Friday, February 7, 2025

Star Trek: Stardate 1000000.0

 I had a post ready to go for today but I am moving it in favor of this dream I had last night.

Andromeda Galaxy

My wife and I are HUGE Star Trek fans. One of the very first things we did as "just friends" was to watch the premier of the first episode of Star Trek the Next Generation together. When the episode "All Good Things" aired, we were taking our first vacation together as a couple. When Voyager began we were dating. When it ended we were married, had a house and a kid. Throughout our relationship Trek has been there.

Right now, we are in the process of re-watching all the Trek series. We didn't go in order, but we have watched Enterprise, Voyager, Discovery, and now we are on Strange New Worlds. Likely to hit The Original series next.

Where am I going with this? Well Trek has been on my mind lately. I was chatting with Steve over at Vulcan Stev's Database (a great place for Trek information) about his Beckett Mariner post that inspired my own. I have been doing TARDIS Captain's Character Challenge and one of my popular posts was about my USS Challenger and Capt. John Adnerg. AND I have been talking a bit in the FASA Star Trek Facebook groups about printing more FASA-era Starships on my 3D-Printer.  So yeah. The fact that I am dreaming about Star Trek is no shock or surprise; save for what I was dreaming about.

Stardate 1000000.0

One idea I keep coming back to is extra-galactic travel in Trek. During the Next-Gen eras travel was still confined with the Alpha and Beta quadrants of our galaxy. The Gamma (Deep Space Nine) and Delta (Voyager) quadrants had been stepped into, but only a little bit. Even in the post-Burn, post-reformation of Starfleet and the Federation of the 32nd Century (Discovery, 3190) have not ventured outside the Galactic Barrier

I must have had the DC Comics "DC One Million" on my mind as well. This takes place in a future where DC comics, from their then current numbering system would hit issue 1,000,000 of Action Comics. That would be  853rd Century CE.

For my Stardate 1000000.0 I figured it would be 200 or so years after the end of Discovery. Trekguide.com tells me that Stardate 1000000.0 is Thu Jul 23 3407 08:33:20 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time). So, the start of the 35th Century CE. Memory Alpha has nothing for this time period.

So what is this all about?

The mission for this Trek game (and I have NO idea what system yet) is a newly constructed ship made mostly of programable matter and holotech, leaving our galaxy to explore the Andromeda Galaxy. This obviously goes way beyond warp drive. It is 2.5 million light-years from Earth.

Extra-galactic travel is not really a thing in Star Trek. Though there have been some run-ins with refugees from the Andromeda Galaxy in Trek (some androids, the Iconians) there has been enough to explore in our own Galaxy. Extra-galactic travel is a thing in many other franchises like Dune and Doctor Who, and very recently Star Wars. 

I don't know what system to use yet (13 Parsecs maybe), nor what the general adventure hooks are save for "explore strange new worlds." I am not planning on a huge horror element, but given that this is me talking horror is going to be there somewhere. I don't even know what sort of drive will get them there or even what ship. At Warp 9.0 it would take 2000 years to get there and I have no idea how fast the new (3191) Pathway Drive is. 

In any case, this is not something I am going to take on soon. But I'll keep thinking about it and see where I end up.

1 comment:

Vulcan Stev said...

Gee, I wish I was close enough to play in this game with you.

It sounds like fun.