Star Trek: Red Dwarf

[Anarchy Bob]

"This is a distress call from the Federation ship USS Red Dwarf. The crew are dead, killed by a warp core breach. The only survivors are 5 enlisted crewmen who were in statis at the time. Revived a hundred years later, they are attempting to bring the damaged ship home. I am Doctor Who, the ship's EMH please come to our help."

That's a crazy idea that i think would work. Had it while chatting with Zymmer.

Basically take a huge Federation ship and have it suffer a castrophic failure when it's in the far end of nowhere on an exploration mission.

The surviving crewmembers were those that had been infected during an away mission and put in statis until they could be treated at a Starbase.

When disaster struck, the EMH activated. Alone on a ship that's drifting he worked non-stop on finding a cure to revive the crewmen. Which he managed after a hundred years.

For some reason, the Federation never sent a ship in these parts and now they have to try head home on a derelict ship with a skeleton crew.

What do you guys think?

[Dan Stack]

Obviously it depends on the type of campaign you desire... I personally love Red Dwarf and have images of a motor-scooter zooming through a Galaxy-class ship. You'd need a silly group for it as a campaign.

It might make for a fun mini-campaign where the whole goal is to restore the timeline (if you went the route of popping them a few zillions years in the future)... Would be neat for some "lower decks" characters who you can introduce in a few adventures as NPCs and then have the players play them for a few games.

[ghosty]

Oh my God...that ranks right up there with my USS Blackadder joke. Its commissioning plaque reads: "I have a cunning plan."


But seriously it may be a good idea. Now you only have to explain why Starfleet never sent a rescue vessel. One idea would be that it dropped down a wormhole which closed behind them leaving them stranded far from explored space and they have to find their way home. Cute.

[Anarchy Bob]

Well it depends. It could be played straight as i've written it. Which is kind serious.

Or you could go the whole way with exocomps as scutters, a soong-type android as Kryten, the ship who develops sentience after all that time.. and the EMH who corrupts his holographic matrix with all that running time. So every time, the computer transplants a holodeck character into the EMH to make it work again. When the PCs wake up, they are stuck with an holographic reproduction of the most hated crewman onboard.

I can just see the disaster... Galaxy class ship.. warp core breach.. saucer separates.. but not fully in time.. massive damage everywhere..

Would make a nice april's fools episode with the objective of restoring the timeline if it's a time related disaster. There, now everyone can use it. With varying levels of sillyness

PS. And you only need to look as far as VOY to duplicate the undestructible Star Bug! Which they at least explained during season 6 of Red Dwarf

[Dan Stack]

Red Dwarf must be silly. And it needs tons of time travel, alternate universes, and derelict ships with sirens...

[Anarchy Bob]

I don't want to make it a Lost in Space crossover. Or Andromeda for that matter. It's Red Dwarf

Anyways, the Federation routinely 'forgets' ships it knows full well to be in need of assistance.

Or you could always have them deep in the Gamma Quadrant before the Dominion War. Or near the Delta while the Borg strike. So it's just assumed they got whopped by that.

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

This is actually a cool idea, I rather enjoy Red Dwarf though I'd like to see enlisted personnel deal with First Contact situations considering their limited training. And the decision on who gets to sit in the captains chair; I could see them all rush for it like a bunch of kids.

[Robbert Raets]

Me likes!

Perhaps crewman 2nd class Rimmer forgot to close one of the plasma manifolds on the warp core - which destabilises, kills most of the crew with radiation, the few survivors manage to eject the core at the last possible moment. The exploding M/AM-reactor creates a subspace tear, which sucks the ship to a far-off place, and the crewmembers in stasis are the only ones to survive the turbulence.

just $0.02