Who Do Dare

"**Who Do Dare**" is the first episode of Oh These, Those Stars of Space.

*On a routine mission, Capt. Cal Sisters and the crew of the CSS Cavalier are commandeered by a strange being with God-like powers and must make a terrible choice. Can they survive his impossible game? What happens next may surprise you.*

## Cast

This episode features:

* Ali Fisher as Meredith Chesterfield
* Branson Reese as Cal Sisters
* Carly Monardo as Katya Bushnikova
* Christopher Hastings as Threadcount 900
* Taylor Moore as Legs Loveless
* Tim Platt as Gelmire Lysander
* and Joe Lepore as everything and everyone else

## Synopsis

> “Captain’s log, spacedate 234701X. The crew is refreshed after a week’s shore leave on Starbase 82. The Cavalier, well, she’s refreshed too. The ship’s been given a full diagnostic and we’ve taken on plenty of supplies. We’ll be needing them, as we’ll be spending the next six months patrolling our borders with the Correxians. Hopefully we won’t see too much action. The boys back at Galactic Command say that if this tour goes well, I could make Admiral in a year. Ah, I’m getting ahead of myself. Not that I mind, haha.”
>
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### Port Starboard

At the Cavalier’s bar, Port Starboard, ship’s pilot Legs Loveless approaches explorer Meredith Chesterfield. Meredith tells Legs he owes her a drink, and Legs gives in after some additional pleading. She asks him if he had fun on 82, and he replies that he didn’t. As he elaborates, Meredith interrupts to remind him about the drink.

Legs summons the hologram bartender and orders two of the “real thing” — two Dutch whiskeys. He says “vooloo” — Dutch for “here it is” — as the drinks materialize, and tells Meredith about his “rough news from back home”; his dad’s boyfriend is an admiral’s assistant in the Vanguard, and sent a letter to Legs with a final warning to stop “hotshotting” around, or it’ll be “vooloo” — Dutch for “last shot” — for him.

The hologram bartender asks Legs what’s with him and Dutch stuff today, and Legs explains that he went to a small high school with Dutch as its single foreign language, due to executive fiat after the Dutch took over Europe in the 2050s. Meredith mentions she also received a letter from home; her parents filled up her bank accounts again. She gets up to leave, and as Legs asks her to cover the tab, she’s already gone.

### Holozone

In a Holozone program emulating 1950s New York City, ship’s mechanic Katya Bushnikova and chief of security Threadcount-900 meet on a basketball court for a duel, épées drawn. Katya explains the rules to Threadcount, who knows the entire world’s history of fencing (including épée, sabre, and the other five secret forms). Katya lunges, her sword smacking Threadcount’s head as the android smacks her on the behind. She reminds him that they’re not here to flirt, and Threadcount responds that he’s portraying her average opponent, a “horned-up male”. Katya accepts Threadcount’s invitation to enter “kill mode”. A steel visor closes under each of the android’s eyes, and he slashes Katya across her uniform, revealing an incredible set of abs. *(Lasers 4: Success, Laser Feelings)*

Katya looks Threadcount over for a weak point, and spots a button marked “release valve” on his shoulder. *(Lasers: 1, 6: Success)* As she presses the button with her épée, lubricant spouts from Threadcount’s joints. They call it a game. Katya asks why Threadcount chose this setting, and he responds that he enjoys scenarios from before he was invented.

### Captain's quarters

Captain Sisters goes over paperwork in his quarters as Gelmire Lysander enters, overwhelmed. The captain asks Gelmire to take a breath. Lysander, still nervous, tells Sisters that he read about him in the Academy; Sisters says he was also in the Academy, and that his father still works there. Gelmire gets overexcited, believing that there’s a budding friendship between him and the captain, and bets he’ll save the captain’s life one day. The captain reminds him that betting was outlawed in 2022. Sisters goes on to tell him that co-workers are more valuable than friends, a lesson that Gelmire takes note of with his tape recorder.

Gelmire reads a message from the Vanguard. They’ve received a distress signal from the planet Gripellia IV, on the Correxian border. The Cavalier is the only Vanguard ship in range, and must protect one of the planet’s moons, a key part of Concilium infrastructure. Lysander gets excited about the mission and the prospect of fighting Correxians. Captain Sisters looks out into the stars of space, and reminds Lysander that it’s not about fighting, it’s about the end result: peace. Gelmire, over the course of a minute-long speech involving peace, war, tables, and wine, agrees. He brings up one more request: Gelmire asks Cal to not tell Sisters’s father that he’s working under the captain’s command. When asked for an explanation, Gelmire refuses, touching a scar on his face. Cal touches his own scar, and understands. He asks Gelmire to assemble the crew. Gelmire sprints outside the captain’s quarters, and shouts a summons to the crew to come to the deck. Sisters chuckles, and presses a button on his desk to broadcast a similar summons.

### The bridge

On the bridge, Captain Sisters sets a course for Gripellia IV. Legs asks Threadcount what the mission is about, and Threadcount tells him that it’s likely another problem with the Correxian-Vermonter “assholes”, who the Cavalier’s crew have defeated on at least 13 separate occasions. Legs is surprised, given they haven’t been seen in the past three peaceful years. He asks Katya if her spy network has heard anything, and she replies that she isn’t a spy. Gelmire chimes in about how he couldn’t be a spy; Katya swats at him like a fly.

Loveless slows the ship to impulse engines as it approaches Gripellia IV. The captain beckons him over. Cal informs Legs that he just had a talk with his father, who also happens to be Legs’s father’s boyfriend. While the captain doesn’t want to get involved, he tells Legs that it’ll be an official infraction if it happens again. The pilot says he’ll comply, but notes some of the things he’s been in trouble for were learned from Sisters over their 11 years of service together. Cal remarks that it’s been 11 years to the day, and wishes Legs a happy birthday.

As Meredith and Katya also chime in with birthday wishes for Legs, Cal apologizes for the bridge’s acoustics that allow everyone to hear their private conversation. Threadcount produces a cupcake from a compartment in his chest, and the captain congratulates Legs on his “27th” birthday.

Gripellia IV appears on the viewscreen, with its purple oceans, and its two moons: the soft pink Love Moon (the only place where Gripellians can reproduce), and the greyish-brown Trash Moon (the Concilium’s primary spacefill). Gelmire asks Meredith (in front of the entire party, at the captain’s prompting) to let him do most of the exploring; she finds this adorable, and says that she’s only interested in discovering planets, at the behest of her parents.

A blinding flash fills the bridge. A sneering figure appears, dressed as a greaser from the same era as the Holozone simulation. Captain Sisters urges the crew to get back, and the figure introduces himself as Kwoo.

### Kwoo’s gambit

Kwoo, introducing himself as an all-powerful cosmic being, asks the crew to hold their (non-existent) applause. He tells Katya to calm down (she is) and Meredith to hold it (she barely notices Kwoo as she slams buttons on an inactive console). Sisters asks the crew to get behind him, but Loveless steps in front and draws his vaser. He doubts Kwoo’s omniscience, calling it a Vermonter trick. Kwoo reminds Legs that a Vermonter would have a big bushy beard, and grows one instantly. Cal is convinced, and asks the being what he wants. Kwoo makes an offer: in exchange for eating a moon of the Cavalier’s choice, he’ll open a wormhole to the rear of the Correxian empire. While the wormhole will lead to potential riches and wonders, the destruction of the Trash Moon would devastate the Concilium, and likewise with the Love Moon and the Gripellians. Cal defiantly rejects Kwoo’s offer, explaining that the ship is full of crew members who haven’t consented to a journey into deep space, and he won’t doom anyone to extinction.

Meredith raises her hand and pleads with Cal to go into the wormhole. Katya backs the captain, agreeing that the trip would be disastrous. Kwoo tries to drive a wedge between Chesterfield and Sisters, wishing that she were the captain and calling Sisters a stick in the mud. Sisters holds firm, telling Kwoo that he values his crew’s input, while Kwoo is all alone. The space god escalates the conflict by enveloping Cal in a field of eerie energy, rapidly aging the captain. Captain Cal Sisters gives a final order to his crew as he collapses and dies.

> “My crew! My beloved crew! Look out there! Look out… at these, those stars of space! They are the question… and we, the living, are the answer. My crew… my final order to you… let the conversation… ha ha… begin.”
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Legs fires his vaser at Kwoo in retaliation, but the beam passes through Kwoo and pings around the bridge. Legs vows that one day he’ll kill Kwoo in exchange for killing the man who was about to be his step-brother. Kwoo retorts that their fathers were already engaged, but hadn’t told them yet. The pilot shoots another vaser beam, grazing Kwoo’s shirt. Kwoo tells the Cavalier’s bridge crew that they need to make a choice, and as he disappears, a tactical station alerts them to two similar-sized asteroids (small enough to not destroy each moon, but large enough to cause serious damage), each about to hit a Gripellian moon in sixty seconds.

### The asteroid problem

Gelmire makes an impassioned plea to protect love by saving the love moon. Katya retorts that the moon only represents love for the Gripellians, and prepares to engage the graviton torpedoes. Threadcount-900, kneeling by Cal’s dead body and laying a single white rose on it, reminds the crew that they have a universe of possibilities besides the two options provided by the cosmic being, including smashing both asteroids into each other, diverting them, or letting both moons get destroyed. Dr. Chesterfield continues to press buttons on her console; a wrench labelled “Katya” is jammed into the works to its unplugged cord. Loveless proposes a “plan B” of playing Kwoo’s game, confusing Threadcount; all the android’s data on the pilot points to him never following the rules. Legs looks over at the corpse of the captain, and a tear forms at his eye, before getting sucked back up into his tear duct. He agrees with Threadcount.

Katya suggests using the ship’s shields to deflect one asteroid into another, like a game of Pong. Gelmire notes that it’ll have to be a perfectly timed and calculated maneuver. As the ship’s computer alerts them that 30 seconds remain, Katya exclaims to Gelmire that the reason she’s here is for challenges like this. A flustered Gelmire responds with an “aye aye, cap—“ before correcting himself. Legs proposes an unproven maneuver known as the ping pong bellyflop, and spits on each of his three hands. He asks Bushnikova if she thinks it’s even possible, and she tells him that they may need to jettison part of the ship for the necessary power. Loveless suggests using Threadcount as a battery, and the robot starts jogging towards the engineering bay.

*[synopsis incomplete]*

## External Links

* Simplecast
* Spotify