Going, Going, Gone...
| Star Traks: Boldly Gone | |
| Episode name | |
|---|---|
| Season | 10 |
| Episode number | 6 |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker, Anthony Butler |
| Year | 2503 |
| Stardate | Unknown |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | Born to Rom [BG] |
| Next in series | |
| Previous in timeline | Born to Rom [BG] |
| Next in timeline | |
And now we bring you the final tale of Star Traks: Boldly Gone…. in which everything from the last 10 series culminates in an extended meditation on the very nature of human existence. Or maybe there’s just a bunch of bad jokes and explosions. Our money is on the latter.
Summary
While getting ready to head to his first assignment after graduating Starfleet Academy, Jarrett Bain asks his parents, Tovar and Shelly Marsden, how his grandfather, Captain Reginald Bain, lost the USS Anomaly. Deciding that there’s no harm in telling the story now, his parents explain what happened.
On Gathering Point, Bain, Tovar, Marsden, Rosalyn Bain, Cabral, Dr. Natalia Kasyov, and Commander Prosak watch with Chindela as Jacinda’s sphere descends to its final resting place on the planet. Chindela thanks Bain for going to retrieve her sphere after Jacinda’s expiration, which required the Anomaly to pass through Breen space using their anti-singularity drive. With Jacinda now there and Cabral no longer having an expiration date, Chindela says that he has completed his duty to the Cerebe. And with the news that the Pliggeri left their homeworld, Chindela asks Cabral to do something for him. Chindela shrinks himself and all of Gathering Point into a cube about three centimeters across. Cabral brings the cube into his sphere and begins to hear it whispering to him.
While Bain doesn’t think the Breen even noticed the Anomaly pass through their space, they did. Grad-Norm summons Dobt-Phul to his office to discuss the Anomaly’s violation of their space. He asks Phul if they still have Selex in custody because they have a use for him now. Phul goes to see Selex in his cell and tells him that Selex will be allowed to return to the Romulan Empire in exchange for helping them get Reginald Bain. Selex says that there are a few other people he wants revenge against and that he’s willing to make a deal.
Three months later, Tovar and Marsden sit in the Anomaly’s holo-mess discussing the possibility of having a child. Across the room, Rosalyn sits down with Prosak, who is still trying to find her path but has backed off on the tattoos and extreme Romulan attire. Rosalyn asks Prosak how she is doing, and they talk about Prosak’s inability to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Before long, Captain Bain’s voice booms over the comm system, summoning the senior officers to the briefing room.
In the briefing room, Commander Vioxx informs the gathered officers that he, Sub-Commander Remax, Centurion Nortal, and Sub-Lieutenant Zantak have been reassigned to take out the Romulan Empire’s new prototype anti-singularity drive ship. Marsden is shocked that the Romulans were able to build one. Prosak asks about joining the Romulans, but Bain tells her she has been very specifically ordered to remain on the Anomaly. They will take the other Romulans to the shipyards at Malak Pasala, where they will transfer to their new ship then remain in the area in case the prototype ship requires assistance during its test flight. After the meeting, Bain tells Prosak that, while he’s upset that the other Romulans are leaving, he’s pleased that this means Prosak will be his First Officer again. She is not so thrilled.
Bain visits Vioxx, who is packing his belongings in his quarters, and tells him that the Anomaly crew is throwing a farewell party for Vioxx and his officers in Twain the Keel that night. He goes on to say that while he hates to lose Vioxx, he’s happy that the Romulan is getting his own command again.
That night, Bain gives a farewell speech, and Nortal hugs Tovar, saying that she will miss Toflay the most. She asks Tovar to give Toflay and message that she will see him in their next life. In order to get through the various social interactions with the Anomaly crew that they will have to endure at the party, the Romulans all get very very drunk.
The next morning, after Bain warns Vioxx to be careful because something about all of this doesn’t feel right, the very hungover Romulans take the Allegra from the Anomaly to Malak Pasala, passing out along the way. After they don’t respond to Malak Pasala, a boarding party beams onto the ship to see what happened. They wake up Vioxx and the others and tell them to get rested and cleaned up before they see the commander of the facility, Admiral Fixit the next day.
Remax doesn’t understand why they weren’t executed immediately for showing up unconscious and hungover to which Zantak says it’s because they’re needed to test the prototype ship because they are expendable. Admiral Fixit tells them that they will take the prototype ship, the Manamanat out to the Pharsalus Sector at increasing anti-sing speeds to test out the engines. Remax inquires if an engineer will be joining them, and Fixit replies that it has been seen to. She dismisses them and tells them to be ready to launch in an hour.
They take the ship out, and when Vioxx contacts engineering to tell them to be ready for Warp H, he is shocked when Selex responds. Before Vioxx can do anything about it, Selex sends the ship into anti-sing. The Anomaly receives a distress signal from the Manamanat and speeds off to assist. While Selex tries to keep the Manamanat’s anti-sing drive stable, Vioxx and the others work to escape from the ship’s bridge, where Selex has trapped them while also locking them out of all systems.
The Anomaly catches up with the Manamanat in the Pharsalus Sector and finds it just sitting there. It doesn’t respond to hails, and the Anomaly’s sensors are having trouble getting clear lifesign readings. Bain thinks this is odd and orders the shields up just as Tovar detects transporter activity in Science Lab Four. A device materializes in Science Lab Four near Cabral and Kasyov, and Cabral quickly concludes it is a bomb. He does the only thing he can before it detonates.
As soon as the bomb explodes, the Manamanat raises shields and hails the Anomaly, audio only. It’s Selex, who explains that the Romulans negotiated with the Breen for his release, so that he could work on the anti-singularity drive prototype using the insights he gained while serving on the Anomaly. Now that he has blown up Cabral, he’s taken away the only thing that made the Anomaly special, and he can finish off Prosak. He demands that Bain beam himself over to the Manamanat because there are other interested parties who want him. Bain immediately realizes that means the Breen are involved. Selex plans to prove his superiority by destroying the Anomaly while Prosak is in command and then hand Bain back over to the Breen. Prosak has Tovar mute the channel, tells Bain she has an idea and that he needs to stall Selex, and then rushes off of the bridge.
Cabral managed to save himself and Kasyov from the explosion by touching her (Well, more like harpooning her with a tendril launched from inside his sphere) and then taking them both and his housing out of phase with the Anomaly after quickly disconnecting himself from the ship’s systems. Nurse Ih'vik arrives with a medical team and transports Kasyov to sickbay just before Marsden gets there with an engineering team. The explosion took out the conduits connecting Cabral’s housing to engineering, so until those are replaced, the Anomaly doesn’t have anti-sing. Marsden’s team sets about making repairs while Cabral considers the message from Chindela that he heard loud and clear while phased: “This was planned for.”
Tovar gets word from Marsden that Cabral and Kasyov are alive, which he relays to Bain, who is busy stalling Selex. Prosak, meanwhile, goes to see Rosalyn saying that she can’t let Bain beam over to the Manamanat because she needs to deal with Selex herself. She asks for Rosalyn’s help, and Rosalyn says that she has just the thing. Prosak races back to the bridge and asks Bain and Tovar to join her in the Captain’s Lounge. Bain puts Selex on hold, and they all go to the lounge, where Prosak tells Bain that she wants him to send her over to the Manamanat. Bain appreciates her desire to protect him but says that Selex is going to be upset if she beams over instead of him. She agrees and activates the holographic overlay she borrowed from Rosalyn, which makes her appear to be Bain. He realizes that she must have gotten it from Rosalyn. Prosak goes onto say that Bain needs to be on the Anomaly to deal with fighting the Manamanat and the Breen. She will go take care of Selex. Bain agrees to her plan.
Vioxx and his officers escape the Manamanat’s bridge and find no one in the ship’s corridors. They go to engineering to find Selex and instead see that the room is empty except for a large black metallic sphere with several conduits running from it into the walls of the chamber. Selex’s voice booms from all around them, and Remax realizes Selex had his brain removed from his body and put into the sphere to run the Manamanat. As Nortal futilely attacks Selex’s sphere, Selex explains that removing the need to regulate his body allows his brain to maintain a stable anti-singularity field. It was the breakthrough he needed to make the project work. Soon after, Bain beams into the engineering area as well. Vioxx catches Bain up, then Selex reveals that, with Admiral Karwrek’s full approval, he gave the Breen his drive specifications and his revelation about needing a brain to directly control anti-sing. The Breen are on their way with a fleet of anti-sing ships ready to take Bain on, but they will be disappointed because Selex will have already destroyed the Anomaly and Prosak with it. He believes handing Bain over to them will lessen their disappointment. The Anomaly launches into warp, drawing Selex’s attention away and giving Bain the chance to reveal to Vioxx that he’s really Prosak in disguise.
On the Anomaly, Bain prepares for battle. As soon as he learned the anti-singularity drive existed, he assumed that he’d have to fight a ship equipped with one someday, and he’s ready to put theory into practice. He checks in with Marsden on the repairs, and she says they are getting close, but they’ve had to cut holes in walls and floors in a lot of places to quickly get new conduit run. Bain gets the best of Selex in their first couple of encounters, and Kasyov returns to the bridge just as twelve Breen scythe ships drop out of anti-sing.
The now re-promoted Thot-Phul hails Selex to let the Romulan know that he’s there to save the Manamanat from Reginald Bain and the Anomaly. Selex reveals that he has disabled the Anomaly’s anti-sing drive and taken Bain into custody already, which upsets Phul because that was not their deal. Prosak then tops that reveal by revealing that the Bain Selex thinks he’s holding is actually her. Phul is happier with this news and takes the Breen fleet to face the Anomaly. Prosak keeps Selex off-balance by mind melding with him.
As the Breen fleet approached the Anomaly, Kasyov reviews the logs from their fight with the Manamanat. She notices that rather than maneuvering at anti-sing, Selex would stop, set a course, then launch into anti-sing, which is exactly what the Breen fleet heading their way just did after stopping at the Manamanat. Bain concludes that they can only use anti-sing in a straight line. At least he hopes so. He has Tovar hail the Breen. Phul has his ships surround the Anomaly then answers the comm. After Bain asks what this is all about, Phul says that it’s about retribution and ridding the galaxy of Reginald Bain. Tovar reports to Bain that Cabral is ready, and then Bain attacks the Breen fleet.
Prosak enters Selex’s mind and finds absolute chaos as he struggles to keep the Manamanat’s anti-singularity drive from exploding. Even with the ship at rest, it is taking almost all he has to prevent a catastrophe. He screams at her to get out of his brain. She does and tells the others that they have to help Selex.
Phul’s ship is heavily-damaged in Bain’s attack, and in another, the Breen “volunteer” who had his brain put into a sphere to run the ship’s anti-singularity drive, loses control and the ship explodes. Phul orders his ship to get to Manamanat, so he can beam over to it while the other Breen pursue the Anomaly.
Kasyov detects amplified neural energy coming from each Breen ship and deduces that there’s a Breen brain tied into each ship to maintain their anti-sing reactions. They just aren’t as good at is as Cabral or have the Pliggeri housing that his sphere rests in that he uses as an interface with the drive system. Bain orders Ensign Yonk to keep their course erratic and for Tovar to take shots at their pursuers when he can.
Prosak, Zantak (who reveals that she has also started following RommaVulc philosophy), and Remax meld with Selex to help him keep the ship stable while Vioxx and Nortal prepare to deal with Phul and the other Breen who are coming to take control of the ship.
With four Breen ships destroyed, the Anomaly goes to intercept Phul’s ship before he can get to the Manamanat. Phul and some of his crew, including a security team, are able to beam aboard, then he sends his ship away. The Anomaly destroys the now Phul-less Breen ship as it tries to flee, but the rest of the fleet arrives, forcing the Anomaly to back off and retreat. On the Manamanat, Phul orders his security team to secure the Romulans while he and his other officers try to figure out how to read the Romulan writing on the bridge consoles.
Vioxx and Nortal search the ship for weapons to use against the Breen but come up empty. Since the Manamanat was a prototype, it wasn’t outfitted with an armory. Vioxx realizes that they can use the replicators to get utensils, though. He and Nortal launch a surprise attack the Breen security team with the equivalent of metal crab mallets, overpower the Breen, and take their weapons. Now armed, they head to the bridge.
Bain lures the remaining Breen ships into an attack by having the Anomaly fake a power failure. The Breen take the bait, and the Anomaly destroys them all, leaving only the Manamanat.
Phul now has to face the Anomaly, which is coming right at the Manamanat, alone. Vioxx and Nortal arrive on the bridge and order the Breen to step away from their consoles. Phul disables their blasters (one of the handy things Breen officers can do to Breen weapons). Nortal engages the other bridge officers in hand-to-hand combat while Vioxx takes on Phul, which Phul isn’t happy about. The only person he wants to fight is Bain, but with no other options, the two begin to fight as the Anomaly closes in. Phul orders his helm officer, who isn’t fighting Nortal, to do an anti-sing burst to attack the Anomaly, but Bain is waiting for it and disables the Manamanat with a barrage of phaser fire. With no reason to continue, Phul surrenders as Tovar and a security team from the Anomaly beam aboard.
Selex, furious that the Breen failed to destroy Bain and the Anomaly, kicks Remax and Zantak out of the meld while Prosak stays behind. Selex realizes the full import of what he has done and what will likely happen to him once Romulan High Command learns of his scheme with Admiral Karwrek. He refuses to go back in disgrace, and Prosak feels him trying to activate the anti-sing drive, so that he can push it to its limit and kill them both. She tries to hold him off while she contacts Bain and tells him to get everyone except her, since she’s locked in a meld, off of the Manamanat. The Anomaly beams everyone except Prosak back just as the Manamanat leaps into anti-sing. Short on options for getting Prosak off of a ship moving at anti-sing, Bain tells Tovar to contact Rosalyn.
As Selex and Prosak argue while still locked in a mind meld with each other, the Anomaly catches up to the Manamanat and matches their velocity. Prosak concludes that they must have a plan to rescue her. She confirms it briefly with Bain, who tells her to break the meld, before Selex pushes her out of the comm system and drops any attempt to keep the anti-sing drive from exploding. Knowing that there’s nothing she can do to stop the Manamanat’s destruction, he turns on Selex with all of her rage and screams at him for his incompetent design. It flusters him enough for her to break free of the meld. She finds herself back in the ship’s engineering room. She dematerializes just as the Manamanat begins to explode.
The Anomaly, with Prosak aboard, veers away at anti-sing and is well clear of the Manamanat’s blast radius. Bain gives the order to head back to Federation space, tells Vioxx that he has the conn, and heads off of the bridge with Tovar while Vioxx, Kasyov, and Yonk wonder how the hell they just managed to beam Prosak to safety. Prosak finds herself on the floor of the Bains’ quarters with Rosalyn standing over her. Rosalyn tells her that she was able to lock on to the Section 31 holo-imager Prosak had on her and beam Prosak back aboard using her Section 31 issue personal transporter. Bain and Tovar arrive followed by Marsden, who doesn’t know why she’s there. They come up with a cover story to tell Starfleet to explain how they rescued Prosak that doesn’t reveal Rosalyn’s involvement.
Back in the frame story, Jarrett demands to know what happened after that, which Tovar and Marsden explain…
Vioxx, Remax, Nortal, and Zantak were ordered back to Romulan space and given a new scout ship. While out exploring uncharted space, they encounter Neb. Vioxx invites Neb aboard for dinner, and they accept.
On the way back to Earth, Prosak returns to her quarters to find Oscar Gunton from Section 31 waiting for her. He tells Prosak that Rosalyn recommended her and feels that Prosak would be a good fit in Section 31. Prosak happily accepts.
Tovar tries to end the story there, but Jarrett points out that they never actually told him how Bain lost the Anomaly. Marsden tells him that once they got back to Earth, the Anomaly went in for a full refit that involved getting everyone off except Cabral, gutting the interior, and basically starting from scratch. Three months later, while Admiral Kristen Larkin is visiting the Bain home in Sussex, she receives an urgent comm from Spacedock Control that the Anomaly was leaving its repair dock. Before any ships can intercept it, the Anomaly jumps to anti-sing and is gone. Bain tells Larkin to get him a ship, and he’ll go after Cabral himself. Larkin says that would be useless and tells Bain to get her a report within the hour.
An hour later, Bain reports to Larkin in her office that Cabral did indeed steal the Anomaly. She says that he should have kept more informed about Marsden’s progress with the repairs. Larkin suspects that Bain is involved, but he admits nothing. She says there will be a full investigation.
Jarrett is disappointed that his grandfather literally lost the Anomaly rather than Bain losing it in combat. Marsden says that Cabral and Kasyov, who was also aboard, haven’t been heard from since. Jarrett wants to know if Bain was actually involved, and Tovar replies that he never asked him because he doesn’t want to know the answer. He has his theories though.
Flashing back to the Anomaly’s journey back to Earth, Cabral and Kasyov ask Bain to come to Science Lab Four, where he finds that Marsden is there as well. Cabral tells them that the cube containing Gathering Point is communicating with him and drawing him to the Pliggeri’s new home. He cannot continue putting himself and the remnants of his entire species in danger by staying on the Anomaly, so he and Kasyov want Marsden to outfit a raceabout with an anti-singularity drive for them to use to go find the Pliggeri. Marsden protests that even if she could do it, it would be miserable for Kasyov and Cabral. Bain says they should take the Anomaly. The ship, wonderful as it is, has shifted the balance of power in the quadrant, cost numerous people their lives, and made Marsden and Cabral targets. It’s better for everyone if Cabral uses it to find his creators. Marsden will need to put in a lot of automation, though, which she agrees to do.
Back in the frame story, Tovar says that being in Starfleet sometimes means keeping things from the people you know or knowing that people you love may be keeping things from you. And because you trust them, you accept it.
Tovar, Marsden, and Jarrett beam up to Starbase One, where Jarrett is meeting his ship, the USS Holloway. As Jarrett boards his new assignment, Marsden asks Tovar if he ever misses serving on a starship. They both agree that they don’t and stroll off, hand-in hand.
Jarrett reports to the bridge to meet his new commanding officer: Captain Reginald Bain. Since Jarrett has a conn specialization, Bain tells him to take the ship out, adding that they’re just going to take a quick spin around the sector and that they won’t get into any trouble…unless they’re lucky.
END OF SERIES
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
- Cabral
- Rosalyn Bain
Author's Comments
We’re finally here. I have to admit that for a while there I really thought that we were just going to leave things with Series Nine. True, it wasn’t much in the way of an overall wrap up for Boldly Gone, but it was an ending of a sort and didn’t leave things on a cliffhanger.
We weren’t happy with that idea, though. It may have taken us 13 years to get to an actual ending, but we did it. Between the two of us, Anthony and I have written several different endings for our Star Traks series. Some of them didn’t stick. I’ve ended the original series 4 times, and Anthony is still going with his latest incarnation of The Vexed Generation. The big question in my mind for Boldly was how to leave it. Would we go open ended, like “All Good Things…” in TNG, where the crew just continues on to the next mission? Or go with something more final, like “What You Leave Behind” in DS9, where characters move on and things have changed?
Obviously we went with the latter. I may be overstating this, but I chalk some of that up to us being older and understanding more that things don’t last forever. Friendships drift apart, coworkers move on, jobs change, and life can send you in directions that you aren’t expecting. Boldly Gone is about the period of time that these characters spent as a crew on board the USS Anomaly, so for the end of the series, it made sense to show how that time ended.
Some parts of this final story have been in our heads for years and years. The final scene with Tovar and Marsden’s kid coming aboard to serve under Bain has been planned since long before Series Nine even. We just didn’t know the particulars leading up to it. Originally, we were just going to time jump to it at the end, but as we were actually writing the final story, going with the future time (Well, the future of the future of Star Traks’ future) as a framing story presented itself and worked well for what we were trying to do.
And the basic idea that the finale would involve the Anomaly taking on another ship with an anti-singularity drive has been in place since the end of Series Nine. The circumstances kept shifting, though. When we thought all of Series Ten involved the Dillon Consortium, the fight with the empty suit also happened in this last story. I won’t go into all of the reasons that we changed our minds, since I’ve discussed it previously, but more specific to this story, it felt right to include Thot-Phul, since he’s been in the series from the beginning, and Selex, since that storyline was never really resolved and it helped push Prosak to where she needed to be.
Because of that, while the story picks up on characters and events from earlier in Series Ten and across Boldly Gone overall, it’s standalone in some ways. I wanted it to be more like “All Good Things…” (And Voyager’s “Endgame” really). You can jump into that episode with a general knowledge of TNG and the characters and have no trouble understanding what’s happening, unlike “What You Leave Behind,” which is the culmination of a massive arc.
Another thing we wanted to make sure happened in the finale was to give Reginald Bain a chance be Bain. Here he is, in command of a starship but facing steep odds. Bain is in many ways the most capable Star Traks captain that Anthony and I have written across our various series. He’s a bit eccentric in some ways and oblivious in others, but in a situation like this final story, he is absolutely in his element.
Anthony and I have different strengths, and one thing he is MUCH better at than me is titles. I was originally thinking to call it “The Bold and the Deceitful.” It was supposed to be a play on the long-running soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” (Which Jimmy Doohan actually appeared on in the 90s), but it never felt right. “Deceitful” and “Beautiful” just don’t sound enough alike for the title to land. Anthony instantly came up with “Going, Going, Gone…” which is, as I said earlier, MUCH better. Anthony’s ideas also led to the name of the Romulan ship, which in turn led to what’s possibly one of the stupidest gags we’ve ever done. I love it so much.
As for the actual ending, the goal was to give enough of a sense of where the characters went after their time on the Anomaly to be satisfying without getting too bogged down in the details. I thought of it a bit like the flash-forward sequences in the final episode of “Parks & Recreation” (Sorry if that’s a spoiler for a show that ended several years ago). We don’t have any plans to follow up at the moment, but if at some point in the future someone did have an idea for a Prosak story or something else, things are wide open for whatever we (or they, if it’s not one of us) might want to do.