“Captain’s log, stardate 7409.2. The starship Challenger, under my command, is to launch in just a few hours. But my operations officer, Lt. Hal Bichel, is holding me at phaserpoint with a serious accusation.”
“My tricorder is picking up Starfleet equipment not registered to this ship.”
“Oh, damn. You’re right.” Chamberlain walked back to the security station and opened his bag. He noticed that Hal hadn’t lowered the weapon. “You’re not relaxing.”
“No, sir. This is one of those situations you trained me specifically to watch out for. Android doppelganger, body switching, you know the drill.”
“I do,” said Chamberlain. “Color me impressed. Here you go.” He handed over his engineering tricorder. Hal inspected it with her left hand.
“Is this–?”
“Yes. It’s from Lexington. Commodore Wesley gave it to me when he promoted me.”
“When my–?”
“Yes, Hal, the day after your father died and I took over as Chief Engineer. Now do you see why I didn’t declare it?”
“I do, sir, and I thank you. But respectfully, it was three years ago, and I don’t need protection. I’m proud of my father’s service, and of his…sacrifice.” The last word came out as an epithet rather than a tribute. Hal’s father had been the chief engineer onboard the Lexington when the Daystrom M-5 computer had taken over Enterprise and fired its phasers at full power on an unsuspecting battle group of four starships during a training exercise. Fifty-three Lexington crewmen had died in the initial volley, mostly in the engineering section. Harold Bichel was killed by an exploding console while trying to stabilize the anti-matter reaction in the warp core. Lieutenant Commander Jeff Chamberlain, the assistant chief engineer, took over for the fallen man and saved the ship. Chamberlain lost his best friend that day, but Hal Bichel lost her father.
“I know that, Hal. I apologize for the oversight. Are we good to go?”
“Aye, sir.” Bichel’s reattached the phaser to her belt and held her tricorder up to Chamberlain’s device, tapping a few buttons. “I’ve reassigned your tricorder for use aboard Challenger, sir. It won’t happen again.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Please see that my gear gets to my quarters.” Chamberlain winked at his operations officer and started again toward the turbolift. But then he paused and took a hard right. He wanted to check in at engineering before heading to the bridge.
When Chamberlain arrived in engineering, the section was buzzing with activity.
Main Engineering, USS Challenger
The captain found his chief engineer, directing his officers in five different directions at once. Commander Chad “Woody” Wooderson turned to meet Chamberlain’s eyes and rolled his own as a reaction. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
Commander Chad “Woody” Wooderson
“That’s ‘Look what the cat dragged in, Captain.’”, Chamberlain laughed.
“As you wish, Captain, sir.” Wooderson was not impressed by rank, but by skill, and the two had been rivals in skill since their days at Starfleet Academy. “You have the braid, Captain, sir. Now what do you want?”
“I just wanted to let you know that I checked the hood over the secondary hull again to make sure that it was sufficient to prevent the deflector from—”
“–from interfering with the planetary sensor array,” Wooderson interrupted. “Haven’t we been over this about a googol times? It’s fine.”
“I know, but I wanted to be sure,” Chamberlain said, sheepishly. “Hey, why is everyone running around like their hair is on fire?” Wooderson grabbed Chamberlain by the sleeve and led him into the corridor.
“Because I told them that a planet killer was on its way into this sector and that we were the only ship available to handle it.”
It was Chamberlain’s turn to roll his eyes. “You’re still doing that old routine? And they actually fell for it?”
“Oh yeah, I uploaded the simulation while they were at lunch. This one’s just a test for me to get a sense of who will perform under pressure. Be grateful I didn’t simulate a coolant leak. We wouldn’t get the stench out for a week, and I want to keep that new starship smell for as long as I can,” Wooderson chuckled.
Chamberlain laughed along with his old friend. “Can I help?”
“No…sir.” This time, the honorific was sincere. “I appreciate the thought, but they need to be able to trust you as their commanding officer. They already know I’m a jerk.”
“That’s true,” Chamberlain cracked. “Carry on then, Commander. And thanks for looking out for me.”
“Aye aye, Captain. We’ll be ready for launch in about an hour…even though we’re not scheduled for departure for another six.” Wooderson grinned, clapped Chamberlain on the shoulder, then vanished around the corner, shouting orders again. Chamberlain looked on his shoulder to check to see what Wooderson had put there but found nothing but a grease-stained handprint. He expected nothing less. Now he’d have to stop at his cabin on his way to sick bay.
As Chamberlain entered the turbolift, he prepared for horizontal movement by grasping one of the handles that encircled the lift. “Captain’s quarters,” he instructed the computer.
Challenger turbolift interior
The turbolift sped laterally along its track until it reached a point just below the stubby support pylon connecting the secondary hull with the saucer section. It then shifted seamlessly to vertical propulsion, rose one deck, and stopped. The door opened. Shhkkt. Chamberlain exited, turned left, and stopped at the very first door, straight ahead. The sign on the door read, “Captain Jeffery J. Chamberlain,” and as soon as he saw it, Chamberlain rolled his eyes. At least it didn’t say ‘Jeffery Joshua,’ he thought. Chamberlain’s middle name was in honor of the American Civil War Colonel from the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment who had successfully fought off a superior Confederate force at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg, a story that Jeff hoped he would never have to tell again. And he wouldn’t have to if he acted quickly.
He punched an intercom button on the wall in the corridor.
“Chamberlain to Bichel.”
“Bichel here, Captain.”
“I thought I had requested a different sign for my quarters door.”
“You did, sir. Has it still not been changed?”
“No, Lieutenant. That’s why I’m calling.” Chamberlain was irritated now.
Suddenly, a voice came from directly behind Chamberlain, not on the intercom. “Well, sir, if you had taken just a minute or two more, I would have had it changed before you arrived. I had a few more crew to check in before I brought your things up. But I see Woody has left his mark.” Bichel snapped her communicator shut, stowing it on her belt, and handed Jeff his gear bag. Then she started stripping the sign from the door, a small tool appearing in her hand from out of nowhere. She then took the adhesive strip off the enamel door plate and attached it to the door in place of the old one. It read, “Captain Jeff Chamberlain.” “Is that better, sir?”
Chamberlain nodded. “Much, thank you. ‘Jeffery’ has always sounded to me like a mother scolding a child.“
Hal smiled. She already knew the real story. “You don’t have to tell me, sir.”
Chamberlain smiled and stepped forward, the door whisking open ahead of him. He walked through. “How is your mother?” Bichel stood outside, every attention being paid to her duty as an officer, rather than a privileged near-relative.
“For crying out loud, Hal, come in,” Chamberlain gestured.
“Thank you, sir.” She stepped into Chamberlain’s quarters, but only just inside far enough to keep the sensor from closing the door behind her. She was protecting his reputation as much as her own. Chamberlain retrieved a fresh, gold triple-braided uniform shirt from his gear bag and stepped around the corner to his privy. “Mom’s fine,” she continued, “A little nervous about this mission, especially considering what happened to Dad.”
Chamberlain returned to the main living area, wearing an unblemished uniform. “Well, she’s not alone there.” Jeff looked out the transparent aluminum window of his cabin. Chamberlain was generally not one for pulling strings, but he had called in a fairly big favor to have his quarters located in the pylon just above the secondary hull instead of in the saucer on decks, three, four, or five, where most of the rest of his 247 officers bunked. Future starship designs would use this part of the ship for torpedo storage, but Challenger’s main torpedo bay was still in the forward section of the saucer. Chamberlain only wanted two things: An actual window that faced out from the port, or planet side of the ship when she was in standard orbit, and to be close to engineering. For some reason, the thrum of a properly tuned warp engine helped him sleep.
“Will that be all, Captain?” Hal’s voice brought Chamberlain back to reality.
“Yes, Lieutenant. And tell Maya for me that I will bring you home safely.”
“Aye, sir. But you should know, she’s just as worried about you.”
Chamberlain blushed. “I’m afraid that ship sailed a long time ago— when she chose your dad over me,” he chuckled. “I’m not saying it was the wrong choice. After all, you are a direct result of that choice. But I have to admit, it still stings a little.”
“Yes, sir.” Hal turned to leave, then paused. “But everyone deserves a second chance, sir. Don’t you think?”
Chamberlain thought for a moment and chose his words carefully. “Maybe we’ll see in two years, when this mission is over. Dismissed.” He winked at his security officer for what he decided would be the last time on this mission. He couldn’t show favoritism toward her despite his paternal feelings. Deep space missions were dangerous, especially for those wearing red.
Jeff turned away as the door whooshed shut, and put away the rest of his gear, stowing his bag. After he grabbed a quick protein supplement to silence his rumbling stomach, he started making his way to the aft section of the saucer via a short series of zig zag movements in the turbolift. Sick bay was on deck seven. It was massive, easily three times the size of the medical facilities on other starships. Challenger’s sick bay even had its own transporter room. There was a flurry of activity here, too, like there had been in engineering. No one even noticed the captain standing at the entrance for several seconds.
Sick Bay, USS Challenger
“Attention! Captain on deck!” an attentive nurse shouted, his deep voice resonating.
“As you were, everyone,” Chamberlain countermanded. The flurry resumed.
“Captain! We weren’t expecting you for a few hours yet,” Chief Medical Officer Jennifer Carmichael appeared out of nowhere.
“No worries, Lieutenant Commander; I just wanted to make sure that your last-minute personnel requests had been filled and you had everyone you needed.”
Carmichael may have been small of stature compared to Chamberlain, who stood a shade under two meters tall, but Jeff had known by her reputation alone that she was a force to be reckoned with. It was confirmed after just a few weeks of working with her. She was ambitious, achieving her position in her early thirties. Carmichael’s dark eyes flashed triumphantly. “Yes, Captain. Hickerson and Hoyle are just beaming aboard now. There was apparently a problem with the shuttlepod. Someone was holding it up, joyriding around the deflector dish.” She tried to stifle a smirk, but failed.
Dr. Jenn Carmichael in Sick Bay
“Uh, ahem, yes, I’ll have to have a word with Chief Nelson about that,” Chamberlain said sharply. He didn’t like being humiliated by an officer on his ship. He already had Wooderson to contend with in that regard. As Chamberlain turned to leave, he paused a moment, and looked back at Carmichael, all humor vanishing from his face. “Tell me, Doctor, in your years in Starfleet, have you ever lost a patient whose death could have been saved by someone taking extraordinary precautionary measures? But who, instead, died because of carelessness or miscalculation?”
“Why yes, of course, Captain. I didn’t mea—”
“That won’t happen on my ship, Doctor. Understood?”
“Underst—” Carmichael’s confirmation was cut off by the sound of the door to sick bay whooshing shut behind the captain.
Jenn Carmichael knew she’d just made a big mistake and had misjudged Captain Chamberlain. She resigned herself to making up for it in the performance of her duties.
Chamberlain seethed as he strode to the turbolift. Didn’t she understand the lengths he had gone to, to protect the crew of his ship? He had gone to the Starfleet engineers with a tactical study of starship damage compiled from the last five years of ship-to-ship combat and had found that the aft section behind the lower saucer was the safest place on the ship. With the widened support pylon protecting it from the rear, there was almost no way a phaser or torpedo strike would hit sick bay directly, and the hood over the deflector dish only added to that safety factor. As the elevator slowed, though, so did Chamberlain’s breathing. Jeff Chamberlain didn’t know how she had gotten under his skin, but he was sure he didn’t like it.
I ended my Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game campaign a few weeks ago. The main problem was that I found the Star Trek Adventures game unplayable.
Star Trek Adventures, published by Modiphius, seemed like a cool way to play a Star Trek game at first, but the more I ran it, the less it made sense. The way one completes tasks in the game requires the use of two 20-sided dice. A player adds the appropriate attribute number with their relevant skill number, plus or minus any situational modifiers, and rolls against that number. If they roll at or below that number on either of their dice, each of those rolls is considered a “success.” The gamemaster determines how many successes are required to complete the task and the players must be told that information ahead of time. There are myriad ways to add more dice, re-roll the dice, and achieve critical successes, to the point where it wouldn’t really matter if a player were asked to roll dice at all. This mechanic is good for storytelling, but it’s not great for the type of game where a chance for failure creates drama. Excess successes on the dice provide a game token called Momentum, which could add more dice in later tasks, decreasing even more any chance that the player characters would fail at anything. This begged the question on more than one occasion, “Why are we even rolling dice?”
The game wasn’t all bad. I thought that the “lifepath” method of creating one’s character was good. It reminded me of the FASA Star Trek RPG of the 80s. Having one’s character background inform the character stats adds a layer of depth to the characters that one can play. Another good idea from the game was that of having Supporting Characters for players to play when their main character wouldn’t necessarily be involved in the scenario. If you were playing a helm officer, for example, and the game was focused on the landing party going down to a planet, for example, you could jump in and play Ensign Redshirt. They wouldn’t have the in-depth background of your main character, but they could still play an important role, and maybe even sport a last name! At the very least, they could die a spectacular death, something that Main Characters weren’t supposed to do. The game rules actually mention “plot armor.”
The graphic design of the books was very attractive, but the rules themselves were badly organized. Sometimes you would be reading half a page in on something complicated, only to be interrupted by half a page of flavor text or quotes from one of the many Star Trek shows and movies. And they often weren’t even relevant to what you had been reading!
Another positive to the game was the idea that if you bought the books either directly from Modiphius or a bookseller or game store, they would send you a PDF of the book for free. And since many of the books had black pages with white letters, which is really hard on my eyes, it was a pleasant surprise to find that many of the PDFs had print-friendly versions with white backgrounds and black print. I am particularly pleased about this, because I have the PDFs from the game to use as background information, but now I am ready to sell all the books. I’ll be putting most of them up on Ebay this summer. I am going to keep the boxed starter set (to go with my FASA boxed set), the gamemaster screen, and the Tricorder set with its Original Series-themed rulebook, but the rest of it is going to go, hopefully to someone who will enjoy it more than I did.
“But wait,” you say. “Didn’t you spend a lot of money on your ship and the interiors?”
Yes, I did, but I don’t regret any of it. I will eventually get use out of them, either running an older Star Trek game like FASA, or another diceless game like I wrote about here. Or, I may just use it all to create continuing fan fiction stories and do occasional illustrations. Don’t worry, it won’t go to waste. But for now, I’m putting Star Trek Adventures away, back on the shelf.
“A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty, ‘Hi-Yo Silver!’ The Lone Ranger!”
Bam! Bam! Bam! Gunshots ring out.
“With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early Western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!”
Now, imagine you’re a child in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. There’s no such thing as television, your family can’t afford to go to the movies, and your only source of information is the cathedral-style radio that takes a place of honor in your living room. The words written above activated the imagination of boys and girls all over the country, as they preceded each episode of the Lone Ranger, starting on station WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan.
I first heard those words when I was around nine years old in 1974, at my Uncle Mike’s house, listening to the very first episode of The Lone Ranger on his reel-to-reel tape machine. I had watched The Lone Ranger TV show with my dad when I was younger, but I’d never heard of a radio drama before. I listened intently, enthralled with the voices and sound effects, and I could almost see the drama unfold in my mind.
When the Lone Ranger was over, he played “The War of the Worlds,” the famous radio broadcast produced by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater on the Air. Based on the novel by H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds played out like it was an actual alien invasion being reported on the radio. And that was all it took. I was hooked for life. I hoped that someday I could get ahold of recordings like that for myself.
Though we didn’t have the Internet back then, I kept my eye out for any reference to radio shows. And sure enough, on the back of of box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, I saw it.
Superman Radio Show ad from Kellogg’s Corn Flakes
There was a SUPERMAN radio show?? I could hardly believe my eyes. How had I not known of this? Looking back, of course, it’s easy to know why. We didn’t have the Internet, and how else would the topic even come up? Not in conversation around my house, that’s for sure. But I wanted to know what the Superman radio show was like. There was no way I was ever going to get any of the records. $1.50 might as well have been a million dollars to me back then, and I knew my stepfather wouldn’t allow it anyway.
As I got older, I found out more about Old-Time Radio, or OTR. There were dozens of shows, thousands and thousands of episodes of radio drama, comedy, news, and more. Occasionally, I would run across a tape of them and I would buy them whenever I saw them. The Shadow was one of the more common and easily obtained shows. I was familiar with The Shadow because he had teamed up with Batman once in the comics, but the Shadow of OTR was an entirely different character.
Batman #259, guest-starring The Shadow
The Shadow of OTR was dressed normally, one would presume, as he went about town as Lamont Cranston, turning invisible when he became The Shadow. He didn’t carry a gun normally, although there were times when he would resort to using a pistol. He certainly never ran around with a pair of .45 automatics. But getting past all that, The Shadow on radio was simply a treat. The whole idea of a character who turns invisible is pretty easy to convey when you can’t see the hero at all!
Then there were those great Power Records, which combined a large format comic book with an audio drama. Remember those? Featured here is a Star Trek book and record set that I used to have with cover art by Neal Adams. I used to get these whenever I could, especially when they came out with one for the Six Million Dollar Man. There’s a guy who has a whole blog about just these items!
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I really got a healthy dose of radio drama. That was when our local NPR station started broadcasting the Star Wars radio show. What’s that? You didn’t know there was such a thing? Oh, yes. I hurried home each night to listen to it on radio in 1981. It took the Star Wars story and expanded it, filling in gaps where the movie had been edited. There was the usual clumsy expository dialogue that radio has to use to paint the images in your mind, but it used the original sound effects and some actors from the movie, including Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels. The actors who replaced the originals were no slouches, either. Brock Peters took the place of James Earl Jones, for example. You’d be surprised how good it really was, especially since they used John Williams’s Oscar-winning score.
My interest in old-time radio and radio dramas waned in my college years. There just wasn’t anything going on in my world. But when the Batman craze of 1989 came along, a couple of different items came to my attention and sparked my imagination. First, there were some cassette tapes adapting comic book stories that came out. The associated comic books came with them, and the tapes served to add an audio soundtrack. The first one I bought was an adaptation of the Untold Legends of the Batman. It was like the old Power Records, but there was no album cover.
As the next decade progressed, DC, Marvel, and even Disney kept putting out audio dramas. Stories like “Superman Lives!” as well as the “Complete Knightfall Saga,” along with the Rocketeer were all adapted to audio dramas. Later on, we would even see one for “Kingdom Come.” But the real fun came in 1994, when the theatrical version of “The Shadow” was released.
When the Alec Baldwin movie came out, the radio shows made a huge comeback. A company called Radio Spirits started releasing audio cassettes and CDs of the old radio shows and I bought several sets of them. Then with the advent of the mp3 file format and the Internet, old-time radio was everywhere. Streaming sites popped up, and suddenly the world of old-time radio was no longer restricted to small gatherings with tape exchanges. Suddenly you could buy hundreds of episodes of long-forgotten shows on CD for pennies and listen to them on a computer.
I finally got to hear Superman on radio, and I was not disappointed. It quickly became my favorite radio show. The episodes were short, but in its heyday, it was on five days a week! I can only imagine what it would have been like to run home after school to catch the latest episode. Superman didn’t go up against the menagerie of villains from his comic book, but often the bad guys were gangsters, racketeers, and kidnappers. My favorite episodes, though, were the ones where he went up against racists and fascists, like the Knights of the White Carnation or the Clan of the Fiery Cross. It was quite progressive, especially for the 1940s. The only drawback to listening to old Superman shows is my inability to try Kellogg’s PEP cereal. “P-E-P! The sunshine cereal!” I wonder what it tasted like.
When the deluge of OTR programs began, I started doing research on this. My limited exposure to War of the Worlds, the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, and Superman, suddenly expanded. I started listening to Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, The Saint, The Whistler, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Dragnet, Gunsmoke, The Green Hornet, and more. I found books on the subject, and read the history. The more I learned, the more I loved it. I started making connections
One of Jack Benny’s supporting cast was lecherous bandleader Phil Harris, a bawdy southerner who constantly kept Benny, whom he called “Jackson,” on his toes. The first time I heard the voice, I just about jumped out of my chair. It was Baloo the Bear from Disney’s “The Jungle Book!” Not only was the voice the same, but the character was very much the same, a jazzy, hedonistic fun-loving guy who could sing scat. Amazing! Then, when listening to another episode, the unmistakable tones of Mel Blanc appeared in a voice similar to Speedy Gonzales. Then it hit me. The mice in “The Mouse that Jack Built,” a 1959 Warner Brothers cartoon, were the characters from this same Jack Benny radio program! When I saw the cartoon as a kid, I had no idea that Jack Benny was a radio star!
On the Fred Allen show, I caught Foghorn Leghorn in the form of Senator Claghorn. Then the floodgates came open. Many cartoons, whether on television or feature films, featured radio performers of old, many doing the same characters or voices that they were famous for decades before. Even “The New Adventures of Superman,” the 1966 Filmation cartoon, starred Clayton “Bud” Collyer as Superman, with Joan Alexander as Lois Lane. Narrator Jackson Beck, whose voice I know you would recognize, since he was active in voice acting for an incredible 73 years, was brought back to narrate Superman.
It wasn’t only voices and characters that were brought back for cartoons. When Mr. Whoopee’s closet would open on Tennessee Tuxedo and everything would fall out, I thought it was hilarious. Imagine my surprise when I was listening to Fibber McGee and Molly from decades before and heard the same thing happen!
Just a few years ago, I was rummaging through stuff in my basement and found cassette recordings of a role-playing game session from 1988. As I thought more about it, I realized just what we were doing. The gamemaster describes the action and plays the part of the characters not portrayed by the players. The players describe their action verbally and act out their characters’ roles, often using voices not their own. We’re not dressing up and acting things out (like LARPers do), but we are doing radio drama. There are a few static images and figures on a map to keep track of where everyone is, but otherwise everything is done by voice and description. They called radio “The Theater of the Mind.” I think it’s still alive and well. It’s just taken a new form.
But if you’re just interested in pure radio, it’s more popular now than it has been since the Golden Age of Radio. With the popularity of podcasts (radio, if you think about it), there are some that talk exclusively about OTR. It’s on Spotify; it’s even on YouTube. Old-Time Radio is everywhere!
Update, 1/25/2023:
I grabbed all four of the Superman radio records on Ebay for $21!
Jeff Chamberlain stood in the newly-completed Spacedock observation lounge, watching the U.S.S. Enterprise float into its designated mooring bay. The Federation starship, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, had just returned from its five-year mission, the only Constitution class starship of the original 12 to do so. As Chamberlain’s practiced eye assessed the condition of the ship, he smiled and shook his head in disbelief. Jeff’s father had been one of the engineers that had designed and built Enterprise almost 20 years before, and Jeff was no stranger to starship design himself. What he saw was nearly a literal Ship of Theseus. He doubted if there were more than 20% of the ship’s original parts left intact. Both warp nacelles and pylons had been replaced. The shuttlecraft bay doors were new. The navigational deflector dish, he knew, had been damaged and replaced at least twice. The sensor suite, hull plating on the primary hull, both had sustained critical damage over the last 60 months. Enterprise had left damaged parts and debris scattered halfway across the quadrant. Chamberlain gave Kirk credit, though. He had brought his ship back and was the only starship captain to succeed at that.
But that was the past, Chamberlain thought, as he turned away from the new transparent aluminum alloy window. It was the very recent past, but the past, nonetheless. He had spent the last three months studying the logs detailing the collective demises of the Constellation, the Intrepid, the Exeter, the Yorktown, the Potemkin, and the rest, poring over every detail, every crew death, including those killed from the surviving Enterprise. Space exploration was a dangerous business. Extraterrestrial viruses, giant psychic single-celled organisms, and doomsday machines abound, not to mention the quadrant’s notorious bad actors, alien, and human alike. Jeff had done his homework, and he was ready. By the time the station’s docking clamps grasped the Enterprise, concluding the final moments of its mission, Captain Jeff Chamberlain was turning the control handle in the turbolift, heading up to his command, the U.S.S. Challenger, berthed 100 meters above.
As the turbolift door opened with a satisfying ssshhkt sound, Chamberlain tugged once each at his gold triple-braided sleeves, and greeted the dockmaster for what he hoped would be the last time for a long time.
“Nelson,” Chamberlain grunted to the chief.
“Captain Chamberlain, isn’t it exciting? Enterprise has returned,” Chief
Bruce Nelson replied. Nelson was a thin man, slightly older than Chamberlain, graying and balding at the same time. He had kind eyes and an affection for his pet cat that prevented him from serving on active duty aboard a starship. He was dressed in the red uniform shirt of the operations division.
Chamberlain was nonplussed. “Yes, everyone seems excited by it. In fact, it’s all anyone ever talks about these days. Take me over, please.”
“Aye, sir,” Nelson responded. “Bridge docking port or engineering?” Chamberlain gave Nelson a look that made the older man crack a smile. “I had to ask…sir.” In the 18 months that Chamberlain had been flying over to the nearly completed Challenger, he had not once chosen to dock behind the bridge of his command, nor had he chosen to use the transporter. “You’re going out…today, is it, sir?” Nelson inquired with a grin, rocking back and forth on his heels, knowing full well what the Spacedock schedule read.
Chamberlain’s grim visage finally broke. “You know it is,” he laughed.
The elder Nelson clapped Chamberlain on the back. “I do. And there’s never been a better man passed through those bay doors, I can assure you.”
Chamberlain ignored the compliment and as the shuttle pod pulled away from the dock, he gestured toward the front of the engineering hull. “Take me past the dish just one more time, would you please?”
Nelson sighed. “Again? Aye, sir. But you’ve done the math a thousand times. Chamberlain silenced him with another look, to which Nelson sighed, “Aye aye, sir.”
As Nelson piloted the pod around the bow of the secondary hull, Chamberlain regarded the deflector dish, which projected a beam of energy into space ahead of a starship, pushing aside any small debris that might strike the hull. Any impact at the high speeds at which the Challenger would be travelling could be fatal. The captain removed an engineer’s tricorder from his gear and slung the strap around his neck.
“You know, starship captains aren’t assigned engineering tricorders as standard gear, don’t you, sir?” Nelson teased.
“It’s a good thing I brought my own, then,” Jeff smirked. His tricorder was marked with his name, Chief Engineer Jeff Chamberlain, and bore the insignia of the U.S.S. Lexington. Chamberlain tamped down the memories that threatened to burst forth and focused on the task at hand as he flipped the lid open and started scanning. He had been concerned for months that the new, shorter pylon that supported the saucer section of Challenger would cause the deflector dish energy to bleed into the path of the planetary sensor array, the glowing dome at the bottom of the saucer. And for the 1,001st time, the math checked out. There would be no interference. He had requested a modified dish and a protective hood on the bow of the secondary hull just to prevent it, and it seemed to have worked. It had cost an extra two weeks fabricating the parts in Spacedock after Challenger had been towed from Tycho Starship Yards on Earth’s moon, but he had needed to be sure. Chamberlain snapped the tricorder shut and stashed it with his clothing.
“Satisfied?” Nelson smiled.
Chamberlain nodded. “Never more so. She’s ready.”
The chief piloted the shuttle pod down to the engineering hatch and backed in slowly. The connectors cycled around the circular docking ring in sequence, followed by an illuminated green light. “Barber poles,” uttered Nelson.
“Successful docking hasn’t been signaled with the alternating stripes of barber poles in 300 years and you know it,” teased Chamberlain.
“I know, sir, but some traditions ought not be forgotten. Besides, I knew you would know what I meant.”
The younger officer smiled as the hatch opened. “And now I have to greet over 200 kids who probably don’t remember it. Thanks for the lift, Nelson.”
“My pleasure, sir. And godspeed you on your voyage,” sighed the elder chief. “I hope to see you again.”
Port engineering hatch
Chamberlain nodded and turned to the intercom at the stern of the shuttlepod. “Chamberlain to Challenger. Permission to come aboard?”
The female voice on the other side of the intercom replied, “Permission granted, Captain.”
“Then open the pod bay doors, please, Hal.” The pod door did indeed slide open to reveal an attractive young woman with shoulder length dark hair on the Challenger side of the airlock. She was wearing the red uniform of the operations division. She was shaking her head. Chamberlain acted dismayed. “Lieutenant Bichel, please tell me you did not just roll your eyes at your captain from the other side of the hatch.”
The junior officer tried to stifle a smile and failed. “I’m afraid I can’t lie to you, sir. But that joke wasn’t funny the first time you told it back when I was at the academy. Welcome aboard, Captain.”
Captain Jeff Chamberlain
“Thank you, Hal,” Chamberlain responded with a warm smile. Her full first name was Hallie but she never used it. She was only Hallie when she was in trouble. He began to make his way toward turbolift three, when she stopped him. Her tricorder was beeping.
Lt. Hal Bichel
“Sir, one moment, please.” Chamberlain stopped.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Are you carrying any unauthorized equipment on board?”
“No, why?” Chamberlain noticed that Bichel’s hand was on her hip near the grip of the type-2 phaser attached to her belt. She drew her weapon.
Fade to black.
“Space…the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Challenger. Its two-year mission: To answer the call when help is needed; to protect life and preserve the ideals of the United Federation of Planets; to boldly go where no one else would dare.”
When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, the merchandise available was unmatched. There were technical manuals, action figures, ship guides, uniform guides, soundtrack CDs, you name it. The comic books weren’t low-budget books produced by Gold Key, but by DC Comics instead. My favorite item, though, had to be the cutaway poster of the Enterprise-D.
Enterprise-D Cutaway Poster
If you wanted to run a Star Trek: The Next Generation campaign (and I did), this was the very best tool. Unlike the original series, where the best care really wasn’t taken to keep track of where everything was, the producers of TNG knew how rabid Star Trek fans were in their pursuit of trivia and they kept track of everything. I had collected the action figures, toy weapons, and ships obsessively, and when it came time to run another RPG campaign, I was well-prepared. With the seventh season of the series coming to a close in 1994 and the release of Star Trek: Generations, I proposed a new game to my friends.
The premise of the game was simple. The crew of the Galaxy-class starship, Challenger, would voyage to the Delta Quadrant, and seek information on The Borg, my favorite Star Trek villain. They would be equipped with every device ever introduced in the series, including the the soliton wave drive (“New Ground”), and the experimental phase-cloak (“The Pegasus”). Because Federation use of cloaking technology was forbidden by the treaty of Algeron, there would be a Romulan representative onboard to protect their interests. Challenger was a regular United Nations in space, with ambassadors from every world in the quadrant. This provided intrigue and cloak-and-dagger activity aboard ship, aside from the encounters they had along the way. We didn’t use a formal game system, but used pure storytelling instead. I used every prop I had bought and they were all on the table with one rule. If the toy made a sound, the person holding it had to improvise why the weapon or device was activated in the game continuity. That led to some fun! To create unique characters, we took apart Playmates action figures and switched out heads to create different combinations that could represent the characters.
When it came time to play the game, there was a teaser sequence to set things up, and then I played the theme song on a portable CD boombox. I used the Star Trek: The Next Generation alternate main title theme from the Next Generation score soundtrack. None of the players had ever heard it before, so it was a viable Star Trek theme for an original story! I would even hold up “title cards” with the players’ names and the name of the character they were playing, printed in the same font used in TNG.
Then I would change out CDs to use the Generations soundtrack, because it included sound effects for the Enterprise-D, including door chimes, transporters, warp drive, ambient bridge sounds, and more. I had a remote control for the CD player, so I could just enter the track number that I wanted to play on command.
I tried to pace the overall story in acts, like a television show, even pausing for commercial breaks so people could grab snacks or run to the restroom. We were playing in the upstairs game room of The Griffon Bookstore in South Bend, Indiana. I would hang the cutaway poster, which I transported rolled up in a tube, on the wall before we started game play.
I think the game was fairly successful. I know many people remember it fondly. It was just really hard back then to get people to show up at a game away from home. We were in our 20s and 30s (I was 30) and had a lot of things to do.
This was one of the happiest memories I had of the 90s and I’m glad I fell down this memory hole today.
As February rolled in, I settled into a routine. Going to school, visiting my grandparents, going to church, buying comic books. It was comforting to be safe and have that regularity, but I didn’t know that feeling was about to be threatened.
My teacher, Mr. Hunter, was big on reading, so he made sure we all got library cards for Tustin’s small public library. He literally walked us across the street to get our cards and our first books. The first book I checked out was The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen Whitfield. I read the book from cover to cover the first day I had it. I was a huge Star Trek fan from the time I was a little boy, and it was still in syndication. I watched it after school on the black-and-white TV in the living room.
The book was so interesting and I learned so much from it that I read it again over the weekend. It described in great detail what everyone involved with a television production does, from writers to directors to producers, even best boys and gaffers. It had preliminary designs for the Enterprise, detailed views of the props, biographies of the actors, everything to keep a 12-year-old fan’s attention, especially in the age before the Internet. I didn’t take the book to school on Monday, and that turned out to be a costly mistake. My dog, Ladybug, apparently didn’t enjoy the book taking attention away from her, so she chewed off about 1/4 of the cover while I was away.
I had taken responsibility for Ladybug, remember, so I knew I was on the hook for the price of the book, $1.50! I was in a panic. I had to return the book at the end of the week, but I didn’t have $1.50 to pay for it. What was I going to do? I’d already bought a comic book on Sunday (Justice League of America #142) with my church money, so I was dead broke. I didn’t want to tell my dad or my stepmother what had happened, so I was determined to figure things out on my own. I started by trying to sell some of my old toys that I still had and didn’t need anymore to try to raise $1.50, but I couldn’t find anyone who wanted my old stuff.
Justice League of America #142
In Justice League of America #142, the Atom was having a crisis of confidence. The Mighty Mite didn’t think he fit in with a powerful lineup that included Superman, Wonder Woman, and he was ready to retire. He, Aquaman, and the stretchy Elongated Man were forced to fight to protect an alien called Willow, and even then, the Atom felt overwhelmed by the situation. I could relate.
I started looking for kids who weren’t in my class to buy my toys. I was getting desperate. I finally thought I’d found someone, a neighbor kid from down the road that I’d just met. I let him take the toys home before he brought me the money, and I was so relieved. But he returned them the next day because his dad had said no to the deal. I was crestfallen. I was spending nights lying awake, wondering what I was going to do. On the following Monday, I learned something about borrowing books from the library; you could renew a book if you weren’t done with it! I renewed the book for another week, while saving my church money in hopes of eventually paying for the book.
This temporary solution helped me sleep a little, but I was still nervous. After I ran out of renewals, I started paying the fines on a weekly basis. I got my next fifty cents of church money, but I had to pay 10 cents for the late fine for the library, so I was back down to 90 cents. The following week, I got another fifty cents, and paid another 10 cents. I had $1.30 saved up, so I knew it would only be one more week before I could pay for the book. My dad noticed that I wasn’t buying any “funny books,” as he called them. I just looked down at my shoes and said that there weren’t any that I wanted that week. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d done, and I didn’t want to be a burden to him or Peggy. I was still afraid of being sent back to live with my mom. I knew how my dad favored the women in his life.
After another week of fitful sleep, I finally had $1.80 saved up and I took my money to the library along with the damaged book to pay my debt to society. When I shamefully explained the situation, I thought the librarian was going to fall over laughing. She not only forgave and returned my fine money, but she gave me the book as well. They said that I was the first person to check that book out in over five years, and it was headed for the discard pile anyway. She thanked me for being such an honest young man, and sent me on my way. And I was rich! I had two whole dollars, and a book that I would read many, many more times over the years.
The Atom also found his strength, as Willow chooses him to defeat a powerful new enemy, the Construct. The Atom also realizes that he has a place in the Justice League. And I had my place at home. I wasn’t a burden after all.
