Writing the Starship Morningstar Adventures

    So my opening scene in Trizzka Troubles, the naming scheme will be explained a bit later, was to introducing you, the audience to the main characters and the premise behind the series. You see the opening scene having a spice trader and Jack trying to sell him cinnamon was a direct reference to Dune and the spice Melange, which smelled of cinnamon. A jokey take on sci-fi and a hint that much of what is to come would be a parody or mocking to sci-fi clichès.

    It tells you in not so minced words that the main character is not so much a smuggler as a conman behaving a smuggler, or as he says, a procurer of not so legal goods. I actually liked writing that scene, don’t know if I’ll ever change it, I’ll try not to, maybe clean it up one day.

    You also get to meet my first Fersira character, as of writing this I have yet to update the appendix to involving her. I was trying to think of an owner for a collection of less than legal space stations. My first thought was of the Asari from Mass Effect, specifically Aria T’Loak the de facto ruler of Omega station. This is referenced in Jack’s dialogue. I sort of haphazardly slapped them together with the Ferengi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is how they got their goofy name.

    Next, we get the ship’s name dropped as it pulls into Omega station and we meet the enigmatic Sam, which is only in part a reference to Scott Bakula, though I wasn’t sure of it at the time. So I pulled an old clichè here where I had the really important/powerful character dress as a commoner/homeless person. I’m not ashamed of it clichès are there for a reason because they work and they can hint something to the audience based on past shared experiences. We all know a character who has done this be it D’Artagnan in Dumas’s romance or Paul in Dune. The act of pretended to be someone else to either get the impression held by the people or to subvert the expectation of the other party. Who Sam is exactly? Well, that’s a story for another time.

    The conversation that follows is littered with references to the Star Trek episode Trouble with Tribbles, of which, the overarching story of this short story is a parody of. With the Thun’Cera filling in for the Klingons, the Engagement and it’s crew filling in for the Enterprise, and Jack and co. behaving as mischievous background characters to a much larger set piece.

    The naming scheme to the story was a combination of the Star Trek Tribble with the Star Wars Gizka, an annoying frog-like thing that boards your ship and breeds like, well tribbles. 

    I felt the plot served as a decent backdrop to my introduction of the not so competent crew of the Starship Morningstar. It wasn’t my favorite story to work on ever but I had a bit of fun with it and hopefully, I can branch out a bit from here into more original, if still a bit of parody, adventures for the crew.

    That being said let’s talk about the next story where I totally spit in the face of that statement I just made.

    So, Encounter at Distant Point Station is possibly in many ways a more direct parody from the Episode of Star Trek that it takes it’s overarching story from. As I skipped all sense of starting with original characters and immediately dropped in the character that would serve as the Q for my universe, Hue. This is referenced over and over again with Jack calling him Cue with various spellings. I actually really like the idea that Jack purposely calls people by the wrong names. Which is why I put the part in Jack’s captain’s log where he refers to Hue correctly. Also, there’s a pretty good joke here that references Star Trek 5 that I thought pretty funny, dunno how well it went over but I enjoyed it.

    The main problem I had with the story was its resolution, how was I going to end it. I mean the episode ended with two giant space jellyfish, could I really do the same?

    The answer, of course, was yes, I did, but where the show had a message about humanity and charity, and helping those in trouble, mine was just a goof about how space jellyfish exist and if you want them to stop shooting at you probably shouldn't imprison and starve their mates.

    So in the end, Space Jellyfish.