"No one gets left behind" is a nice idea in theory, but the real world doesn't always cooperate. While you're off-ship leading an away team, your vessel is forced to withdraw and leave you behind. You are now stranded behind enemy lines, and something is on your trail. Is it simply enemy troops, or something more sinister? Do you try to stay ahead of it? Do you hunker down and try to remain undetected? Or do you turn the tables and fight back?
I've already got a Klingon War fic loosely plotted. When Eleya said the Militia doesn't let you out of boot camp unless you can build a decent IED, she meant it.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
One of the hardest parts of the military life is the loved ones you leave behind at home. In the mid-24th century Starfleet even experimented with letting officers bring their families aboard ship with them. If your captain or a crew member has a significant other or even children outside the service, what do they think of you being away for months and years at a time? Do they try to catch your ship at a resupply stop? Do you just stay in touch by subspace radio? Is the relationship between you strong enough to withstand the distance, or is it stretched to the breaking point?
"Vader, I Am Your Son" (working title, lol)
A strange encounter: you meet a character claiming to be your child. Is he or she a product of a brief liaison many years ago, or could they be something far stranger: a time traveler, or perhaps a trick of the enemy or one of Q's little pranks?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Captains in the current era are usually 'lead from the front' types, but sometimes you have to put agency into your subordinates - a mission, some stroke of luck, or simple politics has the captain left behind as their loyal team of bridge officers has to complete some task - dangerous or no, how does your captain handle the passivity (or just the not knowing what's going on)?
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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Interesting idea, Antonine. Technically, according to Starfleet (and real life military) policy, it's the XO who is supposed to lead away missions, or often even just a junior officer, a senior noncom, and a bunch of low-level enlisted. Though because it's a TV show, most XOs end up with some version of KT!Spock's line: "I would quote regulations but I know that you would simply ignore it."
Maybe I could rewrite "Frostbite" from Eleya's POV.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Nice prompt with "Vader, I am your son," StarSword.
Got a new idea of my own, too.
"Burdens of Command"
Leadership is a responsibility which can carry a heavy burden. For those unprepared for it, it can serve as a true test of one's character.
Through circumstances beyond your control, your character has been thrust into a leadership role far above their usual station (A lowly crewman to a starship captain, a patrol ship captain to the leader of a fleet, etc.). How do they cope with the vast responsibilities now heaped upon their shoulders?
The Sphere Builder's hold on realities have waned in the TCW, failure after failure, they have been fought against and lost an innumerable amount of times within an infinite reality. Now one of those universes has opened to your Character, as they are tossed into that reality by an unknown Sphere Builder device. Confronted with no obvious way of coming home, perhaps the locals can help you get home. Do they openly invite you, brothers-in-arms, or do they fear your arrival, mistrust and paranoia coloring their view of you? Write your Character's struggles or ease at getting home.
Interesting idea, Antonine. Technically, according to Starfleet (and real life military) policy, it's the XO who is supposed to lead away missions, or often even just a junior officer, a senior noncom, and a bunch of low-level enlisted. Though because it's a TV show, most XOs end up with some version of KT!Spock's line: "I would quote regulations but I know that you would simply ignore it."
Maybe I could rewrite "Frostbite" from Eleya's POV.
That'd be cool - we're definitely in the Kirk (either timeline)-vein of landing parties in most missions in STO. Having to do the Picard thing and hang out on the bridge would probably come as a shock.
"Nosferatu Boomtown"
Blame quantum, it's just easier, but nonetheless, they pulled it off. One of the agents in the Temporal Cold War has picked one of the minor powers home systems, and transported a huge mass of a useful strategic resource (topaline, dilithium, maybe even a huge mass of shielded antimatter without the tedious need for generator facilities) elevating them on the local scene. Are they going to use it to launch an empire that will last a thousand years? Or, more darkly, will the captain have to deal with more rogue or aggressive elements of their own government intent on getting a trump card without consdering the long-view, and risking destabilizing an unsettled quadrant?
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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You can send letters by subspace or even talk face to face by video messaging, but sending packages to a starship still requires physical transport. It's mail day on the USS Your Name Here, and the crew is eagerly cracking open their care packages from home. What have they received from their loved ones: toiletries, books, cunning knitted hats? Or has the delivery ship delivered something it wasn't supposed to? And are they in return sending home any interesting souvenirs from their own travels?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
So... Halloween is coming up next month. I propose ghost or horror stories, something you'd rather read (and write) in broad daylight
Think long abandoned space stations, coming back to life. Long-lost ships, turning up in far-away regions of space. Sightings of people who were thought dead, who shouldn't be walking around your ship in this day and age. Think voices in the dark, noises in the Jefferies tubes, something stalking you through the corridors. Is it a malfunctioning holoprojector? Is somebody out of phase again? Or is there something more sinister at work, something that cannot be explained after you've plucked up the courage to do a tricorder scan?
Also, I know we always have the redux for every tenth challenge, I thought maybe we could include a prequel/sequel prompt, to continue from something we've written before?
Starfleet's General Order One. The Non-Interference Directive. An obstructive code of conduct that costs lives, or a noble principle that protects them? Faced with a nightmare scenario where many innocent lives are at stake, your captain must make the decision faced by so many captains before: whether to keep or break the Prime Directive. What leads to the choice? What do you choose at zero hour? And what are the consequences of your actions?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Starfleet's General Order One. The Non-Interference Directive. An obstructive code of conduct that costs lives, or a noble principle that protects them? Faced with a nightmare scenario where many innocent lives are at stake, your captain must make the decision faced by so many captains before: whether to keep or break the Prime Directive. What leads to the choice? What do you choose at zero hour? And what are the consequences of your actions?
Interesting.
Has a bit of crossover potential, if the writer involved is willing to try it.
So... Halloween is coming up next month. I propose ghost or horror stories, something you'd rather read (and write) in broad daylight
Think long abandoned space stations, coming back to life. Long-lost ships, turning up in far-away regions of space. Sightings of people who were thought dead, who shouldn't be walking around your ship in this day and age. Think voices in the dark, noises in the Jefferies tubes, something stalking you through the corridors. Is it a malfunctioning holoprojector? Is somebody out of phase again? Or is there something more sinister at work, something that cannot be explained after you've plucked up the courage to do a tricorder scan?
Also, I know we always have the redux for every tenth challenge, I thought maybe we could include a prequel/sequel prompt, to continue from something we've written before?
Why not make it official?
'Ghost Stories'
It's 2410, a new year dawning means another year of wisdom under the belt. Now, how can you put that to use scaring your crew, when annual ghost stories begin to be told? Perhaps it was the tellings of a survivor of K-13, one who didn't quite make the cut and chose to stay behind. Perhaps the M113 stalk the depths of Mol'Rihan, as the remnant of the Tal Shiar sabotage progress. Perhaps it's a tale of the Elachi's first contact with the Borg, or perhaps their last...
What does it really matter what you say? I mean, these are all just stories... Right?
'Prequel'
Write a prequel leading up to the events of a previous ULC you've completed, or yet will.
'Sequel'
Write the sequel to a previous ULC, or perhaps a future one. I mean with time travel being normal in Star Trek, wouldn't it be fun to read the conclusion before the ending?
There is a slasher killer loose on your starship. As your crew is being bumped off one by one your captain and their officers have to track down and stop this killer. What is worse the killer seems to be almost supernatural in origin (think Freddy Kruger, Jason, Michael Myers) Who is the killer going to kill? Is this killer even real?
"Prime Directive"
While observing a pre-warp culture a shuttle from your ship crashes near a major population center. What is worse, a plague is spreading through the countryside. What do you do? How will you escape the planet? Will you break the Prime Directive and help cure this plague? Will you become infected yourself?
"Mouse Problem"
A pest has snuck aboard your ship somehow. Maybe some mice or saurian rats or Rigelian lice. Either way they are annoying and you need to get rid of them. How would you go about doing this?
"Freedom of the Press"
Someone on your ship has started putting out a newspaper that while directly confrontational, is undermining your authority or making you look bad. You tried to shut them down but they claimed Freedom of the Press so you can't just shut them down. How would you deal with this situation involving your authority as captain but also civil rights of Federation citizens?
"I'm a Captain, not an Actor!" - What was supposed to be one of the innumerable small performances (song, poetry, interpretive dance, Italian Opera, Klingon Opera, German Opera, etc.) to stave off the tedium of deep-space duty seems to have spun out of control. It was bad enough when that new rating turned out to have been a star on his/her colony before signing up, making everyone choose a far more difficult performance than normal, but then said rating was called for a special mission/redshirted.
But the show must go on - as part of Starfleet's efforts to show the return to peace (or the KDF showing the 'poet' side of warrior-poet, or the Republic's efforts to continue culturally reengineering Romulan society, etc.) - they've caught the scent and sent a camera crew to record the performance.
Guess who was the understudy? Does it go well? Humorously? Or is better to set the auto-destruct and beat the rush to the escape pods, the humiliation sure to be less than if the tapes get out?
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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You (or one of your senior officers) are offered a promotion, and with it comes an admiralty (or command of their own ship). It's a good offer, but it means leaving the USS Insert Name Here and your friends. Do you take the attitude of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard (or Will Riker), that you can do more good in the galaxy where you are? Or do you accept the new job, deciding that maybe you can do a different kind of good higher in the chain of command?
Someone on your ship has started putting out a newspaper that while directly confrontational, is undermining your authority or making you look bad. You tried to shut them down but they claimed Freedom of the Press so you can't just shut them down. How would you deal with this situation involving your authority as captain but also civil rights of Federation citizens?
Should point out here, this could actually be a crime under military law, depending on the circumstances. Freedom of expression is more restricted as an active-duty member of the military than as a civilian, precisely because of the issues with undermining the authority of senior personnel, up to and including civilian authorities such as the President. Respectful disagreement is permitted: in fact you're actually expected to speak up if, for example, you are given an unwise or immoral but otherwise lawful order. But if they're being personally contemptuous, you do have the legal standing to court-martial them.
There's a book about the Iraq War that I highly recommend to people, Chasing Ghosts by Paul Rieckhoff. The author served in Iraq as a National Guard lieutenant and is now the head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He writes in the book that after getting home, he published an editorial or something that was very critical of how the war was being handled, and then had to confirm to a legal officer that, yes, he had published the article after he mustered out. Some other useful reading here: https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/speaking-against-potus-violates-ucmj-article-88-and-134-why-do-you-think-it-s-ok
"The Damned" You come across a criminal with a 'shoot on sight' order-only they're protected by another faction who won't let you extradite. Your superiors tell you all will be forgiven if you apprehend/kill this person. The only problem is, you find out there's evidence this person is not guilty of the crime they were accused of. (maybe other crimes, but nothing individually or cumulatively that is nearly so severe). It is implied that failure to apprehend or eliminate this person will get you the same fate.
so what're you going to do? Obey a lawful order that is clearly immoral, or disobey an immoral order and become outlaw? How do you resolve it?
Probably I would try to convince the other side that I believed he was innocent and would do everything possible to see him exonerated if they let me extradite him. If that doesn't work, I counter the lawful but immoral order by invoking the Prime Directive and kick it over to the diplomats. I would certainly regard any "shoot on sight" orders to be unlawful and therefore ignore them, since my version of the Federation has abolished capital punishment in its entirety. (Personally, even as much of a liberal as I am, I'm in favor of the death penalty for heinous charges with indisputable evidence -- e.g. the Boston Marathon bombers or Dylan Roof -- but I don't see the 24th and therefore 25th century Federation as being the kind of place where it would be accepted.)
Post edited by starswordc on
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
"Monsters in the Closet" A temporal mission stops a Na'kuhl commando strike - easy peasy, got the drop on them, no intervention. Problem solved.
Yeah right.
That's a problem, the 'preferred timeline' you came from has the Na'kuhl seen by someone and be the first instance of a particular monster story that has passed into legend.
Your captain just killed an entire body of fiction for a world, with all the odd shockwaves that causes. What happens?
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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Temporal War-crime: The Na'Kuhl have changed their strategy against the Federation, and have gone back in time to attack from a very different angle. Daniels contacts your character with the hardest mission yet; Stop the Na'Kuhl from preventing an atrocity that will kill millions, such as the Holocaust.
IOW, your mission is to make sure it happens in order to preserve "The Timeline".
You REALLY like throwing moral monkey wrenches at people, don't you, Patrick?
Fortunately, I already established that in my continuity the entire Temporal Cold War arc, along with the canon version of ENT, took place in an alternate timeline that erased itself from existence because all the temporal incursions made time itself unstable. I specifically wrote "Brother on Brother, Daughter on Mother" in ULC 27 as a repudiation of this entire storyline; I'm instead using a take-off of BlackWave's Reimagined Enterprise for my backstory.
Remember that the entire arc only happens because the timecops are utter incompetents, never mind their moral failings. Address the problem of their leaving superweapons lying around unsecured and it's easily resolved: Two minor temporal incursions to destroy the Tox Uthat and the Krenims' Mary Sue-perweapon before they can be used as weapons of war, and the Na'Kuhl never turn hostile because their homeworld is never glassed (nor are the Lukari endangered, since the Tholians hit them as bait for Kal Dano), and the Sphere Builders are never assimilated by the Borg. You can deal with the time travel needed to end the Iconian War (and f*ck that arc, too) with the TOS slingshot; you don't need the Mary Sue-perweapon if all you're doing is traveling through time.
But noooo, Cryptic had to justify ENT's abandonment of its premise and the most idiotic captain to ever sit in The Chair somehow.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Yes, yes I do. A Lot of the best Trek in all the iterations was about moral conflicts. (hell, a lot of the best drama is about moral conflicts). To me, that one was an easy, low-hanging-fruit conflict-Daniels wants to preserve the Timeline, the Na'Kuhl want to change it in ways that hurt Daniels' future. Killing the right people hasn't really worked out for them, and it's given the so-called 'moral high ground' too often and too easily. a more cunning move, would be to start preventing disasters and atrocities. Why? because of who might survive. It's the "Edith Keeler" problem. (look it up on Mem Alpha if you're not familiar).
It's certainly a very solid story seed, if it doesn't work for all comers (there's a lot of ugliness when considering how time can go worse) that's why the ULC usually has three or four prompts, right?
Heck, really mess up Earth's history- go heal up Alexander the Great in Babylon in 323. Think of what sort of chaos could spiral out of that
EDIT: Oh, thought to add something that just hit me: The Voth are too hidebound to look into it, but: Nelen Exil goes and grabs a timeship to check this Distant Origin thing once and for all. Imagine the Voth as a weaker, but more dynamic society - recover the rogue scientist and prevent too much hilarity from ensuing.
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Why are there two of me?
Some how another you has been created; be it a clone made when your DNA was introduced to a squichy critter and You2 will only live a few days, or be it via a transporter malfunction that either splits out part of your personality or just copies you perfectly. Write a story about how your captain and their crew deal with the mess
The Captain's Table
Tell the story of your captain's first visit to the infamous Captain's Table bar. What stories do they tell, who do they see, who do they meet, do they get banned from ever coming back
A Trill, a Gorn, a Jem'Hadar, Bejoran and a Voth walk into a bar, and the Bartender asks "What is this a Joke?"
"Nope, just my away team" the trill replies before ordering a round for the bar.
Due to an accident or incident, one of your junior officers has acquired abilities "Beyond the scope of nature"-abilities that border on Q level of power, but without the control. How do you handle them? what do you do about it? can you do anything about it?
Sample of possible abilities:
Runaway telepathy
remote viewing/ESP
Telekinesis (as in LOTS of TK)
"Abilities with the appearance of magic"
(and no, Q isn't going to help...)
Well if it's Eridian, Eridian is already a psyker. So all it'd mean is that she'd have an apprentice psyker.
Hmm... maybe a depiction of when Melani talked J'mpok into their alliance?
1. "What shall we do with a drunken spacer?" a member of your crew with a key skill or trait has developed an addiction and you can't get back to starbase to trade them out-because you're in a crisis and you need them to perform. How does your captain deal with an officer who's got a problem? How does it impact the running of your ship?
2. "Even Roses smell like..." a shipboard romance goes wrong-seriously wrong, and now you have two important, even critical, members of your staff ready to kill each other, even to the point of risking the ship. You can't get back to starbase, and you can't let this **** continue. How do you deal with it when love turns to Hate?
3. "I will not say I'm sorry." You're called back from a mission because of a death in the family (or of a friend, or loved one), only to find out that they took their own life, and nobody seems to have an answer for why. (Suspicious Circumstances).
I love a good character piece (IMHO sci-fi is always at its best when it uses the setting to tell stories about people instead of getting caught up in technoporn), and there are some really interesting ideas here. One side comment, #1 reminds me of Data's issues with the emotion chip in Generations.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Federation presidential elections take place every six years (barring delays due to national crises), meaning President Aennik Okeg's third term is coming to an end. Is he running for a fourth term or stepping down? Who else is running, and what issues are important in the campaign: entanglements in the Delta Quadrant, the refugee crisis at home, economic chaos from the Iconian War? And does your captain prefer any particular candidate?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Comments
"No one gets left behind" is a nice idea in theory, but the real world doesn't always cooperate. While you're off-ship leading an away team, your vessel is forced to withdraw and leave you behind. You are now stranded behind enemy lines, and something is on your trail. Is it simply enemy troops, or something more sinister? Do you try to stay ahead of it? Do you hunker down and try to remain undetected? Or do you turn the tables and fight back?
I've already got a Klingon War fic loosely plotted. When Eleya said the Militia doesn't let you out of boot camp unless you can build a decent IED, she meant it.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
"Loved I Not Honor More"
One of the hardest parts of the military life is the loved ones you leave behind at home. In the mid-24th century Starfleet even experimented with letting officers bring their families aboard ship with them. If your captain or a crew member has a significant other or even children outside the service, what do they think of you being away for months and years at a time? Do they try to catch your ship at a resupply stop? Do you just stay in touch by subspace radio? Is the relationship between you strong enough to withstand the distance, or is it stretched to the breaking point?
"Vader, I Am Your Son" (working title, lol)
A strange encounter: you meet a character claiming to be your child. Is he or she a product of a brief liaison many years ago, or could they be something far stranger: a time traveler, or perhaps a trick of the enemy or one of Q's little pranks?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Captains in the current era are usually 'lead from the front' types, but sometimes you have to put agency into your subordinates - a mission, some stroke of luck, or simple politics has the captain left behind as their loyal team of bridge officers has to complete some task - dangerous or no, how does your captain handle the passivity (or just the not knowing what's going on)?
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Maybe I could rewrite "Frostbite" from Eleya's POV.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Got a new idea of my own, too.
"Burdens of Command"
Leadership is a responsibility which can carry a heavy burden. For those unprepared for it, it can serve as a true test of one's character.
Through circumstances beyond your control, your character has been thrust into a leadership role far above their usual station (A lowly crewman to a starship captain, a patrol ship captain to the leader of a fleet, etc.). How do they cope with the vast responsibilities now heaped upon their shoulders?
The Sphere Builder's hold on realities have waned in the TCW, failure after failure, they have been fought against and lost an innumerable amount of times within an infinite reality. Now one of those universes has opened to your Character, as they are tossed into that reality by an unknown Sphere Builder device. Confronted with no obvious way of coming home, perhaps the locals can help you get home. Do they openly invite you, brothers-in-arms, or do they fear your arrival, mistrust and paranoia coloring their view of you? Write your Character's struggles or ease at getting home.
That'd be cool - we're definitely in the Kirk (either timeline)-vein of landing parties in most missions in STO. Having to do the Picard thing and hang out on the bridge would probably come as a shock.
"Nosferatu Boomtown"
Blame quantum, it's just easier, but nonetheless, they pulled it off. One of the agents in the Temporal Cold War has picked one of the minor powers home systems, and transported a huge mass of a useful strategic resource (topaline, dilithium, maybe even a huge mass of shielded antimatter without the tedious need for generator facilities) elevating them on the local scene. Are they going to use it to launch an empire that will last a thousand years? Or, more darkly, will the captain have to deal with more rogue or aggressive elements of their own government intent on getting a trump card without consdering the long-view, and risking destabilizing an unsettled quadrant?
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"Mail Day"
You can send letters by subspace or even talk face to face by video messaging, but sending packages to a starship still requires physical transport. It's mail day on the USS Your Name Here, and the crew is eagerly cracking open their care packages from home. What have they received from their loved ones: toiletries, books, cunning knitted hats? Or has the delivery ship delivered something it wasn't supposed to? And are they in return sending home any interesting souvenirs from their own travels?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Think long abandoned space stations, coming back to life. Long-lost ships, turning up in far-away regions of space. Sightings of people who were thought dead, who shouldn't be walking around your ship in this day and age. Think voices in the dark, noises in the Jefferies tubes, something stalking you through the corridors. Is it a malfunctioning holoprojector? Is somebody out of phase again? Or is there something more sinister at work, something that cannot be explained after you've plucked up the courage to do a tricorder scan?
Also, I know we always have the redux for every tenth challenge, I thought maybe we could include a prequel/sequel prompt, to continue from something we've written before?
Starfleet's General Order One. The Non-Interference Directive. An obstructive code of conduct that costs lives, or a noble principle that protects them? Faced with a nightmare scenario where many innocent lives are at stake, your captain must make the decision faced by so many captains before: whether to keep or break the Prime Directive. What leads to the choice? What do you choose at zero hour? And what are the consequences of your actions?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Interesting.
Has a bit of crossover potential, if the writer involved is willing to try it.
Why not make it official?
'Ghost Stories'
It's 2410, a new year dawning means another year of wisdom under the belt. Now, how can you put that to use scaring your crew, when annual ghost stories begin to be told? Perhaps it was the tellings of a survivor of K-13, one who didn't quite make the cut and chose to stay behind. Perhaps the M113 stalk the depths of Mol'Rihan, as the remnant of the Tal Shiar sabotage progress. Perhaps it's a tale of the Elachi's first contact with the Borg, or perhaps their last...
What does it really matter what you say? I mean, these are all just stories... Right?
'Prequel'
Write a prequel leading up to the events of a previous ULC you've completed, or yet will.
'Sequel'
Write the sequel to a previous ULC, or perhaps a future one. I mean with time travel being normal in Star Trek, wouldn't it be fun to read the conclusion before the ending?
There is a slasher killer loose on your starship. As your crew is being bumped off one by one your captain and their officers have to track down and stop this killer. What is worse the killer seems to be almost supernatural in origin (think Freddy Kruger, Jason, Michael Myers) Who is the killer going to kill? Is this killer even real?
"Prime Directive"
While observing a pre-warp culture a shuttle from your ship crashes near a major population center. What is worse, a plague is spreading through the countryside. What do you do? How will you escape the planet? Will you break the Prime Directive and help cure this plague? Will you become infected yourself?
"Mouse Problem"
A pest has snuck aboard your ship somehow. Maybe some mice or saurian rats or Rigelian lice. Either way they are annoying and you need to get rid of them. How would you go about doing this?
"Freedom of the Press"
Someone on your ship has started putting out a newspaper that while directly confrontational, is undermining your authority or making you look bad. You tried to shut them down but they claimed Freedom of the Press so you can't just shut them down. How would you deal with this situation involving your authority as captain but also civil rights of Federation citizens?
But the show must go on - as part of Starfleet's efforts to show the return to peace (or the KDF showing the 'poet' side of warrior-poet, or the Republic's efforts to continue culturally reengineering Romulan society, etc.) - they've caught the scent and sent a camera crew to record the performance.
Guess who was the understudy? Does it go well? Humorously? Or is better to set the auto-destruct and beat the rush to the escape pods, the humiliation sure to be less than if the tapes get out?
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My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
You (or one of your senior officers) are offered a promotion, and with it comes an admiralty (or command of their own ship). It's a good offer, but it means leaving the USS Insert Name Here and your friends. Do you take the attitude of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard (or Will Riker), that you can do more good in the galaxy where you are? Or do you accept the new job, deciding that maybe you can do a different kind of good higher in the chain of command?
Should point out here, this could actually be a crime under military law, depending on the circumstances. Freedom of expression is more restricted as an active-duty member of the military than as a civilian, precisely because of the issues with undermining the authority of senior personnel, up to and including civilian authorities such as the President. Respectful disagreement is permitted: in fact you're actually expected to speak up if, for example, you are given an unwise or immoral but otherwise lawful order. But if they're being personally contemptuous, you do have the legal standing to court-martial them.
There's a book about the Iraq War that I highly recommend to people, Chasing Ghosts by Paul Rieckhoff. The author served in Iraq as a National Guard lieutenant and is now the head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He writes in the book that after getting home, he published an editorial or something that was very critical of how the war was being handled, and then had to confirm to a legal officer that, yes, he had published the article after he mustered out. Some other useful reading here: https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/speaking-against-potus-violates-ucmj-article-88-and-134-why-do-you-think-it-s-ok
Probably I would try to convince the other side that I believed he was innocent and would do everything possible to see him exonerated if they let me extradite him. If that doesn't work, I counter the lawful but immoral order by invoking the Prime Directive and kick it over to the diplomats. I would certainly regard any "shoot on sight" orders to be unlawful and therefore ignore them, since my version of the Federation has abolished capital punishment in its entirety. (Personally, even as much of a liberal as I am, I'm in favor of the death penalty for heinous charges with indisputable evidence -- e.g. the Boston Marathon bombers or Dylan Roof -- but I don't see the 24th and therefore 25th century Federation as being the kind of place where it would be accepted.)
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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"Monsters in the Closet" A temporal mission stops a Na'kuhl commando strike - easy peasy, got the drop on them, no intervention. Problem solved.
Yeah right.
That's a problem, the 'preferred timeline' you came from has the Na'kuhl seen by someone and be the first instance of a particular monster story that has passed into legend.
Your captain just killed an entire body of fiction for a world, with all the odd shockwaves that causes. What happens?
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My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
You REALLY like throwing moral monkey wrenches at people, don't you, Patrick?
Throw in a weather control machine and that's the last two 'core' story conflicts.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Remember that the entire arc only happens because the timecops are utter incompetents, never mind their moral failings. Address the problem of their leaving superweapons lying around unsecured and it's easily resolved: Two minor temporal incursions to destroy the Tox Uthat and the Krenims' Mary Sue-perweapon before they can be used as weapons of war, and the Na'Kuhl never turn hostile because their homeworld is never glassed (nor are the Lukari endangered, since the Tholians hit them as bait for Kal Dano), and the Sphere Builders are never assimilated by the Borg. You can deal with the time travel needed to end the Iconian War (and f*ck that arc, too) with the TOS slingshot; you don't need the Mary Sue-perweapon if all you're doing is traveling through time.
But noooo, Cryptic had to justify ENT's abandonment of its premise and the most idiotic captain to ever sit in The Chair somehow.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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It's certainly a very solid story seed, if it doesn't work for all comers (there's a lot of ugliness when considering how time can go worse) that's why the ULC usually has three or four prompts, right?
Heck, really mess up Earth's history- go heal up Alexander the Great in Babylon in 323. Think of what sort of chaos could spiral out of that
EDIT: Oh, thought to add something that just hit me: The Voth are too hidebound to look into it, but: Nelen Exil goes and grabs a timeship to check this Distant Origin thing once and for all. Imagine the Voth as a weaker, but more dynamic society - recover the rogue scientist and prevent too much hilarity from ensuing.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Some how another you has been created; be it a clone made when your DNA was introduced to a squichy critter and You2 will only live a few days, or be it via a transporter malfunction that either splits out part of your personality or just copies you perfectly. Write a story about how your captain and their crew deal with the mess
The Captain's Table
Tell the story of your captain's first visit to the infamous Captain's Table bar. What stories do they tell, who do they see, who do they meet, do they get banned from ever coming back
"Nope, just my away team" the trill replies before ordering a round for the bar.
Hmm... maybe a depiction of when Melani talked J'mpok into their alliance?
My character Tsin'xing
I love a good character piece (IMHO sci-fi is always at its best when it uses the setting to tell stories about people instead of getting caught up in technoporn), and there are some really interesting ideas here. One side comment, #1 reminds me of Data's issues with the emotion chip in Generations.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Federation presidential elections take place every six years (barring delays due to national crises), meaning President Aennik Okeg's third term is coming to an end. Is he running for a fourth term or stepping down? Who else is running, and what issues are important in the campaign: entanglements in the Delta Quadrant, the refugee crisis at home, economic chaos from the Iconian War? And does your captain prefer any particular candidate?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/