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Darth Wiki / AH.com: The Series

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This happens a lot... Artwork by Alex Claw

The parodic adventures of the members of the AlternateHistory.com discussion board. Imagine Star Trek if everyone on board was a pornography-obsessed stoner. And every episode was that "Mirror, Mirror" one.

The basic setting is that the ragtag crew of the MES AH.com travel between parallel Earth Alternate Universes, or timelines, exploring them for no better reason than to find booze and porn. Occasionally these timelines are serious, plausible scenarios, but more commonly they are jokey, unrealistic, magical or parodic situations, such as alternate Earths overrun by psychopathic lesbians or Charlton Heston film characters.

The show's main influences include Red Dwarf, Discworld and Sliders. It has, oddly, "outlived" many real TV shows, having recently begun its fifth season with over 120 episodes produced.

New episodes of the Series are published on the main AH.com site, viewable only by members, but the Series has now acquired its own site, where remastered versions of the old episodes will gradually be posted, complete with snazzy new title card artwork. The complete overview of the series can also be found on this page of AH.com's wiki (including an episode guide).

AH.com: The Series provides examples of the following tropes:

  • 2-D Space: Averted quite well in the space battles depicted. Of course it helps that the special effects budget consists of the reader's imagination.
  • The American Civil War: Commonly referenced due to the frequent use of a victorious South (the Confederate States of America) in Alternate History.
  • America Saves the Day: Subverted. The crew is about three-quarters American but is run by a Canadian, Doctor What. Also, most timelines lack a powerful USA (if only because Balkanised Americas are more interesting Alternate History possibilities).
  • Author Avatar: Most of the authors of episodes are also characters on the ship. Some of them write themselves in a balanced way or don't mention their own character much at all. Rather more are subject to Mary Sue syndrome, or as it is known on the Board, Characterwank.
  • Berserk Button: Several characters have these, most notably Flocculencio's tendency to go Ax-Crazy whenever anyone mentions the name of his nemesis Justin Pickard.
  • BFG: The actual name of the plasma firearms used by the AH.commers.
  • Big "NO!": after the crew saves the Multiverse in "Hair Today, Gotterdammerung Tomorrow", Doctor What asks Leo to bring the ship to an universe where all men are dead and all women are desperate for sex. Leo reveals that, due to the emergency they were in, he had to dump the data, including the address to that universe. Cue the Big No.
  • Britain Is Only London: Even though some of the writers are British, for a while the only episodes set in Britain were by non-Britons, thus leading to this being played straight.
  • Butt-Monkey: The recurring characters Chingo 360 and Alt. Luakel, who are constantly trying to get their old ship back, failing, and returning to dead-end jobs in a mall on the Hub of the Multiverse.
  • The Captain: Subverted; the AH.com Ship's captain, Doctor What, is a goofy screwball who leads the crew more through charisma and imagination than command ability.
  • Catchphrase:
  • Characterisation Marches On: Typically with the more minor characters. Also, everyone has tended to become less Ax-Crazy over time.
  • Continuity Porn: Anything written by Merry Prankster. Also the season three finale, "Hair Today Gotterdammerung Tomorrow", which tied together threads started in about seven earlier episodes.
  • Cool Airship: Of course. For example, the Ludendorff from "Sealions on an Airship".
  • Cool Starship: The AH.com Ship and its sister ships, such as the CF.net or AV.net.
  • Depending on the Writer: In the earlier seasons, much less noticeable later on.
  • Evil Counterpart: The Mirror Crew, who in the finest traditions of this role are all equipped with goatees. Also became the crew's Opposite Gender Counterparts in the singularly disturbing episode "Genderbender Mirror".
  • Expansion Pack Past: Everyone, due to flashback episodes filling in how different characters joined the crew. The ship itself has a backstory that only comes at the end of season one.
  • Explosive Instrumentation: Discussed and then justified—it turns out that the ship's consoles are packed with explosives, because its original builders wanted to have the ability to detonate the console of a treacherous crewman in a You Have Failed Me fashion.
  • Foreshadowing: when the Administratum says that the Luakels are all clones that tend to destroy everything in the timelines they are sent to, Doctor What mentions that the Luakel he knows has parents and all of that. It is a plot point, because the AH.com Luakel is the original one.
  • Funny Foreigner: Played with. The Board has a very international audience so this can only be used ironically. We meet entire planets' worth of people acting according to their national stereotypes thanks to a nefarious virus.
  • George Jetson Job Security: Chingo and Alt-Luakel. No matter how clever their Zany Scheme to get themselves out of their dead-end Burger Fool jobs at the Hub, they're always back there again by the end of the episode.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Doctor What's children by Atta.
  • Humans Are White: Averted. While the majority of the crew are, indeed, various shades of pink, there are at least three non-white crewmembers - G.Bone (interracial), Flocculencio (Indian), and Psychomeltdown (the other sort of Indian) as well as many non-white guest stars.
  • Inn Between the Worlds: Ouroboros, the "Pub in the Hub of the Multiverse", functions in this capacity, although it's technically in an ATL of its own not a separate dimension. Other locations serve similar purposes: it's implied that crosstime traffic is quite widely used in certain timelines and certain locations, for example the orbital city of Singapore, have developed into crosstime ports.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Every cliché of Alternate History and Speculative Fiction has been lampshaded at least once.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: a non-lethal one. In "Teens On A Ship", Ward infects most of the members of the AH.com ship with a "teenifying virus" to transform everyone into a kid. At the end of the episode, the AH.com happily get their revenge, and soon it is Ward and the others who are being teenified.
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The Rafeks.
  • Lower-Deck Episode: "Second Stringers", along with to a lesser extent other episodes by Michael.
  • MacGuffin: Usually "vital engine parts" (which we never hear of again) fulfil this role in driving the crew to explore a timeline searching for replacements.
    • Alternately, porn and booze.
  • Mad Scientist: Both Thande (chemistry) and Torqumada (biology and medicine), who often compete. Dave Howery occasionally evokes more of a Mad Engineer persona.
  • Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Used with the mirror crew in "Genderbender Mirror". Most eye-forkingly so with Female Mirror Luakel.
  • The Multiverse: Given the jokey alternate history premises behind most episodes, this trope is the broad setting of the series, in addition to outer space. The trope is commonly referred to by its name.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Doctor What, having suffered memory loss, helps a bunch of Neandertals that nearly destroyed his homeworld escape death from Ward. The Neandertals proceed with their plans to kill Ward and then eliminate all humanity from the Multiverse.
    • Also, when they get sent back to the past, their presence is what makes the Machine clone Luakels.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Three examples stand out. The Asian Lesbian Ninjas in Leather from the episode "Genderbender Mirror". The Nazis Riding Dinosaurs, led by Cyborg Himmler and Golden Throne Hitler, in the middle of the hollow Earth, in "Dinos and Nazis and Deros, Oh My". And then there's "Hair Today Gotterdammerung Tomorrow", which features an interstellar virus ship being foiled by having its bomb bay doors blasted shut at the last minute by an F-16. Which is being piloted by Elvis. Who is the World Emperor and religious icon of the timeline in question.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Averted, both with Alyson Hannigan (who half the crew lusts after) and Keira Knightly (who is the subject of the other half's... affections).
  • No Fourth Wall: Varies, but tends to increase as the series progresses; one fourth-season episode is technically about what happens when the writing staff goes on strike and the Editor in Chief is forced to get... sub-par replacements.
  • Official Couple — Landshark and Iron Yuppie. Later, also Dave Howery and Keira Knightley (don't ask).
  • Put On A Crosstime Ship — Often used due to former forum regulars, previously chosen to be crewmembers, leaving the Board. Crewmen Abdul Hadi Pasha and DMA were removed in this way - both eventually returned in real life, but only DMA was restored to the crew, Abdul Hadi Pasha instead being used in guest roles.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Some characters gain new catchphrases or attributes based on what their real life counterparts have been doing on the forum.
  • Red Shirt: Lampshaded with the CF.net's security goons, Federation X, Gedca and Fortyseven. All three are Trekkie forum members in real life, so naturally they wear red shirts as they go into battle. Yet subverted in that, while invariably defeated, they always survive. That is, until the big battles at the end of the second season, which kill two of them.
  • La Résistance: Many episodes involve the AH.commers helping the Resistance from a timeline overthrow their oppressors, whether these be the Spanish Armada, Hollywood Cthulhu, or Barney the Dinosaur.
  • Ridiculously Human Robots: Averted with the ship's computer Leo Caesius' android avatar, who is a Steampunk, obviously metallic humanoid robot. Played straight, however, with the super-sexy assassin droids Bill and Hillary (...yes) seen in the episode "Hey Hey We're The Monkeys".
  • Running Gag: So many that we're forced to link to the AH.com wiki to list them. Most are Shout Outs to running jokes on the forum the Series is based on, but others are unique to it.
  • "Second Law" My Ass!: Leo Caesius to some extent, especially after he gets infected with a virus in the episode "Leo Atrox".
  • Shout-Out:
  • Spin-Off:
  • Spiritual Successor: As a Time Skip sequel to both AH.com The Series and AH.com The Next Generation, a new series titled "AH.com Enterprise" has been in the development stages since December 2013. The new series is meant to be part revival and part sequel to the first two series. (There are even some early plans of a crossover miniseries for the 10th anniversary of the first show - it would apparently feature the older crews and the newer crews from all three shows teaming up to go save the multiverse together.)
  • Stable Time Loop: after the war with the ASBs at the end of season 4, the crew and the ship get sent to the Big Bang (the start of the multiverse) and accidentally give the Alien Space Bats some ideas, as well as giving the Machine the DNA for cloning Luakel.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Psychomeltdown with Alyson Hannigan. Later brought to high levels of squickery when Psycho's GenderBendered Mirror Universe counterpart went insane and declared s/he WAS Alyson Hannigan - especially since s/he continued to maintain this even after partly changing back to a man. In later episodes, also used with several characters - both crewmen and recurring villains - with Keira Knightley.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: happens many times.
  • Swiss-Army Gun: The 'BFG' weapons were eventually revealed to be this, in order to explain Depending on the Writer continuity issues with the weapons fire being described differently in different episodes.
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The ASB s (Alien Space Bats).
  • Take a Third Option: In "The Cult of the Swamp God", after a few members of the crew are forced to compete in a LARP due to a computer glitch, they are given the option to take one item from the LARP world. Dave Howery has to choose between a Bag of Holding and Keira Knightley. In the end, he chooses to put Keira in the Bag of Holding and take the Bag.
  • Take That!:
  • Techno Babble: Used ironically. Notably, a powerful enemy weapon is said to use 'technobabblyon particle beams'.
    • A term borrowed from Sev Trek, a Star Trek parody webcomic.
  • Teleporter Accident: All the time, but usually played for laughs. There is the odd exception, such as "To A Theatre Near You", where it is used for drama.
  • The Slow Path: what the main characters have to do when they accidentally send the AH.com into the future from the Big Bang, without themselves inside.
  • The 'Verse: "AH.comverse". The two newer series, AH.com The Next Generation and AH.com Enterprise, also use the same setting.
  • Those Two Guys: Hermanubis and Imajin on the Hub, Shadow Knight and Scarecrow on the Mercator, and Flocculencio and Michael on the AH.com.
  • Those Wacky Nazis: Occasional villains. So relentlessly studied in Alternate History that they are invariably used in an ironic or deliberately cartoonish way. Usually associated with their (historical) plan to invade England, Operation Sealion, which is generally acknowledged to be so badly conceived that even Hitler wasn't crazy enough to order its implementation.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: Inevitably, Doctor What. The only interrogator who managed to wring information out of him was his own counterpart from another timeline, Docteur Quoi. And that was by holding lesbian porn up just out of his reach.
  • Unobtainium: Used as the actual name of the fuel that the Shift drive runs on, lampshaded mercilessly. Usually to be found in asteroid field mazes haunted by an entire race of psychopathic Pac-Men.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Although ordinary swearwords are used liberally, occasionally "fenk" shows up, possibly because "every other sci-fi series has a blatant made-up alternative to fuck !"
  • Villain Episode: The "Counterfactual" miniseries and the later episode "Whatever Happened to the CF.netters?"
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Pretty much everyone on the AH.com, but particular vitriolic pairings are Flocculencio and Michael, Psychomeltdown and Michael, and Matt and Weapon M.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: The CF.net Ship has one of these. It's so rarely used that a running joke is that it takes an entire season's worth of episodes to charge up.
  • Zany Scheme: Ward's plan to infect the AH.com crew with a 'teenifying virus' in the episode "Teens on a Ship" (lampshaded in that the usually dark and gritty villain Ward admits he's just in a cartoonishly evil mood), and also the AH.commers' plan to pay for repairs by getting demeaning jobs in "Temps".

Awesome

Characters

Crew of the MES Alternatehistory.com

Doctor What

Captain by default, a goofy screwball with a heart of gold. Obsessed with porn and lesbians, and porn OF lesbians. Canadian.
  • A God Am I: Parodied with his catchphrase "AND ON THAT DAY I SHALL BECOME AAAA GODDDDDD!!!"
  • The Captain: Thinks himself to be this, everyone else just goes along with it. Occasionally has a heroic moment that lives up to it.
  • Catchphrase:
    • "I find that strangely arousing..."
  • * "That's the 37th strangest thing I've ever seen" (then lists some of the others)
  • * "Don't tell me how to (something completely unrelated), I've seen every porn movie ever made!"

Grey Wolf

Second-in-command, a perpetually drunken Englishman with a thing about genealogy and plush unicorns.
  • Verbal Tic: Starts most sentences with "Um, fuck..."

Landshark

Chief pilot and third-in-command. Spends most of his time snarking at the American crew members or taking part in an S&M relationship with Ironyuppie.

IronYuppie

For much of the show's run, the only female crewmember. Terrifies most of the men. In a relationship with Landshark. Has a sex dungeon full of people they encounter on their voyages, occasionally added to.

Dave Howery

Chief engineer. Has a pathological hatred of Canada and an indestructible wiry beard.
  • Berserk Button: Canada. And someone harming, putting the moves on, or spying on Keira.
  • Freudian Excuse: It's eventually revealed that the reason why he hates Canadians and Europeans is that he comes from a timeline where Canadians and Europeans were occupying and oppressing the USA, and he grew up under the occupation.

G.Bone

Engineer and teleporter operator. Hawaiian.
  • Flanderization: A running joke was him not paying attention to working the teleporter due to doing something else. One of these activities was reading Archie Comics. This snowballed into him becoming an obsessive fanboy of Archie Comics, to the point where he considers having an opinion one way or the other Betty and Veronica dilemma to be constitute different religious beliefs.

Psychomeltdown

Engineer. Navajo Indian.

Michael

Engineer and security officer. Australian.

Flocculencio

General layabout and compatriot of Michael. Singaporean of Indian descent.

Matt

Weapons officer.

Weapon M

Head of security. Once had a threesome. Will never get tired of telling you about it.

Torqumada

Ship's doctor.

Thande

Ship's chemist.

GBW

Ship's operations officer. Often shown later as being a secondary pilot and piloting the shuttles.

Othniel

"Ensign and standard bearer", an evangelical Christian from Utah.

Hendryk

Quartermaster and Whatian Priest. Sinophile Frenchman.

DMA

Security and Orthodox Sheepist Priest. Australian.

Diamond

Optician, nurse, cartographer and Reformed Sheepist Priest. Also practices Pantslessness.
  • Put on a Bus: After getting banned from the board in real life.

Luakel

Eager Young Space Cadet.
  • Send in the Clones: We've seen more alternate versions of Luakel than any other character, largely so the writers could kill him off in a variety of interesting ways; this eventually became the basis for a plot arc.
  • Trauma-Induced Amnesia: After an incident involving a gender-flipped, Mirror Universe version of Kit.

Kit

Ship's operations officer. Gay Welshman.
  • Robosexual: Admires Leo Caesius' robot body's 'fabulous glutes'.

Leo Caesius

The ship's computer, appearing both as a disembodied voice and incarnate in a robot body.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Usually averted, though he gets taken over by a virus in "Leo Atrox" leading to this. His backstory shows that the leadership of his robotic civilisation were like this, though.
  • Character Development: His origin story shows he was originally a great admirer of humans, being a member of a robotic civilisation that had grown up after their human creators had died out. He gets more snarky over time as his romantic impressions get dented by the reality of the AH.commers. In particular being taken over by a virus in "Leo Atrox" leaves him with a tendency to mutter things like "Damn fleshbags".

The Mosquito

A giant mosquito born from a teleporter accident.

Bobo

A flying brain with tentacles created by Torqumada in one of his mad science experiments. Is intensely loyal to Torqumada and more recently also to Keira Knightley.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: In his early appearances his description was kept deliberately vague.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Was at once point stuffed into a Frankenstein body to impersonate Thande, and none of the other crew noticed any difference (and, in fact, they thought Thande was the Frankestein body).

Keira Knightley

A product of a Dungeons & Dragons holodeck-style game world, a Damsel in Distress clone of the actress who was rescued by Dave Howery as part of a party of inadvertent LARPers. He managed to smuggle her out using a Bag of Holding and she joined the crew as a regular.
  • Action Girl: a couple of times, she has joined a mission and played a role. She also became fundamental when nearly the entire crew became five year old.
  • Artificial Human: Which means she has a simplified genetic code, and Dave gets scared eventually that one of the genetic manipulations that get inflicted on the crew sometimes might be fatal to her.
  • Never Gets Drunk: A corollary of her simplified genetics is that her liver processes alcohol too fast for her to get intoxicated.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Averted. She's referred to simply as "Keira Knightley".

Crew of the MES Counterfactual.net

Ward

Hard-bitten former admiral with a grudge against Doctor What and, indeed, most of the multiverse.
  • Catchphrase: "Get your head out of your ass, boy!"
  • Depending on the Writer: Can either be ruthless but honourable or does things For the Evulz. Over time the first characterisation became dominant.
  • Revenge Before Reason: Aimed at both the Devourer of Worlds and Doctor What (the latter case because he believes he abandoned him while fighting the Devourer).

Grimm Reaper

Second-in-command and professional sadist. Dresses up as The Grim Reaper.

MerryPrankster

Third-in-command, perpetually trying to take over.

Kilngirl

Chief engineer.

Fortyseven

Engineer and teleporter operator.

Romulus Augustulus

Security officer.

Dominusnovus

Weapons officer.

Faeelin

Ship's operations and communications.

Midgard

Assault leader.

Bulgaroktonos

Assault goon.

Darkslavik

Genetic weapons specialist.

Other recurring characters and groups

The Mirror Crew

Mirror Universe counterparts of the AH.commers.
  • Beard of Evil: In an obvious reference to Star Trek, all the mirror crew have goatees - except Doctor What, because his primary-universe version has one.

The Germans

A group of German mercenaries, obsessed with politics and perpetually arguing.

The Pole Trolls

Enemies of the Germans, who infest the Wiki World (based on The Other Wiki) and seek to change reality to fit their views. Based on the large number of Polish trolls who have been known to spam alternatehistory.com's message board.
  • Anime Fan Boy: The Wikimasters, the incompetent rulers of the Wiki World, are universally of this type.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Human 237, who steals IronYuppie's sex toys to use as weapons.
  • Jizzed in My Pants: Molobo continuously does this after talking about the glories of Poland, constantly requiring a new pair of underwear from Hurgan. When the Germans show up with all their firepower, he asks for the brown pair for a change.
  • Verbal Tic: Their Armenian ally, Rafi, is unable to speak a sentence without the word "genocide".

The Lesbian Space Marines

Originating from a planet where all the men were killed by a virus. After acquiring shift-drive technology from the AH.commers, began expanding into other timelines.

The Administratum of Bankind

A Grimdark civilisation perpetually at war and consisting of countless hellish hive worlds and huge warships like gothic cathedrals, presided over by a dark religion dedicated to a a dead leader upon a great golden chair. Does This Remind You of Anything??
  • Retcon: They were originally a more straightforward reference to Warhammer 40K, but were later reworked to incorporate references from the forum's AH.com-ised fan variant, Banhammer 40K. This change was explained in-universe as being the result of ASB interference.

The Guild of Cartographers

Or the Mappist Cabal, a group of elite mapmakers crewing the ship Mercator.

The King

Saviour, religious icon and ruler of a planet. Wears white suit, eats cheeseburgers, plays guitar, has quiff. Reminds me of someone, but can't quite think who...

Mike Collins

Powerful enemy of the Hub.
  • Depending on the Writer: Whether he has powers of his own or if they are just the result of technology. The former view eventually won out.
  • Take Over the World: His goal in many episodes is to take over the Hub. He actually has taken over several versions of Earth in the past, including Dave Howery's origin timeline.

The Alien Space Bats (ASB)

Enemies of the Hub, embodiments of chaos, and have been interfering with various timelines since at least Season 2.

The Hub of the Multiverse

A vast complex in its own dimension, a place where timelines intersect. The Pub in the Hub, Ouroboros, often features - it can be accessed from any bar in the multiverse through the door labelled 'Authorised Staff Only'. The Hub also contains docks for ships, huge shopping malls, and so on.

Drinking Game

Drinking game for alternatehistory.com:

  • Every time Harry Turtledove mentions that Sam Carsten sunburns easily, take a shot.
  • Take a shot whenever Jake Featherston flirts with Clarence Potter over the phone
  • Take a shot whenever you encounter the phrase "better—but not a whole lot better".
  • Take a shot whenever US soldiers discuss the differing qualities of Yankee and Confederate tobacco.

YMMV

  • Growing the Beard: Generally acknowledged to have happened around the start of the second season, due to two factors: the writers now had a clearer idea of the series' setting and their depictions of the crew synched up better, and the first season finale had helped provide useful background and origin stories for the AH.com/CF.net vendetta. Nothing at all to do with Dave Howery's infamous beard.
  • Squick: So much. Oh, so much. Highlight if you dare: A teenager loses his virginity with the Gender Bendered evil Mirror Universe counterpart of a gay crewmember; that same gay crewmember is forced into a porn shoot with ten women; the details of Landshark and Iron Yuppie's relationship are so wrong that they can only be alluded to obliquely; and many more. A squick-worthy moment is usually denoted by most crewmen crying for 'the forks!' (to stab into their eyes and erase the memory of having seen the act), except Doctor What, who will muse that he finds it strangely arousing.
    • Even worse. In "The Narcissus Syndrome", Doctor What drinks a virus that changes his personality into something similar to DominusNovus and Super55. The result is a Doctor What that thinks himself as the most attractive person in the multiverse. He goes find the Mirror AH.com ship and has sex with his mirror Gender Bendered counterpart. When he "wakes" from the virus influence, he cleans himself using several gallons of bleach, an entire toothpaste tube and a bucket full of medicinal alcohol.

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