Broken Seal Background
Broken seal?
So Broken Seal was written in response to a monthly challenge about silence. It takes place in the In Between Days time period and the Prime Universe, after Together and before The Cure is Worse than the Disease.
Premise
So I knew that my competition would be mainly writing sad stories, as silence tends to lead one in that direction. Hence I decided to zig instead of zag, and went for a comedy.
It’s Movie Night, and Chip Masterson has been touting The Seventh Seal all week. It’s going to be a celebration of highbrow culture. He’s excited as he’s the biggest film buff on the ship. He’s going to have a discussion and everything.
Meanwhile, Tripp Tucker is trying to reconcile with T’Pol. So he’s using the occasion of the film as a means to get back into her good graces. Hence he figures that an intellectual date will really appeal to her.
Malcolm is excited about the film as he wants to watch it and compare notes with his girl afterwards. But she is at home, so this is a kind of date for them as well, and she assures him that she will dress up and everything.
It All Goes Haywire
However, all is not right, for Hoshi Sato has been hit with a tiny spatial anomaly. And so she makes plans to derail the film’s showing. She enlists Travis‘s help, and she splices a very different film onto The Seventh Seal. And this changes its ending dramatically.
But the projectionist, Aidan MacKenzie, doesn’t suspect a thing. So he just loads the film and then more or less dozes off, bored by the Bergman film. And the MACOs are watching; Jonathan Archer is watching; Jenny from Engineering is watching, and suddenly the film’s plot is changed considerably. Jonathan calls off the evening and yells for Masterson and MacKenzie to join him in his Ready Room. And they are in big, big trouble.
Hence Malcolm confirms with his girl – this isn’t the ending of The Seventh Seal at all.
So – whodunit? Who messed up the film? Will Hoshi confess? Stay tuned.
Story Postings
- Broken Seal as I originally wrote it (contains reviews)
- Posting in Fanfiction.net
- Broken Seal on Fictionpad
- Posting on Wattpad
- Posting on the G & T Show forums
- Broken Seal in context
Rating
While the story is rated K, it does refer to an NC-17-rated film.
Upshot
While I like the comedy aspects of it, I think I could have amped it up even more. Hence I think I should have played up Chip’s pain and fear that he’d lose his Ensign’s rank even more.
[…] picks the movies. He has eclectic taste, serving up everything from Stalag 17 to Dirty Dancing. In Broken Seal, he and Aidan, who acts as the projectionist, are even blamed for the problems with The Seventh […]
[…] the most obvious manner, they have been the subject of the stories Movie Night and Broken Seal. I love the idea that Enterprise had a Movie Night. Canon puts it during a weeknight, but I have […]
[…] added Broken Seal to Trek United, as I hadn’t put anything out there in a while. I updated There’s […]
[…] Logs, I responded to a prompt about experiencing loss with a TNG story called Loss. I also added Broken Seal. In response to a prompt about rituals, I added […]
[…] I have written comedies, it tends to be prank wars. In particular, there are the pranks shown in Broken Seal and Where No Gerbil Has Gone […]
[…] Fanfiction.net, I added Broken Seal, The Puzzle, Tumult, Ceremonial, Achieving Peace, Shell Shock and There’s Something About […]
[…] certainly in the first two seasons of the program. I have revived that, a bit, particularly in Broken Seal, where together they pull a small prank on […]
[…] to a date with José Torres. However, she might have a little residual jealousy, as I depict in Broken Seal. An anomaly hit briefly impairs her judgment, and she stages an elaborate prank against Commander […]
[…] Broken Seal follows a few short incidents of hijinks even during the hostilities. The same is true of first contact with the Daranaeans, in The Cure is Worse Than the Disease. Another case of hijinks is in Where No Gerbil Has Gone Before. But all is not right, and the reason why Chip and Deb are alone in his quarters at all is because Aidan is hurt enough that Phlox keeps him in Sick Bay overnight. In Temper, the war is again on interrupt as Malcolm, Jonathan and Tripp need to work to protect the NX-01 from damage from an errant pulse shot. […]