JC's Guide to the Final Frontier III: The Search for Answers

JC's Guide to the Final Frontier III

The Search for Answers

Another fistful of the Final Frontier's follies and failings

General Order 1

And the award for the quickest violation of the prime directive (relative to the beginning of the ship's mission) goes to...Captain Christopher Pike.  On the first day of his second five year mission, Captain Pike revealed himself, his half-Vulcan science officer and the Enterprise itself to the natives of Kylie 279.  Granted he was sent there to rescue a captured Starfleet survey team, and granted the prime directive was already violated before that when the battle between Starfleet and the Control-controlled Section 31 forces near Xahea was observed by the Kylians (a classified event in and of itself) and granted it went peacefully and the Kylians would eventually become Federation members, and the classified nature of how the Kylians learned about warp technology let Pike off the hook anyway so... I guess all's well that ends well.

Mudd in His Eye

After escaping from a Klingon prison where he was left by Captain Lorca and Lieutenant Ash Tyler, conman, smuggler, swindler, thief, liar and general rogue Harcourt Fenton Mudd (we'll call him Harry Mudd) snuck aboard USS Discovery and tried to use some time crystal tomfoolery to exact revenge on Lorca and sell the Discovery and its mushroom-powered drive to the Klingons.  After some 60-odd time loops the Discovery crew turned the tables on Mudd and turned Mudd over to his wife Stella Grimes and her arms dealer father in exchange for them keeping him out of Starfleet's way (something more valuable than any bounty).  Way to con a conman.  Seems Baron and Stella were not able to keep their agreement, as Harry Mudd escaped again and went on the run from both them and Starfleet, hiding as a bounty hunter selling low quality android copies of himself to the bounty hunters.  Seems like he'd have been better off sipping jippers on a beach somewhere.  8 years later Mudd would cross paths with Captain Kirk and the gang on the Enterprise while engaged in humanoid trafficking.  After leaving his cargo of Venus drug taking women with the miners on Rigel XII space pimp Mudd was turned over to Starfleet to serve a prison sentence.  After escaping prison (again) Harry headed out into space, crashing on a planet full of andromedan androids.  His attempt to escape using one of the androids to commandeer Kirks ship backfired when Kirk and co. turned the Androids against him.  As a parting gift Kirk left Mudd with a series of androids based on the likeness of Mudd's now ex-wife Stella.  Apparently the ever resourceful Mudd did eventually escape his android Stella purgatory-this guy escapes so much his name might as well be Harry Houdini.  At last report he was shilling crappy love potion to miners on Motherload.  Some people never change.

Secure Space Doors!

For the flagship of Starfleet the Enterprise NCC-1701 sure got stolen from starbase a lot.  In 2260 Spock and the crew stole the Enterprise from Starbase 1 and took it to a planet in disputed space to rescue their wayward security chief and stop a false-flag operation from restarting the Federation-Klingon war.  7 years later Spock commandeered the Enterprise at Starbase 11 to transport an invalid Christopher Pike to Talos VI so that the captain could live out the rest of his life with the illusion of not being crippled.  19 years hence Kirk and crew would steal the Enterprise from Earth Spacedock to retrieve Spocks body from the Genesis Planet and take it and a Spocks-Katra-possessed Dr. McCoy to Vulcan.  Seems like Starfleet would have better security at their starbases.  And Kirk didn't bring the ship back either.  At least when Spock stole the Enterprise it didn't end with the ship going BOOM.   

Old Man Picard

Poor Jean-Luc.  He took a promotion to Admiral and left the Enterprise-E to lead the evacuation of Romulus, only for the operation to be cancelled after the Zhat Vash used the synths to make Utopia Planitia go boom.  Then he resigned and retired to his family vineyard.  14 years later he found himself on a mission to solve the mystery of Dahj Asha and her possible connection to the late Lieutenant Commander Data.  With the help of his motley crew on the rattle-trap SS La Sirena he solved the mystery, only to die of Irumodic Syndrome.  Just before his body shuffled off its mortal coil his consciousness was transferred to a synth body by Dr. Alton Soong (the even more eccentric son of Noonien).  A year later synth body Picard and most of his motley crew had to travel back in time to the year 2024 to straighten out the timeline after Q's meddling caused an earlier Soong to change Earth history by killing a Picard ancestor.  Oh, he also became estranged from Beverly Crusher in 2380 after they had a fling and she had his son (which she didn't tell him about for over 20 years).  Seems like maybe he should have taken James T. Kirk's advice and stayed in the captain's chair.  Of course then he wouldn't have gotten that synth body, and been able to help the crew of the Titan investigate the Borg/Changeling plot to take over Starfleet during Frontier Day so...

Parody of Virtue

For all that Starfleet touts its captains as absolute paragons of virtue and morality, they have a history of making some very morally questionable decisions.  During their trek through the Delphic Expanse to find the Xindi, NX-01s Captain Archer locked an Ossarian pirate in an airlock and threatened to decompress it unless the pirate gave him information on the Xindi.  After being stranded in the Delta Quadrant for a year or so Captain Rudolph Ransom of the USS Equinox had his crew began murdering innocent nucleogenic lifeforms and using their cadavers to make the ships warp drive go faster.  During the dark days of the Dominion War, Ben Sisko (with the help of a convicted criminal and a certain Cardassian tailor) tried to drag the Romulans into the war on the alliance side by giving a Romulan Senator a forged recording of the Dominion leaders discussing the invasion of Romulus-and when that didn't work Garak blew up the Romulans ship.  At least it worked, so I guess Sisko can live with it.  I would mention USS Discovery's Captain Gabriel Lorca, but that was actually Terran Gabriel Lorca from the mirror universe (long story), so I'll let that one pass.

Time Out.

A word of advice to all intelligent sentient beings in the galaxy: leave the timeline alone.  Nero the revenge-crazed Romulan mining ship captain went back to the 23rd century of an alternate universe and single-handedly rewrote the entire history of that quantum reality.  A temporally insane Captain Braxton from the 29th century (the future one) tried multiple times to destroy USS Voyager in the 24th century.  A Krenim scientist named Annorax tried to change the past to bring back his dead wife and ended up turning his species timeline into the gordian knot.  The Devidians went back in time from 2368 to 1894 San Francisco to dine on neural energy from cholera-ridden humans and in the process created a predestination paradox involving Captain Picard, Mark Twain and Data's head.  And the less said about the temporal cold war, the better.  It's amazing the temporal integrity officers of the 29th century (and the temporal agents of the 31st century) haven't gone completely insane.  It's probably best to leave the "timey-wimey" stuff to the Gallifreyans-oops wrong universe.

Fleet Formation Fail

At the turn of the 25th century Starfleet in its infinite wisdom developed fleet formation mode, the ability to link every single ship in all of Starfleet together in a giant centralized control network.  The perfect thing for unscrupulous, revenge-seeking enemies of the Federation (like the Borg, or maybe the Dominion) to use to commandeer the fleet and turn it against the Federation.  Whoops.  Talk about 'sheer fucking hubris'.

Sarek Family Matters

It turns out that Spock had not one but two little-known siblings.  In addition to his half-brother Sybok the V'tosh ka'tur zealot who hijacked the Enterprise-A and tried to take it to the center of the galaxy to find God at Sha-Ka-Ree, he also had a step-sister Michael Burnham.  THE Michael Burnham who mutinied against her captain, killed the Klingon leader T'Kuvma, got her captain killed (poor Georgiou) and started the Federation-Klingon war of 2256-57.  Seems she was later responsible for a temporal predestination paradox-something about a red angel and a sphere (the details are kind of muddy).  I guess the Sarek family was more human than we thought. 

Soong Dynasty

...But the most wacked family in the universe would have to be the Soong dynasty.  Waaay back in the chaotic pre-warp pre-WWIII days of the early 21st century an unlikable psychopath named Dr. Adam Soong started experimenting with genetic engineering and altering the human genome.  He also tried to genetically create a daughter using illegal cloning techniques, leading to many failures and one success (Kore Soong).  In an alternate timeline he developed a solution to Earth's climate problems and would be revered as a savior of humanity.  However, in that timeline Earth would develop into a xenophobic totalitarian state known as the Confederation of Earth.  This guy's bad in any timeline.  In the days of Archer and T'Pol Dr. Arik Soong followed in his great-granddaddy's footsteps and got arrested for playing around with leftover augment embryos from the Eugenics War.  His augments stole a Klingon ship, killed its crew, nearly started a war between Earth and the Klingon Empire and attacked the cold storage facility holding the rest of the embryos.  Back to prison for Arik.  In the 24th century Dr. Noonien Soong realized the vision of Isaac Asimov and created a positronic brain.  He then used said positronic brains to create Lieutenant Commander Data (also Lore and B-4).  His son (the biological one) Alton Inigo Soong went on his own to create androids with organic "synth" bodies (Dahj, Soji and their ilk).  He also created the synth golem body into which he transferred the consciousness of Jean-Luc Picard and the one that ended up as the new Data (a combination of Data, Lore, B-4, Lal and Alton Soong himself).  Seems like Data and Juliana (Nooniens ex) were the only sane ones in the family.

I Wouldn't Want to Spend My Vacation There

In its continuing quest to explore strange new worlds Starfleet has encountered many a planet that would make for a fine vacation locale.  Risa, Betazed and Bajor for instance.  They've also encountered a fair share of not-so-vacation-friendly worlds.  That said, here's some advice for planning your next shore leave.  Andoria is very cold and icy, not the best vacation spot for a warm-blooded human 'pink skins'.  Unless you fancy ice fishing, skiing and/or hypothermia.  For that same reason Breen is also off the list, plus I hear that the natives are not very pleasant.  At the opposite temperature extreme there's Vulcan (Ni'Var by the 32nd century), which is very hot and desert like.  I've heard the dust storms in The Forge are quite spectacular though.  Ferenginar is covered in constant torrential rains (so much so that the natives have 178 words for rain), fetid swamps and greedy capitalist trolls (although it's actually improved in that last regard thanks to Grand Nagus Rom).  There's also that "Murder Planet" that the protostar kiddos visited in the Hirogen system.  Don't be fooled by its lush green appearance, the flora and fauna will kill you.  Turns out the planet itself is a giant superorganism.  Yikes!  But the absolute worst vacation spot in the known galaxy is the class Y "demon" planet in the Vaskan sector where Voyager encountered the "silver blood".  It's extremely, oppressively hot (up to 500 Kelvin), has a toxic, highly corrosive atmosphere and is also totally irradiated with thermionic radiation.  On the upside you wouldn't feel the extreme sunburn because you'd be fried to a crisp.