And the winner is...

As problems go, this was a nice problem to have. All the entries in the 2/13/09 Friday Challenge were good. All we needed to do was separate the good from the great, and the great from the really great, and then the really great from the truly outstanding. Simple, right?

Wrong. Actually, this turned out to be quite a tough problem, and we spent hours this weekend re-reading the entries and arguing over their respective merits.

Before I get to the results, though, I first want to say a few words about how surprised I was that every single one of you chose to set your story in the ST:TNG continuity. There was no explicit requirement that you do so; Trek Classic, Enterprise, Voyager, and Deep Yawn 9 were all fair game, and I don't see how anyone who has ever heard William Shatner perform "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" could pass up the opportunity to do something with that. Yes, the correct word is "perform." Whatever that bizarre stream of modulated noise is that emanates from Shatner's buccal cavity, it is definitely not singing. I've heard singing before. You can't fool me.

Nonetheless, all of you chose to set your stories in the Star Trek: The Next Generation continuity, and I have to wonder whether this is merely a generational thing, as this was the flavor of Star Trek you grew up with, or if there is some other reason why you identify this particular Star Trek series as being the one most desperately in need of rock 'n' roll. Does anyone have any theories?

While you ruminate over that idea, let's get on with the results.

First off, Vidad: for that one you deserve a "special" achievement award, and there's no point in arguing, chum; you're gonna get it. No, you have no choice in this matter. Your "special" achievement award has already been selected and will be showing up in your mailbox shortly. Incoming!

Next up, Rigel Kent: while a part of me is still muttering, "The horror! The horror!", on further reflection, the ending is weak. The story up to that point is quite good, although you need to pay more attention to tense as you keep switching between past and present, and I really liked Ensign Danzig's dialog. But the last paragraphs are a punchline that turn the whole thing into a joke, and for me, this week, that just didn't work. There is a stronger, better ending for this one waiting to be written, although I don't know what it might be.

Ben-El: I heard a distinct whooshing sound as parts of this one went right over my head. I really liked it right up to the moment when the Enterprise exploded, but the epilogue baffled me. I think I might know what you were driving at in that last scene, but mostly I'm confused.

One minor note: when you make your sigma character a musician named Orpheus and you kill a girl in the opening scene, you've set up an expectation, and you either need to tie into the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice or at least work against it. If that was not your intent, perhaps this was not the best possible name for that character.

Al: a nice concept, and after reading your comments, I like what you were intending to do here. I really like the idea of your Starfleet psych evaluation sticking to you, as Robert Metzger once said, "like crap to a baby blanket," and I like the idea of this whole wonderful technotopian system being dependent on the competence, or Office Space-like lack thereof, of some under-assistant mailroom flunkie, second-class. I like the way Riker manages to pull out a rough approximation of a happy ending out of the situation, but ultimately, this one just felt underdeveloped and rushed. I can't put my finger on what precisely needs to be changed or developed further. While your intentions were great, it's execution that counts, and in that regard this one just felt... thin.

Good idea, though.

Jamsco: this is another of those ones that just wasn't quite developed enough. The idea is decently interesting: at first I thought this was going to turn into Close Encounters, but when it turned into Star Trek IV only with the ST:TNG crew instead of Kirk and the gang and rock musicians instead of humpback whales, I was amused. But it just seemed too short, too thin, and too neatly wrapped up, too quickly. I wanted to see them arrive in the future and suddenly discover that 115V 60Hz AC power has been obsolete for centuries. I wanted to see the drummer get drunk and suddenly teleport out with three groupies from Hong Kong. I wanted to see... More of everything, basically. It's too short.

Henry: this one has a really creepy subtext that I really like a lot. Of all the entries, I think this one has the most potential to be de-Trekked and rewritten into something that might actually be a sellable story.

I keep feeling there's some analogy to home-schooling or something on that order here. In a world where everyone uses teleporters, what's it like to be one of the few who doesn't use them? When you go through a teleporter, and presumably have the exact position and state of every atom in your body mapped and turned into information that is transmitted, what might you lose, and how would you ever know that you'd lost it? What happens to the original you? How do you know that "they" (whoever it is that operates the teleporters) are actually transmitting true and unaltered information, and not editing or simplifying it en route? As someone who spends a fair amount of time mucking about with Fourier transformations and compression algorithms, I'm keenly aware that information is not the actual thing it describes, and that data is routinely simplified to improve the speed and ease of handling it. When you go through a transporter, what part of you is lost to rounding errors?

As I said, there's a lot in this one to think about, and I think it might be worth "de-Trekking" this one and exploring these ideas further.

Leatherwing: as I said in my comments on your site, back in the day it was joked that DEVO drummer Alan Myers was in fact a robot, and when Data took up the drums I really expected him to end up wearing a yellow plastic suit with a red flowerpot on his head. It was a crime to put him in the story without having him perform "Mr. Roboto," I envisioned Troi's big solo as being something from Grace Slick's repertoire, and I'm not really sure that "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was the best possible choice for the final number. (I think either "We're Not Gonna Take It" from Tommy or "My Generation" would have been a better choice, just to bring it full-circle, musically.) But all in all...

Mike and the Mrs: on the other hand, I laughed out loud at this one, repeatedly. A Ferengi karaoke bar? I believe I've just seen a vision of Musician's Hell. And it's hilarious.

So in the end, that's where we got stuck. I insisted Leatherwing's entry was the best story; Karen insisted Mike and the Mrs's entry was the most entertaining. We would probably still be arguing over it if Karen hadn't said, "Okay, it's late and I want to go to bed, so let's call it a tie."

Thus, it's a tie. Leatherwing and Mike and the Mrs, come on down and claim your prizes!

Me, I think I'm going to go pull my old Gibson SG out of its case, tune it up, and see if my fingers aren't still good for a few minutes of strumming.

Think I'll start out with "Summertime Blues."