Ensign Charlie Preston. The Grand Leech brings out Tulson, who is clearly under some kind of mind control, and insists that they stay for an official dinner the next day. They are given quarters and told to stay put.
Preston goes wandering the corridors later and finds Tulson's lab, where he is contructing some kind of ray gun. The device, called a Transference Ray, converts humans into Joegonots. Once transformed, the changed human can infect other humans by touch. Preston is zapped and, after claiming he isn't feeling well, gets permission to beam back to the ship, where Counselor Claire Webber, who was left in command by Rydell, has been instituting measures to make the crew happier...whether they want to be or not.
Preston begins infecting the crew forcing the ship to go into quarantine. At the dinner the next evening, the away team is served a meal of Joegonot delicacies, none of which are palatable. Jaroch, unable to take it anymore, loses control to J'Ter, who destroys the dinner and kills Elgin, the fiance of the Grand Leech's daughter, Anemia in the process. The Joegonots imprisons the away team. Rydell is handed over to Anemia as a replacement for Elgin, Dillon is presented to the Grand Leech's other daughters, Jaroch is sent to assist Dr. Tulson, and Hawkins and Sullivan are left in a cell. Rydell narrowly escapes from Anemia and finds Dillon. Jaroch, meanwhile, has altered the Transference Ray and escaped as well. Joining up with Sullivan and Hawkins, the reassembled away team moves to strike back against the Joegonots. They retrieve the altered Transference Ray and begin using on the Joegonots (the ones Jaroch hasn't already killed, at any rate). Upon reaching the Grand Leech's throne room, they are surrounded, but then the Transference Ray takes effect. Jaroch changed it to turn Joegonots into humans. With the threat gone, the away team returns to the Secondprize, where Rydell orders the Transference Ray to be attached to the ship. They blanket Ugilious with the ray, transforming the entire populous. The ray is also used to heal the affected crew. All is well, despite a rather large Prime Directive violation, and the Secondprize leaves orbit.
Featuring
- Captain Alexander Rydell
- Commander Travis Dillon
- Lieutenant Commander Jaroch
- Commander Scott Baird
- Lieutenant Patricia Hawkins
- Ensign Emily Sullivan
- Dr. Rebecca Singer
- Lieutenant Lisa Beck
- Ensign Kristen Larkin
- Counselor Claire Webber
- Lieutenant Monica Vaughn
- Trinian
Also Featuring
Author's Comments
The universe hopping part of this story was inspired by the film version of "A Brief History of Time." I saw the movie at the Naro theater in Norfolk, Virginia as an assignment for a physics class I was taking at Old Dominion University. I believe I started writing the book in late November of 1992.
When I was writing this, Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on the air. I purposely set Traks a few years ahead of TNG so that I wouldn't clash with anything they were doing. That didn't work out so well as evidenced by this story. In it, Jean-Luc Picard is serving as Fleet Admiral. Now, fortunately for me, the TNG movies have a nice gap between Generations and First Contact, so there's no reason why Picard couldn't have been Fleet Admiral during that time and then decided to give up the promotion and return to the captaincy. I like to think that the Secondprize drove him to it.
The Suburb, Zero, Fido, and Zero's insistance on giving Rydell a number are all references to "The Prisoner," a 1960's British TV series about a secret agent who retires and finds himself imprisoned in a place called "The Village." Once there, he is dubbed Number Six, and the facility is run by Number Two.