Back to the Well
| Star Traks: TOSsed | |
| Episode name | Back to the Well |
|---|---|
| Season | 1 |
| Episode number | 1 |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker |
| Year | 2268 |
| Stardate | Unknown |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | |
| Next in series | Antares or Bust [TOS] |
| Previous in timeline | |
| Next in timeline | Antares or Bust [TOS] |
In exchange for repairs to the SS Clydesdale, Mike Harper agrees to transport a passenger, but said passenger’s choice of destination is a spatial anomaly that sane captains won’t go near. Why can’t people just pick Risa instead?
Summary
The SS Clydesdale is docked at Starbase 6 and in need of repairs. Its captain, Mike Harper is short on credits, so the station commander, Commodore Scott Enwright offers him a deal: he will authorize repairing the ship if Mike goes to Ceti Alpha Five and checks up on Khan Noonian Singh. Mike refuses.
That night, Dr. John Smith approaches Dr. Janet Corbair in the starbase lounge and says he can get Enwright to do the repairs if the Clydesdale will take Smith to his desired destination. The next day, Enwright makes the same offer to Mike. The Clydesdale will be repaired if they take Smith to a spatial anomaly called The Well. Mike is hesitant, but Smith assures them that they just need to get some equipment he left there to study it and that they won't get close enough to be in danger.
Smith keeps to himself mostly during the voyage, but Corbair is suspicious of him. Once they reach The Well, Smith goes to the bridge, and Corbair takes the opportunity to go through his things. She storms onto the bridge soon thereafter carrying his "equipment," which she says is junk, and she accuses him of being a fraud. During the ensuing argument, the Clydesdale slips into The Well because no one told the pilot, Mike's sister Ronnie Harper, to stop the ship. Smith quickly gives Ronnie coordinates to follow, and the Clydesdale emerges into another universe. Smith's universe, to be precise. He had been pulled into The Well and separated from his own means of transport. Now that he is home, he uses his equipment to summon said transport and gives Mike the coordinates to return to their universe. Corbair says they should take Smith back with them and turn him over for study. Mike disagrees, and during the argument that follows, Smith escapes into the turbolift then locks himself in a cargo module. When the Clydesdale's engineer, Bork, gets the module door open, they find it is empty. Smith has vanished. Ronnie, who has been nauseated since approaching The Well, takes the ship back to their proper universe using Smith's coordinates.
A couple of days later, Corbair has finished going through Smith's other things and found an old tricorder, which is still better than any scanner the Clydesdale has. A message comes in from Commodore Enwright thanking the crew for taking Smith to his destination and for accepting the assignment to go to Ceti Alpha Five. Ronnie is surprised that Mike would change his mind, but he didn't. Corbair accepted the job and doesn't plan to tell Mike or actually go to Ceti Alpha Five. She's just going to file fictional reports to get on Enwright's good side with that idea that Mike will never find out.
Featuring
Also Featuring
- Commodore Scott Enwright
- Dr. John Smith
- Wodak
- Pafal-Sris
Author's Comments
"Back to the Well" is a pretty basic first story: introduce the characters and setting, send them off on an adventure, and set up some continuing threads to follow later. The passenger the Clydesdale is roped into transporting turns out to be from another universe and probably recognizable to fans of another incredibly long-running science fiction series. Should I have brought in the Tenth Doctor in the first story of a new series? Possibly not. At the time I started writing this story, it really hadn't been that long since David Tennant had left the series, and he was (and still is) my favorite Doctor. I really wanted to write him, though.
Also, I was paying off something from a Star Traks: Waystation story that really didn't need paying off. There's a throwaway gag in the final Waystation story, Going My Way?, where Craig Porter sees a blue police box in the storage room of Dillon Enterprise R&D. A little bit later, it has vanished. That's it. I never intended it to be some bigger thing. But then with "Back to the Well," I had a reason for the TARDIS to be there. It doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things, but from what the Doctor says, you can piece together that he hit the Well in his universe, he and the TARDIS ended up in the Trek/Traks universe and got separated in time. With the unwitting help of the Clydesdale crew, he is able to return to the Well, recall the TARDIS, and return from whence he came (Now there's a phrase I don't get to use very often.). Since "Back to the Well" is told from the perspective of the Clydesdale's crew, they don't know or understand any of this. And for readers who don't get the Who reference, it's just about a guy from another universe who uses the Clydesdale to get home. Hopefully it works either way.
I am really happy with the opening narration in this one. I was going for the tone of an instructional video from the 1950s. It works for establishing things, but I didn't want to carry it throughout. I think it would have gotten old fast. I also don't think I could have sustained it anyway.