Starship Titanic - Television Tropes & Idioms

Fancy a free cruise?

Bing-Bong! We regret to announce that the ship is hurtling out of control through hyperspace. All passengers with insurance queries, please contact your ticket vendors.

— The ever-helpful announcer

Well, the ship has lost its mind, and so has most of its crew, including me...

— Edmund Lucy Fentible, DoorBot

The brain child of Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Starship Titanic is a point and click adventure game set aboard an intergalactic cruise ship. The game opens with the ship crashing into your house, and before you know it, it turns out someone has lobotomised the main computer, the ship is adrift in space and it's up to you to fix things.

There is still a functional website that can be found here

. There is also a novelization of the game by Pythonite Terry Jones, who claims to only having agreed to Adams' proposal to write said book if he could write it in the nude. Which he supposedly did.

Not to be confused with two other starships named Titanic.

See this post

if you're trying to run the game on windows 7. (Though be aware that the patches for versions 1.00.42a and 1.00.42b will no longer be available on Starship Titanic's main site. They can still be accessed through their archived versions here for a

and here for b

)

This game provides examples of:

Achilles Buttock: The Maître d'Bot has one, and it must be prodded repeatedly before he will let you look at Scraliontis' corpse.
All Up To You: True, you occasionally persuade the bots to help, but it's an uphill struggle.
Arc Words: "Nobody likes a smartass."
AFGNCAAP: We only have the Robots assurance they're even human.
Blood Sport: Nib. The BarBot is an especially big fan - he'll go on about it at length if you ask him, and the In-Flight Magazine also has an article on the subject written by him.
Brain Uploading: People who have donated their personality, like giving blood in America you get paid for it, with better personalities getting more money. The robots onboard all have these, thankfully they can be adjusted.
The Call Knows Where You Live: After the titular ship reduces your house to rubble, what choice do you have but to to answer Fentible's Call to Adventure?
- But Thou Must: In fact, if you type "no" (or indeed anything besides "yes"), the only acknowledgment your refusal gets is "An odd way to spell it, but I suppose it will have to do."
Chekhov's Gun: Both the picture of the night sky above your house, and the 3D glasses that came packaged with the game itself. These two items are completely useless until you gain access to the Titanic's navigation systems at the very end of the game.
The Computer Is Your Friend: Averted - the computer would be your friend... unfortunately, she's come down with a bad case of lobotomy and the ship has rapidly gone out of control in her absence.
Control Room Puzzle: With a pretty star field.
Cool Starship: Its a hotel In Space.
Dilating Door: The ship has two, the one visible in the intro and the door to the arboretum, which 'grows' open and closed.
Game-Breaking Bug: The game spanned multiple CD-ROMs. Some batches went out with the final disc in the set missing. Okay, not technically a bug, par se, but certainly game-breaking.
- This is due to there being an ACTUAL game breaking bug on the final disk in the first printing that was missing a file that had the game's interface with their Personal Electronic Thing which is necessary to do anything with your inventory or even save/quit the game!
Gargle Blaster: The BarBot asks for your help in making a fairly nasty one. Interestingly, if you ask him for an actual Gargle Blaster, he replies "Nobody likes a smartass".
- This is, in fact, a hint.
Ghost Ship: You are the only living thing on-board, however there are two dead things...
- and one very living (and vocal) parrot
- The flock of starlings are alive - at least, to start with...
Guide Dang It: One review dubbed the game's difficulty "Impossible unless you're the author or telepathic".
Faster-than-Light Travel: Which allows a ship from the other side of the galaxy to crash into your house.
Fun with Acronyms: Personal Electronic Thing, a combination of keyring, Bag of Holding, remote control, staff pager and conversation log.
- Also Spontaneous Massive Existance Failure. The ship sailed from its space dock with great fanfare and promptly vanished.
The Key Is Behind the Lock: In order to obtain a hammer, you need to press a button with a long stick. However, in order to obtain a long stick behind glass, you must break the glass with a hammer. Fortunately, there's a parrot perch that you can use in place of the long stick.
Magic Countdown: Parodied. The bomb, once armed, would begin to audibly count down, get distracted and lose its place and have to start over. A lot.
Moon Logic Puzzle: Of course you need to cover the chicken in mustard sauce before you send it...
Old Soldier: The LiftBot.
Nobby: Between ourselves I'd rather be trotting up the ha'aqa bin-j'Jabbli in my p'narma hat, heading for the rebel headquarters with a grenade under my q'jinjan.
Polly Wants A Microphone: There is a talking parrot on board, located in the unfinished ballroom. It belonged to one of the people building the ship.
Ridiculously Human Robots: Mostly averted, many of the robots look like furniture or art work.
Robot Girl / Spaceship Girl: Well, woman, who her creator is in love with; also the main computer.
Sanity Slippage: The Barbot after a particularly powerful cocktail and the Doorbot at random times during conversation.
Scenery Porn: The Art Deco inspired locations are mostly static, but wonderful to look at.
Schizo Tech: In a giant spaceship that can travel faster than light there is a pneumatic tube delivery system and phonograph cylinders for music.
Sidenote Full Story: The whole story began as a footnote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Somebody Set Up Us The Bomb: There is a bomb on board, in Titania's chambers. The button labeled "Press to disarm bomb" actually arms the thing. If you don't disable it before beating the game, the ship blows up in the ending.The password is "Nobody likes a smartass"
Starship Luxurious: Of course, since it's a cruise ship in space.
Stop Poking Me: Repeatedly clicking on the bomb after arming it will cause it to become increasingly annoyed, eventually screaming at the player that "NO! MEANS! NO!" before breaking down sobbing.
Surfer Dude: The personality of Krage the bellbot
Tempting Fate: StarshipTitanic, The ship that cannot possibly go wrong
Took a Level in Kindness: Marsinta, the sarcastic, deliberately unhelpful DeskBot becomes extremely kind and gentle once you recalibrate her off-kilter personality settings.
What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?
What Does This Button Do?: arms the bomb
What Measure Is a Non-Human?
Variable Mix