Star Traks 1
| Star Traks: The Original Series | |
| Episode name | Star Traks 1: Joegonots |
|---|---|
| Season | |
| Episode number | |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker |
| Year | 2372 |
| Stardate | 49804 |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | |
| Next in series | Secret Admirer [TRK] |
| Previous in timeline | Secret Admirer [TRK] |
| Next in timeline | Belch-O-Rama [TRK] |
In the first ever Star Traks story, Captain Alexander Rydell and the crew of the USS Secondprize face the most disgusting race in the galaxy to save a renown physicist.
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
- Admiral Thomas Wagner
- Dr. Robert Tulson
- The Grand Leech of the Joegonots
- Anemia
Author's Comments
This is the first Star Traks story ever written. Before this, I had never written anything in the Star Trek universe despite being a fan since I was in 7th grade. I had, however, been writing other types of stories since I was in elementary school.
Star Traks came about as a result of conversations my college friends and I would have about what positions we would hold if we ever had a starship. One day at lunch in October of 1992, the real world inspiration for Alexander Rydell suggested in an off-hand manner that I should write some of this down at some point. I'm still not sure if he was serious. Oh well. Too late now. I'd like to pretend that a great deal of planning went into this, but really it didn't. Instead of trying to write my friends, I decided to use caractitures, amplifying aspects of their personalities. The first chapter was done that afternoon, and I took it down to dinner in our dorm that night to get opinions. The reactions were generally positive, so I continued on, adding in more characters as I went. Writing the story took about a month. I had no plot outline, no real idea of where I was headed, and certainly no concept that this was going to become a series.
Because of this, the characters are not quite formed yet. Rydell in particular comes across as far more put-upon and angry than he does in the later stories. For continuity purposes, I suppose this could be chalked up to having to deal with the Joegonots and his taking a fair amount of abuse in this story, both physical and mental.
Occasionally I think about going back and re-editing "Star Traks 1," but frankly I'm a bit scared of overtinkering with things. I have no desire to become George Lucas. No. Wait. I would love to be George Lucas. I would just be a George Lucas who didn't go screw with my past work. Anyway, there are some passages in this story that make me cringe now, but I'm going to leave the story pretty much as is. I was 18 when I wrote it. It shows in places, but there's still a lot of gags here that I am very happy with.