Spotlight

Nov

2017

Spotlight on Bicoulamine

Bicoulamine, a wholly original drug, needs to be explored more.

Background

As a part of the plot of Multiverse II, the collapsed American government needed addicted soldiers to fight. And Coulamine proved to be a great invention, the ‘candy’ pacifying the masses. As I had written them, humans of the post-World War III time period would do just about anything to get their hands on the ‘candy’. They would go without sex, shelter, food, or water, all in the name of just another fix. Furthermore, they would fight as soldiers. However, they still had a small measure of free will, aptly demonstrated by Rita Spinelli. Rita’s breaking of her addiction meant others could do so as well, if they only had enough will, and someone to help them through it. This was one of the reasons why she tried so hard to help Seymour Sonia break his own addiction to the stuff.

However, because I had already created and used my Tricoulamine (a fatal nerve gas) in the Intolerance story, that begged the question: what had existed in between the two chemical compounds, and covered the time period from around 2053 to 2158? Hence I came up with a truly twisted drug which would not pacify the masses. Instead, it turned them into homicidal psychopaths. That had the capacity to make for some really wild writing. However, because the story was never completed, Bicoulamine never really lived up to its fullest potential.

Upshot

While the drug turned out to be a really good idea, I did not get a chance to truly explore it. Hence I feel there is a lot more to tell about Bicoulamine and the post-World War III American landscape.

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Oct

2017

Spotlight on Medical Original Tech

Medical Original Tech drives plots.

Background

Because technology drives Star Trek, a lot of perfectly acceptable medical technology already exists in canon. However, there is always room for more. Whenever a particular activity needs to accomplishing, that may require the creation and application of original medical technology.

Occurrences

Drug Therapies

From tricoulamine (a nerve gas fatal to humans which can make Klingons sleep, shown in Intolerance) to hyprolanine (used to treat depression during the E² timeline), I tend to make up new medications when I need them. I do this, rather than rely on canon sources and ideas.

Surgery

In the HG Wells series, Boris Yarin and Marisol Castillo perform a number of necessary surgeries. In these instances, they implant devices into the bodies of the time travelers. The surgical scenes ended up being rather limited in Ohio. However, these procedures require finesse which comes from both mechanical assistance and surgical knowhow. Marisol may be a trained assassin, but she is also a highly skilled surgeon.

Rehabilitation

In the E² timeline, during the first kick back in time, Ethan Shapiro attempts suicide. As a result, he suffers from brain damage which I intended to mimic the effects of a stroke. Hence, once he awakens from his coma, Dr. Phlox has Ethan try to walk. Because Jay Hayes can whittle and carve, he fashions a wooden cane for Ethan out of wood from one of Botanist Shelby Pike’s Osage orange trees.

Upshot

Medical technology can drive drama when it fails to work as expected or even when it works all too well. Or it can just work as intended sometimes. And developing it provides as many opportunities for creation as anything else does.

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Apr

2017

Spotlight on Coulamine

Coulamine exists because of a back-formation from my own original drug, tricoulamine.

Spotlight – Coulamine

Furthermore, it also exists because I screwed up the start of a round robin story.

Background

First of all, in order to get soldiers to fight (in real life, even!), ordinary people need training and discipline. However, World War III was supposed to be a time period without even those sorts of niceties. Hence, for Multiverse II, the concept changed and the soldiers would be ordinary people with no training. Hence, like opium addicts and the like before them, they had to be hooked on something or other.

As a result, I created coulamine. When Otra turns evil for the story, I accidentally landed her in Maine. However, the action was supposed to take place in Montana. Therefore, I decided that a drug distribution trail would get her from point A to point B. Furthermore, because the other writers were stretching the story out in some ways, this allows for character development and some truly wicked scene settings.

The common people, therefore, would be coulamine addicts, and the drug would be referred to as ‘candy’. And that proved to be a fascinating and horrific idea.

Hence Otra kills a trucker in one of her first acts in the story, and then takes his truck. The truck’s built-in GPS system contains presets to get her to various fueling stations. And as the trip takes her farther and farther west, the food gets scarcer and poorer, the radiation levels climb, the rubble gets worse, and the addicts become more and more desperate.

When Rita finally arrives, she comes across as a tough soldier type, a kind of a survivalist. However, her arms are loaded with track marks. She’s an ex-candy addict.

Upshot

Coulamine worked so well that it got an even deadlier version: bicoulamine.

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Jan

2017

Spotlight on Chi Band Radiation

Chi Band Radiation Background

Chi Band Radiation can do anything.

Image of background radiation

I needed a garden variety phenomenon. Chi Band Radiation would have to be able to stand in for a lot of almost magical properties. It had to be a kind of technobabble thing. Hence I needed for it to sound just mysterious enough.

The idea would cover all sorts of issues. This would include crossing people over from one universe to another. Or it would be the kinds of temporal switches and shenanigans shown in Concord and Crackerjack. However, for both of those stories there were other explanations for their issues.

Chi Band Radiation particularly comes to fore in the Barnstorming series. I used it to show how and why the Mirror Universe was attempting to cross over and potentially invade our own. The Emperor would have been deposed and fallen on hard times. The radiation would be, to him, a godsend, a means of regaining his past glories. Therefore, he would be itching to use it.

Instead of living the high life, he’s living in a shack. He depends upon the kind charity of the native Calafan people. This would be quite the harsh reality for a proud man.

The radiation would also be a means of almost communicating. It would be a way of knocking on the door of another universe, as it were. This would attract the attention of weird ADHD-addled temporal engineer Levi Cavendish. Giving Levi a means of investigating all possible universes was a fun idea. The way to fulfill his mission to find the ultimate pumpkin pie (spoiler alert: it’s in the universe with a 49 centimeter radiation band on the hydrogen line) proved irresistible.

Upshot

This Swiss Army knife has stood me in good stead. I am sure I will be using it again in the future.

Chi Band Radiation

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Dec

2016

Spotlight on the Zetal in Fan Fiction

Spotlight on the Zetal

The Zetal: in order to try to finally wrap up the HG Wells storyline, I needed a sort of garden variety villain. That was the Var-gi-yeh. They would come from outside our solar system, and therefore it would help if we had an early warning of some sort.

I reached back into my older work and found the Zetal.

Background

The Zetal

Back in Together, the Witannen and the Imvari capture ten humans for war games on a grand scale. But they are actually working for a third party, a species in the Andromeda Galaxy, the Zetal.

This species was meant to be more or less incorporeal. However, I did not have much on them. In Together, it was considerably easier to just work with the Imvari and the Witannen. Species which are more or less our basic body type are just easier to deal with. The reader or viewer can relate to them better. And, truly, so can the writer. After all, I needed to get the story down on pixels.

If a character is hard for even the writer to relate to, then the character is just not going to be written. That is unfortunate, as they are kind of interesting on paper. But I have very little on them. They are a piece of bringing Trek out of our galaxy and into our galactic neighbor. That is not enough, though. There just is not enough ‘there’, there.

Upshot

If I need to pull in an Andromeda Galaxy species, then they might be it, and I would do more with them. They certainly could use an overhaul and some love from their creator! Right now, though, they remain a semi-useful curiosity and not much more.

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Jul

2016

Spotlight on Colony Alien

Colony alien – I love this idea so much, it’s in my original works as well.

Background

As a way to add considerable weirdness to the Times of the HG Wells overall storyline, I decided to create a colonial life form. Similar in some ways to the Borg, the individuals would be the size of somatic cells.

A coral reef (image is from Wikipedia, and is for educational purposes only)

Adding to the mischief was the idea of making the cells democratic. Everything, from eating to ambulation to procreation would be the subject of a vote. And the brain cells wouldn’t even be in charge! The colony would just, in a way, be a walking, talking, bipedal coral reef.

Appearances

The colony alien is really only a part of the Times of the HG Wells series. However, it’s been fun to sometimes toss it (them) into the occasional round robins we write on Ad Astra.

Keanu Reeves and Kristen Stewart, both our universe and the Mirror’s versions of colony aliens (image is for educational purposes only)

Curious, often hesitant, and also a bit stiff, the colony alien is a great way to get some mysterious and almost magical character development. Plus they are perfect for exposition. This is because they can eavesdrop on anything. It’s rather convenient to be able to flatten to the thickness of a coat of paint and then match the color absolutely perfectly.

Another great thing about colony aliens is that, if any cells survive at all, no matter what happens (say, a nuclear bomb goes off), the colony reproduces asexually. Hence it can always recreate itself. Until the end of time itself, the colony is, for all intents and purposes, immortal.

Upshot

I like this odd duck of a character(s). It/they will be back!

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Feb

2016

Spotlight on Trichronium

Trichronium is a useful (and tasty!) plot device. It serves as one of the oddest ideas I have ever come up with for Star Trek fan fiction.

Yet, in a way, it works.

Background

During the Times of the HG Wells series, I wanted an odd and different way for the Perfectionists to travel in time. It would be something unique and weird and utterly different from the canon time ships or time portals.

This involved a great deal of brainstorming, as I tried to come up with something that would be, to me, sufficiently wacky.

Eventually it came to me, that it would be a hormone. But instead of being injected, it would be swallowed. That delivery method just struck me as being more practical when traveling in time. Eventually, I decided that it would taste like cantaloupe (Helen Walker says so). Because what the hell. That may have been silly, but it gave me a point of reference I had not had previously. Therefore, that was a rather useful revelation.

How It Works

For the simplest explanation, I decided on a cuff similar to the Cuff of Lo. The temporal enhancer cuff would be useless without trichronium, and vice versa. The traveler would swallow a dose, someone (not necessarily the time traveler) would set the controls on the cuff, and the traveler would end up whenever and wherever. Another swallow, and you can stay longer, as digested foods pass through us eventually. The cuff could override and recall the traveler, as could enough of a drop in trichronium levels. But otherwise the dosages would decide whether a traveler would stay in the past, or not.

Upshot

I like this invention and will probably try to find a way to resurrect this technology at some point.

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Oct

2015

Spotlight on Darvellians

Darvellians are an older invention.

Background

First introduced in If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Darvellians were intended as a kind of alien of the week.

I haven’t written a follow up to this story yet, but I can absolutely see where they fit into my own personal Star Trek fan fiction canon.

Characteristics

I don’t have too much on them. They are gray and furry, and they like it cold. When they board the Enterprise, in an effort to kidnap members of the crew for their scientific experiments, they turn the environmental controls down to -20⁰ C. In Fahrenheit, that’s -4⁰. It is cold, particularly when a person is only wearing a standard uniform.

The only other piece of information I have on them is their use of sulphur-oxylic gas to knock everyone out. Sulphur-oxylic gas is utterly made up by me and the term really doesn’t mean anything.

With no picture, I am going with the gray wolf as inspiration.

Darvellian (gray wolf)

Certainly this animal fits the bill in terms of generalized look.

Darvellian Descendants

Well, not really descendants, per se, but the idea of the Darvellians has been used again by me, particularly in the creation of the similarly-named and similarly-looking Daranaeans. The difference, of course, is that the Daranaeans are considerably better developed.

The idea of knocking out the entire ship with gas was repeated, to a far greater effect, in Together. In that story, it’s the Witannen, with their Imvari henchmen, who perform the deed. As with the Daranaeans, the second use of this piece of the plot is better realized. The older story certainly shows its seams, but some of the ideas were good ones. I just needed to mature more as a writer in order to be able to show them more effectively.

Upshot

These aliens were barely shown but the idea of them is, I think, pretty neat. I should figure out a way to trot them out again.

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Aug

2015

Spotlight on Olathans in Star Trek Fan Fiction

Spotlight on Olathans

Olathans were an early invention.

Background

The Adventures of Porthos

When I first started writing Star Trek: Enterprise fan fiction, I wrote a lot of one-off stories with an ‘alien of the week’ theme to them.

In this instance, I wanted an oppressive villain species, as that story line is a parallel to the rise of the Nazi party here on Earth.

Premise

This species would be hidden and mysterious, but nasty. Their purpose in life would be to suppress their overly-peaceful and somewhat simplistically weak neighbors, the Azezans. While the Azezans were purple in color, the Olathans were green. But otherwise they were to look more or less the same, and I never described them any further (my scene setting and world building skills have improved since that story was written several years ago). This allows for the deception in The Adventures of Porthos to be believable at all.

Purple star image from Hubble telescope photographs

For the Olathans, their weaker peaceful neighbors are only good for one thing – exploitation. Azezans are worked to death and families are broken up. The Olathans are excited to meet with humans. They hope to be able to sell slave labor to them, or at least the fruits of slave labor. Porthos can tell that something is very, very wrong.

At the end of the story, Jonathan Archer has hit upon a fairly foolproof scheme to try to thwart the Olathans. The idea is to hoist them on their own petard. In order to root out any of them hiding on Azezi Prime, he proposes a gift of scent hounds and their handlers. Hopefully the act of outing any Olathans will spur the Azezans to drive them out of their home world, once and for all.

Upshot

While Porthos got his own pair of sequels, the Azezans and Olathans did not. Perhaps it’s time I visited Azezi Prime, to see what’s up.

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Jul

2015

Spotlight on Nokarid

Nokarid had a rocky start, but they also foreshadow later works.

Background

When I was first starting to write Star Trek fan fiction, I wanted to get across the idea of a far more alien life form than was normally a part of canon.

Are there Nokarid in your dinner?

I also hit upon, for More, More, More! what I thought was perhaps the perfect humorous opening line, “It all began with a bad meatball.”

Because, you see, my idea was the aliens were microscopic, yet sentient. They would be smart enough to have a civilization and a culture, but too small to be visible with the naked eye.

Tiny Sentience

In retrospect, the Nokarid are precursors to the colony alien (or Var-gi-yeh, if you are in the Mirror Universe) species of which Branch Borodin is the sole member. They are a colony, to be sure, but there is really nothing known about them. Richard Daniels refers to them as being somewhat endangered although that might be more a function of their overall size.

By accident, Jonathan Archer swallows the entire colony. How they get into his meatball is never subject to explanation. But they are pretty hardy little things if they can survive the cooking process. Once inside, they attempt to colonize their new quarters – his brain. As Daniels works to remove the colonists and not kill them (or tell Phlox that they are there, for first contact should happen later), the effects on Archer’s brain become apparent as the man loosens up and starts to become a bit of a comedian.

Upshot

I only used them once, and so they are the epitome of a one-shot “Alien of the Week”. I think I would like to bring them back, although I am unsure as to how.

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Spotlight on Bicoulamine

Background

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Spotlight on Medical Original Tech

Background

Occurrences

Drug Therapies

Surgery

Rehabilitation

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Spotlight on Coulamine

Background

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Spotlight on Chi Band Radiation

Chi Band Radiation Background

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Spotlight on the Zetal

Background

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Spotlight on Colony Alien

Background

Appearances

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Spotlight on Trichronium

Background

How It Works

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Spotlight on Darvellians

Background

Characteristics

Darvellian Descendants

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Spotlight on Olathans

Background

Premise

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Spotlight on Nokarid

Background

Tiny Sentience

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