The Bain Supremacy
| Star Traks: Boldly Gone | |
| Episode name | The Bain Supremacy |
|---|---|
| Season | 9 |
| Episode number | 1 |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker, Anthony Butler |
| Year | 2503 |
| Stardate | 178305 |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | Trial And Error [BG] |
| Next in series | We'll Always Have Romulus [BG] |
| Previous in timeline | Trial And Error [BG] |
| Next in timeline | We'll Always Have Romulus [BG] |
Having escaped the Breen, Captain Reginald Bain lands right in the clutches of the James T. Kirk Hologram. Meanwhile, Commander Vioxx has the minor problem of all-out war with the Breen to handle. Some guys have all the luck.
Summary
Featuring
- Captain Reginald Bain
- Commander Prosak
- Commander Vioxx
- Lieutenant Commander Tovar
- Lieutenant Shelly Marsden
- Sub-Commander Remax
- Dr. Natalia Kasyov
- Centurion Nortal
- Sub-Lieutenant Zantak
- Engineer Selex
- Cabral
- Admiral Kristen Larkin
- Thot Phul
- James T. Kirk Hologram
- Rosalyn Bain
- Gridloo
- Pridloo
Author's Comments
This story was a real pain in the…posterior region for many many reasons.
After we completed the first two stories, we knew basically what we wanted to happen in the third story (Rosalyn comes aboard. Kasyov is disconnected from the computer.), but we weren’t sure exactly what the plot was going to be. I had some vague ideas about Rosalyn getting captured on a mission and Bain rescuing her somehow without finding out that she is with Section 31. Nothing really gelled, though, so I jumped ahead to work on the later stories of the run, which we did have worked out, while Anthony focused on Vexed.
That was…three, possibly four years ago. I slooooooooooooowy made my way through the last three stories of this run, during which time J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek film was released. I love the movie. Really I do. But they went and blew up Romulus in the late 24th Century. Um…guys…WE WERE USING THAT!!! Now this isn’t the first time that filmed Trek has contradicted something we were doing. Anthony had to go back and rewrite sections of a story that involved Gowron after Deep Space Nine killed Gowron and replaced him with Martok. Of course, for original Star Traks 1-3 to work, you have to imagine that Picard was made an admiral briefly between Generations and First Contact (At least the films left me a gap large enough for that to be possible). But with the 24th Century series and films over and done with, we thought we were safe. We were wrong.
In any case, we were left with two choices: ignore the new movie (which we generally don’t like to do, since we want to stick to filmed Trek canon; although, we made exceptions for some elements of Enterprise) or find a way to deal with it. Fortunately, we had a story without a plot waiting to be filled in this run. Next came the challenge of figuring out how we could save Romulus and stick to the events of the film as Spock and Nero experienced them while still fitting in the Rosalyn and Kasyov events that needed to occur. Originally this was made even more difficult by my decision to treat the “Star Trek: Countdown” prequel comics as canon. I soon realized that there was just no way. In “Countdown” Nero interacts with some survivors from Romulus and gets some Borg upgrades for his ship before he chases Spock. That just was not going to work for me. Instead, I focused on the movie. At one point I probably could have delivered Spock’s monologue during the mind meld from memory.
Eventually, I found a way to make it all work while still managing to throw in a few gags here and there. And to respond to b-guy, something terrible did happen near the end. By leaving Nero around, Bain and company destroyed the universe, which was why they had to go get Nero too. That whole thing was more of a throwaway joke, though. In the end, this story really ended up being more about plot mechanics from my perspective, which made it the aforementioned pain in the posterior to write. Still there are some things I was happy with. The scene with Audrey and Rosalyn has some nice character moments while finally explaining what happened to Bain and Tovar’s previous ship, the USS Maladventure. Prosak finally got to meet her idol, Spock. And I put the prime universe back the way it was…unlike SOME filmmakers I could mention!
This was one thing that really bugged me about the movie after I stopped to think about it. Spock was late? We’re talking about the fate of billions of people here, and he is late? Was traffic bad on the way to Hobus? The whole thing was just way too glossed over. One of my other ideas for this story was that Spock was actually delayed by interference from the 24th Century Section 31, which wanted to get the Romulans out of the way for obvious reasons. However, if Rosalyn and or the Anomaly went back and prevented that from happening, Spock arrives on time, which erases the movie. Grrrrr…
One other thing about the movie that bit me as I was trying to write this story is the supernova/ultranova itself. Can anyone explain how it got to Romulus? Or how the red matter helped reverse an explosion? None of that made a bit of sense to me, but it gave me another gag for the story.
In the end, the story is more about shifting the pieces around (or restoring them in the case of Romulus), so it’s not going to go down as the best Boldly story ever. Still, I think it has its moments.