STA Saturday — “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
Okay, two weeks ago I began a silly little project to re-watch Star Trek (starting with TOS) with the goal of trying to draw a story seed or two for Star Trek Adventures from each episode. We’ve done The Man Trap and Charlie X. Next up? Where No Man Has Gone Before.
Where No Man Has Gone Before (TOS Season 1, Episode 3… or 1?)Okay, before we dive into this episode—which I truly do believe sits best as Episode One of the TOS series, rather than three, we need to address the hunk in the room.
It’s rare a human puts Spock into second place on the eyebrow front. Also, James T. Who? See you in the rec room, Gary.Specifically, Gary Mitchell could get it.
I give Dr. Dehner props for calling him on his admittedly cheesy line, but those wonderful brown eyes, the eyebrows, the chin, the lips… listen. I’m not saying that it adds up to the complete dismissal of James T. Kirk (or, in this episode for some reason, James R. Kirk), but I am saying we need to admit that pretty much only one person on that set makes those mock-neck-zipper-shoulder tunics look good, and that is Mr. Mitchell here.
(Also the scruff. I forgot the scruff.)
Ahem! Sorry. Anyway. So the Enterprise picks up an Earth signal from space that’s kind of impossible because no one has been here in quite the while, and Kirk takes a moment from being Captain Jerk and teasing Spock (already sick of that and I’m only three episodes in) to determine it’s basically a starship black-box, and then because other ships will come this way at some point, decides to… ram the barrier around the edge of the galaxy.
(Yeah, so there’s a barrier around the galaxy. Also, Enterprise is at the “edge” of the galaxy? This I can only assume is in an “up” or “down” direction given the galaxy is something like 100,000 light years in diameter and Sol is about half-way between the centre core of the galaxy and the edge, and in Kirk’s era, they sure weren’t jumping 25,000 light years at any time warp factor. Whatever. It’s Star Trek, and as we’ll come to treat like a mantra, they sure weren’t attempting to build a cohesive canon episode-to-episode.)
Anyway, ramming the barrier turns out to be a bad idea, because a number of the crew die—all of whom had high-ish esper ratings (meaning they had little flashes of insight, precognition, what-have-you), and we witness two of the crew—a psychiatrist, Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, and also the aforementioned hunk, Lt. Commander Gary Mitchell—spark and sizzle like fireworks, and when they barely manage to pull away from the energy barrier, Gary’s eyes are no longer the most swooniest of lovely browns, they’re silver (also those contacts look really uncomfortable).
Gary starts to progress from hot dude in a sleeveless sickbay shirt (chest hair!) to hot dude who can control his own biological state to telepath to telekinetic and—alas—absolute power begins to do what it always does. Meanwhile, Dr. Dehner is entranced by Gary’s whole smokin’ thing, the ship is damaged, and they stop at an automated mining facility on an otherwise empty world where the plan is to dump Gary before he loses touch completely (humans are starting to be like insects to him by this point) and repair the ship and then get the hell out of there.
Alas, Gary gets silver sideburns, so you know he’s powered up into godhood, and—Oh No!—it starts to happen to Dehner, too, and Kirk has to kill Gary (but first he has to convince Dehner to hold on to her humanity for just a little longer to fight Gary back down to a mortal level) and in the end, the gods die, Kirk’s uniform rips for the first time (this will be a recurring theme) and as they fly away from the planet where Kirk lost Dehner and Mitchell he has time to be Captain Jerk about Spock’s feelings one more time. Roll credits.
(Oh, and this time no one stalks Yeoman Rand, but it’s because she’s not in the episode; but don’t worry, Dehner—a focused, cool and composed professional—gets super emotional at the staff meeting while all the men remain completely calm and aloof look at her like ‘jeez… women,’ and Dehner makes a crack to Gary about being cold because she’s a woman overcompensating as a professional and so there’s still that. Also Captain Jerk doesn’t even know his Yeoman’s name. Dude. Boss 101.)
Scenario SeedsThis time, something that jumped out at me right off the bat was the inclusion of the Delta-Vega Station as a setting for Enterprise to limp to in a damaged state, and the other thing was the notion of espers.
Seed One: Automated and Uncrewed Mining/Mineral Facilities
Delta-Vega Station is an uncrewed lithium cracking station. The mining facility is on an other wise desolate planet (which does have a tonne of minerals and crystals, but Dehner notes would take a miracle to survive on for any length of time), and Kirk mentions that ore ships drop by once every twenty years or so. Facilities like this one were set up by a mining company, working alongside the Federation.
Your Place/Ore Mine?—Quite a few options pop to mind with facilities like these. For one, (a) setting up a new automated and uncrewed mining facility would be a great starting point for a mission where you wanted to focus on your player engineers and science officers (especially any that might have a Focus in geology or mineralogy or the like), and having a non-Starfleet or civilian mining company also be involved is always a fun way to set up some tensions or personality clashes—or perhaps new friendships or relationships—between the Starfleet crew and people who don’t exist in (and aren’t used to) Starfleet’s hierarchy. Then of course, the routine “set it up and get it running” goes awry when individuals with telepathic ability start to see/hear whispers, especially those who handle any of the crystals the facility is setting up to process, and later, non-telepathic individuals start to wander off, vanishing off sensors by going deeper into the mines and actively attempting to stymy the efforts by sabotaging the automated units, as it turns out the crystal formations are all connected and host a nascent consciousness—something similar to a crystalline entity, only planet-bound—which is attempting to save itself from being harmed by the facility via telepathic influence on the weaker minds around it. Or, (b) the crew’s vessel is passing by an uncrewed facility and picking up strange readings—explosions?—that may indicate something may have gone wrong on the site. When they arrive—taking a shuttle because the particulates in the atmosphere being processed here refract transporter beams—there are clear signs the facility has been breached, but not by whom, and an atmospheric hunt through the dimly-lit facility with only machines in motion follows, a cat-and-mouse game where it turns out enemies of the Federation have laid a trap, and now the crew have left their shuttle behind them, the enemies are going to use it to return to the crew’s vessel and infiltrate it—or simply destroy it with explosives placed on the shuttle. The crew need to find a way to get a signal back to the ship through the disruptive atmosphere, and there are still enemies on the planet to worry about. Or perhaps (c) a frantic call from an ore-ship brings the player’s crew to the site of one of the facilities only to find a previously unknown alien species suffered a catastrophic failure of their own engines and crash-landed on the planet weeks ago: they’re hurt, afraid, and combining a First Contact mission with disaster relief and medical interventions among the many wounded makes for a high-tension setting—especially if it soon becomes clear the “catastrophic failure” of the alien vessel’s warp-engine doesn’t seem to have been an accident in the first place, but might have been by design (though more effective than intended), to give the species a plausible reason to end up on this planet where they could attempt to gain technological advantages by learning all they could from Federation technology without earning the ire of the Federation itself.
Seed Two: Espers
As described by Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, being an esper is not something I’d consider a Talent by Star Trek Adventures terms, or even the the level of a Focus (though for someone very high on the scale it could work, and be applicable to situations where having a vague insight into the future or random events might offer an advantage). I’d consider “Esper” a great facet to drop into a human or other non-telepathic species character as a Trait, however, something the narrator or player can spin up here and there in a scenario when it might apply. Or, to put it a little more front and centre, a value of “Highly rated on the esper scale” could be a great way to tuck in some psychic ability without overdoing it, given the use of Determination, and also a way for a narrator a fascinating Sci-Fi way to challenge the player—strange radiations, other telepathic species, time loops; all might affect an esper in a way the narrator could roll out by challenging the Value in a given scenario: does an esper refuse an order when they get a flash of insight that following orders might lead to disaster? How can they prove it?
The Sound of Psilence—The crew are called to a newly discovered species to initiate first contact after a survey ship reports an encounter with their warp-capable test ship, only to learn the species have no sense of hearing, utilize an incredibly complex and difficult to understand written language, and communicate with each other via a form of telepathy that doesn’t register clearly among Vulcans, Betazoid, or any of the other telepathic or empathic species of the Federation—but the player and crew espers find themselves glimpsing images and sensations that might make it possible to speak with them. First contact progresses until (a) the esper crew start to realize they’re also getting senses, images, and glimpses of impending doom, and the alien species aren’t just trying to communicate but to warn them about an enemy incursion or natural disaster about to destroy a Starbase, Colony, or Starship—can they manage to communicate clearly and in time in order to stop the destruction? Or, (b) the more the espers interact with the alien species, the more they notice stratification among their people, and ultimately learn that some of their species are “silenced”—made telepathically invisible via genetic engineering—specifically to be utilized as spies and assassins, and this First Contact is also an assessment by a species that cares little for individual rights to gain control of the crew’s ship and reverse-engineer Starfleet technology now they’ve learned more powerful species exist in the galaxy. Or, (c) when it becomes clear the species have a natural talent for accurate prescience, a group of Ferengi, Orions, or other advantage-seeking-species swoop in to kidnap a group of the more gifted aliens, intending to use them to scan the future for opportunities they can use for profit or personal advancement, turning First Contact into a rescue mission. Things are all the more complicated given co-ordinating or even clearly communicating with the alien species is difficult and done via esper-level vague intuition and imagery.
Just Lucky, I Guess—Adding a rakish rogue Okona-like figure as an ongoing character to the campaign might be fun if one of his qualities the crew only uncover over time is his high esper rating. The first time the free-wheeling trader/surveyor/independent businessman shows up where the crew are assigned to prospect a dilithium source only to find he’s gotten there ahead of them to stake his own claim and the Federation will now have to cut him in on the deal, it’s an unfortunate circumstance, but not the end of the world. When he shows up again with exactly what’s needed—assuming he receives a favourable trade—during a minor disaster, it might cross into unfortunate and into annoying. His ability to know where to go—one he calls a ‘knack for being in the right place at the right time’—is one he’s learned to trust, and even more so when it’s paired with the notion of bringing something with him, but it’s only so long before something goes wrong. Potentially, (a) he has the same relationship with Klingons, or Romulans, or some other political organization that decide his ongoing ability to be where things will be interesting is something they can use against the Federation, and they attempt to kidnap him—only, their attempt goes sideways as he manages to glimpse just enough of the trap springing around him to lend them on a merry chase into neutral territory and leaving the players to realize they might need to risk a political incident to stop their enemies from using his ability against them. Or, (b) knowing a place will be “interesting and important” isn’t the same as knowing that place will be safe, and the rogue gets himself in way over his head when he shows up somewhere with exactly what a violent militant group need to launch a coup. His own esper ability is enough to escape, but the group now has everything they need to build a bomb—and the only people he can call on for help close enough to be in time are the player crew. Or perhaps (c), he shows up somewhere the crew are set to begin a routine colony mission only to warn them of dire intuitions—he knows, somehow, they could spell doom with what they’re planning to do, only without any real specifics. Assuming, of course, he’s telling the truth and this isn’t a long con.
I will say, this episode is still a favourite, with the budget for practical effects (telekinesis!) and those silver contacts. And even if the energy barrier thing is head-tilting, the whole “absolute power corrupts absolutely” plot still lands.
See you next week!
