Sea World According to Gerp

## Summary

The crew heads to the lush water planet Gill/Gesh and encounters unexpected locals. Pleck gets a base tan. Nermut loses his cool. Bargie hires a coach.

## Plot

Pleck is glad Nermut is feeling better after his hotdog incident. Dar warns the crew that they are retaining a lot of water thanks to the nitrates in the hotdogs. They are unable to fit through the door, Bargie worries her hallways are too narrow. Bargie opens her hatch a little and the vacuum pops Dar through the door. The receive a call from Rolphus Tiddle, he wants to update them on Hark Tartigast. He's missing. In his absence they are sending the crew on a supply mission for water. Rolphus dislikes how chatty the crew is. They are to go to Gill/Gesh, a lush water planet, and negotiate with the locals. Bargie asks if he's the guy who sells underwear, Rolphus reminds her that everyone has a side hustle. Dar tries to engage Nermut about his music career but Rolphus cuts them off, reminding them that they are in a missions briefing. Bargie has an acting coach coming. They want to involve Rolphus in their lives but he refuses to be drawn in.

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They land on the planet and discover it is not a water planet, it is very warm and dry. They decide to walk and see if the water is beyond the horizon. A creature in a small bowl of water greets them, their name is Gerp. When Gerp introduces themself again the crew realise that Gerp has a very short memory span. Nermut is close to the tank, he wants to eat Gerp. They ask Gerp if there use to be more water, Gerp says that there was a long time ago when there were people that didn't look like Gerp. Nermut is planning on how to eat Gerp, the crew tell him to chill out. Gerp overhears them and tells the crew that they are more Gerp's around, they'll just need to carry them there. They can slowly move by rocking their tank back and forth. Gerp asks them if they've seen the beautiful star, the sun. C-53 shows them a picture that illustrates the sun has grown 40 times bigger over the past 10 years. Nermut is impatient to get to the other Gerps, he has a tiny knife and fork out. Gerp tells them that there is more water where they came from. Dar carries Gerp very far away from Nermut. Gerp says that Nermut should eat them, C-53 fishes him out of the tank and slaps him hard enough to throw him ahead of them. They find more Gerps who are all called Gerp. The crew have an aside, the crew try to work out how to stop the planet's destruction by the sun or at least how to save the Gerps. Dar forgot that they were carrying Gerp, the Gerp are alarmed that their planet is in danger. They quickly forget. They fish Nermut out of another Gerp tank. He explains that the Gerps are similar to a delicacy on his planet. Pleck realises that the sun is bigger than when they landed, the Gerps start chanting 'Big Star'. C-53 does the calculations and predicts that the planet will fall into the sun that day. Dar's getting a tan, the crew tells Pleck that he is pinker than normal. Gerp remembers people, their skin sizzled off. Another Gerp remembers a person's head explode. Yet another Gerp remembers people coming to take their water but they fell down and died before being able to do so. The planet's surface is almost 200° fahrenheit, Pleck calls Bargie and asks for a pickup so he can apply some starscreen. Bargie is with her acting coach Roberto Krak'oor.

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C-53 discovers Federated Alliance uniforms on the skeletons. Gerp remembers explosions and people shouting 'oh! we've thrown the gravitational pull of the planet off'. C-53 and Dar are horrified. Gerp asks why they are visiting the planet, Gerp remembers when all the water went away. Nermut is still trying to eat Gerp. Pleck calls from Bargie to see if they need help, he's in an ice bath. Beano is helping by bringing ice. He hangs up. The Gerps offer their water, the crew refuses on the ground that the Gerps would die. They decide they should try leaving their tanks (with Nermut's encouragement) to see if they become one with the star. Dar threatens to slap Nermut back on the ship. C-53 picks Dar up by the leg, he faints as the blood rushes to his head. Nermut regains consciousness and fishes a Gerp out of their tank. C-53 slaps Nermut away again. Gerp jumps out of their tank. They are okay so the rest of the Gerp jump out of their tanks. Due to the large amounts of stellar radiation the Gerp rapidly evolve to be able to walk and think. The crew have 20 minutes until they are incinerated. The Gerp want them to take their water but to leave them behind. The water has mostly evaporated. Gerp tells them to get more from the nearby planet of Gesh, the planet they are currently on is Gil. The Gerps bump into each other and morph into a giant Gerps. Pleck calls again, the crew tells him that its getting weird. He tells Bargie to go and collect them. They say goodbye to Gerp.

They watch Gil fall into the star. Bargie tells them all to be quiet as she is in the middle of a scene. Bargie and Pleck resume reading the scene. Bargie stops, saying that Pleck is not good enough. Roberto counters saying that Pleck isn't the problem. They move onto the next scene which is entirely in Juntowa, Pleck's acting is so good it brings Roberto to tears. Roberto calls Bargie's past movies 'popcorn holos' so she hangs up. Dar asks Pleck how he's feeling, his skin is flaking off. The crew has a sidebar without Nermut, Dar thinks that Nermut should be on probation for his behaviour. The crew agrees and they put him on probation. They receive a call from Rolphus asking for their mission status report. Rolphus reminds them that he doesn't care about their personal issues, he decides he can't deal with giving the crew missions. He entices Nermut to move to Rebellion headquarters by telling him about their 6-month path to promotion for Senior Missions Operations Manager. Nermut regretfully tells them that he'll have to move to Rebellion headquarters. They send an autonomous shuttle to collect him. The crew starts to gossip about Nermut's mission failures, he reminds them that he hasn't left yet.

## Quotes

"Gerp was my father, call me Gerp." - A Gerp.

"Emissary Decksetter, I think we need to review the concept of a utopian society." C-53, after Pleck remarks that the Gerps live in a utopia.

"Dar: Could you imagine different groups, who just hated each other so much, they would sacrifice an entire planet?

C-53: No, that's so dumb."

"Okay my small fishy zealots. You do not need to jump out of your little tanks." - Dar

"Pleck, is it weird to wish you were just pink and not red?" - Nermut, about Pleck's sunburn

## Trivia

* Dar wears a bathing suit in anticipation of it being a water planet.
* Nermut is cold blooded.
* Nermut memorised all of the Federated Alliance protocols.
* Nermut's bones are hollow.
* Gerps look like a delicacy from Nermut's planet called Milnids.
* Roberto's acting classes cost 200 Kroon.
* A Blumshon is a long vegetable.

## Credits

### **Voice actors**

C-53 - Jeremy Bent

Pleck Decksetter - Alden Ford

Dar - Allie Kokesh

Nermut Bundaloy - Seth Lind

Bargarean Jade - Moujan Zolfaghari

Rolphus Tiddle, Beano and Roberto Krak'oor - Winston Noel

Gerp - Ali Gordon

### **Production**

Edited - Seth Lind

Recorded - Robert Doggy Jr. Studios by Shane O'Connell

Sound Design and Mix - Shane O'Connell

Music - Brendan Ryan

Additional Music - Shane O'Connell

Opening Crawl Narration - Jeremy Crutchley

Ship Design - Eric Geusz