December 16, 2016 December 16, 2016 Posted in Crude FictionTagged Crusher, Data, Enterprise, Geordi, O'Brien, Picard, Riker, Star Trek, Troi, Wesley, Worf	
I’ve been re-watching a lot of Trek recently, and y’know what? It’s fantastic, it really is. ‘Deep Space Nine’ is as awesome as ever, and ‘The Next Generation’ is just wonderful.
One trend I noticed, though, in Next Gen’s later seasons, was Riker’s increasing tendency towards “Trickster God” status. As such, I decided to follow through on that, with a skit on one of my favourite pieces of internet comedy. Okay, two of my favourite pieces of internet comedy. Enjoy.
I’ve had a series of complaints sent to me regarding your conduct over the last few weeks. If the stories inside these letters are true, then I think we need to have a discussion about acceptable behaviour aboard a starship, however I thought it only fair that you be given the chance to review the complaints yourself so you may give me your own interpretation of what happened.
As you may be aware, a few days ago I attempted to simulate the gaining of body weight, a common experience for humans of my age. The crew and other officers were very supportive, particularly Doctor Crusher, who helped me to accurately capture the built-up subcutaneous bulk necessary for an authentic representation.
Sadly, there was one exception to this supportiveness, which was Commander Riker. I found it highly inappropriate of him to follow me around the corridors with his trombone, playing what can only be described as a series of ‘sad notes’ as I walked to my various destinations.
Though I had expressed a desire to also be subjected to the ‘ribbing’ that many overweight individuals suffer in some primitive societies, I feel that Commander Riker’s elaborate efforts were particularly over-the-top and unrealistic by most standards. Especially his reassignment of Engineering Team Four-B to reconstruct the entrance to my quarters, such that I was unable to fit through the doorway without considerable difficulty.
I am yet to raise the issue with Commander Riker, and would appreciate any advice you could offer on confronting him in a constructive and friendly manner. Although I have since returned to my normal weight and size, I feel his actions may have had a hurtful effect on other members of the crew who are themselves naturally of a larger size.
Will’s been bothering me again. The other day he came into sickbay with another Parrises Squares injury, which is pretty normal. After I patched him up, he started asking questions about chemical compounds – things like the best way to replicate methylamine, tropane alkaloids and ergotamine. When I asked him why he wanted to know, he just said “don’t worry about it.” A few days later, he came in and just straight-up asked how to make to “the good stuff, you know, the real hard shit.” Again, I asked him what it was for, but he just told me to stop worrying and then left again.
Jean-Luc, if he wants to know more about chemical preparations I don’t mind him asking, but I would just feel a lot better if I knew why. Would you have a word with him, make sure he’s not doing something ill-advised?
I received this one a couple of days afterwards, Number One, and I certainly hope the two aren’t related:
Captain I love this ship everything is so shiny and I love how fast it goes and how all the stars shoot past like little fairies and I love the seats everything is so comfy and how the jeffries tubes are like ants nests and I love how your head looks like an ice moon but I hope you aren’t sleeping with my mother but if you were I’d be your dad no wait you’d be my dad and then we could go fishing together and you could teach me how to make wine that tasted like warp speed I love you love from Wesley.
I must strongly protest at the actions of Commander Riker over the past few weeks. On my birthday, shortly after my return from the Bat’leth tournament on Forcas III, I explained to Commander Riker my distaste for “surprise parties.” Counsellor Troi confirmed that she had persuaded him not to host one for me, for which I was most grateful.
However, since then Commander Riker has hosted no less than twenty-three surprise parties for me, all within the space of a month. They were mostly held in my personal quarters in a gross violation of my privacy, however he has also held four in Ten Forward, three at my Mok’bara classes and one at a briefing of my security staff.
This is completely unacceptable, and I must insist that you make him stop! I have repeatedly asked him to cease these childish events, and each time he has promised that he would, only to later tell me that he thought “it would be more of a surprise if I thought he had stopped.”
I have even requested a more secure locking mechanism on my quarters, but I did not realise that Commander Riker was a member of the Accommodation Administration Committee – and I did not like the way he was smiling at me as the committee chair offered to install security-coded maglocks on my door.
Thank you for your congratulations on my recent promotion. It will take me some time to adjust to the increased responsibility, especially whilst maintaining my responsibilities as ship’s counsellor, but I look forward to the challenge.
I need to talk to you about the application process, though. Will was assessing me, as you know, and as you also probably know I struggled with one of the later parts of the test, the “engineering test.” It took me some time, and some repeated attempts, to figure out that it was necessary for me to sacrifice one life to save many. I am grateful to Will for taking me through it and helping me succeed, but some of his behaviour during the test was just troubling.
After I figured out that I had to send Geordi to his death, Will said there was a second part to the test. It seemed like more of the same – this time, a security problem, with hostages. The thing is, it turned out that the solution was once again to order Geordi to his death. I thought maybe that was a coincidence, but then in part three there was another simulation, even more elaborate, which required me to sacrifice Geordi again. We got to part five, with an incredibly contrived scenario which somehow required me to stab Geordi to death with a micro-optic drill before I decided enough was enough.
When I confronted Will about it, he said he was surprised I made it as far as part three, never mind part five, and then said I must have “some serious issues.” I told him he had taken things too far but he just laughed and told me that I needed to speak to a psychiatrist – I hope you appreciate why I didn’t find that funny.
Captain, Will and I go back a long time but this was too much, and I’m worried he’ll do the same thing to other officers – I don’t think Data would cope well with that kind of “test”, and I’m certain Geordi would object.
I don’t know how, but somehow Commander Riker has managed to change all of the access codes on all of the transporter consoles again, this time to “stupidpaddy123”. I know it was Riker because last week he invited me as guest of honour to “Interstellar Scotland Day” in Ten Forward, and introduced me as “the ship’s resident walking stereotype, Paddy O’Toolbag”. I told him I was Irish and he told me to stop boring everyone and just play a tune on the haggis, and when I told him I wouldn’t he started playing ‘God Save The Queen’ on his trombone and then asked why I wasn’t singing along.
Regardless of the offensiveness of his remarks, he shouldn’t be messing around with security codes on any ship system, it’s a security issue and it makes life harder for me and my colleagues.
I’d also appreciate it if you could have him apologise for reprogramming my replicator to only produce boiled potatoes regardless of what I order. It must have taken him weeks to manually reconfigure every recipe in the databanks.
That last message was meant to be signed off with “Chief O’Brien”, but he’s messing with my auto-correct now, too. Could you have a word?
Number One, I hope you see why these reports are so troubling. Speaking of events in Ten Forward, I was less than pleased with your antics last week. I was quite excited to attend the First Annual Frontier Archaeology Symposium, so you’ll understand my disappointment to walk in to find myself at “Johnny Luke’s Head Polishing Masterclass”. Although I am impressed at how many of the crew and senior officers you managed to convince to wear bald caps.
Please see me at 0900 tomorrow, and please make sure you’ve hard a good hard think about what it is you’d like to say for yourself.