The Star Traks Reunion Special
| Star Traks: The Original Series | |
| Episode name | Please Hold For Oblivion |
|---|---|
| Season | |
| Episode number | |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker |
| Year | 2393 |
| Stardate | |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | Please Hold For Oblivion [TRK] |
| Next in series | |
| Previous in timeline | |
| Next in timeline | |
Eight years after the Forever incident, Alexander Rydell gathers officers and friends from the USS Secondprize for a reunion.
Summary
"The Star Traks Reunion Special" consists of several short stories surrounded by framing material set at the reunion. The stories are...
- Picnic - The Secondprize answers a distress call from a Yynsian ship, the crew of which is acting strangely. After transporting the crew to the Secondprize's sickbay, Commander Travis Dillon and Lieutenant Commander Jaroch beam aboard. Soon Jaroch begins suffering the same symptoms. He attacks Dillon and sends the ship racing away from the Secondprize. Dr. Rebecca Singer determines that a batch of irradiated potato salad is to blame. Rydell is able to contact the battered Dillon and orders him to get rid of the potato salad on the ship. Dillon, running from Jaroch the entire time, puts the potato salad the only place he can, in his stomach. Free of its effects, Jaroch returns to normal, but suffers some nasty digestive after-effects.
- Scenes From An Italian Restaurant - While the Secondprize is on a layover at Earth, Rydell takes Dillon, Patricia Hawkins, Emily Sullivan, Scott Baird, Jaroch, and Dr. Elizabeth Aldridge to dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant...in Italy no less. Sullivan makes a special order and ends up with a drug-laced meal intended for a table of Orion drug dealers. As Sullivan has a drug trip, the dealers attempt to extract their product from her stomach leading to a battle with the Secondprize officers, a battle the crew is unprepared for. As Rydell and Baird destroy the drug lab in the restaurant's kitchen, taking out most of the kitchen in the process, Aldridge forces some the drug remaining on Sullivan's plate into Jaroch. Jaroch's past lives go suitably wild, and he, Hawkins, Dillon, Aldridge, and an equally-loopy Sullivan are able to take down the dealers.
- Uncle Dork - Baird and Sullivan are stuck watching Baird's nephew, Herbert, for a night. The disagreeable child argues about food, presses random buttons on the bridge, and demands to see Engineering, which Baird most definitely will not allow. Herbert gets away from Baird and escapes to Sickbay with Baird in pursuit. The boy manages to inject Baird's leg with a local anesthetic, slowing the engineer considerably. Baird tracks Herbert to Engineering, where the child is able to get the drop on the hobbled Baird, and Baird ends up dangling precariously over the edge of the warp core shaft. Sullivan and Hawkins intervene, rescuing Baird and preventing Baird from killing Herbert until he is picked up by Baird's parents later that day.
- You're the Inspiration - The Secondprize crew have two weeks of leave on Argellus III. While there, Lieutenant Andrea Carr meets one of her idols, the poet Seugio P'lezar. Discovering that she is a fellow poet, P'lezar asks her to dinner and has her read her poetry to him. And then she spends the night. The next morning as she is leaving with P'lezar for another reading, Carr is kidnapped by members of the Uleera Independence Guild, who release her on the condition that she delivers a message to P'lezar. He is to use his influence to push the planet's rulers to free the Uleera Province. P'lezar urges Carr to return to the Secondprize, so that she will be safe. She refuses and insists on going to his next reading with him. She's kidnapped before this one as well. Her captors tell her that she will be killed unless P'lezar does what they have told him to do. Carr escapes and rushes to the reading to let P'lezar know that she is safe. She arrives and discovers that he is reading her poems to the audience and passing them off as his own. P'lezar had been suffering from writer's block since the publication of his last work. He'd become such a success that he had no suffering in his life to use as fuel for his creativity. Carr's poems struck him as being good enough to present to his fans, who were demanding new material. With the help of some friends, he arranged to have Carr "kidnapped," so that she wouldn't know he was reading her poems. The misery he feels at what he's done gets him writing again. He asks Carr to give him another chance. Carr declines.
- The Road to Feruk'Zin - When the Secondprize rushes away from Starbase 163 to try to prevent a civil war on the planet Feruk'Zin, Lieutenant Monica Vaughn and Counselor Claire Webber are accidentally left behind. They are forced to hitch a ride on the USS Ontario, which is also headed to Feruk'Zin to make sure that Captain Rydell doesn't screw things up. The Ontario's captain is not at all pleased to have officers from "that ship" on board his vessel. He's even less pleased when Vaughn and Webber start fraternizing with his crew. The Ontario becomes trapped in a subspace distortion, at which time the Ontario's captain must suffer one final indignity: being rescued by Alexander Rydell.
- Thanks For Your Support - The Secondprize is examining the Mondigeri Anomaly to test out new sensor hardware and software provided by a third-party vendor. As soon as Jaroch brings the system online, it shorts out every system on the ship. Baird is able to get some basic things back online, but not the engines, which is something of a problem since the anomaly is reaching out to absorb the Secondprize. Jaroch attempts to contact the sensor vendor's tech support system and runs into several difficulties until finally reaching a living being. Unfortunately the company outsourced their tech support to the Klingons, so every suggestion involves a bat'leth. Jaroch is finally forced to take matters into his own hands to save the Secondprize. He manages to move the ship away from the anomaly, and then he and Baird have to spend several days rebuilding the computer core from the ground up. With that complete, Jaroch has the Secondprize drop by the vendor's headquarters, where he installs their own software into their system. Much chaos ensues.
- We Welcome Your Suggestions - The bridge crew and Commander Baird attend an on-ship training from Mister Bob. The training is so dull that every single person, including Commander Dillon, falls asleep. After the training, the attendees begin exhibiting strange behavior. Rydell sees snakes at every turn. Baird wants nothing to do with anyone and seals every door on the ship, so that no one can get near him. And Dillon can't find his butt. Realizing that something is very wrong, Dr. Aldridge has Monica Vaughn beam her directly to the bridge, where she discovers that the bridge crew have been implanted with subcutaneous transmitters. Mister Bob has planted post-hypnotic suggestions to incapacitate the bridge crew, making the ship ripe for a takeover by Mister Bob's half-brother, an Orion auditioning for a post in the Orion Syndicate. Aldridge is able to free the crew from the effects of the hypnosis, and Mister Bob and his half-brother are taken into custody.
- Viva Lost Vega - While the Secondprize remains in orbit, Rydell, Lisa Beck, Dillon, and Baird attend the grand opening of a casino on Vega Four. Soon after the opening ceremony, the entire planet vanishes. Rydell and Beck learn that the casino owner gambled the planet away to a nice couple, not realizing that they were a couple of omnipotent beings actually capable of taking possession of it. Rydell and Beck are able to convince the couple that the casino owner had sold the planet to them first, so the omnipotent beings scold the owner for dealing in bad faith then go off to find a planet somewhere else for the solar system they're building. Dillon and Baird spent the entire time gorging themselves in the buffet and had no idea anything had happened to the planet. They about kill themselves trying to out-eat each other and are forced to comm the Secondprize for an emergency beam out to Sickbay, where the stomach pumps are standing by.
- The Secret Life of Trininan - Over the course of her years on the Secondprize, Trinian saves the ship from threats that the rest of the crew aren't even aware of. The last of these, a horde of psionic parasites, leaves her needing a vacation. She heads off for Betazed, just in time for Rydell to find Forever.
Before the next story, the reunion is interrupted by the arrival of two agents from Temporal Investigations. They accuse Rydell of aiding and abetting a temporal displacement and inform the others that the Travis Dillon in the room with them is not the Travis Dillon they knew on the Secondprize. Travis acknowledges this is true and says that the real Dillon saved his life.
- Experimental Outcomes - Several years after his release from Tantalus V, Travis Dillon must visit his brother, Bradley Dillon on Waystation. Their father, Dr. Richard Dillon has died, and there are certain things in the will that Bradley, as executor of the estate, must explain to Travis. Bradley gives Dillon a note from their father telling Dillon that his entire life has been a psychological experiment and that now he wants Dillon to check in with a Dr. Bunch, one of Dr. Dillon's colleagues. Dillon decides that rather than going along with his father's wishes, he's going to throw a wrench into the "experiment." He takes a ship to Lorikel, where Dr. Derrick Azar had a lab where he performed temporal research. Dillon finds that Azar is dead, but he left behind a time travel device, which he uses to go to the early 21st Century. He finds that era's Travis Dillon, who, after having his own mental health issues, now lives alone in a cabin in Montana. He convinces that Travis to change places in time with him. When Travis leaves for the 24th Century, Dillon has a breakdown and wanders off into the snow ranting to himself. In the 24th Century, Travis meets with Rydell and tells him what has transpired. Rydell agrees to help him hide the fact that a switch has taken place and to see if he can get Dillon's book about the Secondprize's adventures published. Travis then confronts Dr. Bunch, who has been trailing him taking notes, and heads off to start his new life.
Back at the reunion, the Temporal Investigations agents insist that Travis has to be put back in Montana, so that he can die in a snow drift like he is supposed to. The group realizes that Dillon must have died in the snow almost as soon as Travis left. Rydell agrees to retrieve Dillon. They take the Secondprize back in time, and Rydell and Jaroch beam down to retrieve Dillon. Rydell says that history will have its body. He'll get Dr. Aldridge to make a fake corpse. She's done it before. Then they'll take both Travis and Dillon back to the 24th Century. Rydell and Jaroch go to Dillon as he is freezing in a snow drift and tell him that they've come to take him home.
Featuring
- Alexander Rydell
- Travis Dillon
- Jaroch
- Scott Baird
- Patricia Hawkins
- Emily Sullivan
- Andrea Carr
- Monica Vaughn
- Lisa Beck
- Claire Webber
- Elizabeth Aldridge
- Trinian
Also Featuring
Author's Comments
The first thing I wrote for this project was the Prologue, appropriately enough. At that time, I didn't even know it was going to be a project. The conversation between Rydell and Travis just popped into my head, and I typed it up, not sure what it would become. As the idea for the reunion special as a whole formed, I had a a thought of "Am I really going to do this?" I wasn't sure that I wanted to go back to the well, as it were. Did I really want to risk messing up what I'd done in Oblivion and Lost Years? I decided that this was going to be different. I wanted to go back to telling some fairly simple funny stories and to have a good time with the characters. In the end, the reunion special achieved that for me. Your mileage will vary. Of course, the end did get a bit more on the sentimental side. Sometimes I just can't resist.
"Picnic" was originally written as a script for a Star Traks comic that never ended up happening. A reader had contacted me about wanting to draw a Traks comic and wanted to know if I would provide a story. I did. Unfortunately the project never took off. The storyline fit in with the type of thing I wanted to do for the Reunion Special, so I rewrote it as a prose story and included it.
The original version of "Uncle Dork" was written in the first batch of Star Traks short stories back in 1993. I was never happy with how it turned out, so I didn't post it when I started the website started three years later. I still liked the concept of Baird having to deal with a child, so when the reunion project came along, it seemed a good time to see if I could rework it. The original story didn't have Sullivan involved, but I think adding her and the relationship aspect makes the story work better than it did before.
"Viva Lost Vega" is the only time that I can think of when I've built a story around a title. Like Rydell, I enjoy Elvis music. One day "Viva Lost Vega" popped into my head. I have no idea where it came from, but I thought it was too good to not use. I've been to a few casinos, and I swear that the bits about the slot machine players robotically putting money in the machines and not reacting even when they win is absolutely true.
"Thanks For Your Support" grew out of my experiences working in the IT field. There's nothing like dealing with tech support.
Believe it or not, some of "We Welcome Your Suggestions" really happened. In our Freshman year of college at Old Dominion University, several of my friends and I attended a hypnotism show on campus one night. I watched my friends act out most of the suggestions I used in the story. I guess I got off easy, since I was the one given the suggestion to laugh hysterically at everything.
"Experimental Outcomes" was written while I was in graduate school. It was a standalone story at the time and was originally posted on the Star Traks: Unleashed page as an out-of-canon story, since it was so serious compared to everything else I'd done. I liked the story enough that I wanted to use it for the reunion project, but I really couldn't leave Dillon dead like that. I know the epilogue undoes most of this story and is incredibly sentimental, but I like it.