More ideas from Tricky's Brain!
Ok, I was at work the other day, and one of the lines was working on the 'Ships of the line' book. Of course, I flipped through it. One image stuck out: an ENT era ship crashed in a desert. I read the little blurb, and it said that it was from Archer's time, the Colombia maybe, and it was lost, but found in the Gamma Quadrent. The blurb took the position that the Dominion might have made incursions into the AQ, but in my mind I thought about the opposite: What if this ship had made it there somehow? How would the crew react? What would they do?
So, I started playing this idea in my head, slowly modifing it as I went along. The story would start, not at the begining, but at the end. FED/SF ambassadors/diplomats would be meeting the leaders of some newly discovered "alliance" of different species that has recently been discovered in some backwater part of the galaxy. What astounds them, is that these aliens seem to have some knowlege (although out of date) of FED languages and culture. Then they present a gift to the Ambassador: Several old style memory cards (like Spock used to use); a SF insignia patch from a missing ship; and some other trinket that changes from time to time in my head (a Klingon dagger, IDIC symbol or something iconic like that, or maybe something seemingly innocuous, like a family photo).
When asked how they came upon these items, the aliens simply say they owe a great debt to the people of that ship, and they are helping them finally get home. Review of the cards tells a sweeping epic.....
well, the epic changes in my head alot, but the basics are that something happened to a FED ship, and it was drawn across space to this region (i know, Voyager), where they found that they had next to no chance to get home. Quickly running afoul of the ruling power in the region, the ship's captain attempts to rally the other races into freeing themselves from the tyranny of the local big bad.
Ok, this really borrows alot from other stories, I'm the first to admit that. But some of the elements are just so appealing. Heck, the other day I came up with a tagline, if this was a book, comic or movie : The greatest SF captain you've never heard of!
Just the idea of a ship from Kirks time, trapped in the big unknown, deciding to continue to 'protect and serve' people around them. Of course, there is some issues with the PD, but we all know TOS era captains ignored the PD all the time.
So, here are some other ideas that have been rolling around:
The ship has a small group of Klingons onboard: Prisoners? Diplomats? Perhaps the ship rescued them? At any rate, these warriors bring alot to the table when it comes time to fight.
The big bad; I've been toying with various ideas about them. I want them on par with TOS tech, maybe give them an edge, but nothing a good engineer or science officer couldnt whittle down with some skills. One idea I had was that the phenomena that drew the ship here happens from time to time (or is it controlled?), and at one time, there was an advanced civ that lived here. They charged this race with protecting the others from whatever might come out of the anomaly, and maybe finding uses for newly discovered items as well. As time wore on, they decided that they were powerful, so they should be rulling the sector instead of patroling it. So, they went from noble protectors of the various cultures in the region to overbearing masters.
I don't know why, but I was thinking that one of the species of this region might be free androids. I guess I just like them (and I thought it would be funny to see TOS reactions to free thinking machines)
I picked TOS era for the ship, since it's just far back in time enought to make it an almost believeable story, but it sounds almost hopeless (400 fed members trying to stop an oppressive empire from building it's forces on the backs of the innocent). Plus, its kinda nice, imho, to step back from all the glitz of the NG-VOY era stuff: seeing these guys used to getting their hands dirty, not being afraid to fight, and generally being cowboys in SF uni's is sorta funnish.
I don't know what I would do with this story (write a novel/comic, try to make rpg suppliments, online collaberative rpg), but mostly i wanted to get it out of my head. Any thoughts would be appreicated (not about my cluttered mind, but bout the idea!)
