View Single Post
  #88  
Old 05-06-2018, 08:33 PM
NAHTMMM's Avatar
NAHTMMM NAHTMMM is offline
Noodles And Hot Tofu! MMM
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: St Louis, MO, USA, . . .
Posts: 2,959
Send a message via Yahoo to NAHTMMM
Default

Wildfire

Quote:
Tonight's episode is brought to you by Smokey the Bear, who reminds you: only YOU can prevent wildfire!
A simpler sponsor announcement here, and no self-attribution weighing it down. Good.

Quote:
[b]Betra-Na: How go the battles on the Vigilance and the planet?
Astrin-Sa: If you rearrange the letters in "Ree", "Gore", and "Trina", you can spell "a greener riot".
Betra-Na: So those fighting are reusing their ammunition? Truly, we have come a long way from our wasteful past.
5MV fans may be dimly reminded of Tuvok’s nutty antics in “Endgame”. Oldbies may remember the thread we had in the old forums where we ran bits of fivers through online translators and back. There’s no causal connection between either of those and this, just maybe a little encouragement for me to feel free to indulge my taste for playing with words. Basically, there were a few short alien words and I wanted to see if they anagrammed anything funny. They did. I expected it to turn into a running gag but it didn't. Which is fine.

Quote:
Lorhrok: Look at this picture of the Excelsior taken a short time ago.
Dovan: Why is the ship coated in orange?
Lorhrok: It was initially my belief that we must have passed through a cloud of telepathic Cheetos recently. However, since the orangeness has been intensifying, and since Valandria has been appearing to turn orange as well, it seems clear that--
Sharp: That someone is shooting at us with telepathic Cheetos powder, and some of it is hitting the planet?
Lorhrok: I was going to say that our sensors need to be recalibrated, but I suppose your explanation works, too.
In a parody, never trust that the absurd explanation is wrong. At least, not until someone points out just how stupid it is.

Quote:
Lorhrok: Why did you promote me to First Officer, sir?
Dovan: As an apology for forcing you to work with Kinash Adow.
Scene disposed of in two lines with a burn on someone.

Quote:
Astrin-Sa: The Excelsior has crept to within two million centors of the Vigilance, Your Excellency!
Betra-Na: Centaurs? What do horse-people have to do with anything?
Astrin-Sa: No, centons!
Betra-Na: Centons? Isn't that a Battlestar Galactica term?
Astrin-Sa: Sssss! Just tell them not to shoot us already!
Running gag has left the starting blocks! I misspelled centons in the first line, but they got it right in the recording anyway. I wouldn't have recognized the BSG connection if not for Derek's BSG fiver.

Quote:
Dovan: Hi.
Betra-Na: (over the comm) Ewww, you're a boy! Go away. I don't want your space cooties!
Dovan: Well, we don't want your space Cheetos! So what are you going to do about it?
Betra-Na: I've got some millennia-old exposition in the freezer, but it's probably stale by now.
Dovan: I'll take it.
Betra-Na: Very well. I should warn you, it involves my ordering your ship's destruction.
Dovan: On second thought --
Astrin-Sa: (over the comm) I'm waaastiiing! Oh, what a world, what a world...
Betra-Na: Too late.
This and the following block are properly one scene, but I split them up for pacing’s sake.

Quote:
Dovan: Look, just stop killing us!
Betra-Na: You stop killing us first!
Dovan: You started it!
Betra-Na: No, you started it!
Dovan: All I want is for you to trust a bunch of aliens with your entire civilization. Is that so much to ask?
Betra-Na: Well, you are Starfleet.
Dovan: Exactly, we do this all the time. Thank you for cooperating --
Betra-Na: That was a refusal, Dovan. We are no fools. We have seen what you do in such cases.
Dovan: I told them it was a mistake to show Voyager reruns on Intergalactic UPN, but would anyone listen? Noooo...
On Dovan’s third line: We typically see things from the point of view of our Starfleet heroes, and we take it for granted that they can fix things by the end of the story, or at least escape unscathed, because planetary crises keep happening around them. But imagine events from the other end: these strange, advanced aliens appear in your star system and take it for granted they can solve your problem. Wouldn’t you be skeptical, just out of a healthy sense of caution?

Dovan's "Noooo" isn't necessary in text format, but this was intended for audio, so it went in.

Quote:
Lorhrok: The Oracle hologram has such a nice personality, we thought we'd try to blend him with the EMH.
Rol: How's it working?
EMH/Oracle: Warning: This program is not licensed for use in this context. Self-destruct will activate in 20... 19... 18... 17... 16... 15...
Rol: Wow. I guess digital rights management gets really nasty in the future.
Again, a “scene break” to give the dialogue room to breathe.

Quote:
Adow: Listen, hologram, if you don't stop killing yourself I'll kill you and strangle your emitter!
Rol: Now, why did your ship go back in time and crash?
EMH/Oracle: We fired a temporal thingy at the enemy and temporal stuff happened.
Lorhrok: Who was the enemy?
EMH/Oracle: I don't remember.
Adow: Could you return to the future and take Lorhrok and Rol with you?
EMH/Oracle: Certainly.
Lorhrok and Rol: No, wait, don't -- (WHOOSH)
Adow: Woo-hoo, one step closer to ruling Engineering!
Adow has a couple of jokes here that I think we’ve all seen before. To compensate, I turned the first one up to 11 with the dumbest, most directly violent thing I could think of.

Quote:
Sharp: Captain, the Cheetos disease is caused by a telepathic virus. I mean, a viral telepathy. I mean --
Dovan: Either stop making stuff up or leave me alone!
Sharp: Anyway, I want a Level One Quarantine.
Dovan: Will that help much?
Sharp: Not really. I've just always wanted to own a Level One Quarantine.
Sharp is a simple woman with simple desires.

Quote:
Betra-Na: Muahahaha!
Sorid-Gee: (over the intercom) Muahahaha!
Betra-Na: What?! Bring it on, punk!
Sorid-Gee: I know you are, but what am I?
Betra-Na: Oh yeah?
Sorid-Gee: Yeah!
Betra-Na: ...Well, talk to you later.
Sorid-Gee: See you soon.
I took the back-and-forth and deliberately condensed it down to cliché evil laughter and clichéd argument, followed by “nice talk, see you later” as if either Valandrian had actually gotten anything out of this exchange. This is either very lazy or worth a grant from the Endowment for the Arts.

Quote:
Dovan: Great. We need to protect those Marines from the Valandrian defense ships, and Kibyr and I are all that's left to man the bridge.
Kibyr: GAK!
Dovan: And Helder and I are all that's left to man the bridge.
Sharp: (over the comm) Helder's dead too, sir.
Dovan: Is there anyone left to help me?
Computer: There's a mysterious janitor down in Engineering.
Yubari: (over the comm) ...Well, sir? Do you want me up there?
Dovan: Don't rush me...
Some computers are more eager to be helpful than others.

Quote:
Rol: Ugh... where did that hologram take us? Hey, are we back in sickbay? I guess we got off easy.
Future Sharp: It's the future. We're at war. I'm an embittered front-line doctor.
Four of Seven: I'm a Borg with a cutesy nickname.
Lorhrok: And I seem to have changed voice actors.
Lorhrok’s beautiful punchline is courtesy Wowbagger. BTW, this was many computers ago, and the site I used for hosting my first draft is long evaporated, so I’m working entirely off of memory. If Wowbagger has any other lines or refinements he wants to claim as his own, he’s certainly free to speak up.

Quote:
Yubari: Sir, I must protest. There has to be a more efficient way to destroy the ship than this.
Sharp: (over the comm) I'm warning you, there's no way I can protect my patients from your maneuvers --
Dovan: "Snow"? Oh great, I still haven't gotten my mother that snow globe! Lieutenant, you're with me. Transporter chief, beam us both down!
Yubari: Shouldn't you get the ship out of danger first, sir?
Dovan: Good idea. Let me just set the -- (WHOOSH)
Nice first line from Yubari. Sharp’s line should have been rephrased to put the “snow” sound at the end, e.g.: “I’m warning you, I can’t protect my patients from your maneuvers. There’s no way —”. It’s still a weak way to remind Dovan that he needs to return to the planet, but the punchline is good.

Quote:
Betra-Na: The Vigilance will self-destruct in two yarens.
Sorid-Gee: (through the door) Yarns? Like what you knit with?
Betra-Na: Yarens!
Sorid-Gee: Yars? Didn't an oil slick kill her?
Betra-Na: Sssss! Just die already!
I loved what Zeke did with this running gag for the next episode. "I wish metrons were shorter."

Quote:
Sorid-Gee: Let's go to the Catacombs.
Brigadier: Is that where Betra-Na is going?
Sorid-Gee: All I know is that it's not where the Vigilance will be exploding.
Brigadier: I'm convinced. Let's go.
I like the way Sorid-Gee thinks.



I gave the fourth episode a very brief shot, but my time and energy were required elsewhere. Zeke did a great job with it anyway.
__________________
My 5MV webpages My novel fivers list

Yup

“There must have been a point in early human history when it was actually advantageous to, when confronted with a difficult task, drop it altogether and go do something more fun, because I do that way too often for it to be anything but instinct.” -- Isto Combs
Reply With Quote