Looking Out for the Little Guy
| Star Traks: TOSsed | |
| Episode name | Looking Out for the Little Guy |
|---|---|
| Season | 1 |
| Episode number | 4 |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker |
| Year | 2268 |
| Stardate | Unknown |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | Busted [TOS] |
| Next in series | Reign of the Clydesdale [TOS] |
| Previous in timeline | Busted [TOS] |
| Next in timeline | Reign of the Clydesdale [TOS] |
Colony supply runs are about as nice and easy as it gets…most of the time.
Summary
The SS Clydesdale is delivering supplies to the Lehrer Colony, but when Mike Harper contacts the planet, the head of the colony, Administrator Wyatt, is paranoid that someone might overhear their comm and insists that Mike beam down to discuss the situation. Mike isn't pleased with the idea, but he beams down along with Smash. Wyatt meets them at the beam down site behind the colony structures and orders Mike to come back to her office with her. Mike has Smash get started beaming down the supplies while Mike goes with Wyatt.
Wyatt's office, which she insisted they crawl too, is full of cargo containers, which she says she is storing there for safe keeping. She explains that about two months after their arrival on the planet, things started disappearing from the colony. There are only 30 colonists, and surveys did not reveal any kind of civilization on the planet. Mike is just there to deliver supplies, so he wishes her luck holding onto what he just delivered and heads back to the beam down site. The supplies are there, but Smash is gone.
The Clydesdale can't detect Smash, so Mike heads up into the wooded hills surrounding the colony to look for him. After he has climbed a fair distance, he is knocked out by a drugged blow dart to the neck.
On the Clydesdale, Ronnie Harper is bored, since the ship is just sitting in order. She pesters Dr. Janet Corbair into playing a game with her. Corbair agrees and uses the opportunity to play a series of card games with Ronnie, which Ronnie repeatedly wins, while secretly scanning her with Corbair's newly-acquired tricorder.
He comes to tied to a tree and missing his communicator and boots. Smash is similarly bound nearby. Smash explains that he went up into the woods to relieve himself when he saw a bunch of tiny blue humanoids, which he describes as being three apples high for some reason, in loin cloths. One of them fired a blow dart at him, and he woke up tied to a tree.
A group of the beings arrives, led by an elder with a long white beard. He gestures threateningly at Mike and shouts incomprehensibly, then storms off into the forest with his group in tow. Smash, who had already ripped free of time vines binding him, frees Mike, and they head off to try to find their missing items. They soon find a massive ball of metal, about four meters in diameter, made up of the items stolen from the colonists as well as their boots and communicators and stuck together with sap. It is sitting at the edge of the forest by a clearing that the colonists had created up to the top of the hill, where they placed their communications array. Mike realizes that the ball is a boulder and that the beings intend to roll it down the hill and hit the colony.
They grab their communicators and boots just as the tiny beings discover them. Mike and Smash race up the hill but instead of pursuing, the little blue guys start moving the metal boulder into position. Mike comms the Clydesdale for assistance while Smash charges the beings to try and stop them. They flee in terror but not before releasing the boulder. Smash tries to stop it himself but ends up riding it down. Ronnie and Corbair race to the Clydesdale bridge and are able to slow the boulder with the ship's tractor beam and direct it away from the colony structures. It stops safely. Mike reaches the colony just as Wyatt comes storming out of one of the colony buildings wielding a phaser rifle and demanding answers. Before Mike can explain, Wyatt is knocked out by a blow dart. Hundreds of the little blue beings are charging down the hill toward the colony.
Mike orders the colonists inside as Smash scoops up Wyatt. They seal themselves into one of the colony buildings. The colonists don't understand where these beings came from, since they scanned the planet. They realize they weren't looking for anything as small as the blue beings. The building is surrounded now with the beings banging to get in. The colonists are looking to Mike to save them, since he's a captain. Mike tries to use the universal translator in his wrist communicator to talk the beings. The translator can't handle the beings' language, so Mike orders the colonists to abandon the colony.
The Clydesdale beams everyone up before the beings are able to break into the building. Administrator Wyatt is furious and blames Mike. Ronnie consoles him saying that the beings were likely planning that attack for months, so the colonists were lucky Mike was there to save them. Mike hopes Wyatt realizes that eventually.
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Author's Comments
Remember Avatar? I mean the James Cameron film and not the Nickelodeon cartoon. It came out in 2009, and, as you may recall, became a huge cultural sensation. The sequels might even have been released by the time you read this. It's also where the basic idea of this story came from. At the time, Avatar got a bit of criticism in some quarters for its plot, namely that it was very similar to the 1990 film "Dances With Wolves." Since the Na'vi in Avatar are blue, I saw a few people call it "Dances With Smurfs."
Now there's an obvious issue with that description. The Na'vi were like eight feet tall, certainly well taller than humans, hence the need for avatars. I'm not going to rehash the whole movie here.
But "Dances With Smurfs" stuck with me, and I thought that a Smurf-like species occupying a planet and not being pleased at being colonized was amusing. And it was another good TOS situation for the Clydesdale crew to face. TOS has a number of episodes where they go to some colony or facility to deal with whatever has befallen its residents (In fairness, TNG does too). For this one, though, I was thinking more of "Devil in the Dark" or "This Side of Paradise." Of course, Mike Harper doesn't really care what's going on at Lehrer Colony. He wants to unloaded his cargo and leave. He just ends up in the unfortunate position of wandering into the middle of this situation having to deal with it.
It took me a while to settle on what word the planet's residents would use for their language. I wasn't going to use "Smurf," but when I originally wrote the story, I put in "Narf" as a placeholder. I almost kept it, but a good friend who read the story rightly advised me to come up with something else. "Yenk," when said with the tone I have in my head, reminds me a little bit of the Martians from "Mars Attacks," but it works.
And Lehrer Colony is indeed named for Tom Lehrer (If you have no idea who Tom Lehrer is, go look him up. He's a giant in the history of comedic music.). There's no particular connection between any of his songs and this story. I just wanted to name something after him.