Focus on Time Ships

Time Ships are fascinating, and exist within canon.

Focus

A focus (unlike a spotlight) provides an in-depth look at a Star Trek fan fiction canon item and my twist(s) on it.

Of course, all of fan fiction is like that, but the idea here is to provide a window into how a single canon concept can exist within in fan fiction.

Background

Instantaneous temporal transportation generally does not make for good drama. And this also points out the problems with transporters: when it’s easy to save someone’s bacon, the drama suffers. Furthermore, it’s possible that writers just plain didn’t want to go in that direction. And they don’t, until Enterprise and Crewman Daniels with his time portals.

Occurrences

To add some fun to the HG Wells series, I had engineer Deirdre Katzman name all the ships after old time travel fiction. Hence the ships are as follows:

• • Audrey Niffenegger

– the first of the ships is manhandled by Rick; the name comes from the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife.

• • HG Wells

– this ship replaces Audrey.

• • Jack Finney

– Tom Grant gets this one. Jack Finney wrote Time and Again.

• • Flux Capacitor

– Sheilagh Bernstein gets this ship.

• • Elise McKenna/Simon Morley

– these ships are counterparts in our and the mirror universes. The Elise McKenna never gets built. Both get their names from character in Time And Again.

• • Audrey II

– Deirdre has a wicked sense of humor and, while this ship is intended to replace Audrey, the name refers to Little Shop of Horrors.

Upshot

Ships mean drama, as fuel can run out, they can suffer attacks or breakdowns, and enemies can steal them. Hence I rarely use time portals in my fan fiction.

In addition, do you like this page? Tweet it!

Finally, you can find me on Google+.