Planet of the Week

'Week' is pronounced with a lot more e's but not spelled that way.

SF parody. Starship lost in alternate dimensions. FTL = travel to another universe. Heart of Stone = Gormenghast in space. The idea is a Gothy version of Phage Rock from Iain M. Banks' Excession. Probability Generator changes ship configuration as needed for the story. Wormporter is used to send crew to planet surface.

Characters

Heart of Stone

The ship, which has a Mind of her own. Her job is carry the crew into danger and watch them flail around trying to save themselves. True to her name, she doesn't particularly care whether they succeed. She's been fitted with the experimental Probability Generator, powered by a Quantum Crystal from planet Schrodinger, which orbits the star Taum Felixi (or maybe it doesn't).

Captain Jain C. Cherkoff

C. stands for Coffee. His job is to look good while bossing everyone else around and making dramatic speeches. Not especially bright, he usually just does whatever his officers suggest. Always gets the girl, then loses her before they make it to his cabin.

Glaskit

Chief Exposition Officer. His job is to explain what's going on. A silicon-based lifeform from planet Cronin-Gerow, looks like a glass version of the robot from Metropolis, complete with the suggestion of breasts, but speaks in a deep, masculine voice. His body is filled with sparkling pink crystals -- these are his brains, you can see 'em work. Being 50% brains by weight, he's smarter than the rest of the crew put together. He pretends to be a coldly logical automaton, but has normal feelings like everyone else, and occasionally they slip out.

Dr. Rudy Copse

Chief Medical Officer. His job is to say "He's dead, Jim," even though none of the characters is named "Jim." Rarely has to actually treat anyone, since it's usually the Red Shirt Clones who get hurt, and nobody cares about them. From planet Hephaestus, whose people look like fantasy elves and act like fantasy dwarves. (The reason why an alien races' planets are named after human dieties is Yet to Be Revealed.)

Wolf 359

Chief Security Officer. His job is to send Red Shirt Clones out to die in order to protect the main characters from being in genuine danger. A humanoid canine from the Canis General system, devout follower of his people's military tradition. Commander of the Space Marines aboard the ship. Has 3D Spatial Sense -- he's a Where Wolf.

Diana Free

Chief Communications Officer. Warrior princess from plant Hera, an all-female society. Her people reproduce parthenogenically, and she sees all this sex nonsense as a major cause of the crew's problems. An Empath, she takes a deep personal interest in the crew's mental health, even though it's none of her damn business. Into pastry-inspired hairdo's.

John Hammer

Chief Technobabble Officer. His job is to feed technobabble into the Probability Generator, thus reconfiguring the ship to do whatever he wants. Like the Green Lantern, the chief limitation on his power is his own imagination. From the Engineers' Collective on planet Watt. A cyborg of African ancestry (the biological parts, anyway), speaks with a thick Scottish accent (a planet Watt tradition).

Al Giem

Biology Officer. A stereotypical gray alien, tends to examine unfamiliar creatures by sticking sensors up their orifices. His race has many strange practices, like the Communion ceremony, which involves consuming human DNA samples. There is a horrible suggestion that his race's sexual practices involve cows, and the cows don't enjoy it.

K-1000

Annoying Ship's Mascot (his full official title). His job is to distract the audience while the crew is doing dramatic, important stuff. Usually looks like a black Scottish terrier, but he's really a shapeshifting hellspawn from planet Morpheus. Fortunately, none of his forms is over 25 pounds. Resents being treated like an animal, since he's smarter than most of the crew. His habit of barking rather than talking may have something to do with this.

Red Shirt Clones

Their job is to die to show how much danger the main characters are in without the main characters actually getting hurt. Space Marine recruits who wash out of basic training are fed into the de-synthesizers, where they're broken down, have their patterns scanned, and uploaded into the synthesizers, thus ensuring the ship has an endless supply of expendable cannon fodder.

Space Marines

Their job is to actually shoot the monsters while the Red Shirt Clones distract them. Often there aren't quite enough Clones, then the Marines take heavy losses as well. Since the Marines don't have names either, nobody really cares.

Copyright © 2007 by Richard C. McCluney, III