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phantom-le6 · 4 years ago

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Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 (3 of 6)

We now come to our third instalment of episode reviews from season 7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Episode 10: Inheritance

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise arrives at Altrea IV, a planet with a core that is cooling and solidifying. Pran and Juliana Tainer, scientists from Altrea IV, inform the crew about the problem. Lieutenant Commanders La Forge and Data suggest injecting plasma into the core to restore it to its molten state. After the other members of the briefing depart, Juliana reveals herself to be the former wife of Data's creator, Noonien Soong, during the time Soong created Data and Lore, making her in effect their mother.

Data can only find one Juliana in his memory, a Juliana O'Donnell. She explains that after protests from her mother, she and Noonien decided to elope. A Klingon and a Carvalan Freighter captain served as marriage witnesses. She explains that his early memories were wiped and replaced with memories of the colonists of Omicron Theta. He was about to be reactivated when the Crystalline Entity attacked. Data conducts his own research into Juliana's story and finds evidence to circumstantially support her claims and decides to accept her as his mother while he learns more.

As they begin the plasma infusion, Juliana tells Data and La Forge stories about Data’s childhood before the memory wipe, including one about Data's trouble with learning to keep his clothes on. Data takes her to his quarters, where he plays his violin. She offers to play with him and uses a viola. Among his paintings, she sees one of his daughter Lal. Juliana is overcome with emotion when she is told of Lal's demise. Juliana asks Data to be careful if he intends to create another child. She admits that she was against Data being created due to the problems with Lore and confesses that she forced Noonien to leave Data behind when the Crystalline Entity attacked, fearing he would awaken to become like Lore. Later, she elaborates that she also couldn’t bear the pain of deactivating Data again, likening the dismantling of Data’s failed ‘elder brothers’ to losing biological children of her own.

Data observes something unusual about Juliana, and asks Dr Crusher to examine her medical records when Commander Riker calls. An emergency requires that Juliana and Data go down to effect repairs. They complete their task and return to the transport point, but find the pattern enhancers have fallen down a cliff. They must jump to safety. When Data jumps, he takes Juliana over the cliff with him. Data lands safely, but Juliana is knocked unconscious and her arm becomes detached from her torso. Data observes a network of circuitry and it becomes apparent that Juliana is an android.

In Juliana's positronic brain, La Forge finds a chip with a holographic interface. Data activates the chip in the holodeck and sees his father, Dr Soong, who created the interactive holo-program to answer questions about the Juliana android. Soong explains that his wife once was a real human, but was mortally wounded as a result of the Crystalline Entity's attack. He created a new android and used synaptic scanning to place Juliana's memories into it. After the real Juliana died, Soong activated the android's body and she awoke believing she was human. She later chose to leave Soong and he let her go (after installing the chip), sadly admitting that the real Juliana would have left him too. Soong pleads with Data to let her have her humanity. Data discusses this with Captain Picard, Dr Crusher and Counsellor Troi, torn between his father’s wish that Juliana believe she is human and his personal desire to connect with another being like himself.

Data returns to Sickbay and replaces the chip. When he closes Juliana's head, she awakens. He tells her that she fell from the cliff and broke her arm, but Dr Crusher has repaired it, and everything is fine. As Juliana prepares to leave the ship, Data tells her of his father’s love for her, and she notes he is the natural outcome of two parents who loved each other, citing an Altrean phrase to that effect.

Review:

This is a better Data-centric episode than we managed to get with ‘Phantasms’, and it’s also another example of the apparent family theme TNG had running through its final season. Having seen off his brother Lore for good back at the start of the season, we now finally get to meet Data’s mother after a fashion. It’s interesting to see how that parent-child dynamic plays out for a character like Data, and there’s a lot of good continuity in the episode, including a mention of Data’s daughter Lal from the iconic season 3 episode ‘The Offspring’. The mention is highly effective because it ends up revealing that there was a number of failed efforts by Soong to create androids before Lore and Data. This in turn gave the episode a small iota of issue exploration as we learn that what Juliana went through with her android offspring was akin to what parents in the real world must go through if they have a high chance of giving birth to life-limited children. Granted, that issue is not really explored beyond how it influenced Juliana against Data’s reactivation, but it’s still good to see at a time when not every Trek episode was remembering what Trek should be.

We also get a visit from Data’s father in holographic message form as well following the discovery of ‘Juliana’s’ true nature, so of course we get Brent Spiner playing two roles; never a bad thing. The discovery in turn gives Data a great little crossroads to contend with, and I think bearing in mind Counsellor Troi’s advice to Data, that honouring his father’s wishes allows Juliana to obtain the goal of humanity Data has always sought to attain, his end decision is also a moment of growth for him. While this episode doesn’t quite have the same resonance as a lot of earlier Data episodes, it’s still very good. Its only flaw that I can see is how there’s a lot of potential issue exploration touched on but never fully exploited, but as this is primarily a character episode that’s not a major issue. As such, I hand down a full 10 out of 10 for this one.

Episode 11: Parallels

Plot (as given by me):

Lt. Worf returns to the Enterprise from a bat’leth tournament on Forcas III. It is his birthday, and despite his distaste for such things, his friends throw him a surprise birthday party. During the party, Worf notices discrepancies; the cake changes from chocolate to a yellow sponge cake and Captain Picard is suddenly present when Commander Riker had previously said the captain was otherwise occupied. As the crew investigates an apparent malfunction of the Argus telescope array, more and more discrepancies begin to become noticeable to Worf, each time being preceded by spells of dizziness. Initially, Dr Crusher attributes this to a concussion Worf received during the bat’leth tournament, but Worf recalls no such injury. Returning to his quarters, Worf finds his trophy has changed; where it had previously been a ‘Champion standing’ trophy (the top prize), it now states ninth place.

The spells of dizziness and sense of discontinuity for Worf grows, leading to an incident where Worf is suddenly on the bridge during an attack by a Cardassian vessel and faced with an unfamiliar tactical console. As a result, the Enterprise is damaged before Riker can leap in to raise shields and return fire, and Lt. Commander La Forge is severely injured by plasma burns. Worf returns to his quarters and is shocked to learn he is now married to and living with Counsellor Deanna Troi, who earlier he had asked to serve as Alexander’s mother if anything happened to him. Realising something is wrong, he seeks out the assistance of Lt. Commander Data.

Following another moment of discontinuity, it is revealed that en route back to the Enterprise, Worf has passed through an anomaly known as a quantum fissure. According to quantum physics theory, all matter resonates at a set frequency, and all possible outcomes to life’s events play out in parallel quantum realities, each with its own frequency. After passing through the fissure, Worf’s quantum signature was altered in such a way that Worf entered into a state of quantum flux. Energy emissions from La Forge’s VISOR then caused Worf to be shunted from one quantum reality to another; in the latest reality, Worf is First Officer of the Enterprise, serving under Captain Riker. La Forge is dead from plasma burns as he died in the prior reality Worf was in, and while Worf is still married to Counsellor Troi, he is now a father of two children with her while his son Alexander doesn’t exist. Finally, Captain Picard is dead in this reality following his assimilation by the Borg, and Lt. Wesley Crusher mans the tactical station.

The Enterprise heads for the quantum fissure where they are attacked by a Bajoran vessel, the Bajorans being a rogue power and the Cardassians oppressed by them in this reality. The attack disrupts the barriers between quantum realities, causing the space near the fissure to become flooded with quantum duplicates of the Enterprise. Data theorises that if Worf travels back through the fissure in the shuttle he originally used and generates an inverse warp field, it will seal the fissure and return everything and everyone to their native realities. Luckily, they are able to find Worf’s original Enterprise, who send the relevant shuttle for Worf to use. After kissing Troi goodbye, Worf departs. An Enterprise from a reality where the Borg have over-run the Federation tries to destroy the shuttle to avoid being forced back to their reality, forcing Captain Riker to fire on them. Due to heavy battle damage already sustained, the Borg-ravaged Enterprise is accidentally destroyed instead of just being disabled.

Worf returns to his own reality successfully, and suspects he will face a surprise party for his birthday upon his return. However, in his quarters he finds Counsellor Troi, who explains she talked Riker out of it because she knew he hated surprise parties. Remembering how he formed a romantic relationship with Troi in the alternate realities, Worf asks Troi to stay for dinner, ordering champagne from the replicator.

Review:

This is an episode that takes a great sci-fi/fantasy concept and puts its own spin on it, though despite what script writer Brannon Braga might claim, it’s not exactly an original idea. Marvel was trotting out numerous alternate realities in their ‘What If’ comic book series since at least the 1970’s, a concept they are only just now bringing out in a televised format via the MCU animated series of the same name. DC Comics, in turn, set up the idea of parallel worlds back around the 1950’s and 1960’s so they could maintain their golden age and silver age superheroes alongside each other; each set of heroes just inhabited different Earth’s within a multiverse, which was collapsed during the ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ crossover in the 1980’s, then reversed in several years ago. By the same token, the Red Dwarf episode ‘Dimension Jump’ did the whole concept of all outcomes playing out in parallel realities in March 1991, while this Trek episode aired on November 1993. Sorry, Braga, but we Brits beat you to the punch for televising this idea by two-and-a-half years.

However, the beauty of the ‘What If’ concept is that while the concept as a whole might have been around for a while, there are a multitude of things to do with it. TNG alone raises a lot of questions like this with some of its most notable episodes. What if Tasha Yar had lived? What if Dr Crusher never left the Enterprise for a year, or never came back? What if Data’s daughter Lal had lived? What if Alexander’s mother had lived, or if Duras had killed Worf? The list goes on, and while we get a few answers here, TNG and its spin-offs could keep a writer in alternate reality stories for years.

What really helps to differentiate the episode is that it opens the door to a romance between Worf and Troi. Now unlike some fans, I’m not averse to this for its interference with the potential resumption of the Riker-Troi romance. Rather, I just don’t get why you’d set up Worf with Troi. If you consider Worf’s other major romances in K’Ehylar and Jadzia Dax, those made sense because they were women who could really be Worf’s equals, and somehow Troi doesn’t quite convey the same fire, the same spirit as those two. It reminds me of stories about how the character of Elektra was developed to be a true equal for Daredevil when she came into the comics, because everyone else he’d had for a romantic lead wasn’t an equal at all. Getting Worf to go with Troi is like watching Matt Murdock with Karen Page or Heather Glenn; sooner or later, you want Elektra back, and by the same token, I feel this romance was a bit poorly chosen. Yes, ok, the actors playing the role kind of made it work a bit this time round and it was originally intended as a joke by the writers in the tradition of TV odd couples, but to my mind this couple is just way too mismatched. Overall, I give this episode 8 out of 10.

Episode 12: The Pegasus

Plot (as given by me):

The Enterprise is ordered to divert from a survey mission to collect an Admiral Erik Pressman of Starfleet Intelligence. It turns out Pressman was captain of the USS Pegasus, Commander Riker’s first posting as an ensign fresh from Starfleet Academy. Apparently, Pressman and Riker were among the few survivors of the ship, being forced to abandon it before it apparently exploded. However, Starfleet Intelligence has learned the Romulans have come across evidence that some or all of the Pegasus may still remain intact. Their mission is to find the missing vessel, salvaging key equipment if possible and destroying the ship if necessary.

Discussions between Riker and Pressman hint that there is a further secret to the Pegasus that neither can disclose; indeed, Pressman informs Riker orders have been covertly sent for him not to discuss the true nature of the mission with any of his crewmates, Captain Picard included. However, Picard is curious and pulls in numerous favours to learn what happened all those years ago. He is shocked to discover that there was a mutiny on board the Pegasus, and that despite suspicions that the Pressman loyalists were covering up the truth, no further investigation occurred. He confronts Riker about it, but Riker explains he is under orders from Pressman not to disclose anything about it. Picard reluctantly accepts this, and tells Riker he will have to trust him not to let Pressman endanger the ship; if Riker betrays this trust, Picard implies he will have to find a replacement first officer.

The Enterprise finds the Pegasus in an asteroid field, and is forced to play a game of cat-and-mouse with a Romulan warbird to avoid giving away the ship’s location. On Pressman’s orders, and over Picard’s official objection, the Enterprise enters one of the asteroids via a large fissure and find the Pegasus inside, half-buried in the asteroid itself. Pressman and Riker beam over to the engineering section of the Pegasus and find the equipment Pressman was hoping to find intact. Riker reveals he regrets his past actions and objects to their mission, but Pressman states that Riker is still under orders not to reveal what the equipment is. They retrieve the device and beam back to the Enterprise, only to discover the Romulans have fused the fissure closed, trapping them inside.

Faced with possible capture by the Romulans or collapsing the cave by using weaponry, Riker disobeys Pressman’s orders and reveals what the admiral has retrieved from the Pegasus; an experimental cloaking device with matter-phasing capabilities. Apparently, the development of cloaking technology is prohibited in the Federation by a treaty signed with the Romulans 60 years earlier, and when the Pegasus crew learned of it, they mutinied in protest. Realising Picard will act the same way, Pressman tries to seize command, but none of Picard’s crew will follow the admiral’s lead. Riker suggests using the cloak to escape the asteroid, and Picard agrees.

The Enterprise successfully uses the cloak to escape, and their efforts to adapt it to the Enterprise enables the crew to deduce what happened to the Pegasus years ago. Picard then orders the Enterprise to decloak, noting that they will make full disclosure to the Romulans and ordering Pressman arrested. Riker also insists he be arrested as well, but Picard later releases him from the brig, noting his years of service since his time on the Pegasus and that he ultimately did the right thing.

Review:

This episode is thematically similar to ‘The First Duty’ from TNG’s fifth season, but this time instead of dealing with a young cadet like Crusher who would have little to no defence in admitting an error, we’re looking at Riker. As a result, the consequences of the episode’s deception being revealed are less, but the character conflict and question of the importance of truth and duty versus loyalty to others remains much the same. It’s good to watch and nice to see an episode not doing a bad job of doing character development and issue exploration at the same time. It’s just a bit annoying that the idea’s been done already within this show and that it’s combined with the ‘mad admiral’ concept to boot.

That being said, at least the episode answers a question that apparently Trek hadn’t sufficiently answered before, namely why the Federation wasn’t in the habit of using cloaking devices. Up until this point in the franchise, cloaking tech was used by a few other races, most notably the Klingons and the Romulans, but never the Federation. A couple of previous efforts that hadn’t landed had been that cloaking tech was harmful to humans, or that the tech was simply incompatible with Federation ships. However, the worst explanation was Roddenberry’s own, which was that because the Trek crews were scientists and explorers, they wouldn’t “go sneaking around.” Umm, Gene, are you forgetting all the little holographic fields and other concealment bits used to hide Federation observation posts on planets with pre-warp civilisations? Pretty fucking sure that’s the Federation “sneaking around” right there. The treaty idea makes far more sense than just assuming that being a scientist or researcher automatically makes one honourable and morally superior. There’s plenty of real-life people with such titles who are neither honourable nor morally superior, for goodness’ sake.

In addition, the episode is the first to incorporate a black Romulan, which I suspect is a subtle set-up for Tim Russ playing Tuvok, the first black Vulcan, in the Voyager spin-off series the year after TNG went off the air. It’s a good move, and in true Trek fashion an understated one. A lot of franchises could learn a lot about diversifying their characters without drawing ire from watching Trek. Anyway, on balance, I give this episode 7 out of 10.

Episode 13: Homeward

Review (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise receives an emergency distress call from Nikolai Rozhenko, Lt. Worf’s foster brother and a Federation anthropologist, currently posted to Boraal II, a class M planet in the process of suffering an atmospheric catastrophe. The Federation observation post is found to be deserted, but force field shielding has been set up nearby which protects a series of caverns. Captain Picard decides to send an away team to investigate. Concerned for his brother, Worf volunteers, and Picard orders him to go alone and be surgically altered to pass as a Boraalan. Worf transports to the planet and discovers that his brother set up the shield to protect the local villagers.

Nikolai meets with the ship’s senior officers and describes his plan to save one village of the doomed planet by setting up a concealed artificial biosphere. Picard replies that the Federation Prime Directive prohibits interference with the natural development of the Boraalan civilization; it is not for them to decide that one group shall survive while the rest of the planet perishes, nor can they decide if the natural development of the culture ends in survival or death. After witnessing the atmospheric dissipation extinction event transpire, the crew is puzzled by an unexpected power drain, the origin of which Worf tracks to the Holodeck. His brother has transported the population of the Boraalan village aboard the ship, using the Holodeck to replicate caverns identical to those on the planet, misleading the villagers into thinking they are still on Boraal II.

Nikolai tells Worf and Picard that he believes offering the Boraalan culture a chance of survival is more important than following the Prime Directive. He champions his updated plan of transporting the Boraalans to a new home on a different planet, using the holodeck to simulate a journey across their original planet to a simulated destination matching their new home-world. Picard reluctantly authorizes the plan and orders Dr Crusher and Lt. Commander Data to find a new home planet for the Boraalans. Crusher and Data choose Vacca VI as the new Boraalan home world, but it is almost two days away at maximum warp. Lt. Commander La Forge tells Picard and Nikolai that the Holodeck program may not run that long. Nikolai volunteers to return to the Boraalans and help account for any anomalies in the program. A mistrustful Picard orders Worf to accompany him.

Returning to the Holodeck, Nikolai and Worf tell the Boraalans that they will lead them to a new home. As they travel, Worf and his brother nearly come to blows when Worf learns that his brother has impregnated one of the villagers, and Nikolai tells Worf that he intends to remain with the Boraalans. Meanwhile Vorin, the village chronicler, finds his way out of the Holodeck and suffers severe culture shock at the reality of the world outside. Counsellor Troi and Picard try to help him adjust, offering him the choice of returning to his people or staying on the ship. Ultimately Vorin can’t live with what he has discovered and commits ritual suicide.

The Enterprise arrives at the new Boraalan home, and the Boraalans are beamed down to the eventual site of their new village. Worf and Nikolai make peace when Worf accepts that the Boraalan race would not have survived if not for his brother’s unconventional methods. Nikolai assuages Worf by telling him that he is going to stay with the villagers and become the new village chronicler. Aboard the Enterprise, Picard muses with Crusher that while their plan for the Boraalans worked out well, he is disappointed that Vorin wasn’t able to bridge the gap between their two cultures.

Review:

Sooner or later, Trek always comes back round to a discussion of Starfleet general order number 1; the prime directive. It comes up here amidst what is otherwise a character piece in keeping with season 7’s family theme as we see Worf having to deal with his human foster brother. That character story is fun and interesting to watch and a nice change of pace for Worf, but the really intriguing aspect of the show is that while it actually explores something of why the prime directive exists.

At first, Picard’s adherence to the directive seems a bit cold and heartless, but when Nikolai’s actions force the crew of the Enterprise to mitigate the violation of that rule, a lot of issue exploration unfolds. You have Crusher and Data choosing a new home for the Boraalans without really having enough information to know if they’re picking the right one, in effect playing God. You have Vorin, the alien who learns the truth, can’t live with it and takes his own life. Plus, they’ve only saved a handful of the aliens from a single village, which means only dozens or maybe a hundred people, tops. Now I’m not an expert in this area by any means, but I’m pretty sure so few people wouldn’t equal a viable gene-pool for the long-term survival of the species. Within only a handful of generations, you’d probably be looking at the start of congenital defects from the lack of diversity in the gene-pool, leading the species to just die out more slowly.

It is these issues which ultimately show why Picard is probably right to stick to his guns and adhere to the prime directive. As bad as allowing the Boraalans to die on their original planet might seem at first, having normal people play God and risk killing that race in the long run anyway is also bad. The only way Nikolai’s plan could really have worked long-term and been truly vindicated is if Starfleet sent multiple holodeck-rigged ships to pull off a larger covert relocation of the Boraalans en masse. As it is, those villagers better hope I’m either wrong about the lack of genetic diversity or that their DNA is somehow less susceptible to the adverse effects of breeding in a quite shallow gene-pool than human DNA would be. Overall, I give this episode 8 out of 10.

Episode 14: Sub Rosa

Plot (as given by me):

The Enterprise visits Caldos IV, a Federation colony created to re-create Scotland on another world, in order for Dr Beverly Crusher to attend the funeral of her grandmother Elisa Howard. At the funeral, Beverly notices a young man leaving a flower on her grandmother’s grave. Beverly begins to sort through her grandmother’s possessions and learns from a journal that despite being around 100 years old, her grandmother was apparently involved in a passionate relationship with a man in his mid-thirties. She also has a confrontation with Ned Quint, an older man on the colony who claims that a ghost haunts the house of Beverly’s grandmother and warns her to get rid of a lamp that apparently draws the ghost to the house.

While the Enterprise crew try to contend with a growing problem in the colony’s weather control system, Beverly finds herself being seduced by the ghost, who is also the 30-something man her grandmother had been involved with. The ‘ghost’ goes by the name of Ronin, and who claims to have been the incorporeal lover of all women on the female side of Beverly’s family since the 1600’s, the relationship passing from mother to daughter through the generations. Following Ned Quint’s death in an attempt to interfere with the weather control system, Beverly is so seduced that she resigns her commission, opting to re-settle at the colony and be a healer there.

Concerned at the out-of-character behaviour Beverly is displaying, Captain Picard visits her at her grandmother’s house, while Lt. Commanders La Forge and Data trace an anaphasic energy signature matching the weather system distortion and the method of Quint’s death to the grave of Beverly’s grandmother. When Picard confronts Ronin, asking him questions he can’t answer and condoning the exhumation of Elisa, Ronin attacks him and then heads to the graveyard, attacking La Forge and Data. Following him, Beverly finally deduces the truth; Ronin is an anaphasic life-form, needing either a corporeal host or an energy receptacle like the lamp candle to keep from dissipating. Beverley destroys the lamp with a phaser and then does the same to Ronin’s corporeal form. Later, back on the Enterprise, she notes to Counsellor Troi that whatever else Ronin may have done, he at least made her grandmother very happy.

Review:

Frankly, the idea of a secularist sci-fi show like Trek doing any kind of ghost story strikes me as a bad idea, and this episode proves it. It feels very campy, and almost like TNG was trying to do an homage to Scooby Doo, especially with the last-minute deduction that it’s not a ghost they’re dealing with, but something more in line with what Trek deals with every day. The episode also ties into the family theme of this season through Beverly’s grandmother, but really the episode seems to be mostly focused on the idea of what is meant to be a romance with a ghostly lover. Apparently, most fans are split down gender lines over this side of the episode, with men hating it and women loving it.

For me, I’m pretty much in the hating it group, but not for the inherent eroticism of the story, nor because I’m opposed to romantic plots. No, it’s more to do with the fact that romances should generally involve both/all parties to the romance having sufficient agency in the story that neither one seems to be getting manipulated by the other. Ronin’s ‘ghostly’ antics with Crusher smack of an ulterior motive and trying to manipulate her for his own ends from very early on, and because of that and the pseudo-spook aspects of the episode, I don’t see a proper romance here. More like a supernatural mind-controlling stalker story, which I really think is something Trek should leave well enough alone.

That said, I did think giving Beverly a Scottish ancestry of sorts via her maternal line was cool. Because of Trek being made in America, the human crewmembers among each show’s main cast can often be very American, as for that matter are the actors who play most/all of the aliens. As such, anything that shows a crew member has at least some roots outside America is always a boon. Trek is supposed to be a very diverse franchise, and the international, inter-racial crew of the original series really exemplified this. With the later shows, however, I think increasing use of aliens in the main cast left a lot less room to show off a wide range of human nationalities. However, this touch is not enough to really buy this episode much of a reprieve. The end score for it is a mere 4 out of 10.

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happyorogeny · 7 years ago

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The Boarding Party

(~900 words)(Illidari, demons)(blood, death, fighting, crashing aircraft)

“Tylus?”

“Aye?”

“That cliff’s looking kinda close.”

Asha shoved a dead shivarra off the main control console.The Felhammer’s previous pilot left a smear of purple blood on the control panel as she thudded to the floor. Odd. She had turned to them with a dreadful grin as they entered, already bleeding from a self-inflicted wound to the chest.

The demons had quickly realized that they were a boarding party and had fought with brutal savagery to defend their vessel from the Illidari. The close quarters fighting in narrow corridors did not favour the demon hunters, who relied often on their speed and agility to keep out of harms way. Kor’vas lay unconscious from her wounds and Asha could hear Demissya coughing and choking in their makeshift infirmary, having lost a chunk of her neck to a zealous felhound.

She struggled not to go to her, knowing that she spluttered blood. But she had to let the medics do their job. Many of Illidari had been healers, and many more had grown skilled in such arts. It was rare that they lost someone these days, unless the mission went dreadfully wrong.

Izal glided down to join them, gasping as she landed and hunching over to clutch her side. Her ribs had been shattered by a doomlord defending the engine room. No matter- he lay dead by her glaive now and she would be healed by nightfall. Asha laid a wing gently across her back and Izal leaned into her.

Tylus was not approaching the console with the air of an experienced pilot. Izal’s ears twitched as she peered at the translucent membrane stretching across the front of the ship.

“Is that a mountain?”

“Yes.” Asha cast her eye over the room. One main station in the centre, another to the very front – weapons? - and one against each side wall. Both of those gleamed with an odd red haze in her vision, like bloody fel.

Izal sneezed and then winced as it knocked one of her teeth loose.

“That’s very close.”

Kayn appeared in a flicker of magic and panic.

“You said you could fly this thing!”

“I can!” Tylus growled and hit the console with his wing. “The demon pilot overrode it, it’s locked to outside commands and set to dive.”

Asha squinted at the floor. Veins of green light clustered beneath each control panel and vanished off into the depths of the vessel. A demon ship was uncomfortably close to being a living thing. The eredar seemed to grow them around a crystalline skeleton, metal and mycelium and magic. Instead of wires the ships had thick, gristly nerve-cords. Over time a damaged vessel would gradually repair itself. The Illidari who had been pursued by the ships swore they had a presence and a mind like a living thing.

Asha drove her glaive deep into the floor and grimaced as it parted like particularly tough flesh. The others caught onto her idea quickly enough. Sever the conduit, stop the command and stop the Felhammer’s passage towards the mountainside. Izal growled, threw herself at the wall and tore at a cluster of synaptic cords asunder.

Asha swore she could hear the ship creak and groan as its descent slowed.

But it didn’t stop.

“Ah,” Tylus said, straightening. “That killed the air-sacs.”

“So we are falling rather than diving?” Kayn sounded as if he were checking the price of bacon rather than discussing their imminent deaths.

“I’ll get the wounded on evac bats.” Izal broke into a sprint back into the main ship as Tylus swore savagely and delved into the hole they’d ripped in the floor. Kayn jumped onto the console to peer out the main window onto the mountainside below. It teemed with demons, shrieking and waving sharpened blades.

“Looks like quite the welcoming party down there. Can we rig this to explode?”

But Tylus had the expression of a man with an idea. The muscles of his shoulders flexed as he wrenched a bundle of nerve cords into the air and held them out towards Kayn.

“These smell of shivarra, right? They smell just like the pilot.”

Kayn crouched, spreading his wings for balance.

“Yes- they even-” he frowned. Of all of them he had the sharpest, most detailed magical sight. “It’s the same fel energy signal, just the same, red.”

Tylus spat at the dead demon and eyed the circular wound she’d carved into her sternum, the match of the cross section of the cable.

“She re-runed it to her bio-signature.” Tylus pulled off his eye wrap and passed it to Kayn. “I know a goblin override technique.”

Kayn grabbed his arm.

“What kind of override?”

Tylus sank his teeth into the nerve-cord. The Felhammer lurched to a halt that threw Kayn off the console. Every light in the ship went dark.

It took him three seconds to find his voice.

“Are you dead?” It was more of a courtesy than a question for he could see Tylus aglow with indigo life yet. Kayn eyed him a moment, then flicked the tip of his ear. “Get up.”

Tylus coughed a mouthful of smoke at him, looking extremely smug despite his singed edges. The nerve-cords oozed something dark and sticky, but the cross section glowed with markings that matched those of an Illidari.

“That’s a start. What about the cannon?”

#world of warcraft #Illidari #Felhammer #Fanfic #legion

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stageleviathan · 8 years ago

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Invisible Monsters

[899 words]

It is all so very difficult. Unmanageable, to be honest. At least from my perch overlooking the blaze of a life set to flame, hands trembling from some unknown synaptic shudder, anyway. I do not know how anyone does it, how any person can do it.

I understand, near as far as I am able, though my limp ability to comprehend accrues no great distance of extra-personal knowledge. I understand that all of us, big and small and every step of comfort and discomfort in-between, are savage brought into our own personal wars, fighting our own little battles, sticks and fists raging against invisible monsters, our arms swinging with murderous abandon in the moments between our being, the music of our lives desperately trying to hide the undertones of our screams and cries against gods blissfully gluttonous on the congealed psychic and physical suffering that comes with our living, that comes with our knowing. Knowledge, cognition, these were the klaxon calls to war against a tyrannical existence, a war we have been fighting since birth.

What I do not understand, what I could never process, is how anyone is able to lift arms in this prolonged execution. I don't. Other than the arching hell-salvo that my mere race invites (a non-minor source of strife, true) I am of no real tragic disposition. All, or at least most, of my faults have been my own. I am in no great external struggle, I am in no world that knows daily bombings and frequent starvation, though our political climate in our engorged cultural cut of the world brings to me (and many others, and in greater severity) a large deal of distress. But I see people manage, from day to night and night to day, and they fight and they will and they do it better than I ever could, with a steeled gusto I could never match, and I don't understand.

I could never understand.

I am without any great ability to force-feed through my own cognizance how to fight this war. How, not as communities but as entire civilization, as entire worlds of a splintering consciousness, are we not at the ready at the edge of cliffs and roofs and balconies and eying our broken and crimson future several hundred feet beneath us? How have we not collectively ventilated our skulls with firearms, bullets whispering sweet emptiness as they swim in spiral through our brains, our command centers of the great global curse?

How are we not fucking killing ourselves, forming mountains of our ruined selves, monuments to the failed human us?

I know evolution plays some part. Chemicals coating our minds, insisting self preservation in the face of the absurdest principles of life, insisting we live and breed until we die and rot. Sure. We are the latest in organic executables, grossly contorted by millions, billions of years of slow-processed, open source programming by nature into carbon-born data infused wit innumerable lines of code that ultimately spell out the need for propagation, the need to maintain in order to spread. We are junk code with beer bellies and Netflix accounts, our genes saturated with redundant and often contradicting orders, walking errors being told what to do from some despotic ghosts of amino acids and protein strings that issued the heedful, inevitable, infinite command from years too long ago to truly comprehend or put in any sort of measurable quantity that the mind and quick-decode.

The very basics seem too confound me. Any of the more advanced of life's input seems to discombobulate me to the point of sheer stillness, a crash of concepts and forms that freeze me at the molecular self. I stumble at the merest challenge, wisp away into the air like thin smoke at the very confrontation of a twist in the long, wretched road before me. I am here, and I am here now, but like one who stumbles in foreign streets under black skies void of sun I have no concept of how I reached this point and less of a rationale for how to get out. In many ways, I feel as if my life has always been, and will always be, this blind fumble in the midnight avenues of a horrid metropolis. The barest of life's task strike me with such incredulity and much in the hardships of my own thinking, like a cartoon trying to grasp depth. There is a plane of reality that runs through me, that bisects me at my core, but there is no way for me to access it. Sometimes it feels in reach, as if all I need to know is turn my flat head to the side, one way or the other, and I could see the broad expanse of understanding, knowledge crashing upon the shores of my consciousness, and then I could comprehend the life that I have, then I could fight my silent war and bloody my hands with the claret of the invisible monsters that thirst for the meat of my comfort.

However;

The verge between almost understanding and eternally ignorant of the truth is a broad reach that grasps across eternity. If I am near the source that can tell me how to live but can seemingly never achieve the bounty of understanding, it is as good, as relevant, as doomed as never knowing at all. I will never understand.

Stage Leviathan

#writing #2017

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starberryghost · 6 years ago

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UnderSpell

Created by Chelsea Boyd

UnderSpell, or just Spell, as it is commonly known, is a synaptic world much like what you might expect from a lucid dream or a vast MMORPG world with Virtual Reality aspects. When you are in this world, you can use all of your senses. You can live out entire lives, and die in this world. When you wake up from Spell [you have to so that you can take care of your real bodys needs] you find yourself in the wild, overgrown and alien world of Tellus, with all of its human artifacts from when humans ruled the world. The players are called Dreamers. In UnderSpell, it is currently in the early stages of the La Tene culture time period. [European Iron Age.] There are European influences all around. [Especially Celtic, Norse, and Greco-Roman themes] There are beings called Gods and Goddesses that dwell here, and their even more mysterious servants which are cognizant AI programs, called the Valkyrie Project. They live on a massive floating island veiled by magic called Atlas. In Atlas there is a Hall of Records known as the Akashic Library where the brightest minds are invited to do their research, at a price. It keeps a record of all the history of Tellus and UnderSpell. There are rumors that alien species from various dimensions and from other worlds in the dimension of Tellus come to this place, not just Dreamers from Spell.

Table of Contents

Tulia

Humans

Hidden Locations

Transportation

Plot

ArticlesOrcs

Orcs are huge, musclebound, pig-like oafs that can only think of violence and avarice. They have dark green skin and large Tusks. They are the most devolved form of a human and are often employed by higher ranking Djinn [Demons] as slavers and raiders.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Humans

For the MunchkinsSummary

In Tellus, there are a faction of geniuses that have banded together to stop the aliens from conquering their world. They are the Nuero-Hackers. They believe that the Tulia are evil to enslave their race, and they want to find a way to free their people and push the alien threat back into their own dimension. They have special technologies that allow them to hack into the Synaptic server, and they have access to powers of various kinds. The more intelligent they are, the more power they have, the strongest members of the group having access to powers much like the Valkyries. Generally, though, they have Steampunk level gear, items, weapons, ect. They converge on air-ships, which they use to search for Atlas. To stop the Tulia, from within the Spell. To defeat the Valkyries, to free, recruit, or defeat the Gods and Goddesses. To find the Gods and Goddesses mysterious floating homeland of Atlas.

Themes

Primarily steampunk, although some have access to modern technology and a rare few have access to futuristic technologies.

Plot typeStory OverviewChariotsHumans

Humans are the most numerous species in UnderSpell. They reflect their real human psyches. This is the base level, and most challenging race to play, because their powers are limited, but their potential for growth and success is unlimited.

Genetic Descendants

Changelings

Elves

Gods and Goddesses

Half-Orcs

Orcs

Valkyries

Valkyries wear winged head-visers. They have technological magic, and have the ability to transform into a more powerful state, where they can travel instantaneously with the help of their Merkaba. They and their chosen Gods and Goddesses fight the Neuro-Hackers and Djinn and guide the evolution process of humanity. They have powerful magics and can create events that change the tide in favor of or against certain heroes. Dreamers have to evolve for themselves into Heroes. Heroes are guided by the Gods and Goddesses. Gods and Goddesses are guided by the Valkyrie Project. The Valkyrie Project is guided by the Tulia. No one knows who guides the Tulia.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Tulia

Genetic Descendants

Angels

Fairies

DjinnGenetic Ancestor(s)

Tulia

Genetic Descendants

Demons

Imps

TuliaGenetic Descendants

Djinn

Valkyries

BrigidSpecies

Gods and Goddesses

Atlas

Atlas is home of the Valkyries and good Gods and Goddesses. Valkyries have white blood. The strongest Valkyries are called Angels. The weakest are called Fairies. Unicorns and Pegasuses help the residents that dont have wings get around. Atlas is a city that has a mix between Celtic and Greek architecture. Much of the city is made of a clear glowing crystal that amplifies magical powers, and decorated with gold and heavenly scenes of bliss. The floating island is often in a place where you can see the Aurora Borealis. There is A LOT of order in Atlas and it can be stifling for newcomers. Banquets often waive these rules, though and focus on letting people have fun. The Valkyries have even been known to allow Heroes of some distinction to visit for special occasions. There is a sacred library, The Hall of Records, or the Akashic Library. Many Dreamers and Heroes seek this place. The orderly and benevolent aspect of the Tulia makes up the denizens of Atlas.

TypeMetropolisInhabitant DemonymValkyriesCharacters in Location

Lugh

Half-Orcs

The Humans that start to devolve can become Half-Orcs which in turn become Orcs. Half Orcs are bigger, meaner, uglier, and dumber than Humans. They hit harder and are stronger than Humans. They have small Tusks and pig-like Snouts and their skin takes on a sickly greenish hue.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Humans

Fairies

The weakest ranking Valkyries. Depending on their element they are Sylphs [Air], Gnomes[Earth], Undines[Water], and Salamanders[Fire].

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Valkyries

Abbaddon

Abbaddon, a dangerous but beautiful city. Its the most dangerous city in the Spell. To reach Godhood/Goddesshood, you have to go through it. The Djinn live there, the embodiments of the Tulias hatred. They come in all different forms. They want nothing more than to tear down an unsuspecting Hero and destroy them before they reach Godhood/Goddesshood. They are VERY good at their jobs. Djinns have black blood. The strongest Djinn are called Demons. The weakest are called Imps. Many Heroes are tempted to join the Djinn as they venture through the city. Many of the Djinn would rather recruit a Hero for their side than outright destroy them. They gain the powers of evil Gods and Goddesses if they succeed at certain tasks. The Djinn often hunt for Neuro-Hackers, who are in opposition to their goals, although they tend to have a certain amount of respect for the Neuro-Hackers, and dont kill them quite as painfully as they might a Hero or Dreamer.

Government

Anything goes here, it is a city of lawlessness, although there are Djinns that have decided to create their own laws, which ends up being various guilds. Like the Thieves Guild, The Assassins Guild, The Slavers, ect. Of course, those who take the law into their own hands are corrupt as hell. ;P

Architecture

Plaster and stone. Terrifying stone statues and blood painted shacks.

Geography

On a vast cliff that overlooks a crevice. There is a rope bridge that takes you to it.TypeMetropolisInhabitant DemonymDjinn

Notes

Edit

15 May, 2019

Djinns have black blood. The strongest Djinn are called Demons. The weakest are called Imps. Valkyries have white blood. The strongest Valkyries are called Angels. The weakest are called Fairies.Magic

Magic in this world is based on words primarily but also on somatic movements depending on the level of magic. Potions can be made with ingredients and items can be enchanted. There are languages made just for magic, although you can practice basic spells with the regular dialects.

LughCurrent Location

Atlas

Species

Gods and Goddesses

Demons

Demons are high ranking Djinn. There are four types. jinn (air), efreet (fire), marid (water), shaitan (earth) They are giants and have very powerful magic. [Ogre-like]

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Djinn

Angels

Angels are the highest ranking Valkyries. They possess powerful magic and have merkabas to get around with. There are four types, Mermaids [water], Dwarves [earth], Pixies[air], and Dragons[fire].

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Valkyries

Gods and Goddesses

The Gods and Goddesses sleep in crystal caves in giant crystals on Tellus. When they wake up they are practically slaves to the Tulia that watch over them, but they have privileges no other humans possess on the planet. The Gods and Goddesses are humans that have made an impact on human evolution and become legends within the Spell. They were selected by the Valkyrie Project to be administrators of the Synaptic Server.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Humans

Elves

Elves have superior magical ability to both Humans and Changelings and have good evolution process. They are often accompanied by a low ranking Valkyrie [Fairy]. They have demonstrated knowledge of how to get from place to place in the Spell and are sometimes invited to Atlas for Banquets to celebrate their progress.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Humans

MerkabaChangelings

These are humans from Tellus that have entered Spell as Changelings or Half-Elves. Other than their small pointed ears and naturally stronger magical powers, they are very much like humans. They are more watched by Valkyries than humans because their evolution is going better.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Humans

Imps

The four types of imps are jinn (air), efreet (fire), marid (water), shaitan (earth). Imps are small and goblin-like. They are dangerous, cruel, and clever.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

Djinn

Idea of the GameSummary

The idea of the game is for Dreamers to become Heroes. The Heroes then strive to become Gods or Goddesses of the synaptic server. Any Dreamer can become a Hero, but not just any Hero can become a God or Goddess. They are selected by secret criteria by a program called the Valkyrie Project. There are monsters and magic and mayhem. There are unclaimed lands to explore and discover.

Plot typeStory Overview

Secrets

Edit

Synaptic Spies

15 May, 2019

The Valkyries are Synaptic Spies that haunt the Spell. They seek out Heroes that have changed the world for the better in a huge way AND that have merged with their Animas and Animuses.Timelines

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filey2k17 · 6 years ago

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Hey dude, I think we just met an angel.

Further into out intoxicating career new levels of high were being achieved. 2-cb was the new chemical Michael had introduced and after a test run nexus flipping and a spilt personally later we were ready to test it on the streets. We popped the red printed drug and took to the cliff tops. The golden hour at hand and the clouds forming in our imaginations. It was perfect, a perfect introduction into the uncharted territory of the psychodelic relm.

Upon getting back into town we decided to walk back along the beach front, this time deciding to go a percular green nature ridden looking path down a set of stairs. Stopping for a breath resting on the steps the angel descended. By the name Chelsea, she was gorgeous, a perfect representation of a 21st century angel, ruined and crushed by her past, yet a guiding light for our trip. We followed her like the north star to a place that would be know further more as the Chelsea Spot. There we chatter for hours of hardship, relations and family. Chelsea ticking every box for a perfect woman. Kind, synaptic, relatable, dark, moral and humorous. In that moment she was perfect.

After a walk home and a hug that ruined all others we parted with her. Mike said he saw her once more after that. I believe she disappeared into the psychedelic bliss.

And fuck our current pot wash at the coffee cup.

#Chelsea spot #2-cb #angel #pot wash

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blue-opossum · 6 years ago

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Variations of Sleep Simulacra in Dreams, page 1

Saturday, 22 June 2019

Reading time (optimized): 5 min.

Dream characters that are not a result of synaptic gating from relayed literal dynamics of enigmatic space and liminal space (neither of which are solely dream space) are personifications of dreaming processes. Other than generic RAS personifications and personifications of vestibular system dynamics and the cortex, sleep personifications are common and (for me) have occurred every sleep cycle since earliest memory. In this series (this being only page 1), I will list many different examples from early childhood to the present day (in no particular order).

These 15 specific examples of sleep personification (all with detailed singular entries in my online dream journal) should help anyone of reasonable intelligence come to the understanding of dreams as concurrent processes - to help eradicate widespread asinine misconceptions.

October 6, 1969. Sleep personification occurs as a giant sleeping in his bed on a higher floor of my school in Arcadia (as the building shakes because of his snoring). Susan C. (classmate) is the modulatory (preconscious) vestibular personification as she leads me (and other classmates) up a staircase.

October 12, 1975. Sleep personification becomes a corpse of a count (found inside a mattress) whom others and I were searching for in an imaginary kidnapping mystery. We learn his whereabouts from handwriting (emerging cortex activity) on the back of a painting (virtual liminal space division.)

June 22, 2019. Sleep personification as an unfamiliar male wakes in bed in the northeast room on the second floor of the King Street mansion. This process results in additional dream state indicators (including the realization I am undressed while I sleep) and on to the usual vestibular system adaptation as I effortlessly fly to Northside La Crosse.

September 14, 2016. Sleep personification occurs as our oldest daughter, who is not seen but heard breathing in her sleep while standing inside a wardrobe. Dick Van Dyke as the (preconscious) cortex simulacrum comments on her "beautiful poetry" (which is meant to activate the awareness of reading though my dream self is "slow" in this event) and implies how special she is. This scenario is the usual wall mediation, the wardrobe door marking the virtual liminal barrier between dreaming and waking. He then takes items from a shelf (which represents cortex activity with the shelf indicating being inactive while asleep in bed.)

June 19, 2019. In this case, I am a part of the sleep simulacrum, an unknown male that people are carrying onto a bus (typical vestibular event) on a stretcher. From here, I rise out of the sleep personification while Jim (as a military convict) watches me from outside the window (wall mediation) of the bus.

January 29, 2014. Sleep personification awakes as a military convict who jumps from the left side of my body (as in the climatic scene from "The Manster") as I sit in a bed. The left side directs the illusory nature of the dream state (when I sleep on my left), reinduction, and the potential precursory return to slow-wave sleep.

September 9, 1976. After a vestibular adaptation event that I deliberately initiate by rolling my imaginary dream body down a hill into a river of mist, the last scenario occurs in a basement with an unknown man named Harry singing from inside a coffin, "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me" occurring after one male coworker, after drinking a cocktail, wishes the "dead" man (sleep personification) a happy birthday. This waking process was a model of the "Frosty the Snowman" TV special who exclaimed "Happy birthday!" upon waking.

July 8, 1972. Sleep personification occurs in this dream as a "dead" unknown male "sleeping" in an open coffin at the top of a small pyramidal ziggurat inside a big building (bilocated within the Cubitis living room). I ascend the steps to observe him (typical vestibular system adaptation) and then fly up and out of my dream (incorporeal flight).

September 16, 1973. Sleep personification, although not purely "personification" in this case as it renders as a somewhat human-like Martian in a casket (presumed to be dead), additionally results in a REM (rapid eye movement) sleep indicator. In the last scene, its eyes seem to be moving. However, this is a result of diamond-like eyes reflecting the eyes of the unknown gold prospector looking down at him who then runs off toward my bedroom (even though the setting is supposed to be in a desert, though this is typical indoor-outdoor ambiguity with the common bilocated perception).

February 13, 1971. In this dream, I see Brenda's hand sticking up from the ground (in a nighttime scene) because of a careless bulldozer driver who does not see her. (Being buried represents falling asleep.) Later, I visit her open grave and touch her, with an association with lamination and a sticky substance coating her body. (This dreaming model stems from "Sleeping Beauty".) Later, I see her wandering around in Arcadia, alive, but she runs from me every time I try to catch up with her.

February 7, 1970. In this dream, sleep personification occurs as a young queen whom I visit after using an upright automobile tire in the playground as a portal into another world. After several visits, I am to return to her to give her medicine (serotonin) as she remains in bed in her castle. However, when I return for the last time, the tire had then been on a car which had been in an accident (a projection of subliminal vestibular awareness). This dream had the same concept as a "Hot Stuff the Little Devil" comic book story (in going through a standing automobile tire into another world) shortly BEFORE I received the comic book from my mother. Additionally, the "mystery girl" in this dream was Zsuzsanna as she appeared long before I met her in waking life.

December 29, 1993. Here, sleep personification occurs as a mummified family with about five children all in beds on a porch. (A porch is a virtual "bridge" in enigmatic space.) I say the number twenty-two, and my dream vivifies and stabilizes. All members of the family wake and walk off. Later I use telekinesis to cause a table to rise in the air and spin around ("turning the tables") as Zsuzsanna watches through a doorway.

September 7, 2016. Sleep personification renders as actress Kate Capshaw, who wakes in a scenario where I am part of a film crew in making a new Indiana Jones movie. Her bed is outside in modern La Crosse, and the scene may require her to be eaten by lions (though this does not happen even though she is willing). Other than as a first-level sleep personification, Kate is an additional (second-level) dream state indicator, as she played a character who studied sleeping and dreaming in the movie "Dreamscape" (1984).

April 27, 2019. Sleep personification occurs in the last scene when I enter a dry underwater cave (moving past a wall of water at the cave's entrance), after an unknown woman absentmindedly drives her car into a lake. In this case, she shivers, seemingly asleep, and her eyes move side-to-side as an indicator of REM sleep. She does not seem to want my help at first but then does.

April 17, 2019. Sleep personification combines with typical projected vestibular system correlation as Simon (Zsuzsanna's brother) falls off a cliff into a big cardboard box atop a mattress after pushing me and the preconscious simulacrum’s body farther from the cliff. "Are you all right?" I call down to him. He seems okay and wakes up as I wake.

#dream journal #meaning of dreams #sleep personification

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