PREVIOUSLY ON THE PHASER THREAD…
“Was the Mirror Mirror disintegration panel a true disintegrator, or just some interdimensional transporter. Did it send whoever “to the cornfield”, as it were?”
That reminds me, I wanted to make a thread about…well…see the title.
Where did the Tantalus Field come from and how did Mirror Kirk end up with it? I like to think it’s like Stephen King’s “The Jaunt”. Kirk comes across a trader who owns this technology that originally had two pieces to it. A long range teleporter and it’s receiving station.
Mirror Kirk: “What would happen if there were no receiving device?”
Trader: “Why…I don’t know.”
Mirror Kirk: “Let’s find out.”
Or the guy at the beginning of Operation Annihilate. The one who stole the ship and drove it into the sun. What’s his story??? He heroically manages to resist the agony of his tormentors, steals the only operational ship they’ve constructed thus far and flies it into the sun, setting back the space pancakes work. Noble sunnavabitch.
Christopher Pike: In a Universe where ships go faster than light, computers that talk to you, transporters, blah blah blah, this fucker gets a 600lb rascal scooter with a single flashing light and can only answer, “Yes” or “No”.
I want to see the incredible story of survival (and revenge!) of the two redshirts left on Triacus. (There’s no indication that Kirk ever remembered that he needed to go back for them, though to be fair, it could just not be mentioned.) How they survived with no supplies until rescued by…oh, let’s say Moe.
I want to know where Finnegan is now. I want to see if the reality matches up with Kirk’s memories, and if he’s a Starship captain or stuck scraping space barnacles off garbage scows.
I read one of the Khan/Gary Seven novels. There certainly was a lot to explore in Roberta Lincoln and Mister Seven, and for the most part, it was good. (I disliked the ending of the first, and still haven’t got over it enough to read the second.)
But they never answered your question. I wonder who it could be, especially as there still doesn’t seem to be anyone even in Picard’s time that fits the bill.
Maybe it was actually the Temporal Integrity Commission.
The bartender in “The Trouble With Tribbles.” How do you end up umpteen light-years from Earth and work as a bartender on some space station? And a rather remote one at that?
How about the back and future stories of the three frozen folks the Enterprise D thawed out? What happened to them after Picard dumped their asses off?
Not that recent. 1999. (Unless you’re thinking about a different non-canonical explanation for where the Tantalus Field device came from. In the book I noted, Tiberius tortured Balok of the First Federation to give up that particular device. Nasty piece of work, that guy.)
Well, the bartender in Deep Space Nine ended up umpteen light-years from Ferengar and working as a bartender on some space station. In his case, the “why” is “business opportunity”. That sounds likely in the first case as well.
(The 21s Century Earth alternative is "the bartender works for the services contracting firm Star Fleet contracts with to operate deep-space starports and got assigned there, a la Halliburton.)
I thought that this would be an interesting idea for a show set now. It wouldn’t be the same Gary Seven (Maybe it’s Gary Nine or something) but there is a modern day hero sent on a mission to pave the way towards a more utopian humanity. He has assignments sent to him and maybe someone from the future visits once or twice (but not too much). Travelers is a show with a similar idea but the hook is quite a bit different.
Both Assignment Earth and The Questor Tapes would have made good shows. Both have that Roddenberry Utopia thing going on.
Maybe all these years of “gritty” television have damaged me, but I see a TV show where a guy thinks he’s working for the New Utopia, but was in actuality recruited by the enemy. He goes along, happily doing “whatever it takes” (ie, killing) for The Greater Good, but he’s really a tool of the bad guys. Maybe do that show for a whole season before you introduce the Gary Seven-analog, who sets the hero straight.
Christopher L Bennett has done a great job in a few novels of fleshing out the “Department of Temporal Investigations”.
I’d love to see that concept turned into a series. Kind of a nitty-gritty CSI- or L&O-type police procedural, with two very down-to-earth, serious investigators … but with the fantastic element of time travel and visitors from the past/future/other dimensions thrown in.
STX: The Wrath of Oxmyx. Where a fleet of starships from The Iotian Federation are causing trouble. They’re like political Pakleds - they have big ideas, but don’t understand how to make them work. Hilarity ensues when Picard’s Enterprise comes up against a bunch of yayhoos flying replicas of the original NCC-1701 and wearing 23rd century uniforms.
I think the story here (for me) was that the Iotians were as smart, or maybe smarter than humans, and to see in a STTNG show what they might have achieved in that time interval between TOS and SSTNG.
I based mine on the fact that Iotian society in APotA wouldn’t work, but perhaps they knew even then that imitating Chicago wasn’t working. “Nothing ever gets done.” So a positively-oriented Iotian people, properly motivated, might be a powerful society.
