I Don't Normally Talk About the Cast Members of the Reboot...

Normally, I only write remembrances of the original cast members of TOS.  However, I really couldn't go without saying something about this tragedy that hit the reboot cast hard.  So, let me begin...

As I have said in an earlier post, 2015 was a pretty sad year for Star Trek. Nimoy left us, then Whitney, then Hynes, as well as others like James Horner, Harve Bennett, and probably others who I can't recall right now. These people were part of Star Trek's past, and as sad as it is, you do expect that at some point they will leave us.

Who on Earth would have thought that someone from Star Trek's reboot future would leave us too soon?!

I was blown away when I heard the sad news of Anton Yelchin, the young man who played Chekov in the Star Trek reboot films. While it is true that I never liked the first Star Trek reboot, never saw the second one and don't plan to see the third, I truly did like this young actor.  He always gave a strong performance in all of his roles, including the role of Mel Gibson's son in The Beaver.  I even thought that his performance as Chekov was spot on, getting all of the Walter Koenig inflections right and yet making the character his own.

Anton Yelchin was only 27.

Never to see 30.

But, the most tragic thing of all...

He was an only child.

Could you imagine the loss his parents must be feeling right now…



Anton Yelchin
1989-2016

Just dropping a line...

Hey guys,

ProvidenceMine here.

Just wanted to let you know that I am almost finished with Draft Zero, so the continuation of the story is on its way.

Thank you so much for being patient.

Janice Rand will enter the building soon.

See you soon :D

Aren't You All Aglow In Your Thousand Yard Stare Chapter Four

Aren’t You All Aglow In Your Thousand Yard Stare

Chapter Four

ProvidenceMine

From the expanse of the bleach whiteness of the ceiling, a small blue white light encircled overhead from where Rand sat.  It was like a comet, its illuminating tail leaving a pathway behind it, as it encroached itself towards her, its humming sound getting louder with each passing descent.  It made a sudden stop, and Rand was able to see reflections of light elongated on either side of the circle.  It was a tube, clear and long as it moved closer to her.  Rand could feel the blood drain from her face and neck.  These officers were not going to stop at the electroshock torture, but were going to bring down a new brand of hell-on-earth for her-this she could be sure of.

The tube finally stopped and hovered about 12 inches from her head.  Rand was transfixed by this new and deadly unknown, the crystalline instrument glinting against the whiteness of the interrogation room.

“Perhaps you might be able to answer the question now, prisoner?”

Rand’s attention was forced back to the cool, measured voice of her Vulcan inquisitor, his upper body leaning forward over the table as he looked at her levelly from his slit-like alien eyes. 

“I told you I can’t answer that question!  Ask me something else, damn it!!”

Rand and Glok glared at each other for awhile until Rand felt something cold and hard snap around her ankles and wrists clamping her onto the arms and legs of the chair.  She looks down and panics, struggling fruitlessly against the restraints which were as black as the chair and tables themselves.  The tube, which had been hovering above ominously, lowered itself smoothly to the floor, effectively encasing her in its walls.  When Rand heard the rim seal itself around her, the restraints suddenly popped open. 

“What the hell?!”  Confused, Rand raised her arms towards her and rubbed her wrists.  She saw Glok and the male guard looking at her.  She couldn’t see the female guard, so she turned behind her sharply, and saw that she was next to the entrance where she and Rand had entered this room earlier. 

“Cadet, please answer the question.”

Rand’s attention returned to Glok.  “I guess this means we’re going to run around this tree all night?!”

“If you like.  If you want me to wait, prisoner, I can be a most patient individual.” 

“Patience is a virtue, so they say,” said Rand, her nerve rearing itself upfront.

The silence lengthened between them, so much so that Rand became a little fidgety.  She yarned, she bent over in her chair, she rubbed her nose, stretched her legs.  All the while Glok sat there, watching her.  There was no sign of irritation, impatience, nothing.  Rand sat back in her chair and crossed her arms in defiance, and Glok crossed his arms as well, easing back into his own chair.  When Rand saw this copycat gesture the sheer absurdity made her break out in sudden laughter.  It started out as a giggle, low and soft as its echo bounced off the walls of the tubing and floated around the silence of the room.  Her laughter build and grew, morphing from giggling, to cackling, then to bursting guffaws-loud and crude.  Tears ran from her eyes as Rand heaved and gulped in the waning air between fits and mirth.  As her laughter continued, her ears began to plug up and Rand found herself swallowing in order to unplug them to ease the discomfort.  She went on like this for some time, almost like autopilot--laughing, swallowing, heaving, gulping.  Her breathing became more shallow, her throat became more dry.  Again, Rand began to panic.

“Can you answer the question at this time, Cadet Rand?”

Glok’s voice was condescending, slithery, eerily calm like still water.  Rand grips onto the arms of either side of the chair and leans forward in her chair.

“For someone’s who’s a Vulcan you don’t hear well, do you?!” 

Her voice came out high, strained.  The dryness that was forming inside of her throat was now spreading to her mouth and nose.  Rand stumbled blindly off of the chair and banged on the surrounding tube with both fists, like a madwoman.  Glok pushed himself away from the table and got up from his chair.  He walked towards Rand until he was face to face with her.  Standing poker-faced, he asked the question again while he watched her struggle against the thinning oxygen in her torture chamber. 

Rand opened her mouth and tried to speak, but it was as if a thick arid wad was stuffed down her passage, blocking all means of breathing, all means of life.

Oh, God…Oh…My…GOD…!!

Rand’s eyes started to blur, the images smeared across her vision like glittery apparitions, her knees starting to give way.  As she collapsed, the last thing Rand heard before blacking out was Glok asking her that same goddamn question spoken in his native tongue.

  

Aren't You All Aglow In Your Thousand Yard Stare Chapter Three part two

Aren’t You All Aglow In Your Thousand Yard Stare   

Chapter Three

part two

ProvidenceMine

“You are Cadet Janice Eudora Rand, is this correct?”

Rand shook her head and rolled her eyes.  “Yeah,” she said bluntly.

The commander looked up from the document and simply raised a brow.  Rand sighed. “Correct, Sir,” she said more politely. “Very good,” said Glok.

Oh, isn’t he polite.

“I am going to ask you a series of questions about yourself, and you are to answer me with as much detail and clarity as possible.  Is this understood, Cadet Rand?”

Rand was apprehensive.  “What kind of questions…”

“Is this understood, prisoner?”  Commander Glok wasn’t loud, but he raised and tightened his voice just enough so that Rand got the message, especially since he replaced the more congenial ‘Cadet Rand’ with the more subjugative ‘Prisoner.’ 

Rand felt her cockiness dissipate. 

She became fearful.

So, she decided it was best to get along.  “Yes,” said Rand defeated.  “Yes, I understand.”

The commander’s smile was faint, small, but it held an arrogance that spoke volumes for Rand. 

“Don’t think for one friggin’ moment that you’ve broken me, asshole,” she thought to herself.

“Fine,” he said, his voice holding a slight clip.  “Let us begin, then.”  He returned to the document and scanned it over before posing the first question.  When he was finished, Glok looked up expectantly.  Rand looked right back at Glok, smiling tentatively, her humor and nerve returning, though in a small dose.  “This is a joke, right?” 

The commander said nothing.

Rand was speechless, that small window of bravado slamming shut in her face as panic rose inside her.  She stared at Glok, straight into his eyes, as if fishing for some kind of mercy from this twisted game.

“Answer the question, prisoner.”

Rand tried to speak, but her words fell out in fractured bits.  Glok repeated the question.

“How in the HELL am I supposed to answer that?!” 

She heard noises behind her, the sounds of clicks and rotations, as if something was being fastened.

And then…

“EEEOOOWWW!!!!!”

Pain seared her left shoulder in pulsating waves, hitting her like a legion of claws lacerating through the flimsy material of her prison garb.  She fell hard on the floor, her arms flapping and her legs twisting underneath her.  Hostility rose inside Rand, mingling unpleasantly with the twinges and spasms of physical torment in her limbs.  She clenched her fists as she fought the urge to hurt both the commander and the female guard.  Rand took a long, shuttering breath before flattening her palms to the floor in an attempt to hoist herself up. 

Rand felt a hand tuck in the pit of her elbow, and realized that the female guard who had shocked her was now trying to help her up.  Rand violently pulled her arm away, and pushed herself up from the floor.  As she plopped back on the hard seat, she eyeballed the female guard and then Glok.  Rand was pissed as all get out, but she was also helpless.  Helpless, which made her all the more pissed. 

Commander Glok sat patiently, his hands folded on the table. He looked at Rand, and as if on cue by a silent prompter, simply asked the question again.

That uncontrollable rage exploded out of Rand, her body shaking and hot like a volcano.

“YOU’RE KIDDING ME, MAN!! I CAN’T ANSWER ANY QUESTION THAT…!!!

The second shock engulfed her, making its way from between her shoulder blades to the rest of her.  Rand’s spine curled and then snapped forward like a whip, making her slam against the edge of the table with her forehead before falling to the floor again, face down. 

Rand seethed as she lied prone on the floor, her fingers curling into clenches as the pain from the shock augmented the throbbing that was now in her forehead.

“Are you all right, cadet?”

Rand, in spite of her condition, laughed.  That must have been perhaps the most ludicrous question that anyone ever asked her!

‘Look at me, dipshit’ is what she wanted to say.

Rand didn’t answer him, but slid her hands underneath her and pushed herself up with great effort, finally sitting on her knees as she looked at the emotionless face of Commander Glok.  “Take a wild guess,” she said tightly, as if trying to contain herself.  She struggled, but Rand was able to push herself up on shaky legs and plop herself back on what had to be the hardest seat she ever had to sit on.  She really didn’t know which was worse, the seat or the cold icebox of a floor.  Commander Glok sat as before, hands folded over the dossier, his eyes steady, watchful, like an owl studying its prey-and as before, he asked the same exact question in the same exact inflection.  Rand shut her eyes, knowing that she did not want another shock to her system, yet dreading that it would be her fate.  She felt her body make an attempt at shielding itself, her shoulders curling inward.  “God, no,” she thought.

God, no no no!”

Commander Glok’s eyes swept over Rand as he sat back in his chair.  “I am most surprised that you cannot answer this question, cadet.  According to your academic record, this particular skill should be, shall we say, painless for you,” he said following his statement with a slight cock to his dark red brow. 

Rand wanted to rip his face off.  “Painless, huh?”

“Yes. Painless. Easy.”

They love that word ‘easy’ around here, don’t they. 

Easy or not, Rand knew that she had to do this.  She  closed her eyes and went back in her mind, back to the things she’d learned, skills she had acquired throughout her life.  She could feel herself unwind, feel her body uncoil from the tightness and the fear.  Everything was suddenly familiar to her, as if a thick fog parted and unveiled a clearing, a way out of the forest.  For the first time since entering this program, she was clear.  Rand opened her eyes, turned to Commander Glok, and answered the question. 

“Moi et ma familie sont initialement de New Jersey et resident toujours la.”

The Vulcan did something unexpected.  He smiled, widely.  He even showed teeth, lots of big, strong white ones all in a row. Its appearance was rather brief, however.

It was replaced by a self-satisfying smirk.  “Do you see?  You do know the answer.  It all came back to you, did it not?”

Rand answered by breathing a sigh of relief, perhaps the biggest sigh she ever breathed in her life.  

“Yeah, who would have thought.  They should add a shocking device to all the desks of every Kindergarten class for more solid retention of the Alphabet.”

“It is heartening to hear that you are in good humor,” said Glok.

Rand snickered, shaking her head at the enormity of the absurdity.

“Very good.  Shall we continue then, cadet?”

“I can hardly wait,” Rand snorted.

The Vulcan’s eyes went back and forth between Rand and the dossier, his eyes the only part of his body that was in any motion, like the blinking lights of a computer.  When he finally posed the next question to her, Rand sighed and smiled to herself.  She was far more relaxed now, far more composed, though still pissed off.  Taking a beat, Rand went back to skills learned in her recent past, digging them up, sorting them through, and then answering the question in the Vulcan tongue in which it was asked.  Afterwards, she folded her hands in front of her on the desk and waited. 

The Vulcan put down the dossier and raised a brow.  “You are correct,” he said.

Rand wanted to collapse in utter relief, but she wasn’t going to give these guys the satisfaction. 

No, Sir.

No, thank you.

She didn’t think so…

Her knowledge of the Vulcan language was pretty rudimentary, as the yeomanship training program taught her just enough of the language to get by on a routine trip:  “Where’s is the nearest compound?”  “When will the next shuttlecraft leave for the space station?”  “Where’s the bathroom?” Stuff like that. 

As for French, that was a language she knew well, as she had 12 years of it in school, though she hardly ever used it outside of classes.  

Why in the hell did she ever want to learn French anyway?  She had forgotten the reason.

“Well, I rescued myself from another bit of shock therapy,” she thought.

So far, so fucking good-though Rand wasn’t quite sure just how long her luck would last.  Glok posed four more questions to her in Vulcan, and she was able to answer every one of them.  Thank God.  “If things keep up like this, it’ll be over before you know it,” thought Rand with giddiness.

The Vulcan posed the next question to Rand, again in his native tongue, and waited for the answer.  Rand began to speak, but then hesitated.

“Wait, I know I know this one,” she said aloud in a voice that was now wavering slightly.  She cleared her throat as Glok looked at her in that emotionless mask of his, his hand on the dossier.  Rand was tempted to tap her fingers on the table, but opted to rotate her ankles instead.

 “Never let them see you sweat,” she thought.

She went through a number of possible answers to this particular question, but even the proper use of the goddamn verb had stumped her.  Rand could feel her eyes strain, so much so that her headache returned.  Beads of perspiration had formed on her upper lip and her brow.  She was in trouble, and she knew it.  She looked at Glok, gripping the edge of the table until the tips of her fingers ached. Glok posed the question again.  For Rand, having that question repeated to her was like a weapon.  She stared at Glok mutely, her vision blurred by the sweat that was now falling from her brows.  The Vulcan raised both of his own brows and drew his mouth together in a tight line, shaking his head faintly.

“You don’t know the answer, do you?”

The mock sympathy in his voice angered Rand, but she was powerless to act on it.  She didn’t answer Glok, but continued to stare at him as she tensed up her body, bracing it for another shock. 

“Very well, then,” he said. 

Glok sat back in his chair and folded his arms.  The female guard who had been administering the shocks stepped a few paces back, slowly.  Rand, confused, turned to the female guard and then to the commander. 

What, no shock?  What the hell is going on?

The Vulcan turned his head slightly in the direction of the male guard behind him, and raised his hand until it was level to his chest, his palm facing downward.  Then, without saying a word, he lowered his hand slowly and deliberately until it tapped the table.  The male guard moved to the back wall, opened up what looked like a service box and pushed a series of buttons that lit up in a pattern of light.  Next to this panel, the wall began to undulate, change shape, expand and then protrude until it morphed into a lever, its handle resembling the extended planes of a hammerhead shark. The male guard reached over and pulled the lever down.

Rand could hear a noise overhead, a steady, low-pitched humming. 

“What is that?” she thought.

Rand raised her head and looked up towards the ceiling…

End of Chapter Three

  

Quick question, please...

Hey guys!

You know who this is!

I just have a quick question, now that the new Star Wars movie is out.

I've noticed that in recent years there has been this infantile competition between Star Trek and Star Wars fans.

When I was growing up, and I will not tell you when that was, anyone who was a Star Trek fan was also a Star Wars fan.  Both were embraced by the fans.

What the hell happened? Why the competitive nonsense?

I was, at one time, a Star Wars fan myself until I grew out of that fandom.

But, even though I am no longer a Star Wars fan myself I still don't understand the animosity between the two camps.

Any suggestions as to why this is?

Until next time...

Another Request...

Hey,

It's me, ProvidenceMine.

The reason why I'm writing here today (no, it's not chapter three part two of my story, though I'm almost finished with that! YAY!!)

It's because I have, yet, another request.

I know that fan fiction is done, for the most part, on the internet these days.

However, I know that fan fiction started out in print magazines.

Duh.

I was wondering whether there were any print publications that specialized in fan fiction, namely
Star Trek fan fiction.

If there is anyone out there who might know of such publications, I would love it if you dropped me a line at the comment section.

I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

Update…….

Alex Kurtzman will serve as executive producer.

He is part of the J.J.Abrams team that brought you Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek into Darkness (2013).

UGH!

You know that this is going to be set in the reboot universe, with all of that nonsense about 'punching it,' Orion girls who act more like air-headed bimbos, Spock/Uhura lover spats and revamped story lines from old Star Trek movies.

Let's not forget that Scotty with no Scottish accent.

I couldn't believe that one!

This show will be offered on CBS Full Access for around five dollars a month, maybe 5.99-I'm not sure.

I got this information from StarTrek.com

From the comments, and there are many of them, most seem none too enthusiastic about this prospect.

Glad I'm not alone on this one.

But, hey…

There's always Star Trek Continues!

And, you know what?

I suspect, that as popular as STC is, this new pseudo Star Trek that Kurtzman is offering will make STC even more popular, as unsatisfied viewers will discover and RUN to the fan produced triumph as their appetite for the real thing heightens.

Just my opinion.

Until next time...