AndiJF
TGCapper and Moderator
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#11 | Posted: 28 Oct 2009 04:31
Excellent work, I'll be fascinated to see where you take this. I too have long been dissatisfied with the weak ending of Turnabout Intruder, but I imagined it differently, beginning after the court-martial scene, when "Janice Lester", Spock, McCoy and Scott have been thrown into the brig:
Star Trek: The Undiscovered Opportunity
Janice Lester, having stolen Kirk's body but lacking any of his training or experience, and obsessed with dumping the new "Dr. Lester" off at the Benecia Colony as soon as possible, blunders into a pair of raiding Klingon battle cruisers... Disruptor bolts slam into the Enterprise's shields and the ship heaves like a broaching whale. Alarms scream... Damage and casualty reports pour in... "Kirk" panics and loses it... Lacking any orders, Sulu puts the helm over and the Enterprise flees, with the Klingons in hot pursuit...
Meanwhile... Battle damage has cut power to the force fields in the brig... "Janice", Spock and the other "mutineers" break out and head for the bridge... Pausing briefly at a replicator to get "Janice" something to wear (Time? Of course there's time! A girl can't go into battle in her nightie!) but the machine reads her new body shape, and will only issue the regulation mini-dress, nylons and kinky boots...
Cut back to the bridge... The situation is dire... The aft shields are failing... the "Captain" is in a foetal position on the deck, his trousers soaked with urine... Close-up of Sulu's sweating, desperate face... The bridge elevator hisses open, and he looks over his shoulder...
Captain Janice Lester strides onto the bridge in a her gold mini-dress, like a supermodel coming down the catwalk... It's her world, and she owns it... High heels click on the deck plates... She snaps confident orders in a cool contralto, and the clammy hand of panic releases its hold on the crew at their consoles... She steps over Kirk's huddled body, and takes the command chair, absently tugging down the hem of her short skirt and crossing her legs. She glances at the tactical displays, taking in the situation almost subconsciously. The Klingon vessels have become separated in their over-eager pursuit, and a predatory smile plays across her lips.
"Prepare photon torpedoes. Set maximum yield, continuous rapid fire on all tubes. Phaser banks stand by."
Her fingers fly over her chair's panels without conscious thought, feeding commands to the ship's tactical system. Sulu sees the green icons light on his screens.
"Pattern entered and locked Captain."
Captain Lester leans forward. "Execute!"
Her abused engines screaming, the Enterprise pulls hard to starboard and "up". The Klingon commander, surprised by the aggressive manoeuvre of his previously passive opponent, allows his ship to overshoot, but recovers quickly and orders a sharp turn to bring his target back under his guns. The Enterprise reverses with a barrel-roll, pulling her opponent into a rolling scissors in which his initial overtaking momentum forces the Klingon out in front. The Enterprise swoops on his vulnerable stern like a falcon on a wood pigeon.
"Fire as you bear Mr. Sulu!"
"Target lock, Captain!" Sulu yells triumphantly, pressing the firing key.
Salvo after salvo of photon torpedoes hurls from the Enterprise, swamping the Klingon's point defence and shattering his shields. The Enterprise closes to kissing distance, slashing through the Klingon's hull with her phasers, and then rolling away into a split-s to avoid the sudden annihilating flash as her target's anti-matter containment fails.
"Good shooting, Mr. Sulu!" Her first victim forgotten, Captain Lester gazes avidly at the tactical display, hungry for her next kill. "We'll take the second bandit head on. Set up for an offset pass, he's coming in dumb."
His warrior blood boiling, the captain of the second Klingon cruiser drives his engines to their screaming limit, racing first to protect his squadron mate, now desperate to avenge her. In his fury he mistakes the Enterprise's slower approach for the effect of battle damage. The closing velocity is so high that he only gets a flickering opportunity to engage, but even as he comes into range the Enterprise dives "down" sharply and then straightens again but offset from his course, outside his cone of fire. Then he overshoots his elusive quarry and the battle becomes a turning duel in which his own speed becomes his enemy. The Enterprise easily holds the inside curve, pounding his cruiser with full salvos of torpedoes while he can only reply with his dorsal disruptors. Snarling with humiliated frustration the Klingon commander peels away, running for the nearby Neutral Zone. His ship jinks and swerves, turning and pitching evasively, as he desperately tries to disengage, but red warning icons still spread across his damage display like blood from a severed vein.
"He's going Captain!" reports Spock from the sensor station, "He's lost propulsion... I read plasma spilling from his nacelles... internal explosions... massive loss of atmosphere... life-pods ejecting..."
"Very good, Mr. Spock. Break off the attack Mr. Sulu, and slow to pick up survivors. Security and medical teams to the transporter rooms; we're having Klingon guests and they won't be happy."
Captain Lester stands up and looks down at the huddled, piss-soaked, near-catatonic figure of James Kirk crouched at her feet.
"Mr. Chekov, call a security detail and secure... this man. If the brig fields are still down, chain him to a bulkhead somewhere." There is no reply. She turns, hand on hip, to the young officer and finds him staring goggle-eyed at the curvy body filling her uniform.
"Mr. Chekov!" She snaps.
"Uh... Wha-," He blinks, "Yes sir! I mean ma'am... Captain!" The scarlet-faced young Russian ensign beckons to a couple of Redshirts, and they drag Kirk's body to the bridge elevator.
Captain Lester shakes her head. It's going to be a long trip back to Camus II...
Now, isn't that better that the wimpy spontaneous reversion?
* We get a nice feminist message - "It's the software that matters dummy, not the platform."
* The boys get Sandra Smith in a tight gold mini-dress. And nylons. And high heeled knee-boots.
* We get a kick-arse female starship captain decades before Honor Harrington.
I probably trampled all over the Star Trek cannon in terms of technology, characters, tactics, sociology and so on. I don't care, and anyone who does should get a life.
I always thought the spontaneous switch back was deeply lame. At the very least, the Enterprise should have had to return to Camus II and use the alien machine to return Kirk and Lester to their "correct" bodies. However there are certainly more interesting possibilities:
* Janice in Kirk's body hangs himself in his cell, rather than give back his hard-won manhood.
* Dr. Lester's original plan involved setting demolition charges to destroy the alien base after the Enterprise left orbit. When the Enterprise returns, Captain Lester finds nothing but a big hole in the ground, and no way to switch back.
* Mr. Spock sabotages the machine, or destroys Kirks body. Having the captain's personality in a female body neatly resolves the appalling sexual frustration he has (they have?) been suffering for five years. Eat your heart out Nurse Chapel! |
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