SW-Fans Into Darkness

[Captain Untouchable]

In the wake of watching Star Trek Into Darkness, Charley and I kinda want to do an Abrams Trek roleplay. We're not thinking "new setting" or anything - just one ship, a handful of characters, and an adventure or two that maybe draws on some of the Star Trek stuff that'll probably never make it onto the big screen.

To make life easier, we'll probably go with a ship of the same class as the Enterprise (so we all know what the inside looks like, etc), and we'll maybe start off between Star Trek and Into Darkness, so that we can foreshadow and tie into stuff.

I've been doing Star Trek roleplaying since I was thirteen, so I have a fair few ideas of stuff we could do, if people are interested.

[Dale Goetz]

Lt. Commander Goetz reporting for duty at the engineering station.

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

Command-- I mean, Captain Érinthe Hetetlen, First Officer Commanding Officer.

My name is weird: say it like this.




(Damn straight I'm Captain Hungarian Untouchable )

[Jorann Lokar]

We've bandied the idea before of mission-based threads where one poster takes the role of DM, outlining the mission objectives and controlling the antagonists and obstacles that the heroes must overcome. I think that could be a great model for episodic adventures like the one at the beginning of Into Darkness.

Let's Prank the Natives!

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

I think episodic is definitely the way to go with this sort of thing.

Just to get the pulse of people's opinions and preferences: are we wanting to go with The Original Series style episodes (self-contained morality fables; most of the crew involved most of the time), The Next Generation / Deep Space Nine style ones (still morality tales, but with main characters taking it in turns to be the main focus), or Movie style stories (high stakes adventures with a morality "theme" running through it, but with different members of the crew experiencing that theme in different ways).

Also, Andrew just brought up the idea of a "season one antagonist" in a conversation we're having. Do we want our stories to be relatively stand-alone, or do we want to have some sort of theme that ties everything together?

I'm cooking up a few ideas for a first story... and we might as well start as we mean to go on, y'know?

[Jorann Lokar]

Having an arc is probably inevitable, because that's just how we roll. But I don't think we need to feel like every story has to advance it. I think it's enough to know we've got a broad mission to fulfill in a particular region of space, and we're free to tell stories in that context. Over the course of those stories we can tie into the big plot, like we've done off and on in MU.

I also think we could brainstorm plotlines for individual characters and figure out how to combine them into episodes, or even deliver them as stand-alone vignettes. For instance, after reading up on Orion culture, I'd love to have a story where Jorann finds himself the target of a Ganzu, or revenge society, and he doesn't know why.

[Dale Goetz]

I'm a big fan of going stand-alone TOS style sci fi vignettes, but we can tie things in when we get the juices going

[Ari McKenna]

This sounds fantastic

[Érinthe Hetetlen]

The thread for our first adventure - "Footsteps" - is up.

It's a relatively self-contained story, though as you'll see already it's tying in with elements from the movies as well. You may remember Mr Cumberbatch talking about Starfleet aggressively exploring sectors of space and finding certain "things" - being part of that wave is the overarching theme of what we'll be doing.

This first story does also involve visiting a planet from The Original Series. However, we're arriving ten years earlier (as we will every time we "re"visit somewhere from the show), so events will take a very different path to what they did before. As alluded to already, I'll be GMing this to some extent: effectively that means that you guys won't always no what's coming. The main reason for that is so that you can shape the story on the fly and have fun... but also it means that you guys get to guess what is being cooked up as we go. Bonus points for the first person who correctly works out which TOS episode we'll be drawing on this time.

Lastly, I think it would be really cool if we try and make sure our threads end up flowing like a TV show / movie: keep conversations flowing, and break things into scenes rather than pin-balling all over the place as we sometimes have a habit of doing. That way, the people who aren't actively participating have something coherent to read through.

Hell, maybe we can even upload it on Amazon and try to make some money.

[Captain Untouchable]

^ Further to that, it would be really useful if you could keep tossing out that they'd like to do either in general, or specifically with their character.

If there's a planet you want to visit (the one from "Bread and Circuses" where Roman culture has 20th century tech, and Gladiator shows are aired on TV), a race you want to encounter the AbramsTrek version of (Metrons, Romulans, Cardassians), or if it's just a thing that you want to do (skydive out of a shuttle, have an evil transporter twin, be court martialled for a crime you didn't commit)...

...the more ideas you guys throw at me, the more ideas I have available to make our story/episode/vignettes as content-full as possible for everyone.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

I kinda like the idea of taking the mirror universe premise and tweaking it a little so that it's almost like the Dominion infiltration. Since apparently the mirror universe is aware of us as early as Enterprise era, what if they have a coordinated infiltration plan for *reasons*

If we do something like that, we'd have to play the long game with it, but it might be cool.

[Captain Untouchable]

^ I was thinking about that earlier.

For those who don't know, the Enterprise two-parter "In A Mirror, Darkly" is set entirely in the Mirror Universe (it's totally self-contained, so you can skip ahead and watch it without fear of spoilers) involves the mirror versions of the Enterprise cast stumbling across the USS Defiant, which disappeared from the normal / Prime Universe during the TOS episode "The Tholian Web". Encountering a ship from 100+ years in the future becomes an integral part of how the Mirror Universe ended up being the way it was in "Mirror, Mirror".

The question is: if we did a Mirror episode, would we go to the Mirror Universe that reflects the Prime Universe... or would we go to an Alternate Mirror Universe?

With the way events have changed, the USS Defiant might not disappear to the Mirror Universe. In fact, some sources use the name and registry number for the Defiant to identify one of the ships that looks like this in the first movie, having it destroyed at Vulcan. If that's the case, then the "Alternate Mirror Universe" would differ from the Prime Mirror Universe from the events of that Enterprise episode onwards... and as a result the AMU would look totally different.

*

I really like the idea of a covert / Dominion-style infiltration spin on that. Maybe the AMU people are coming here after our advanced technology, since the Abramsverse seems to be more technologically advanced than stuff would normally be?

[Thaitla K'prerr]

That brings an interesting premise actually. Is the Alternate Timeline's mirror universe the same one with the Terran Empire? It may not actually be!

[Captain Untouchable]

I've been thinking on it a little too much more.

Once you strip out the Defiant storyline from that Enterprise episode, the main thing you're dealing with is the Terran Empire having an internal scuffle with the aliens (Vulcans, Andorians, Orions, etc) they have conquered. In the end the Terran Empire wins, leading to the human-centric situation we see in The Original Series... but the universe-hopping Defiant is a contributory factor to that success.

The knee-jerk reaction is to assume that without the Defiant, the Terran Empire would collapse... but we saw that already in Deep Space Nine, where The Alliance (Klingons, Cardassians, and Bajorans) had basically pulled an Emperor Palpatine and turned the Terran Empire into the Rebel Alliance. That's been done.

What if instead, the Terrans didn't totally loose... what if they became the British Empire of space? They're still regarded as having one of the best navies in space, but many of their former colonies and conquests have splintered off into independence. Perhaps the Vulcans in particular have splintered off and become America: perhaps they've gone and conquered / reunified with the Romulans, and are now the dominant power. Maybe the Andorians are Scotland... or maybe they (or someone else) are Space France, and they've been conquered by Space Germany (Cardassia), prompting the Terrans and Vulcans to team up with the Space Russians (Klingons) in some sort of World War scenario. Hell, in both WW1 and WW2 the British Empire was admired by / inspiration for Germany, so that ties back into the Terran Empire really well.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

I think of the options you've mentioned, I really like the idea of an evil Vulcan/Romulan unification government, with possibly the terrans as their vichy france or whatnot.

The Vulcans are always kinda "othered" in the main universe in some ways, this might actually be a cool way to exploit that tension, especially since there are so few of them in the Alternate Reality.

[Captain Untouchable]

Yeah: depending on the manner in which we encounter them (Do they come to us? Do we go to them? Is it a self-contained story where we only write our alternates?), I figure a galaxy ruled by Vulcans is likely to be the biggest contrast. Also, we never really got to see a Mirror version of the Romulans, so it's fresh ground within an old idea.

I don't think the Terrans should be Vichy France though... that's a little too similar to the situation in Deep Space Nine. We've seen them as the conquered underdogs, and we've seen them as the tyrant top dogs. Seeing them as a formerly great power that perhaps still has the arrogance even though it's lost the prestige... that's not just new for the Mirror Universe, that's new for Star Trek humans in general. More fresh ground, which I think is pretty important with these sorts of things.

[Jorann Lokar]

I don't mean to be the contrarian, but I'd personally much rather explore this universe before we start involving the Mirror Universe. Beyond the original series episode "Mirror, Mirror," I've never found the setting to be very compelling.

I'm rather interested in exploring the interactions of the big three - the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans - in the aftermath of the Narada. Remember, the Federation isn't the only power to take a hit from Nero; the transmission Uhura decoded said that a single Romulan ship had destroyed 47 Klingon warbirds. That has to have the Klingon Empire restless, no matter how much the Romulan Star Empire protests their innocence. Meanwhile, the Romulans are sure to try to press their advantage now that a rogue agent has conveniently dealt a body blow to their two biggest rivals.

In Trek's version of the Expanded Universe, there's a region of space known as The Triangle where Klingon, Romulan, and Federation territories intersect - which also happens to be right next to the Orion colonies. It's a great place to monitor the political tensions among the three galactic superpowers and to encounter Trek's criminal underworld.

I don't think we want to put the Valiant on full-time border patrol duty, since that would make it hard to write exploration stories. But we could see plotlines about supporting Federation colonists in the region, thwarting Klingon-funded piracy, intercepting military encroachments by cloaked Romulans, or conducting some plainclothes espionage in the Trek equivalent of Casablanca, with Klingons and Romulans eying each other across a seedy bar. It also ties in nicely with the increasing political tensions we see leading to events in Into Darkness.

[Thaitla K'prerr]

Oh my god a Casablanca homage would be amazing

[Captain Untouchable]

"All-out war with the Klingons is inevitable, Mr Kirk. If you ask me, it's already begun. Since we first learned of their existence the Klingon Empire has conquered and occupied two planets that we know of, and fired on our ships half a dozen times."

That's what Admiral Marcus explains to Kirk, and it doesn't exactly paint a picture of overt Klingon-Federation hostility. The quote is made in 2259, and we're currently sitting in 2258. Even if we ignore Enterprise and assume that the Federation only encountered the Klingon Empire fairly recently (which is ironic, given that Marcus is standing in front of a model of the NX-01 as he says this), that's still not all that much scope for us to have an antagonistic relationship with the Klingons. If you're going to encounter Klingons but you're not actually going to be able to fight with them... is it really worth encountering the Klingons at all?

Even in TOS, the crew only properly encountered the Klingons six times, and that was in the middle of a quote-unquote "war". Since it's a fairly safe bet that the Klingons will be a major part of Star Trek 3, and since that will probably focus on the conflict hotting up in response to Into Darkness...

Personally, I'd rather focus on the alien races that probably won't make it into a movie. That's where we're going to have more freedom and scope, and it avoids us replicating (and possibly contradicting) what the movies are going to end up having the Enterprise crew do. That said, if Klingons is what people want, then that's what we'll do: it just may be tricky to cook up all that many story ideas that "work".

[Jorann Lokar]

You really don't think there's room for any contact with the Klingons short of a war? Maybe the Valiant was one of the ships the Klingons have fired on. A skirmish in contested or uncharted territory doesn't have to equal a shooting war.

I was thinking in terms of contributing to the tensions Marcus is referring to. We've had enough contact with them to establish a Neutral Zone, and there has to be a reason they're the bad guys in the Kobayashi Maru. I think there are plenty of shades of hostility we can play with and still keep them the mysterious alien threat we see in Into Darkness.

We can go a different direction if you prefer. I'd just be a little disappointed to see a moratorium on the biggest of all Star Trek baddies.

EDIT: Just as a point of order, even if we don't use the Triangle, I'd still love to see at least one undercover mission into the Orion Colonies or some other seedy part of space, since that'll give Jorann an opportunity to strut his stuff. Maybe even pose as the captain of his own privateer vessel.