Book Review: Star Trek: From History's Shadow by Dayton Ward

From History's Shadow might remind a lot of Doctor Who readers of David Bishop's Who Killed Kennedy. Both stories serve to tie together a number of plot threads into a cohesive continuity.

While the original crew is part of the story, it's the parallel tale of Captain James Wainwright that really drives events. He was a minor character in the Deep Space Nine episode "Little Green Men" where the Roswell incident is the result of the Ferengi accidentally time travelling to 1947. Wainwright becomes part of Project Blue Book and throughout the 50's and 60's has run ins with the other time travelling incidents in Star Trek lore.

The book in general has an X-Files feel to it. With Wainwright and his partner Allison Marshall playing Mulder and Scully as they try to track down a group of time travelling aliens who are trying to interfere with Earth's history.  They also have to deal with the lack of support from the military and government, who regard Blue Book as a waste of time.

Gamers running a period Torchwood or UNIT campaign would find lots of interesting ideas out of this book. It plays heavily with the Temporal Cold War idea that was introduced in Star Trek: Enterprise (and honestly making it much more interesting here than the show ever did.) It's feasible the Temporal Cold War might be an extension of the Last Great Time War into the Star Trek Universe. And the book providing a look at events both through the eyes of locals trying to grasp what is happening and the time aware agents who are trying to alter events to their own advantage.

Apollo 23: Base Diana

And here's my last post on Apollo 23. Focusing on the Setting of the adventure Base Diana.

 

Base Diana

Base Traits:
GOOD 

• Advanced Technology (x2)
• Computing Power
• Secret Base

BAD

• Alien Threat
• Unreliable Resource

The US Government started building Base Diana in the late 70's. Supposedly, the Apollo 17 was the last time man went to the moon, but in fact the missions continued in secret throughout the 70's and into the 80's. Modules for the construction of Base Diana were brought up throughout the 70's and the final components for the Quantum Displacement Field were brought on Apollo 22 in 1984.

Quantum Displacement Field

 The Quantum Displacement Field is the base's main lifeline to Earth. Simply by walking through the lines of mushroom shaped devices outside the base, you go from the airless moon to the desert of West Texas, a few miles away from Diana's Earth counterpart Base Hibiscus.

1. Main Airlock-  
 This is the primary entrance and exit to the outside, the main space suit locker is located here.
2. Communications Center -
The central computer and and main communication terminal to Earth is located here.
3. Medical Bay-
 The base has a fairly basic medical suite. Normally any serious medical cases are shuttled back to Earth via the Quantum Displacement Field. The Process Chamber for Professor Jackson's Alpha Wave Manipulator  is here as well.
4. Prisoner Receiving-
Any of the special prisoners are brought into the base via this access point, and taken to the lower level prison cells.
5. Quantum Displacement System-
The massive equipment that connects the Moonbase to Earth is here.
6. Section 9-
The supposedly empty section of the base is in fact the Talerian store house for people they have "Blanked" 

Adventure Hooks

Apollo 23 ends with the base being abandoned due to the loss of the quantum displacement field. Even so, the United States government has put a lot of effort into that facility, so it' seems unlikely they will simply leave it be. It's hinted in the story the facility eventually gets upgraded and repurposed as the penal colony featured in the classic series story Frontier in Space. So while the base may be temporarily uninhabited, it's likely to come back to life in the future.

• In a U.N.I.T. based campaign, when word about the facility gets out to other agencies, the US agrees to reopen it as an international outpost with multiple nations helping operate it. You could easily run a whole campaign around the idea of man's first tentative steps into space in the very hostile univers of Doctor Who.
• If the base is closed and has been that way for a while, what are these mysterious signals that are coming from the base now? A team of astronauts, scientists and hastily trained marines are sent back to the base to figure out what's happened.
• Maybe there really are Moonites and they are in league with the Rutan Host. So they may not be too thrilled about the humans taking up residence.

Apollo 23: The Talerians

To start off this blog, I thought I'd do some in depth examination of one of the books from the New Series line. So I'm starting off with the first novel for the Eleventh Doctor, Apollo 23. This will be the second of three articles covering the book and aspects usable in the game.
 
 

Talerian drawing by me, background by Sam Brown

 Talerian                             

 ATTRIBUTES
Awareness   3            Coordination   3
Ingenuity      3           Presence         3
Resolve        5            Strength         1

GOOD TRAITS
Indomitable
Fear Factor (x2)


BAD TRAITS
Alien Appearance (major)
Weakness- Easily punctured skin (major)

SKILLS
Convince     4 (Control Possessed  6)
Fighting      3
Knowledge  4 (Earth people 6)
Marksman  4
Subterfuge  5
Technology  3

WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT

Battle Armour [5] 
Talerian Blaster [3/6/L]
Talerian Mind Transfer Device

STORY POINTS: 3-5


Talerians were the same height as humans, but with grey-green skinned, blobby bodies covered in slimy pustules. Their heads were bulbous, with a slit-shaped mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, and a single, egg-shaped eye. They had no necks. Their skin was rubbery, able to deflect small impacts. More powerful attacks, such as a knive wound, or a change in atmospheric pressure, would rupture the skin, causing the Talerian's liquid innards to gush out, killing them. With each passing generation, the Talerians grew more and more fragile.

The way the Talerians have overcome their physical limitations is to transfer their minds into the stronger bodies of other species. They prefer to use "Blanks" individuals whose one minds have been wiped and made more pliable to the Talerians' strong will. If a character has been subjected to a wide spectrum engram erasure, or other Resolve and Awareness draining attack, they are susceptible to the mind transfer.

In a desperate attempt to change their fate, the Talerians planned an invasion of Earth through the secret lunar installation Base Diana. The science staff of the base were experimenting with mental conditioning methods that left the subjects vulnerable to Talerian mind swapping. The Talerians took control of the lead scientists Professor Jackson, and then systematically subverted the majority of the base staff.

Talerians are very single minded in their desire to find new host bodies. They are physically limited, and must depend on stealth and subterfuge to achieve their goals. They prefer to move slowly, but are not above fast forwarding their plans if the opportunity arises.

Talerian Mind Transfer Device (special gadget)

The Talerians used this in conjunction with Doctor Jackson's memory adjustment machine (same as the Engram Eraser from sample gadgets) to implant the minds of Talerians into human bodies.

TRAITS
Transmit, Possess (special 3)

STORY POINTS 4

BEYOND THE BOOK

Talerians are a natural fit for the "enemy within" scenarios. Their technology allows them to control people from nearly cosmic distances, without their physical bodies  being present. So there's no quick and easy access to cut off the transmitter, so the players will have to be clever with how they help the Talerians' victims.

Apollo 23 ended with the Talerian invasion being stopped at Base Diana, but it's possible some of their agents already took host bodies and returned to Earth via the Quantum Displacement field before it was sabotaged.  Some Talerians may already have a foothold on Earth and are planning their next move. Any sort of Torchwood or U.N.I.T. based campaign might find the blobs as a recurring opponent.

Maybe the Talerians might not keep to one host, and jump around to body to body to achieve their goals. If the players wake up one morning with no memories of last night and CIA at their door asking about some missing plutonium, it might be the Talerians have been using you as a patsy in one of their schemes.

Out in space, it might be the Earth is not the only place they are targeting. Any alien may serve their needs, and maybe they have already captured numerous other species. Anyone with advanced technology may find themselves targeted.Why exactly is a Sontaran, a Draconian, and a Zygon working together as mercenaries when they would hate each other normally?

Apollo 23: An overview

To start off this blog, I thought I'd do some in depth examination of one of the books from the New Series line. So I'm starting off with the first novel for the Eleventh Doctor, Apollo 23. This will be the first of (at  least) three articles I'm doing for the book.

I can't say I've read many of the Doctor Who novels. I recall reading Timewyrm: Genesys from the old Virgin Books line, but I never really got into the Doctor Who books. Only recently I found a few of the New Series books from BBC at the used book store, and the title and image of the burger wielding astronaut amused me so I picked it up.

The  easiest way to sum up the story is the synopsis from Wikipedia:

The Doctor and Amy arrive at a shopping centre much to The Doctor's disappointment. When arriving they discover that a spaceman has appeared out of thin air. They both decide to materialize to the moon which they successfully do and find the secret Base Diana. Investigating, they learn of a plot by the evil Talerians to take over the Earth by possessing human bodies. The Doctor ends up trapped on Earth and working with secret government officials, manages to return to the moon on Apollo 23, there having secretly been Apollos 18 through 22 before a link was established between Earth and the Moon that allowed instantaneous travel before sabotage caused it to break down, causing the spaceman to appear.  On the moon, Amy is captured and possessed and lures the Doctor into a trap, but he manages to escape with the help of Major Carlisle who managed to secretly remain unpossesed due to a power failure caused by Amy attempting to stop sabotage. With Carlisle's help, the Doctor finds a back-up copy of Amy's personality and restores her to normal and later manages to do the same using the fire suppression system to everyone but the alien leader, Jackson, who had kept his back-up with him. Restoring everyone's minds through their back-ups also erases the alien minds possessing them. Jackson manages to summon an invasion force of actual Talerians and reveals that the real Jackson's experiments had allowed him (the alien possessing him) to transfer himself to Jackson in the first place and start the invasion. The Talerians are revealed to be balloon-like aliens that are extremely fragile and are dying out. They want human bodies to survive. The Doctor restores the real Jackson by secretly giving him his back-up in his tea and he sacrifices himself to destroy the Talerians by shooting out a window, causing a depressurization that kills the Talerian invaders due to their fragility, and also kills him.

From a role playing stand point, this would be a fairly easy game to use as game scenario. It's mostly the "base under seige" story with the added paranoia of not being certain who you can trust inside.

Base Diana would be a useful location for other adventures. It was built in secret in the early 80's and has become the ultimate in maximum security prisons for people that for some reason or another need to be kept far away from the world. The story is very vague on what these people have done, so it might be that some of them are not here because they are violently dangerous, but politically dangerous. It's isolation and the unlawful experiments being conducted might be more for the benefit of the powers that be than to "cure" the inmates of their dangerous natures (shades of The Prisoner and Mind of Evil.)


The fact that the majority of the staff simply accepts the Doctor and Amy's presence on the base seems a bit out of character for the typical military.  Especially since this is supposed to be a top secret military base hidden on the moon and these two distinctly non-military strangers just pop in right as the base has a major system malfunction just makes me think one of the military guys should have at least thrown them into a cell and contacted command before anything else. The base staff for the most part came across as fairly blandly generic, but I think most of that might have just been a matter of how the author wrote the story.  They could easily have been played a lot more sinister or at least memorable.

The alien menace of the Talerians is definitely worth revisiting. Such a physically fragile race in search of stronger host bodies could be a good theme to play with. Their mind swap technology seems rather limited in the story, we never see how the Talerians turn themselves into mental energy, suggesting the equipment must be bulky and immobile. If they were to advance that to a more portable form, the possibilities of brain swapping and the horrible consequences of such might be worth playing out.


There is one very fun scene to inspire the GMs early in the story. At the car park where they left the TARDIS, it's sitting over two spaces. The attendant is about to fine them. The Doctor whips out the psychic paper and claims a  two-for one exemption. And in a classic example of a "yes, but..." success roll, the attendant validates the psychic paper with his signature! The paper is effectively useless for the rest of the story (Amy flips the paper around in the holder, but prints everything backwards.) Which makes for a nasty and amusing way for GM's to neutralize a player who overly depends on his psychic paper or other easy cheat. At the end of the story I would give them the option to spend a story point and go dig in their TARDIS for a hypersonic eraser or some such that will erase the writing off the paper and make it good as new.