Of Unspectacular Marvels

THE BROTHERS ALTAIR IN THE VIRTUAL METAVERSE OF MADNESS

The long-awaited sequel to Twisted Pair

 In an alternate reality, Cade Altair, maddened by grief over the death of his lover, Alana, and the agonizing decline of his estranged, villainous twin brother, Cale, determines to regain everything he’s lost. To which end, his powers unbound, he hunts, subdues, and then merges with his brother, becoming the amalgam Altair entity known as Caje. Meanwhile, in our reality, Cale cannibalises the remnants of Cuzzx’s mind-hacking, programmable A.I., and biowarfare technologies, desperate to restore his powers. The resultant experiment breaches the fabric of the Metaverse, drawing the all-powerful Caje after it.

Cade, warned of the danger by the alien beings who granted him his powers, attempts to seal the breach, and save his brother. Unbeknownst to him, Caje has realised that the intrinsic disparity between this reality’s Cade and Cale is the very catalyst he requires to overthrow the aliens, gain mastery over the Metaverse, and restore Alana to him.

Cade, unable to overcome his amalgamated form and driven to desperation, hurls himself and Cale into the breach, traversing the endless expanses and possibilities of the Virtual Metaverse. Caje must now hunt them across myriad realities, through countless worlds.

A world where Cuzzx reigns supreme.

A world where Cade sacrificed himself to defeat Cuzzx, and Cale, seeking redemption, carries on his mission to defend the Earth.

A world where Cale, not Cade, was the chosen brother.

A world where there was only one child Altair.

A world where the sisters Altaire were chosen (but their bras were not).

A world where Alana yet lives.

Tom & Harry resort to busking on the streets in order to raise some cash to get Voyager home. Tom tries to pick-out ‘I’m Too Sexy’ by Right Said Fred on a broken guitar, whilst Harry accompanies with his little dance.

After a seemingly endless, gruelling week, Janeway’s attempts to relax in a much-deserved bubble bath are thwarted by obstacles as diverse as sub-spatial anomalies; the latest stomach-turning report about ‘Wot Tom dun did’ ; Neelix barging in so that she can sample his latest culinary misadventure; and Q rising from amidst the foam at the other end of the tub, wearing only a snorkel…

The crew discover that Voyager’s insurance policy expired the moment they were catapulted into the Delta Quadrant.  In yet another bid to get himself fired, Robert Beltran disappeared for a week without warning. The production team hastily cast Lou Diamond Phillips as his stand-in, and all the female actors had an oestrogen-fuelled meltdown.  As more and more of Voyager’s crew members are ‘getting it on’ (not including Paris), Janeway (who, of course, isn’t getting any) feels that there should be some guidelines in place. Tuvok and Neelix disagree wildly over how this should be implemented, and each devises his own method for keeping the Voyager crew’s burgeoning sexual urges in check. Why not tune into ‘Neelix’s Love Kitchen’ chat-show for some friendly advice? Or, for the more shrewd, you can replicate yourself a copy of ‘How to fornicate safely and responsibly with Tuvok’.   Seska sends Voyager photographs from the Maquis Christmas party where Chakotay got drunk, stripped-off and, for the benefit of everyone present, enacted vividly what he’d like to do to Admiral Blackwell with a large marrow... In spite of himself, Neelix manages to bake the most awesome apple pie that anyone has ever seen. Ever. Thus begins a madcap and surprisingly bloody battle of wits, as numerous individuals conspire to steal it even as it lies cooling in the mess hall. (In order to save the Voyager crew from themselves, Tuvok later jumps into an environmental suit and takes the pie for a precarious space walk across the hull).  Bored out of his holomatrix in sickbay, the Doctor takes to sitting in the doorway and shouting hurtful, bitchy remarks at passers-by like a cantankerous rube on his porch. The crew realises that Neelix is essentially a child abductor – and that they are all accessories after the fact.

Voyager attempts to ford the treacherous expanse of space known locally as ‘The Back Passage’. Meanwhile, the contents of Chakotay’s medicine bundle are stolen and replaced with a pink-haired troll, a used condom and a broken Leonard Cohen record.

When Harry really, really needs to take a whizz on the way back from an away mission, Tom lands their shuttlecraft on an uninhabited forest moon. Whilst relieving himself against a tree, the young ensign is ambushed by the primitive indigenous race of tree-dwelling monkey-folk and faces having his manhood removed for defiling their most sacred tree. Someone has been scrawling obscene graffiti all over the ship in red crayon. Simultaneously, all the red crayons from Kes’s colouring-in box seem to have gone missing. It’s up to detective Tuvok to investigate! After months of fruitless searching, Harry finds the battered end of his clarinet - only to have it stolen by a cheeky little alien bastard who collects assorted crap. Meanwhile, Neelix serves-up some Spotted Dick in the mess hall. The Doctor attempts to convince B’Elanna that she is half Mars bar rather than half Klingon. He’s even compiled some diagrams of her DNA structure, indicating the human-to-confectionary ratio… 

The crew discover that Janeway has been moonlighting as a Dolly Parton tribute act on the holodeck.

When the crew can’t figure out whether they need to go left or right at a binary star system, Chakotay drinks peyote (hahahathatrhymes) in order to commune with his spirit guide. Unbeknownst to him, alas, Paris – to maintain their ongoing ‘feud’ - has replaced his supply with a combination of Sunny Delight and Toilet Duck.  Tripping major space balls, the commander strips naked and proceeds to run up and down the corridors, stopping occasionally to whisper to/ suck the carpets or stick his manhood into any and all electrical outlets. After being told to ‘chill the eff out, daddio’ (Janeway), Tuvok comes across a copy of ‘Eddie Murphy’s Book of Bitchin’ One-Liners’ in Voyager’s lost-and-found box.

...is that the reed from Harry’s clarinet in there, too?

The crew hold a bake sale in the hope of making new alien friends in the sector via the medium of cake. Neelix undertakes the challenge of baking a Sporidian soufflé (or something), whilst Tuvok breaks out his ‘legendary’ Vulcan mild-tasting nutritional baked oblongs. Unbeknownst to anyone aboard Voyager, however, the whole affair soon comes to the attention of Gastrus: the bitchiest food critic in the quadrant. If Janeway and co. can’t impress him, they face imminent destruction. Guest stars Loyd Grossman. 

Paris is put on report after he’s caught doing inappropriate things to a gel pack. Meanwhile, the replicators start dispensing nothing but Flumps. Under Chakotay’s guidance, Janeway finally makes contact with her spirit guide: Big Bird.

(Well, we’ll say a provisional Big Bird…or, I dunno: a kestrel with the voice of Ethel Merman. Whatever.)

Rumours abound of an episode filmed almost entirely on the fly as the result of an altercation on set. The story goes that, during a take, a disgruntled extra on the bridge referred to Kate Mulgrew as ‘Moody Mulgy’ just a little too loudly. Mulgrew then leapt like a crazed wolverine onto the unfortunate background actor; Robert Beltran tried to intervene, only to wind up grappling with the livid Mulgrew. After a good few minutes of them rolling and flailing across the floor of the bridge, Tim Russ allegedly leapt down and successfully administered the Vulcan neck-pinch to both parties (others say he just bitch-slapped the pair of them into unconsciousness).

Unable to stall for time, the production team simply made-up a story on the spot, where Janeway and Chakotay contract space scurvy and go nuts.

Kes wakes up aboard what appears to be an orbital convent, with no memory of how she got there. Before she can make sense of her situation she is packed off, space guitar(?) in hand, by the Mother Superior to minister to a close-knit alien race known as the Voen’tr’aaps.

Thinking solely with his d**k once again, Paris hacks the Doctor’s programme and adds a cheeky hidden subroutine. The result of his prank is such that, whenever a female crew member visits sickbay for a particular check-up, the Doctor involuntarily shouts ‘Jesus mother-loving Christ! I’m being sucked into a black hole!’ Voyager picks up a trio of free-spirited hitch-hikers who are making their way to Cosmopalooza!, the most totally bodacious music festival this side of the Necrit Expanse. Smitten with the fey Florella Starfondler, Harry decides to bunk-off and tag along. Whilst awaiting his cameo in ‘Death Wish’, Jonathan Frakes takes the helm as a guest director once again. Desperate to milk his Star Trek persona for all it’s worth, he ensures that every scene in the episode contains his likeness – be it a framed press shot, a bearded extra straddling a chair, or a piece of erotic sculpture – in the hope that fans will petition the show runners to add William T. Riker to the Voyager family! The crafty bastard… Chakotay invokes the parable of ‘The woodchuck and the disgruntled badger’ in an attempt to help two warring alien factions make peace. Tuvok then points out a flaw in the narrative, and within minutes they’re back to beating the s**t out of each other.  Kes gets a boo-boo.  When B’Elanna’s secret pet, Renegade M.C. Hamster, escapes into the ship, she fears that her reputation will suffer and everyone will see just how vulnerable she really is (which is probably why she doesn’t tell them that his name is actually Mr. Wubbles).  Voyager gets stuck in mega space traffic at the Ira Via turnpike near the Anulum Via nebula cluster. Let’s just pray that they’ve got the exact change for the Feta Tolonium - if they ever get there…………what? Yes, it’s Latin. If a Vulcan splinter group can have planets called Romulus & Remus, I don’t think it’s that far-fetched…said the show’s scriptwriters…not me…them. 

The Doctor informs the crew that they have all been infected with space gout, and must report directly to sickbay for inoculation. He proceeds to subject them all to three hours’ worth of lukewarm stand-up material (or, rather, naked insults) before admitting he made the whole thing up. Janeway orders Torres to shut-down the EMH programme, eject the floppy disc and jettison it in an escape pod. Then everybody contracts space malaria.

Having only just learnt of the passing of Rene Auberjonois, I’ve collected some of the Odo-centric missing episodes from the first thee series of DS9 that we never got to see...and never will.

Nog and Jake persuade Odo that a dried-up piece of Play-Doh is in fact the fossilized remains of one of his own kind, prompting him to undertake a dangerous journey into the Gamma Quadrant.

Odo is confused by a lava lamp. 

It’s just asking for trouble when Larry the janitor borrows Odo’s pail to mop-up some strange alien sick - which looks curiously  just like Odo in his liquid state - and then flushes it into space…

Odo forms a curious bond with a homeless cat on board the station - only to discover it’s wanted for murder on the planet Rodentia.

Jake’s florid attempts at love poetry are stolen by Odo and posted throughout the station, as the constable embarks upon a calculated campaign of acting like a monumental dick. Sisko, O’Brien & Bashir persuade Odo to join their barbershop quartet. Rather awkwardly for him, however, a certain relative of Deanna Troi just happens to show up at their first gig… 

Odo mishears O'Brien using the phrase 'as dead as a dodo,’ and becomes convinced that the 'tricky Irish bastard’ (Sisko) is out to kill him. 

Bashir uses the archaic British idiom of someone being a 'wind-up merchant,’ and Odo becomes convinced that one of the vendors on the station is secretly a renegade clockwork android killing-machine.    In a bid to help him develop a hobby (or just to end an awkward conversation), Sisko suggests that Odo revive the old station radio…station(?) and host his own show. Unfortunately, Quark dusts-off an old contract that clearly entitles him to exclusive radio broadcast rights on DS9 - provided he doesn’t repeat the gaff that saw the whole thing axed in the first place. In order to moderate Quark’s content and keep his new-found love of DJ-ing alive (though he isn’t all-that great at it), the old adversaries find themselves co-hosting as ‘Lobes & the Stretch-Guy’. Nog and Jake leave a packet of Jelly Babies near Odo’s office, whereupon the constable believes them to be a group of dormant infant changelings he must now father. Nobody bothers to tell him the truth because it’s too funny - at least for a while.  

Annoyed by what he perceives to be recent laxity in station security, Odo presents Sisko with a new code of conduct for all new arrivals on DS9, which he calls his list of ‘Odos and Odon’ts’. When Sisko points out that, as a play on words, it doesn’t really work, Odo stalks off, moodily. Later that evening, Kira is granted a terrifying vision of a dystopian future, in which Odo has become the tyrannical ‘Supreme Dictator of the Alpha Quadrant’, ruthlessly enforcing even the most trivial of rules and regulations. The whole plotline is basically a vehicle/ excuse for the episode title‘Odo, you don’t!’

Odo is livid when he discovers that Quark has manufactured a line of ‘Stretch Odo’ action figures…and they’re not selling.

Having lent Odo another of his detective comics, tensions arise between O'Brien and the constable when the latter comes to read ‘Dick Tracy vs Prune Face’. 

Although initially flattered by the verbal pun, the captain’s patience soon wears thin as everybody insists on announcing that they’re doing every last little f***ing thing ‘the Jane-Way’ - a habit as ubiquitous as the t-shirts and other assorted merchandise on sale in the mess hall… As series/ season two kicks-off, everybody does their ‘guess what minor alteration I’ve made to my appearance since the first run to denote the passage of time’ shtick. To which end, Harry’s over-sized comedy glasses don’t last too long. A pity Tuvok didn’t get to keep his hi-top fade, though... 

Drunk out of his skull at a trade outpost bar, a semi-naked Paris bets a group of surly Greasærians that Voyager can outrun any ship in the sector. Consequently, the crew soon find themselves participating in a space street race(?) through an area of gravimetric instabilities locally referred to as ‘The S**t-Storm’.

The bridge crew get another potted plant to complement the one they got in the first series (easy, Mr. Tuvok). Also, they find a way home which inevitably doesn’t work out.

Wednesday night is Disco Night in the mess hall! Time to break out your flares and strut your funky stuff, Chakotay!

Janeway commissions Kes to make a mural using her crayons and finger paints, so everybody in the mess hall can feel all warm and fuzzy and go ‘awwwww’ whilst avoiding eating whatever crap Neelix has broiled this week. Alas, despite the overall naïve charm and nascent existentialist leanings of the piece by Voyager’s ickle pwincess (also referred to as Ensign Snugglebunny), she makes Crayola Janeway look just a little too fat - and then s**t really hits the fan.

Rumour has it that the Delaney sisters have made a list of all the male crew members, ranking them in order of hotness (kinda like that South Park episode…which won’t air for another ten years, because this is 1995/6). Convinced he’s bottom of the pile, Harry overcompensates by swaggering everywhere and maintaining a firm grip on his crotch.

The Doctor sets-up a rudimentary crazy golf course in sickbay for his private use, having accumulated a stash of personal effects from crew members who traded them for hardcore drugs. Is that Harry’s clarinet on the third hole?

Voyager keeps going round and round the same asteroid after Paris claims he can see the face of Robert Reed in it. Meanwhile, Harry tries to sneak his bed sheets down to the laundry room without anyone seeing after…well, after…y’know. GOD! WHY IS TORRES ALWAYS AROUND WHEN THESE THINGS HAPPEN?!

Neelix attempts a beef casserole. Concurrently, Voyager gets swallowed by some kind of giant space whale. Somehow one of these problems will resolve the other.

Tuvok uses the neck pinch on this really annoying kid who wouldn’t shut the f*** up when the crew visits yet another generic alien hippy commune. He is immediately taken captive and commanded by the weary-looking village elders to work his magic on the rest of the little s***s.  In his absence, law & order aboard Voyager break down as all the toilet paper goes missing mysteriously…

In the wake of Seska’s betrayal, Chakotay seems thoroughly bummed-out (especially since Disco Night Wednesdays didn’t last too long). In an unusually generous move, Paris lends him Brandy, his inflatable playmate, who is subsequently possessed by a malevolent, incorporeal life-form who tries to take-over the ship. Meanwhile, Neelix experiments with chub.

With spirits aboard Voyager at an all-time low, Chakotay decides to boost morale by playing the panpipes up and down the corridors - along with peddling some rudimentary dream catchers he gets Harry and Kes to make with glitter glue. All of Harry’s uniforms shrink in the wash, so the young ensign has to go on shift in his vest and boxer shorts. The rest of the crew - including Janeway - find every excuse to send him on errands around the ship, just so they can all chase him and flick him with wet towels.

B’elanna has a very Klingon time-of-the-month, so…Neelix is probably gonna die.

When Tuvok learns that his collection of souvenir spoons has been traded away accidentally, he goes bat-s**t crazy.  

Janeway alone is caught in a temporal loop which, unbeknownst to her, doesn’t affect the amount of coffee she drinks. Wired like a thirteen-amp plug after only the fourth time round, she decides to pilot Voyager straight into a nearby supernova – because that’s where the cream lives!

Neelix starts incorporating a wondrous new vegetable into pretty-much every dish he rustles-up. Unfortunately, excessive consumption of this particular marrow results in a prolonged laxative effect followed by an agonising death.

The Doctor’s programme experiences a yet another glitch when someone changes a light bulb, causing his holo-matrix to render him in good old-fashioned 8-bit resolution.

Two days into the voyage home and everyone’s already sick to the back teeth of Neelix.

Whilst the crew busy themselves piling-up the bodies of the dead Starfleet crew-members, clearing away the fragments of exploded computer parts and trying to get all the blood out of the carpet, all the toilets aboard Voyager stop working. It never rains but it pours…

Janeway starts to crumble under the stark reality of Voyager’s situation, and resorts to huffing helium in order to calm down. Luckily, no one on the bridge seems to have noticed…

Tensions between the Maquis and Starfleet crew-members come to a head and the latter ends-up getting royally served by Seska and company. With some trepidation, Janeway and Chakotay decide that the Starfleet personnel must represent in order to achieve a lasting respect between the disparate factions of Voyager’s new crew. Unfortunately, no-one from the academy seems able to spin a rhyme…no-one, that is, except Tuvok.

All the male personnel don’t quite know how to feel when they learn that Kes is only, like, two years old or something. Except Paris: he knows exactly what to feel...I mean, exactly what he feels. I mean...he's a horny, horny man.

Chakotay must try to reason with B’elanna when he learns that the entire engineering team is living in fear of ‘the Klingon titty-twister’.  Neelix experiments with a load of Spam he finds in the cargo bay, before learning that it’s a foodstuff. Supposedly. 

Harry’s confidence plummets when he realizes that he is the most uninteresting member of the cast…I mean crew. Perhaps breaking-out his old Short Round impression will help give him some edge? Hold on to your potatoes! 

After weeks of ardent wooing (or, rather, unsubtle innuendo), Tom finally beds Ensign Hilton. Unbeknownst to her, he films the entire thing to enjoy again later - but brags about it to Harry who promptly steals the cassette (yep: cassette. It’s 1995, after all). Seska then steals the cassette from Harry and starts distributing copies amongst the sex-starved crew… just because. Soon enough, the Paris/ Hilton tape is a ship-wide sensation. Briefly.

Tom and Harry decide to wind-up the Doctor by running into sickbay, shouting ‘shut-in slap-head: suck my balls!’ and stealing handfuls of swabs on the way out. Pissed beyond belief, the Doctor decides to enlist Kes in helping him get his revenge…then he remembers that she’s only, like, two years old or something. But she has boobies, so…? Voyager flies past a load of stuff like we see in the opening credits instead of our just seeing it from the same three angles, over and over. The crew starts to look a little worse for wear, and someone finally takes a shot at Neelix.

Paris, having bedded pretty-much every female crew-member within the first month, made sure to hide so many of their bras that a ship-wide shortage is soon declared. Tuvok, of course, offers a viable solution. What a dick.

The Doctor refuses to treat anybody unless they willingly humiliate themselves for his personal gratification first - whether they’re bleeding to death or not. Except Kes, because she’s, like, two years old or whatever. Ethics, dude. Jeez. After Voyager's initial encounter with the Kazon, Paris starts referring to them as the 'I can't believe they're not Klingons!', completely forgetting about B'elanna. The chief engineer seems fine with it, however - until she traps his manhood in a Jeffries tube access port. All the elaborate holodeck programmes - like Paris's bar - are turned-off because, oh, I don't know, Voyager is stranded in the Delta Quadrant and needs to CONSERVE POWER OR  SOMETHING?!

Voyager holds a space garage sale(?) in the shuttle bay, and Neelix unwittingly sells Harry to troupe of travelling space actors(?). The young Ensign appears lost forever, until Tuvok discovers that the actors’ repertoire consists solely of Benny Hill routines they’ve picked-up from old Earth broadcasts. You all know what’s coming. 

With the food reserves all-but depleted, the crew draw lots to see who gets the last pack of sardines from the larder (Voyager must have a larder, surely? Or the galley. Whatever.). It all gets rather tense. Oh, and something trans-dimension-y happens in between. 

After a fourteen hour shift, B’elanna gets ‘mega-hangry’ and bends a ladle round Neelix’s head. (All she wanted was some soup, not some protracted bollocks about made-up space vegetables.)

The station takes delivery of yet another new runabout and, as no one can think of any other rivers to name it after, O’Brien suggests that they just call it Joan.

Sisko’s runabout (Joan – that’s right: it lasts one whole episode) is shot down by an unknown enemy, leaving him to pit his wits, resolve and all-round bad-assery(?) against a predatory alien foe on a dense jungle moon. Guest stars an 8-year old Mason Gamble as Noxius, the Heart-Gouger.

Odo is livid when he discovers that Quark has manufactured a line of ‘Stretch Odo’ action figures…and they’re not selling. A bright-eyed Dr Bashir arrives at Federation outpost D0-UC7E, eager to get underway and earn his ‘Special Certificate for Awesome Spacemanship’ as recommended by Commander Sisko – who didn’t stop grinning the whole time he was telling him about it!

Quark gets a karaoke machine.

Sisko, Dax and O’Brien find themselves stranded in a strange parallel universe, not unlike Earth in the early 1990s, where they must help a small, affable red creature find his missing friends, ‘D’, ‘S’ and ‘9’ in order to get home.

The crew manages to wedge the Defiant between the middle command bit and the inner ring of the station.

Jadzia gets so drunk that she vomits-up the Dax symbiont.

Garak wryly displays a single pair of gorgeous red shoes in his window, causing all the women on the station to go mad and in Kira nearly strangling Leeta to death. Kira then takes Bashir hostage and threatens to vaporize his manhood if the shoes aren’t delivered to her within the hour. Even ol’ ‘Sisko Slap de Chienne’ can’t restore order…but maybe Gul Dukat can…

Having lent Odo another of his detective comics, tensions arise between O'Brien and the constable when the latter comes to read 'Dick Tracy vs Prune Face'. Keiko leaves Molly with Bashir for a few minutes, which is plenty of time for the chatty little munchkin to tell him about all the ‘funny names that daddy calls you at home’...

Annoyed by what he perceives to be recent laxity in station security, Odo presents Sisko with a new code of conduct for all new arrivals on DS9, which he calls his list of ‘Odos and Odon’ts’. When Sisko points out that, as a play on words, it doesn’t really work, Odo stalks off, moodily. Later that evening, Kira is granted a terrifying vision of a dystopian future, in which Odo has become the tyrannical ‘Supreme Dictator of the Alpha Quadrant’, ruthlessly enforcing even the most trivial of rules and regulations. The whole plotline is basically a vehicle/ excuse for the episode title ‘Odo, you don’t!’