Fan Film Friday: Star Trek: Dark Armada: ‘Choices’ Trilogy
Written by Randy Hall on February 19, 2010 – 12:00 pm -
For most of us, Saturday, February 13, was spent preparing to spend Valentine’s Day with our loved ones. But for fans of independent productions, especially those who love the Star Trek: Dark Armada series produced in the Netherlands, it was also the long-awaited release date for the sixth and final part of the “Choices” trilogy.
No, you didn’t read those numbers incorrectly. That series is a three-part story, each of which has two brief segments—and the first set has a different title to boot. Just follow along and all will be made clear.
“Worst Nightmare” began with Captain Alexander Richardson (played by Robin Hiert) and Security Chief Celissia Katina (Iris Janse) returning from a difficult diplomatic mission to the planet Y’Nok when they found that their starship, the U.S.S. Batavia, was not at the rendezvous coordinates.
A scan quickly found the Batavia, which was adrift in space. Richardson and Katina beamed over to the ship from the Sardam and tried to restore its power.
Katina then used her telepathic ability to see if anyone else was still alive on the Batavia, and when that proved unsuccessful, the two officers used the shuttle’s transporter to take them to Engineering, where they gave the ship’s engines a “cold start.”
Despite several attempts to get the ship functioning, the last scene of the episode showed the captain and chief of security apparently in a trance back in the shuttle. Was everything they experienced just a dream from Katina? Or, as the episode title suggests, their worst nightmare?
When the vessel Bluestar came across the shuttle, its Vulcan captain, Talek (Tom Achterberg), was able to bring both Richardson and Katina out of their hypnotic states.
Once the crew members returned to the Batavia, Richardson decided to seek the advice of someone who had previous experience with the Y’Nok situation: Admiral Ian Quincy Knapp (played by David W. Dial, who was also that character in the Hidden Frontier series).
Using a holoemitter, Knapp told Richardson that his experience with Y’Nok wasn’t a pleasant one. Knapp found Federation colonists in shuttles firing a deadly gas into the environment that would be harmful to the native life.
When Knapp ordered the shuttles to stop firing and received no response, he ordered the Saratoga to destroy the lead shuttle. After that, the other Federation colonists retreated, and the starship’s medical staff was able to treat the effects of the toxin.
“You didn’t have a choice, did you?” Richardson asked regarding the killing of Federation citizens.
“Choice?” Knapp responded. “You always have a choice.”
Events took an ominous turn when a Federation shuttle began attacking the Batavia, which quickly took out the weapons system in the smaller ship before it escaped at warp speed.
At that point, we were given a glimpse of the bad guys, with the apparent leader telling his younger partner that “it’s time for the next step” in their plan.
The Batavia then received a distress call from the same shuttle that attacked their ship, and Richardson sent a shuttle with ensigns Belissa (Monique Lanting) and Roberts (Célina Plomp) to see if anyone on the vessel needed help, just as they would for any other Federation citizen.
After arriving at the shuttle’s location, the officers responded to an urgent distress call from the vessel by beaming its occupant (identified as a “Colonist” and played by Martijn Aartsen) aboard. Under the concept that no good deed goes unpunished, the alien pulled out a weapon and took the women hostage.
When the villain demanded that the captain put the world of Y’Nok under his control, Richardson had two obvious choices: destroy the shuttle and kill everyone onboard, or find a way to turn the tables on the enemy.
As a result, Richardson kept the terrorist and his two hostages talking until the ship could get a lock on the officers and beam them back to the Batavia. But when the starship tried to lock a tractor beam on the shuttle, the villain managed to escape by jumping into warp speed.
Another part of the plan got underway when Lieutenant Junior Grade Yuri Vasiliev (Tim Leegstra), whom we had seen speaking to the terrorist, asked to be reassigned from the Bluestar to the Batavia. Once his transfer was complete, Vasiliev attempted to sneak into Engineering and sabotage the ship’s control mechanism.
Just then, Lieutenant T’Mock caught Vasiliev in the act, and the nervous crewman admitted that he had been trying to destroy the starship either through his override of the ship’s command code or a bomb placed on the warp drive itself. Moving quickly, the Vulcan lieutenant ordered that the bomb be beamed away from the ship where it exploded harmlessly.
In the final scene, the captain said that while he appreciated Vasiliev’s choice to save the ship and the crew, the lieutenant nevertheless had to hand in his communication badge and pips as a result of the bad choice he had made by joining forces with a terrorist.
Now’s a good time to don my Clint Eastwood hat and get reviewing.
The Good: Right off the bat, I was impressed with the crew’s uniforms, which are a cross between late Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, but with a bit more color that makes them more pleasing to the eye.
Add to that some nice special effects (including some great “green screen” shots and good background music), and you’ve got a pretty enjoyable program.
The Bad: At some points in the film, the story left me a bit baffled. For example, the captain and security chief were obviously traveling along in a shuttle at warp speed when they entered some sort of mind meld, which is something Katina apparently can do. But why, especially when the shuttle might fly into a planet or a sun or something?
A line about the shuttle being on “auto pilot” or something like that would have easily plugged that hole in the story.
Later on, we saw that Richardson and Katina do indeed have a budding relationship, which makes that the best reason the trance happened, though I had to wonder why it took a Vulcan captain to snap them out of it.
I also wasn’t very impressed with the baddies. Putting together some kind of punk-rock terrorist and a fumbling, nervous lieutenant isn’t the kind of team I’d pick when taking over a starship or a planet. Nevertheless, these kinds of plot holes are symptomatic of a group’s first effort.
The Ugly: The biggest problem I had with the story was the sheer number of parts and parts of parts in each segment. There must be some limit to the amount of memory you can use in a single episode on YouTube. Still, I’d rather do it the way the Dark Armada folks did because now we can look forward to their next independent production sooner rather than later.
For those who want to see the entire series, go to this site. And others interested in the group itself can get more information right here.
Related posts:
- Fan Film Friday: Star Trek: Armada
- Fan Film Friday: Star Trek: The Romulan Wars
- Fan Film Friday: Star Trek Phase II: To Serve All My Days [Revised]
- Fan Film Friday: Star Trek: The Go!Animate Generation: Maiden Voyage
- Fan Film Friday: Star Trek: Intrepid: Heavy Lies the Crown
Tags: Captain Alexander Richardson, Choices, Dark Armada, Iris Janse, Robin Hiert, Star Trek, U.S.S. Batavia
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