Episode 1x02 - "Directive"

[Serris]

Sunday, February 16th, 2017 @ 3:00 PM EST / 8:00 PM GMT

The Amarante receives what appears to be a distress call on a subspace frequency being broadcast from a pre-warp planet that's seemingly without the means to transmit that kind of signal. Even stranger still, there appears to be an alien probe in orbit, monitoring the inhabitants below. What's going on here?

[Serris]

Introduction:

It's been two weeks since the Amarante began its mission in the Delta Quadrant. The ship was on course for B'omar space when it detected a strange carrier wave emanating from a planet with a pre-warp civilization. Finding the situation curious, Captain Tolendo ordered a course change to investigate.

Upon arriving, the ship discovered an unmanned orbital platform, seemingly of alien origin, conducting constant surveillance of the planet below. Why they would find it interesting was anyone's guess -- the planet's technology level was on par with Earth's in the late 19th / early 20th century... yet they were still transmitting a subspace signal. A briefing was convened to determine the course of action; an away team led by Commander Zandeur would investigate the source of the signal.

Clothed with approximations of the inhabitants' attire, Commander Zandeur, Commander Muri-Giaz, Commander Quinn, Doctor Bertrand, and Lieutenant Wilcox embarked to the planet, transported into a secluded area...


On the Amarante:

... while the bridge crew monitored their progress. Seemingly uneventful at first, they engaged in idle conversation, regaling each other with entertaining stories... until the away team lost contact. Then all hell broke loose.

The array appeared to have signalled an alien ship, which demanded that the Amarante vacate their space immediately. Despite Captain Tolendo's best efforts to explain the situation of their people on the planet below, the aliens insisted, firing a warning shot across their bow, and explaining that the anomalous contaminants that threatened to ruin their experiment would be purged.

Not content to simply leave his people behind to face certain death, Captain Tolendo maintained position, provoking the aliens into opening fire. A brief skirmish ensued, the ships inflicting heavy damage onto each other before a few lucky quantum torpedoes managed to cripple the aliens' power systems.

Things didn't look good -- the aliens transmitted a distress call, the Amarante's shields were down to twenty percent, and there was already thermal damage to the secondary hull plating. A confrontation with another vessel wouldn't end well.


On the surface:

... of a military installation. The away team was quickly found out by the populace, taken into custody, and searched, their advanced technologies confiscated. Led into an alarmingly out-of-place advanced military bunker below the surface, they were questioned by the General in command, with a forceful hand. Commander Zandeur endured a few rifle butts to the head trying to explain his way out of the situation.

Then, Commander Muri-Giaz made a remarkable discovery; one of the displays where they were being held showed schematics for a warp engine reactor. He interrupted the questioning by confronting the General with this newfound information, revealing a truly fascinating predicament -- the planet's society was warp capable, over fifty years ago. They had that capability stripped from them after an alien race took notice of their test flight and decided to use their planet as a testbed for an unethical sociological experiment: How would a society adapt or regress if they had their technological advances stripped from them? Their military capabilities were disabled from orbit by an electromagnetic pulse, forcing them to surrender to the aliens and their cruel experiments.

The General had reasoned that they must have been from the foreign ship that had just entered orbit. As the Amarante had the capability to free his people, he plead with Commander Zandeur to help them, in exchange for letting him answer the ship's hails and return to his people. Zandeur promised to do what he could, and the away team was whisked back to the ship.


Epilogue:

Another alien vessel was approaching, twice the size of the one the Amarante had previously encountered. Intending to smooth things out and buy time for a diplomatic solution, Captain Tolendo ordered medical and engineering supplies transported over to the alien vessel they'd disabled, hailing the incoming ship. Commander Zandeur attempted to reason with them, but the Jamarrans were insistent on the Amarante leaving their space.

Left with little recourse, the ship departed on its earlier course to B'omar space.

[Klaw]

Sorry I missed it. My relatives only just left.

Hope you all had fun

See you next week

[Shoot]

It was really good episode, I really liked it, more of these!

[Scott Archer]

Run time: 02:16:00


The pacing of this episode was a lot better than the previous one.
The story was a very good Trek based story with moral decisions that were genuinely interesting and exciting to be a part of.
It was also a genius idea to run two parallel story lines between the two different servers and for me this gives a very believable and realistic feel of the Trek universe and a very enjoyable RP experience.


However, my main criticism here is one person running stories on two servers, which often lead to pauses on one whilst the story line was carried out on the other, which did slow down the pace and at times it did feel like we were waiting for you.
I feel like there are a few ways around this:
- There could perhaps be a custom Discord channel for comm messages between the servers (that way no one is having to physically send the message between them.)
- Having another admin who knows the basic plots sat cloaked on one server and participating on the other (or someone not part of the series doing something similar perhaps?)
- A combination of these?


I feel that if the dual server thing is something you would like to do fairly frequently (and I sincerely hope it is) then this does need looking into.


Overall though, a solid 4