Write It Up: Star Trek: Engage

One area we've not touched on is role-playing within the Star Trek universe - but then as if by magic we seem to have found ourselves the perfect commentator to explain what's going on. +Aoibhe Ni it's over to you...

In the past 15 years I have been imprisoned countless times by several malicious factions.

No, don’t worry, it's OK. I'm fine...

I swear.

It didn't knock a feather out of me, actually.

I have also lost my memory, lost a husband (literally, he went through a wormhole, and I haven't seen him since...), passed from one collapsing reality into a safer one where I now reside. I have had a building fall on me in the midst of a firefight, I have manipulated people to my own ends, and in turn I have been manipulated by others. I have yelled “Abandon ship!”, “Fire when ready!”, and uttered the immortal phrase, “He's dead... er, Tim...?” more times than I can count.

I have been telepathic, athletic, near death, crippled, excruciatingly shy, annoyingly outspoken, a harlot and a saint, and I have had several competing past lives. I have even been human once or twice, y'know, for a change.

I am a role-player and I get my kicks playing Star Trek: Engage.

Star Trek: Engage is new on the scene, but its roots go way back. Our founding members all played text-based RPGs since the '90's, using imagination and a love for the written word to pull adventure after adventure out of the bare bones of a story laid down by a Game Director.

Think D&D, without the dice, with a more fluid format, and played by dedicated players who are dotted across the globe, and you get the idea. But it's far more than just sitting in a chatroom while you describe your character doing the Enterprise Shuffle (though, we do love a good Star Trek-related meme...). A well-written character will take on a life of their own, and playing them week after week can bring out side-stories, character arcs and interactions you never would have expected.

The fact that the game is played in a chat room once a week for an hour means you have to think on your feet while all around you the story unfolds. How would you react if suddenly faced with the Borg, for instance? Or confronted with a dying planet containing 3 billion beleaguered inhabitants? What if your Captain started to act unreasonably all of a sudden... would you risk mutiny, or stand by his side trusting that it’d all make sense in the end? What would happen if your best friend was taken hostage and you were ordered to stand down? What if your consciousness was beamed into the body of that hot chick from Astrometrics? No, actually... better not answer that last one. No-one needs to know.

In addition to the hour a week you play with your fellow crew mates, you also have the opportunity to write a duty log that is then read by your crew, and by interested players across the entire game. This can be written in any format you fancy. Some people love to write occasional flashbacks to a time before their character was on board their ship, some do short conversations with NPCs, and some even collaborate with other players mid-week and produce fantastic joint-logs. Any way you slice it, these logs are an excellent way to flesh out your character and add to a crew’s growing rapport. They're also a wonderful chance to get your character's opinions and personality across.

The point is that with Star Trek: Engage, the sky is the limit in terms of story-telling. If you can describe it, you can do it. Just... try not to describe that Astrometrics lady in too fine a detail, OK?

Currently, we have five time-slots to choose from, effectively spanning the week, and we are gearing up to add a sixth ship to our ranks. We have made sure to cater for both morning, evening and weekend players, so you’re bound to find a ship at a time that will suit you. The more we grow, the more ships we’ll launch, and as a player you’ll have a direct say in when those new ships will run. 

Right now, we have the Nova Class USS Saturn, a Prometheus Class USS Hyperion, the Intrepid Class USS Bremen (shut up, I like it…), the Nebula Class USS Hooke and a Space Station on the edge of Tzenkethi space, and we have plans in motion to add a Sovereign to that list. Each ship and station has an atmosphere of its own, and each crew works together differently, making each one unique. 

Whichever ship you choose, you will start at the rank of Cadet, with your first promotion most likely happening after the 4th week. From then on, it’s a case of gathering up promotions for quick-thinking and bravery, commendations for loyal service and dedication, or reprimands for disobeying orders. Your Starfleet career is bound to be peppered with a combination of all three, and who knows… perhaps it’ll even culminate in you being awarded your own captaincy...

In Overview from SKoST

Sounds very, very interesting don't you think? If I had the time I would be tapping away at the keyboard at every available opportunity because writing is definitely my passion and there's always a part of me that wants to define my own corner of the Star Trek universe.

Back in the 00's I used to write for the sadly long-defunct Delta Fleet which was a great experience and helped hone my fictional writing skills which had been out of practice for a few years. I had a Gorn security chief and an operative from Section 31 active on the ship but time and life took precedent (the site still exists in a very different form). The great thing with Engage is the chance to create your own character or characters in an established piece of the fictional universe. Who knows, but you could be creating people who might well end up as the stars of a future

While my experience of writing for the expanded universe was done turn-based, linking characters together over weeks or months to complete a story this sounds much more focused and organised with specific times to connect up and write a new story aboard one of the featured ships. Additionally there are blogs on the site which act as workshops to help aspiring writers develop their characters in a "realistic" manner rather than making them all super-human with Q-like abilities. Certainly makes you feel like you're not alone and there's always going to be someone around top point you in the right direction - or the wrong one depending on your character's evolution!

Star Trek: Engage hasn't been around for long but already there seems to be a good level of organisation and if you want to write - and perhaps aren't quite up to creating your own backstory, ship and setting then this is a great starting point. Even if you're not and are a fan of Star Trek and want something new to be involved in that can feed your hunger for the franchise then why not drop by and see what's going on. I'm sure you'll be most welcome.

If you want to join the adventure, Enlist Here. 

Want to learn more? Have a look at the handy handbook.

Your crew, and your Starfleet career awaits at Star Trek: Engage!

Thanks to Aoibhe for letting us into the Engage world.

Cold Equations Book Two: Silent Weapons

Silent Weapons picks up a short time after the events of Book One, The Persistence of Memory and from the off this is a very different beast to its predecessor.

Now before we go any further - SPOILER ALERT. If you haven't read the first book, be warned as I WILL be referring to it during this review!

While The Persistence of Memory skipped through time to provide the autobiographical narrative of Doctor Noonien Soong, this is a much more linear affair but much more complicated in the nature of the plot. It does require a bit more concentration to keep track of events right from chapter one - yep, David Mack kicks this sequel off with a lot of balls in the air and the art here is very much in the catching.

I was hesitant as to where this was going to go as Book One really left things open for interpretation. After getting into the heart of the book at about 150 pages I realised that it's as close as Star Trek could come to a taut political thriller. While the Vaslovik plot is carried over from the first novel in the trilogy, it spends a considerable amount of time on the proverbial backburner in favour of political machinations which I found to be more interesting but we'll come to that in turn. Book Two focuses more on the discovery of the android factory from the concluding section of The Persistence of Memory and the way in which the Breen are utilising this find for their own devices. There are numerous locations for the action, namely the Breen homeworld, a control centre for their acquired androids, a secret conference on Orion and then the Enterprise itself. Now you know that at some point they will all come together, the fun is in working out just how Mack will achieve this by the last page. I can assure you it does and - well, I'm not going to ruin it! I will say that it's a "thinker" and you need to be on your toes to keep up with who is doing what, where, when and how otherwise you might be in a big narrative mess by about page 160. 

My interest in this novel was piqued more than with the first not just for the multi-faceted thriller but also thanks in no small part to its supporting cast. The Gorn, one of my favourite alien races in the franchise (kudos for that, Mr Mack), are heavily featured and we get name-checks for the Tholians and the Tzenkethi too as part of the shadowy Typhon Pact. Even the Romulans manage an appearance to remind us that they're still a power to be reckoned with in this quadrant. I hope that Mack utilises the Gorn again in the future and that we get to see the Tholians in action and not just as a technology reference.

Reading this purely on my journey back and forth to work could have been a nightmare due to the strands that Mack lays out but I kept up with a couple of flick-backs to earlier chapters and previous pages so it was well worth it. Occasionally there are plot reminders from the cast which helps keep you in the picture. Everything has a purpose (as we know!) and no action is there for the sake of filling a page. As with my first review I don;t want to give too much away as it would ruin the experience that I was lucky to have upon opening chapter one - needless to say the Breen are up to no good here and Data gets implicated very early on, bringing the Enterprise to the Orion homeworld. Some of the initial chapters might seem irrelevant in some of the details described and you are left wondering - but persevere and you will not be disappointed. If there's one thing I'm learning from David Mack is that everything has a purpose!

One thing that I do enjoy within Mack's work is that he just loves playing with known Star Trek concepts. It happened in The Persistence of Memory and it's in action once again here. We're reintroduced to Captain Morgan Bateson, formerly of the USS Bozeman and it was impossible NOT to think of him as anyone other than Kelsey Grammer in "Cause and Effect" from The Next Generation. Orion was never visited in the multiple TV series but Mack builds on his visual impressions littered into Book One and fleshes them out further, even to the point of taking us deep into their slums and teaching the reader about the nature of their society. Fascinating stuff but my hat truly has to come off for his insights into the Gorn who have only managed two story appearance across the five series and ten films.  In particular their view of art is intriguing and I was quite envious of how Mack has established their culture, hierarchy and motivations within this story. While you would think it would be enough to focus on providing an insight into just the one race as part of the narrative, don't be deceived as the Breen get their own fair amount of page time in which we learn much more about the structure and taboos of their society while we watch them unfold their plans section by section.

Twisting thriller into mystery into action, Mack weaves the after-effects of The Persistence of Memory into this new story with deadly androids doing their masters' bidding, secretive Breen and even the UFP President thrown into the soup for good measure - one gripe; why did the President's bodyguards have to verge on the cliched CIA-style agent with dark glasses and a suit? Minor point but it's the 24th Century....! 

This new Data is something of an oddment and whenever I was reading this character I felt about as uneasy as Geordi - it's Data but it's not. The memories are there but this is Data version two and while you can see the character is there, if only through the absence of contractions in his speech, he feels different just in the way he carries himself through the narrative and on more than one occasion I made myself question who this character was. David, if this is part of the plan, I applaud you because it worked. The "new" Data is centre-stage for a good portion of this novel as are Picard, Geordi and Worf and all four characters are well defined and seem to work better within this story than they did in Book One. While the latter three characters are familiar the resurrected Data really is intriguing and slightly eerie. Indeed  it is his predicament which drives the story initially and the trail of crumbs and events from that which power the story along.  The pacing is great as we move from one set piece into investigation, to diplomacy, to private moments and then back into action once again - there's no let up so if you have to put this book down beware of what point you take a break - what you've just read may be very relevant in a few pages time or you might need to recall it in a few chapters!

Anyway, a lot of this book as you will have gathered, is focused on androids and Soong-type androids to be precise. They instill a great deal of paranoia into the story because you just don't know where or when they will turn up, what will happen when they do and whether or not they will succeed in their actions. Some of the descriptions of their actions are brutal and we can see that they are focused solely on their mission's goal. The androids are expendable but there is definitely more to them than you first think considering what they are capable of doing and who is in control of their minds. Manipulation is the name of the game.

Alongside the main story is a sub-plot revolving around Picard and Crusher which does link into the main thread at one point later on. I felt this was a particularly effective thread as it dealt with the nature of their relationship as a family and as shipmates. Mack drops in a note about the age difference between La Forge and Smrhova at one point - because these guys aren't getting any younger and it does waft up scents of nostalgia because of the length of service we have seen the main characters over. 

The Jean-Luc/Beverly plot reminds us that they are human and that at some point things have to change, especially as the captain is no longer single and there are important matters to consider for their future and the safety of his son. I'll be interested to see if this transitions into the final book, The Body Electric. I'm also fascinated to know how the Vaslovik plot is going to be continued in the finale as we have effectively skipped over it from the first few chapters of Silent Weapons. It was the reason for Data's presence on Orion but other things got in the way!

Overall I probably enjoyed this story much more than I did with The Persistence of Memory, possibly because I understood a bit more about the expanded Trek universe and also because the first book had "broken" me back into the TNG universe. Looking back, the first novel is very much a set up piece which lays a lot of seeds and possibilities for the second book and doubtless the third will bring all the threads together neatly (I say that now!). Not a book to pick up on its own but if you've pounded through the first book this is certain to satisfy your curiosity and leave enough questions unanswered (again) to ensure that the concluding book is an essential purchase.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Cold Equations Book Two: Silent Weapons is now available  from Simon and Schuster ISBN 9781451650730 priced £6.99