Boldly going with alacrity.
Space... the final frontier. These are the missions of the Starship Tempest. Set between Captains Kirk and Picard, five friends continue their first roleplaying campaign as the crew of this Federation starship. Exploring strange new worlds, keeping peace in the galaxy, defending their keyboards from kids and cats, and going clumsily — if not boldly — where no one has gone before.
—Captain Rye-jae Maddox (aka Ryan)
Starship Tempest
(also know as Star Trek: Tempest) is a podcast hybrid of the Actual Play and Audio Drama formats, set in the Star Trek universe and played using Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures 2d20 RPG system.
Set in the time period between Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Starship Tempest follows the adventures of the USS Tempest, an Ambassador-class Federation starship and the sister ship to the Enterprise-C (first seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise"). The show features many established elements of the Star Trek universe from the perspective of a new ship and crew, though between the whims of the GM and the RPG nature of the storytelling, it has slowly diverged into an Alternate Continuity.
Starship Tempest contains examples of:
- Adaptation Deviation: The first three missions contain a handful of these, since they come from Star Trek Adventures' first mission compendium book but are adapted to the different era Tempest is set in.
- "Entropy's Demise": The context of the Romulans is different, since there has been no official contact with them for about 30 years.
- "That Which Is Unknown": Dr. Ja'Brenn and the Takarans become Dr. Toran and the Angosians, changing a species only known minimally by Dr. Crusher late in TNG to a different alien of the week species from TNG.
- "Border Dispute": The Nova-class USS Nightingale becomes the Merced-class USS Ellesmere.
- Animal Theme Naming: The various supporting characters of the Tempest crew all have conspicuously animal sounding names. There's Douh the deer-like helm officer; Eele the engineer that specializes in electro-plasma systems (read: an electric eel); and K'at, the nurse that happens to be from an established Star Trek species that bears a strong resemblance to Earth cats.
- The Cameo: In "Sabotage on Station 7" both Milder's and Garcia's case officer at Starfleet Intelligence is Marta Batanides, one of Picard's Academy friends we see in the TNG episode "Tapestry" and who according to beta canon worked in Starfleet Intelligence. She returns to give the players their mission in "The Wise Man Will Wage Just Wars" and becomes the head of Starfleet Intelligence after Admiral Hamidi sacrifices herself in "The Mandate of Heaven".
- Continuity Nod:
- In "That Which Is Unknown" the Angosians know they can't join the Federation until they end their conflict with the Tarsians, a conflict which had only recently ended when the Angosians were introduced in the TNG episode "The Hunted".
- In the TNG episode "The Chase", set in 2369, it's been 30 years since Galen and Picard have seen each other, meaning they last saw each other in 2339 — aka, the end of "Boats Against the Current". Thanks to Maddox's intervention, that 30 year gap will be averted.
- In "Incident at Ivex" the Klingon bird of prey is named "Tong Vey" after a famous battle in Klingon history that is a plot point from the Deep Space Nine episode "Rules of Engagement".
- In "Tempest Tossed" the main Cardassian ship is the "Kraxon" which is the same ship that takes Thomas Riker into custody in the DS 9 episode "Defiant". And Gul Krim is the name of a Legate mentioned in dialogue in DS 9's "Behind the Lines".
- In "Primum Non Nocere" the medical mission that the Tempest is diverted from is delivering antiviral medicines to the plague ravaged colony of Arvada III. In the TNG episode "The Arsenal of Freedom", Dr. Crusher tells a story about how a plague broke out on the colony where she was living with her grandmother. Traditional medical supplies ran out and her grandmother used local plants and herbs as a stop gap before help could arrive. The reason such a stopgap was necessary, according to Starship Tempest, is because the ship carrying the necessary relief was diverted by a different mission - the circumstances of "Primum Non Nocere."
- Daimon Smeet, first encountered in 2.7 The Butcher's Benevolence, is also the name of the Ferengi Grand Nagus mentioned in the Deep Space Nine episode Ferengi Love Songs, the only Grand Nagus assassinated in office along with his First Clerk. Smeet and Gaxor return in 3.4 In the Long Run as Grand Nagus and First Clerk, having acquired a different replicator after failing to steal the Tempest's and accidentally crashing the Ferengi economy with it, presumably leading to their assassination in the prime timeline, where the Tempest crew did not or could not spare them from that fate.
- Everybody Did It: Sabotage on Station 7, as an intentional send up of Agatha Christie, ends with a version of this. Turns out everyone was guilty EXCEPT the saboteur. And the sabotage was an indirect way of bringing the guilty parties to justice.
- Literary Allusion Title
- "The Tempest Tossed" is from Emma Lazarus' poem The New Colossus. The one that goes, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." and which continues, "Send these the homeless, the tempest-tost to me..."
- "Above the Highest Sky" is an adaptation of the Star Trek animated series episode title "Beyond the Farthest Star" and to a lesser extent, the Deep Space 9 episode title "Far Beyond the Stars."
- "Boats Against the Current" is a line from The Great Gatsby which likens the futility of trying to return to an out of reach past with trying to row a boat against the water's current.
- "The Captain in the Arena" is a play on the "It's not the critic who counts..." excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic" speech, which includes the line, "The credit belongs to the man actually in the arena." And of course, also the classic TOS episode the mission is built on, "The Arena".
- The Wise Man Will Wage Just Wars: is a quote from St. Augustine's "City of God" — "But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars." which is the first use of the phrase "just war" in literature and what would go on to be termed "Just War Theory."
- Covenants Without Swords is a quote from Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" where he states, 'Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.' Meaning that an orderly and peaceful society cannot function without some sort of authority that has a monopoly on physical force.
- Deserts Nearer Home is an allusion to Robert Frost's "Desert Places" poem whose last line is, "I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places."
- Wavelength of Evil comes from the novel "The Most Dangerous Game."
- What We May Be comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5, where Ophelia says, "We know what we are but not what we may be."
- Theory and Practice is from Einstein's quote, "In theory, theory and practice are the same. But in practice they are not."
- In the Long Run comes from a quippy retort of John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression. Classical economists argued against government intervention, claiming that in the long run, the market would sort itself out. Keynes retorted, "In the long run, we are all dead [anyway]."
- Mandate of Heaven is the English translation of a concept in Ancient China that said that an Emperor's license to rule could be revoked by heaven if they proved unworthy of it.
- If Angels Governed Men comes from a quote by James Madison, fourth president of the United States, framer of the US Constitution, and principle author of the Federalist Papers, which argued in favor of ratifying the Constitution. In Federalist 51, Madison wrote: "If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself."
- If Two Are Dead comes from a quote by Benjamin Franklin on the difficulty of keeping secrets, "Three may keep a secret, if two are dead."
- Deadlier Than Hate comes from a quote by Eliezer Yudkowsky, saying that the only thing deadlier than hate is indifference.
- Ite Inflammate Omnia is the Latin translation of a quote by St. Ignatius extolling others to evangelize the Christian Gospel, which translates as, "Go and set the world on fire."
- Mutinous Winds comes from a speech by Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest.
- Knocking Rashly at Unknown Doors comes from the Havamal, a book of proverbs from Norse mythology.
- Abysm of Time also comes from a speech by Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest.
- Meaningful Name:
- Primum Non Nocere: the research outpost is named for the Dr. Frankenstein like character C.A. Rotwang from the landmark science fiction film Metropolis. Also, Budala is the word for 'fool' in several Eastern European languages.
- Mile-Long Ship: The Zandaran Ark ship from "Above the Highest Sky" is this. Also apparently a Generation Ship since the inhabitants have lived in the ship's main volume for generations and the ship originates from somewhere on the other side of the galaxy.
- Mythology Gag: One of the Tempest's shuttles until it's destroyed in "That Which Is Unknown" is the shuttlecraft Cristoforetti, who is an Italian astronaut who did a tour of duty on the International Space Station and, while there, took a picture of herself wearing a Star Trek costume in the station's cupola module.
- NoodleIncident:
- Vulcan diplomat Sapir never goes into detail about what exactly happened between him and the Tholian scientist Gaseev, saying only that sometimes even trying to help with the best of intentions can end up making things worse.
- ShakespeareTitle:
- What We May Be: From "Hamlet"
- Mutinous Winds: From "The Tempest"
- Abysm of Time: Also from "The Tempest"
- Ripped from the Headlines:
- Season 3's What We May Be features a plot by a hostile foreign power to throw an election that will weaken the Federation, using preexisting internal tensions with the help somebody on the inside.
- Shout-Out: The name of the Sentry Station 7 commander is Robert Slocum, the name of the narrator from Joseph Heller's Something Happened, who is also a mediocre middle aged man with a lackluster career and a loveless marriage.
- Whole-Plot Reference:
- The premise of Above the Highest Sky is almost a direct lift from The Orville episode "If the Stars Should Appear".
- Captain in the Arena is an in-universe deliberate reference to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Arena" - Intentional on the part of the Gorn, who have decided to model their diplomatic contact with the Federation on the circumstances surrounding first contact...which are the events of "The Arena" episode.
- Flight of the Recreant: Yeah, it's The Hunt for Red October just Recycled In Space. The Romulans stand in for the Russians and cloaking technology stands in for Red October's caterpillar stealth drive.
Stay safe, be kind, and we'll see you... out there.
