Back when I read this aloud to Kid One, then three years old, I concluded it was one of the better Oz books. Now I've read it aloud again to Kids One and Two, now eight and five, and I stand by that assessment.
Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein by L. Frank Baum illustrated by John R. Neill
As I prepped this review, I skimmed some of the reviews on LibraryThing, and I was struck by one that noted, "As much I enjoy the story... at no point in the story do I ever worry about Dorothy, because she never worries.... [C]onsidering the almost continuous stream of dicey situations she gets into, she remains zen and mostly unbothered at all times, which really renders her rather dull. It takes away a lot of the excitement that should be building... I guess this is because it is a children's adventure, and Baum didn't want his readers getting upset, but I always liked a book that could make you cry as well as make you laugh."
One of the interesting things about reading books aloud to kids is that you become aware of how kids process literature differently to how adults process literature, something you must of course have known at some point in your life, because you were once a kid yourself, but which you've clearly forgotten in the past thirty years. I agree that Baum usually has a very even-keeled tone: note very matter-of-fact way that things like the mutilation of the Tin Woodman or the attack of the wolves are communicated in Wonderful Wizard, something especially revealed by the contrasting choices made in some adaptations. A more modern writer, I suspect, would write sequences like Dorothy floating on the chicken coop in the ocean by telling you how scared Dorothy was, or crank up the suspense of the part where the Oz characters are trying to find the transformed Royal Family of Ev in the Nome King's palace and becoming transformed themselves.
But what I realized from reading this book aloud to a five-year-old is that a five-year-old doesn't need the prose to indicate how scary something is to be scared by it. Poor little guy was snuggling up to me for comfort when Dorothy was floating around on that chicken coop; poor little kid really did not like it when all the members of Ozma's party were being transformed, and I had to reassure him by reminding him that we had read later-set Oz books where Ozma was just fine! Kids, it seems, have an innate ability to just imagine themselves in a situation that adults lack. Kid Two doesn't need Baum to tell him Dorothy is scared because he imagines himself on a chicken coop in a storm in the Pacific Ocean and that is scary!
Kids also appreciate the moments of triumph: the kids loved when Billina hid herself and found out the Nome King's secret, and when she made her guesses—big whoops of delight.
Kid Two is apparently a Jack Pumpkinhead stan; near the end of the book, he complained that he hadn't turned up, and then was quite ecstatic when he appeared in the (what will be obligatory from this point on) end-of-book celebration scene. This was a fun one to read aloud again.
Continuity note: My kids did not remember that Glinda met the Nome King, and he acquired his Magic Belt, in Ages of Oz, even though we only read it five months ago! Oh well.
My grandma was born Marilyn Inderhees on August 6th, 1927, in Cincinnati. She was the second of four, after older brother Jack, and before little sister Audrey, and little brother Bob. She grew up in Westwood; her father, Edward, was co-owner of a paint store, Mohawk Paints, in downtown Cincinnati.
Marilyn’s mother, Helen, was the homemaker, and she raised the family through the tough times of the Great Depression and World War II. During rationing, her dad had a secret supply of Hershey bars from Mr. Habig at Habig’s drug store. They would divide a bar up eight ways – two pieces for mom and dad, four for the kids, and two for the dog, Trixie. They had a victory garden on the empty lot next door, and her dad was the air raid warden for the neighborhood.
Marilyn and the little girl down the street, who was a few months older, walked to school together, beginning in first grade. That was her friend Dorothy, or “Dot.” They would stay friends for over ninety years and later become sisters-in-law.
After grade school, Marilyn attended Mother of Mercy High School, graduating in June 1945, just a few weeks after Victory in Europe; she turned eighteen in August, just a few weeks before Victory in the Pacific over the Japanese. I wonder what these times were like for a young woman. After high school, she got a job working downtown, as a secretary. When not working, she had a rambunctious group of friends--she always liked to have fun.
She met Charles, and they married on June 16th, 1951, just eight days after he graduated as an electrical engineer. The night before she got married, her dad told her she was on her own, but if she ever needed help, he was there for her.
Marilyn and Charlie were fortunate to be able to immediately buy their first house in North College Hill. Her mom and dad moved the furniture into their new house while they were gone on their honeymoon. The house was less than a five-minute walk to Charles’s brother Lou and wife Lottie, and to his sister MaryAnne and husband Mike. It was easy to hang out together at each other’s houses in the evenings, have dinner with their young families, or go to the North College Hill pool.
It took a few years to start a family, but then they came pretty quickly: Jim in 1954, Janet in 1955, Pat in 1957, Karen in 1960, and my father Dan, forever “her baby,” in 1963.
Her dad died suddenly and tragically in a car crash, in October 1955. It was a shock to her and the rest of the family. Marilyn was 28, and her daughter Janet just a few weeks old. Marilyn forever would remember exactly where she was sitting in the living room when Charlie got the phone call.
After seven years in North College Hill, with the family getting bigger, Marilyn and Charlie moved to the house on Lauderdale in 1958. Here they raised the five kids, who attended Saint James School, and the family attended Saint James Church, where she would be a parishioner for almost seventy years. She did mom duties, shuttling kids in the station wagon, clipping coupons to stretch a dollar, volunteering in the cafeteria and library and the PTA and so forth. Later in life, she would knit hats for babies in the NICU and organize the Yarn & Cards outreach here at St. James.
Marilyn and Charlie had a big group of friends who liked to play cards, party, and travel to Florida together: the Luipolds, the Grievenkamps, the Hudepohls, the Rolls, and so forth. She and Charlie liked their martinis. They would sit outside together every night in the warm months from 11:30 to 12:15 or so, and share one or two and just talk, and look out at the night.
She used to say to her husband, “Charlie you should put a porch on the roof.” An interesting vision, but it never happened. She would also say, “Charlie, you should put a skylight in the kitchen.”Also never happened. But then, “Charlie, you should cut a big hole in the back of the house and put in doors and a deck.” She got that one.
The kids got older, graduated high school, and all graduated college. She and Charlie survived a late career lay-off, and then enjoyed a long retirement with travel to far parts of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe. She had several bouts with cancer. Challenges like this were invariably met with a little grumpiness and depression, followed in a few hours by embracing the reality of the situation, and just dealing with it, and doing her best. Persevering.
The grandkids started coming in the 1980s, eventually reaching sixteen. She was always interested in what I had to say, though most of the time, she would laugh and say, “You’re such a character.” Then the great-grandkids, currently at twenty-two. If there’s a way I will always remember my grandmother, it’s on the annual Thanksgiving trip. This began in 1973, and lasted through almost all of the next fifty-three years. Unable to cook a traditional Thanksgiving turkey in a tiny state park cabin kitchen, Marilyn opted to cook Cincinnati chili instead. What began with seven attendees now includes Marilyn’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, running as many as fifty people. Because this began in West Virginia, every year at the Friday night cookout, the Mollmanns would belt out John Denver’s “Country Roads”—what the Mollmanns lack in musical talent, they make up for in enthusiasm. This song became a staple of Mollmann family weddings, and Marilyn would tear up when she heard it.
Charlie passed in 2013, after a few years of difficult health. She was in charge now, and within a few hours or days, got a new dishwasher, soon followed by repainting, updating the bathrooms, new doors, new driveway, new front porch, new garage door, new garage floor, new furniture, and so forth. She loved the house, and loved taking care of it, properly, cleanly, and neatly. She was able to stay there until the day she died.
Marilyn was a woman of tradition and habit. Every year, we would have Christmas Eve in her basement, every year we would do the same things in the same order, from the customary all-children photo, to Grandma’s punch. Every day, it was the rosary at 9:30, channel 9 noon news with lunch precisely at twelve; Divine Mercy chaplet at 3:00. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! at 7:00. Certain days of the week had certain breakfast items.
Marilyn was always there to listen. She talked on the phone regularly to her kids, and visited for dinner quite often. She was born in a different age, with different rules, but she was open to listening to new ideas and new norms. She adapted and grew.
She was a great daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother, and friend. An inspiration. A lovely person. A devout Catholic, attending church and praying the rosary for comfort, a member of the St. Mary’s Ladies Society, member of a weekly prayer group, and she and Charlie volunteered at Church, counting the collections.
She was always positive, open to a new adventure, and full of energy. At age eighty, the first time she got on the waverunner with her son Dan, and he asked what she wanted to do, she said, “go fast.”
We want to thank Janet, Pat, and Karen for taking such good care of her in her final days.
She will be remembered and missed by her family and friends.
I cowrote the above with my dad, and read it at my grandmother's funeral earlier this week. She died on July 4th, just over a month shy of what would have been her 99th birthday. (Most people call this a eulogy, but in Catholicism it's technically "Words of Remembrance.") I'll probably have more to say about this later, but I just wanted to post the text for now.
As previously discussed here on this blog, I've been rereading some of the early L. Frank Baum Oz books aloud to my kids. So far, we've done The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Marvelous Land. But in between these, we've been working in some later "apocryphal" Oz books based on when they take place. So, for example, we read Donald Abbott's Speckled Rose between the first two because that's when it's set. In between Marvelous Land and Ozma, we read issue #3 of Oz-story Magazine because it contains the story "Ozma Sees Herself" by Edward Einhorn, which is set during that span; I also read the kids a couple other stories from the book I thought they would be interested in, and then read the rest of the book to myself.
Oz-story Magazine, Number Three edited by David Maxine with Eric Shanower
Anthology published: 1997 Contents originally published: 1901-97 Acquired: May 2026 Read: May–July 2026
"Ozma Sees Herself" is set shortly after Marvelous Land, and concerns something L. Frank Baum himself was resolutely uninterested in: the psychological ramifications of Tip's transformation back into Ozma. It's pretty short, but like all of Einhorn's Oz work, well done. It also introduces Ozma to the Hungry Tiger; I was a bit surprised that Einhorn had the Tiger and the Cowardly Lion know each other from before Dorothy met the Lion, because I personally am a fan of the interpretation that the Tiger we see in Wonderful Wizard when the animals beg the Lion to kill the giant spider is the Hungry Tiger. But that's a quibble: the idea that Ozma sees a beautiful nymph and comes to recognize it as herself is a clever one.
The book also contains three installments from W. W. Denslow's newspaper strip that featured the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. (Denslow and Baum shared copyright on the first book, and each made their own attempts to capitalize on the success of the stageplay adaptation of it; for Baum, that was Marvelous Land and its own stageplay adaptation, while for Denslow, it was a series of short stories he wrote and illustrated himself.) Denslow is an amazing illustrator, of course, but his writing does not really hit the tone of an Oz story. His work actually reminds me a lot of the next Oz-illustrator-turned-writer, John R. Neill—basically anything can happen if it gives Denslow an excuse to draw something interesting. For example, in these stories, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman can casually travel to America! Overall, they're pretty harmless and forgettable. If you care about timelines, they probably take place between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, except for the first one, which includes Dorothy. This is about her being sad because it's Christmas and she's away from her family; my understanding is that Oz timeline aficionados place it during Wonderful Wizard, in the segment after the Wizard has left Oz in his balloon, before the characters get the idea to go see Glinda for help. (Hungry Tiger Press later collected all of Denslow's stories in a book called The Scarecrow and the Tin-Man of Oz, which I own but have not read. Maybe someday I'll read it to the kids.)
This volume didn't contain as much kid-friendly material as some other installments of Oz-story; the only other thing I read aloud to the kids was "Spots in Oz" by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, which features the leopard with changing spots named Spots from The Hidden Valley of Oz. It was two years ago that we read this book, and it is honestly pretty forgettable, so Kid One has only a vague memory of Spots, and Kid Two doesn't know it at all. This story isn't much cop either, but it's fine. It also features the Hungry Tiger, so that lined up nicely with "Ozma Sees Herself" and our imminent rereading of Ozma of Oz.
There's some original comics material here, all written by Eric Shanower, with various illustrators (including himself); I particularly enjoyed "Poppies," a one-page conversation between Ozma and Dorothy about the poppies Ozma wears in her hair, with beautiful artwork by Ramona Fradon.
In terms of prose, ones I read to myself included "Buffalo Dream" by Jane Mailander, which was a reprint from an anthology of original sf&f. This is about a strange thing that happened to Oscar Diggs—the man later known as the Wizard—during his time as an itinerant circus performer in Nebraska. It's very different from an Oz story, but I really enjoyed it: a melancholy story about the last of the buffalo, told in the first person. "It was very long ago... and far stranger things have since happened to me." Reading it in this context, it's immediately obvious who the main character is, but it would have been fun to encounter it in the wild.
There are a couple Baum reprints; the one of "The Glass Dog" from Animal Fairy Tales is fine. This issue's full-length novel is his The Flying Girl, originally published under the pseudonym Edith Van Dyne in 1911. The novel is about a brother and sister; she's seventeen and working as a secretary to help the family make ends meet, he's a recent engineering grad from Cornell who can only find employment in an automobile repair shop, but soon gets swept up in the mania for flying. He develops his own airplane, and the two must navigate the skullduggery of potential investors to support their invention... as you might guess from the title, she ends up being the one to fly it!
I found it a quick and charming read. I was surprised by some of the turns some of the characters take; Baum actually does a decent job avoiding what initially seem like some obvious directions. While Baum's main talent was surely in his fantasies, he was able to turn his hand to other genres quite successfully. In fact, though, I would say the book is clearly science fiction! It is about a new technology, one that's not real at the time the story was written, and the ramifications of it. If this isn't sf, then I don't know what it.
I should also point out that while there is some surprise at the idea of a "flying girl," there no resistance. I bet if someone remade this book now, there'd be a bunch of misogynists going, "NO FE-MALE IS SUITABLE FOR FLYING!" In fact, we get the exact opposite from one of the characters: "The most successful aviators of the future... are bound to
be women. As a rule they are lighter than men,
more supple and active, quick of perception and
less liable to lose their heads in emergencies. The
operation of an aeroplane is, it seems to me, especially
fitted to women."
Though, the same character goes on to make this prediction: "The airship of the future will not be a passenger
affair... but an individual
machine for personal use. They’ll be cheaper
than automobiles, and more useful, for they can
go direct to their destination in a straight 'airline.' Men will use them to go to business, women
to visit town on shopping expeditions or to
take an airing for pleasure; but I’m sure they will
be built for but one person." Whoops!
Two other things of note. First, there's some discussion of mental illness and domestic abuse that really does not past muster in 2026, and made me very glad I did not elect to read the book aloud to my kids:
"He says that—that you abused his sister," doubtfully remarked the girl. "Well, I did," said Cumberford, calmly. "I pounded her two or three times. Once I choked her until it’s a wonder she ever revived." "Oh, how dreadful!" exclaimed Orissa, shrinking back. "Isn’t it?" he agreed, lighting a cigarette. "Only a brute would lift his hand against a woman. But Burthon's sister—my wife—had a fiendish temper, and her tantrums aroused all the evil in my nature—there's plenty there, I assure you. It was the time I choked her that Burthon had me arrested for cruelty. She had put poison in my coffee and I took the fluid into court with me. Burthon said I was lying and I asked him to drink the coffee to establish his sister’s innocence. But he wouldn’t. Pity, wasn’t it? The judge begged my pardon and said I ought to have choked her a moment longer. But no; I’m glad I didn’t, for she died naturally in the end. My dear daughter, whom I sincerely love, is like her lamented mother, except that I can trust her not to poison me."
Egads, I don't even know what to say about all that.
On the other hand, the "daughter" referred to in that passage, Sybil, very much reads as autistic to my 2026 eyes. Here's her first appearance:
As they went up the path Orissa, anxious to be sociable and to put the stranger at her ease, said brightly: "Don't you think the ride out here is beautiful?" "Yes," responded Sybil. "The orange groves are so attractive, just now," continued Orissa. There was no response. "I hope you enjoyed it, so you will be tempted to come again," resumed the little hostess. Miss Cumberford said nothing. Her father, a step in advance, remarked over his shoulder: "My daughter seldom wastes words. If you wish her to speak you must address to her a direct question; then she will answer it or not, as she pleases. It's her way, and you'll have to overlook it."
As the father of an autistic kid, this could be describing their approach to social interaction to a T!
Anyway, I was pretty into this. The sequel, The Flying Girl and Her Chum, was reprinted on its own by Hungry Tiger Press, so I'll probably end up picking it up at some point. (I gather the first book had minimal illustrations; it's been reillustrated here by Eric Shanower.)
Often, when I read a Star Trek novel I think to myself, "This would make a good Star Trek Adventures scenario." Novels that have made me think this include John Vornholt's The Next Generation: Masks (1989), Jeffrey Lang's Deep Space Nine: Force and Motion (2016), John Jackson Miller's Prey: Hell's Heart (2016), and especially many of the Next Generation works of Dayton Ward: Armageddon's Arrow (2015), Hearts and Minds (2017), and Available Light (2019). (It's probably not a coincidence that Dayton himself has written a lot for STA.)
That last one I thought would not just make a good STA adventure in general, but would make a good fit for my campaign. The premise of the novel is that the Enterprise finds a derelict ship in deep space. It seems abandoned, but the crew eventually discovers that it's carrying 60,000 refugees from an alien planet, they're just suspended in the ship's transporter buffer—where they can actually live until the ship arrives at its destination. Things are complicated, though, when a group of scavengers turn up.
This would work well for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to make the scavengers into Ferengi instead of an original race. One of my player characters is a Ferengi woman, and she has a brother who works as a successful businessman. If her brother was among the scavengers, it could lead to some good character conflict for her. (Additionally, one of my players requested more familiar races from the show.) Second, way back in our fourth episode, the players acquired an alien superintelligence living in their computer system, the "Engineer" named "Mercury." Unlike most of their people, Mercury wanted to explore the universe; they had briefly done so in an android body (which the players found way back in episodes 1 and 2). However, Mercury had honestly not done a lot since coming aboard, aside when the players briefly consulted them in episode 6. I had the idea that Mercury might complicate things here by uploading themself into the derelict's transporter buffer, which would then let them materialize themself as a living being.
I also did a B-plot, as I've been doing more of this season. The players have been dealing a lot with the Haradin and the ways their nativist movement is disrupting the entire Ekumene sector. I wanted them to help shape Starfleet's response to this, so my subplot for this episode was a conference on the player ship's home base of Deep Space 10, where Rukot and Mooria would be summoned to participate.
Also, at the beginning of the summer, one of my players, Cari, had been torn whether to continue playing her regular character of Jor, the Diversitas's security officer, or a new one-off character she'd played in our ninth episode, Rina K'var, the blue Orion pickpocket, who'd ended up exiled by her aunt. I suggested she could play Rina once, an idea she went for, because I had a good idea how to fit the character into the B-plot of this episode.
“Captain’s Personal Log, Stardate 55020.9. Consul Vrossaan has invited Mooria and me to a conference on Deep Space 10 to discuss growing Haradin tensions in the Ekumene sector. Professor Orven Jadrel’s understanding of Haradin history, trade, and the meanings of Harad will be essential. The Haradin are not simply facing piracy. They are facing a crisis of identity....”
This is
who I had per session:
Ryan as Rukot, captain (sessions 1-3)
Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer (1, 3)
Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (2-3)
Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot (1, 3)
Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst (1-3)
Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer (1-3)
...with special guest stars:
Cari as Rina K'var, freelance Orion (1, 3)
Hayley as Charley Lee, DS10 science officer (2)
I'll write this one up act by act. I did change the episode title to "No One in Here" to fit with my usual pretensions, but maintained Dayton's original title as the title of Act I. To keep with his usual theme of using Rush song titles, I used two other track titles from the same album as "Available Light" as the titles of Acts II and III.
Act I: Available Light
Mercury appears to Gurg (image generated by ChatGPT)
It's been an ongoing subplot in our campaign that Gurg, the Diversitas's chief medical officer, has been trying to make contact with Mercury; it was the whole reason he snuck aboard the Diversitas and finagled an assignment there. The episode began with Mercury presenting a genetic problem to Gurg; once Gurg solved it, Mercury appeared on his screen and asked what he wanted. Gurg's big technological goal is to connect people's brains to each other for the sharing of information (a collective, he is always quick to point out, not the Collective); when Gurg told Mercury this, Mercury gave Gurg a set of nearby coordinates.
It took a bit of persuasion for Gurg to convince T'Cant, who was acting captain with Rukot away at the conference, to go there, but he eventually did. There the players discovered the derelict. The three scenes were basically 1) examining the derelict from the outside, 2) beaming over and exploring it, and 3) discovering the Ferengi were aboard. (Kenyon, who plays Nevan the chief engineer, was away for this session, so we just said they left him in command when the players beamed over.) I had to come up with a bunch of Tasks for the players, of course, but I very much benefited from being able to take a bunch of description and such right out of Dayton's novel!
Nejamri derelict (adapted from the Available Light cover by Doug Drexler)
My players were convinced this was an Alien-esque scenario, so they proceeded very cautiously. I had a bit where I played some Ferengi laughs they heard from the other side of a door, but they were convinced it was something creepy and malevolent! I had planned on having scene 3 be about them dealing with the Ferengi, but things went slightly longer than expected, so I just ended the act with the Ferengi turning up and one of them hugging Frector and exclaiming "sister!"
In Available Light, a fight breaks out between the scavengers and the Enterprise crew, and a mysterious emitter seemingly evaporates the character of T'Ryssa Chen; if there had been a fight, I would have done something like this, but this didn't happen, so I had an emitter evaporate T'Cant seemingly at random—because Debi would be out of town next week!
In the B-plot, my goal for this act was mostly to establish the NPCs and the parameters. There were a lot, since I wanted a bunch of different possibilities represented for the conference, but most of them were returning. These were:
Captain Akul, Klingon (episodes 3, 5, 8)
Professor Orven Jadrel, Haradin academic (episodes 7, 8)
Consul Vrossaan, Federation diplomat (episodes 5, 6, 8, 10)
conference attendees
Plus there were three new NPCs: Della Robbia Roman, the admiral running the conference, (my players were delighted by my southern accent); Commander Derzir Ban, a Trill logistics expert (I wanted a joined Trill who could be snobby about Mooria's failed Initiate status); and Ashrevi, a Return to Harad agitator protesting the conference. And also Gregin Shrek, DS10's bartender, would put in an appearance (he previously appeared in episode 5). Each NPC would have a different take on what Admiral Roman should do about the Haradin: a military solution, a diplomatic solution, an Intelligence solution, and so on.
My other goal was to get Rina K'var involved. Since being kicked out of her aunt's pirate guild, she'd been playing Orion tambourine in Gregin's bar; he asked her to sneak into the conference and get him some information. With some judicious use of Threat, I got the players to intersect, and Rina even overheard some of Taleria's subordinates plotting. The act ended with Professor Jadrel giving a keynote at the conference... and then a bomb going off, injuring Jadrel, Mooria, and Rina. (Mooria's and Rina's players would be out of town the next week, so this worked well with my preexisting idea for a bombing subplot.)
In the A-plot, I had three basic scenes planned out. The first was the negotiating between the Starfleet crew and the Ferengi; Frector excels at this kind of thing, of course... but I put the whole Federation crew at a Disadvantage in Social Conflict with Ferengi because they were hanging out with a female. So it was difficulty 6... but she still did negotiate to allow continued access to the derelict. Her brother was Assistant DaiMon Tozal, working for DaiMon Plen of the FCA marauder Trickledown Economics.
In the second scene, the players investigated the derelict with some technical Tasks, alternating with social Tasks to deal with the Ferengi—they got up to shenanigans that the crew would have to deal with to proceed. The players were able to pretty quickly put together the clues to figure out that the Nejamri was carrying 60,000 people in transporter buffers, but they were suitably impressed at the concept.
In the third scene, I had an Extended Task planned. I didn't know exactly what it would be, just that it would be Magnitude 5, Work 30, Resistance 1, Intervals 12. I was going to play it by ear based on what was happening: they wanted to open up a communication channel to T'Cant, so I had this cause the derelict computer to recognize she didn't belong and attempt to purge her. Nevan and Gurg took care of this, while I occasionally spent Threat to have the Ferengi do stuff Frector would have to deal with.
At the end of the act, Mercury used their connection to upload themself into the derelict computer, which also shut off the power. Commercial break!
Lt. Commander Charley Lee (image by ChatGPT)
Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Admiral Roman tasked Captain Rukot with investigating the bombing. I had known we'd be down to just four players this week, and suggested to my wife that she could play: she was in my old campaign, but now cares for the kids while I play usually. This would mean bringing the kids and them having a late night, but we thought we could make it work... beside, Kid One was interested in playing! I suggested to my wife she make up a character who could be stationed on Deep Space 10 and help Rukot investigate.
She decided to build a science officer with a Focus in chemistry, a human with a cybernetic hand that gave them an enhanced sense of touch. Kid One designed the visual appearance using an online Star Trek token generator, and Kid Two came up with the name: Charley Lee. A family undertaking!
When it came time to plan the mystery, I thought the only two real possible culprits were either the Romulans or the Haradin agitators. But how to make this not obvious... yet not so complicated the players would struggle to solve it? The idea I came up with was that Ashrevi had planted the bomb, but she had been given it by Romulans posing as Haradin. So the players would find some clues incriminating the Haradin, and some incriminating the Romulans, and some absolving each group: footage of Ashrevi carrying in a package she didn't carry out... but strong evidence she couldn't have brought an explosive on the station. They did a good job making their way through the clues and figuring it out.
I made the third scene an Extended Task as well, a chase where Ashrevi ran away and they had to catch her. Something interesting I did was to play both scenes at the same time, going back and forth. As Kenyon pointed out, this mean the players had to be thoughtful about using Momentum, because they needed to save some for the other group!
Act III: Presto
DaiMon Plen (Lurin from TNG: "Rascals")
Debi was back, so we began our third session by showing what T'Cant was up to in the Nejamri "Heaven" (it's called "Haven" in the novel, but c'mon, let's go big). This let her get some key exposition.
Scene two then set the stage for the finale: The DaiMon of the Ferengi ship ordered Frector's brother to disconnect the Starfleet connection to the computer core of the derelict, so Frector had to stand up for herself. Austin killed it, rolling something like 11 successes, some of which he spent to establish an Advantage countering the Disadvantage I'd set up. They also made contact with Mercury and communicated with T'Cant inside the derelict computer.
I wanted the final scene to be all about transferring power to the Nejamri derelict, but I didn't want to do yet another Extended Task. So I adapted the Extended Task mechanic:
Every round, the players could attempt a Daring + Engineering Task to transfer power to the derelict.
On a success, they could roll Challenge Dice like an Extended Task, and the power flow would increase by that amount, on a scale of 0 to 20.
The difficulty would start at 5, but every time they succeeded it would go down by one.
But also every round, I would roll Challenge Dice, and the power flow would go down this amount, representing the Ferengi doing things to interfere.
I could spend Threat to do things like increase the difficulty of the main Task or add to my Challenge Dice rolls.
But the players could also undertake Tasks to either create Resistance on my rolls or stop me from rolling altogether.
If the power flow went back down to 0, the materialization process would begin without enough power to sustain it. If it went up beyond 20, then there would be enough power to sustain the process.
the Trickledown Economics (image from Star Trek Online)
This I think was pretty fun! There was some grumbling about the fact that since it wasn't an Extended Task, Nevan couldn't use his relevant talent, but I pointed out that if I let him use it, I would have just designed the whole thing to be harder to compensate. There was a nice tug-of-war, but they won in the end. Frector broadcast to the Trickledown crew, pointing out the downsides of their undetaking, causing a work slowdown; T'Cant bent the power transfer beam so the Ferengi couldn't block it. There was one very exciting round where between them all, the players rolled five 20s, giving me 10 Threat!
In the end, the players saved the Nejamri, had some exciting showdowns, and convinced the Ferengi to lay low. My adaptation got looser as it went, but I think overall it worked well.
I'd like to make the A-plot a publicly available mission, but my notes are mostly written for my own benefit and have a lot of stuff specific to my players and campaign, so I would need to do a lot of cleanup first. Maybe someday!
The first scene of the B-plot was mostly to wrap up dangling thread from the investigation: the players got to question Ashrevi, and hear Taleria's side of the story. (The latter told them she'd already sent her subordinates home to Romulus... on a shuttle she feared wouldn't make it!) Then in the second scene, I had them hear each NPC's take and then come up with their own plan. They very much wanted to amplify Professor Jadrel's anti-nativist message... but how?
This was sort of the crux of the episode for me. I could think of a lot of ways to do this, but didn't want Starfleet to just tell them—hence the conference idea. They came up with the plan of hacking into the Haradin transmitter network, and transmitting Jadrel's message through that.
Scene three, then, was convincing other people to go along with the plan. If they could convince four of the six NPCs, they then could convince the Admiral. They worked their way from easiest sell to hardest, making good use of Talents and information to lay out their argument... and then they convinced the admiral. So now I know what to base the season finale around!
As I have mentioned previously, I have begun rereading some of the Oz books aloud to my kids. For Kid One (age 7), it's been almost five years since we read the early ones; for Kid Two (age 5), they haven't heard them at all.
One of the interesting things about reading the books aloud was how it cause me to see many of them in a different light based on Kid One's enjoyment of them, what they responded to—as well as what I responded to, when I was reading aloud instead of reading silently. Rereading is also interesting in this regard, because when I first read The Marvelous Land of Oz aloud,* I was reading it to a three-year-old, and now I'm reading it to two much older kids. So I've gone from reevaluating the books to rereevaluating them!
The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an account of the further adventures of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman and also the strange experiences of the Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Animated Saw-Horse, and the Gump; the story being A Sequel to The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum illustrated by John R. Neill
So last time around, I complained about this one a lot: "I feel as though Baum was attempting to recapture the magic of the
original book's Scarecrow–Tin Woodman–Cowardly Lion trio, but failing. [...] Tip occasionally has
good ideas, but the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman are pretty useless;
and new characters Jack Pumpkinhead and Woggle-Bug pretty much
contribute nothing at all. Plus everyone becomes mean and is constantly
sniping at each other!" But this bothered me a lot less this time around because I think my kids can appreciate funny banter at ages 5 and 7 that a kid aged 3 cannot. They thought Jack Pumpkinhead's constant fretting about ways he might die was funny; Kid One told me they really liked my Woggle-Bug voice; both kids had an appreciation for the Woggle-Bug's really terrible puns (particular highlights: the "squash" one, all the jokes about the Scarecrow being filled with money). All of this had gone over the head of Kid One five years ago.
Even though it has been a long time since we read this book, Kid One is familiar with the origins of Ozma from adaptations and such; Kid Two, however, did not know the true identity of Tip. (It was a feature of Paradox in Oz, but that was a long time ago for him, and probably all went over his head in any case.) So I put Kid One under strict instructions not to hint to Kid Two what was going to happen... and thankfully they listened! This paid off when it was revealed who Tip really was. Kid Two's mouth was literally agape! But there was a downside, too; when we finished the book, Kid Two was sad: "But I want there to be more books about Tip!"
Continuity note: One of the fun upsides of having recently read the Ages of Oz prequels aloud to the kids is when they pick up on connections; Kid One was very excited when Glinda's lie-detecting pearl showed up in this book, which she acquired as a kid in A Dark Descent.
* I always think of this book as The Marvellous Land of Oz, though, because as a kid the copy I owned was a Puffin Classic, which used UK spellings.
It's summer, which means it's time for me to get my Star Trek Adventures group back together! I reached out to everyone who participated last summer, and they were all willing to play again this summer. It's a really solid group of players at this point, so I was very happy to hear this.
I have seven players, which I know is a lot, but it's not very often that all seven are at the table, because we play weekly whether everyone can make it or not. Something I was keen to do this summer was push the role-playing element a bit more. My players aren't the kind for protracted in-character dialogue, but it did seem to me that I could be putting more pressure on Values in interesting ways. In the final episode of last summer's mini-campaign (see episode #8 in the list below), for example, the players were kind of pushed to perhaps do something undemocratic in the short term in order to help democracy in the long term... they did not, and everything worked out. What I am a bit curious about is putting the players in situations were sticking to their Values might either 1) cause inter-character conflict, or 2) cause conflict with Mission Directives.
To this end, one thing I wanted to do was split them up more. Last summer, I added a B-plot to the prewritten mission "The Gravity of the Crime" (see #7). I think this helped energize things a bit: two or three characters on the ship doing their own thing meant all the players got more to do. It also seemed to me that putting two characters off on their own could let them focus on their interactions a bit more as a duo, and let me find ways to put interesting pressures on them.
Outside of the character dynamics, I also wanted to continue our ongoing plotline about the Haradin and their growing nativist movement. I have an idea about where this might go by the end of the season, but we'll see. The players dealt a blow to that movement in the finale to last season, but the real world has shown us that this doesn't always mean something! So the idea I had was to explore some of the consequences the movement might have for the wider Haradin society. Specifically, inspired by some of the USAID stuff, I had the idea that the Haradin clan-ships might cut funding to planetborn Haradin, as this might have become politically unpopular.
This dovetailed nicely with a prewritten mission I've long had on my list of potentials to run, "Entropy's Demise" by Anthony Jennings from the first STA mission compendium, These Are the Voyages. That's about a Federation wine colony that needs help, but what if it was a Haradin wine colony... whose requests for help from the ship-clan had gone ignored? It also has a role for the Romulans, and one of my players had requested more familiar Star Trek aliens in the campaign. (And I could see how I could build on this to have more Romulans going forward.)
So I decided to do that one, adding a B-plot. I'll go through the A-plot first here and then the B-plot.
“Chief Engineer’s Log, Stardate 54910.9. Doctor Gurg and I are returning to the Diversitas via runabout after spending a week supervising the construction of a new hospital on Maxia Beta VIII. However, we have been asked to divert to Deep Space 10 by Lieutenant Commander Mazio Sanna of Starfleet Intelligence...”
Planning the Mission
Morghanek's Hope (image generated by ChatGPT)
The basic premise of "Entropy's Demise" is that the player ship is sent to Morgan's Hope on Carina VII, a colony growing grapes and producing wine. The colony is beset by mysterious temporal anomalies: a kid who should be six months old looks six years, grapes are going through their entire life-cycles in days, buildings only built recently are collapsing overnight. This turns out to be due to a century-old Federation starship, the USS Hamilton, which was testing a temporal weapon using tachyons; the abandoned ship is orbiting Carina X. The three acts are 1) the players investigate the colony, 2) the players discover the Romulans are observing the colony in secret and clear out their base, and 3) the players go to the Hamilton and deactivate the weapon while competing with the Romulans who want it themselves.
My main changes were, first, making the colonists into Haradin, which mostly involved changing names.
Morgan's Hope → Morghanek's Hope
Syreeta Sebastian → Siretha Sebanil
Mackley family → Maklen family
Wesley → Weslar
Aurelia → Aureneh
Efren → Efrevi
Zane Knoll → Zanil K'nor
Se'irrah's estate (image generated by ChatGPT)
There was one existing colonist with an alien name, whose species I don't think is ever established, Se'irrah, so I kept that name as is.
The other main change I made was altering the backstory of the USS Hamilton a bit. In the mission as written, it's a Constitution-class starship testing a weapon; I made it a Crossfield-class starship testing an experimental drive system, a sister ship to the Discovery from the same program. I felt like 1) "Burnham's War" seemed like a plausible source of Starfleet desperation (this wasn't really accounted for the mission as written), and 2) a tachyon drive seemed a much more likely thing than Starfleet making a tachyon superweapon! Plus, I have a nice Eaglemoss model of the Discovery.
warehouse on Carina VII (image generated by ChatGPT)
These are the players I had:
Ryan as Rukot, captain (sessions 1-3)
Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer (1-3)
Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (1-3)
Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot (1-2)
Cari as Jor Lena, security officer (1-3)
Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst (1-3)
Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer (1-2)
Kenyon and Andy were who I siphoned off into the B-plot, so more about them later. I was able to keep things to one session per act. (Technically our sessions are three hours, but we usually socialize and eat for the first thirty minutes.)
Act I: Trouble on Carina VII
secret Romulan outpost (image generated by ChatGPT)
At the first session of the summer, I asked the players to reflect on what their characters had been up to in the months of narrative time since we had last played. Cari had the idea that Jor had become disgruntled about how poorly most of the crew had done in some recent Fitness challenges, and thus was imposing a strict workout regimen on the crew; Andy built on this by Gurg being tired of treating workout-related injuries and thus being willing to write crewmembers frivolous medical excuses for getting out of workouts. This was leading to tension between the two once-tight friends. I had the players reflect on who would adhere to Jor's regimen and who would not; Ryan and Debi said their characters would, but Claire said Mooria would only participate in "fun" workouts, while Austin said Frector (who, as a Ferengi female, just can't keep up no matter how much she wants to) would have started engaged but gotten discouraged. We began the episode with a scene of Jor confronting Mooria about participating more, which was interrupted by the distress call from Carina VII.
The players surprised me by contacting Matriarch M'Syrolath of Clan Marvek while en route to Carina VII and informing her about what was going on, but this worked well, because it let me foreground the ship-clan's abandonment of the colony. The players were very cautious on arriving at the planet, sending a probe at first rather than getting close. This meant they detected interference, so they used their ship's "Modular Laboratories" Talent to set up a sort of isolation laboratory that would screen out any environmental influences. Instead of beaming down to talk to the governor, they talked to her over comms; instead of going to the Maklen family home to see their prematurely aged child, they beamed the Maklens up into the modular laboratory!
I did eventually get them to understand they needed to go to the planet, so while T'Cant studied Efrevi Maklen and Rukot tried to isolate the interference, Jor took Mooris and Frector to the surface. This part of the mission as written turned out to be kind of redundant and repetitive. Your players talk to some characters and find out something weird is going on, repeat again and again. They don't get much new information out of each iteration of this, and I don't know that the colony needs all these NPCs who ultimately don't contribute much. I ended up skipping through some stuff in the interests of time and tedium. The characters don't get to do much detective work; basically, they scan a bunch of stuff, then someone shows up and says it's Romulans and it is Romulans. If I were to run it again, I think I'd add more clues throughout and let them piece together the Romulan observers themselves.
There was a bit of shenigans because investigating the planet is mostly Tasks in Medicine, Science, and Engineering... but T'Cant was on the ship, and Gurg and Nevan were somewhere else entirely! The remaining characters were not exactly well-suited to this.
Act II: The Outpost
USS Hamilton near Carina X (image found on Facebook; I think it's from Star Trek Online?)
We had some fun roleplay stuff on the way to the Romulan outpost: I suggested to Cari that Jor might carry out an impromptu fitness challenge as they made their way down the path. This ended up being an Opposed Task: could Frector and Mooria match Jor's roll? Austin was like, "Well, there goes my Determination for the session already": he felt Frector's Value of "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" would cause her to do this to try to keep up. Claire also spent Mooria's Determination. Mooria did keep up, but even with Determination, Frector failed the roll! But I rewarded Austin with another point of Determination for this in-character decision.
The mission as written shows, in my opinion, some signs of being ineffectively edited down from a longer version. Act I ends with a note saying the players can't find the outpost, but Act II begins with the players just going into it! But I easily fleshed this out by giving them some Tasks to find their way in. Similarly, the mission as written just begins a scene with, "If the Player Characters interrogate D’Tok, they learn that he and his team of scientists recently arrived at the Romulan Outpost after the discovery of the tachyon emissions," without explaining who D'Tok is or where the players might find him! Everything in the base was pretty straightforward, however. There's a Difficulty 2 Task to disarm a bomb the Romulans plant; I dumped some Threat to make it D5, but T'Cant succeeded anyway. Frector and Jor got the jump on the Romulans setting the bomb and knocked them out before they could even react.
I think that in the mission as written, the interference is supposed to come from the tachyons, but Ryan wanted Rukot to study it; I hadn't planned on this, but I decided the Advantage from Modular Laboratories could let him do this, and so let him isolate the interference as something generated by the Romulan outpost to make them harder to discover.
Act III: The Lost Starship
Subcommander Taleria and her soldiers aboard the Hamilton (art from These Are the Voyages mission compendium)
The mission as written suggests the players will research the USS Hamilton once they find it's the source of the tachyons... mine did not! However, once they got to it, they wanted to use its command codes (like with the Reliant in Star Trek II) to run it remotely; I had them find the ship was classified once they attempted to do this, and they acquired the Hamilton's logs. The mission as written has no explanation for how Starfleet could have final logs from the Hamilton. If Starfleet knew it was in the Carina system, why did they never recover it? I established that the logs were jettisoned in a recorder buoy Starfleet recovered a century after they were recorded, and the logs only indicated the Hamilton was lost in "an unknown solar system in the uncharted Ekumene sector," so Starfleet didn't know where to look for the ship. (Maybe the mission as written is thinking the crew evacuated, then the ship vanished to the Carina system? I don't know.)
My players dithered a bit in approaching the Hamilton (they had a long debate about sending a message to the Romulans), so they didn't have a ton of time in the final session, so I made things a bit simpler on the fly. Still, they did good. They convinced the Romulan subcommander, Taleria, to work with them, nicely setting her up for a return appearance. The final fight is supposed to be on the Hamilton's bridge, trying to knock out all the Romulans before their commander can download the plans for the tachyon device. Austin had the idea that instead of shooting the Romulans, they should just shoot the console they were using. The Romulans missed on their opening turn (I should have spent more Threat!), and then Frector and Jor each hit the console (I made it D1 instead of the usual D2 for a phaser shot, since it seems to me shooting a console can't be that hard), blowing it up and knocking out the Romulans. In the whole episode, the players only shot two Romulans and never were successfully hit by one!
"Entropy's Demise" is fine on the whole, but it feels like more of a D&D adventure than an STA one: go to a village, then go through two "dungeons" essentially. There's no Star Trek–style moral dilemmas or allegories, nor does most of the stuff in Act I really matter to Act III. But it worked nicely for my purposes: I ended with a hook into the ongoing Haradin plot, and Subcommander Taleria will come back in our very next episode!
The B-Plot
Esha Vortan (image generated by ChatGPT)
With the B-plot, I wanted to pick up on our Christmas episode. In several episodes, the players have bumped into a Haradin character named Esha Vortan. Esha was one of the Haradin pirates they captured and handed over to the Klingons in episode #3 (though he wasn't seen in that one, this was established later). He first appeared in episode #5, where they got the Haradin prisoners back from the Klingons; he was keen and young, and offered to mind-meld with T'Cant to try to help the crew to understand the Haradin. (T'Cant couldn't mind-meld with him because of his implant, but he didn't know this.) Esha let Gurg study his implant. When they Haradin pirates were released (mentioned in episode #7), he returned in episode #8, now part of General Zotabia's paramilitary forces trying to prevent "election interference." He was nice and genuinely thought the Diveristas crew would be impressed by this. He then popped up in episode #9, now a pirate again, and was part of the pirates the crew helped capture.
So what would happen to this guy? I wanted to explore some ideas of how someone becomes radicalized—and how they might be deradicalized. I also wanted, like I said, some potential character conflict, and to use our recurring setting of Deep Space 10 with its NPCs a bit. Nevan and Gurg seemed like an interesting pairing for such a subplot. Gurg likes to debate; Nevan likes to solve puzzles. But Gurg likes sharing information, while Starfleet Intelligence hoards it, which seemed to have good potential for conflict. Plus, Nevan's romantic interest, Chief Susu Webb, is stationed on DS10!
(image generated by ChatGPT)
I had Nevan and Gurg diverted to DS10 after a mission and summoned to the office of Lieutenant Commander Mazio Sanna, the director of Starfleet Intelligence operations in the Ekumene sector. (He appeared in episodes #5 and 8 before, and as Frector's boss, has been mentioned in several others.) Mazio told them that SI was really happy with how Frector had acquired the coordinates to Zotabia's pirate base in episode #9, but they also wanted a PR coup: firm proof that General Zotabia had returned to piracy. However, none of the pirates were willing to name Zotabia... could Nevan and Gurg get Esha to spill the beans via Esha's bond with the Diversitas crew?
Nevan and Gurg secured a temporary release from the DS10 security stockade for Esha by talking to Captain Morox, DS10's JAG officer, and were able to talk to him in the station bar. They found out that Esha had initially received comfort from the Haradin transmitter network when Zotabia had reactivated it, but since he'd been locked up on DS10, it had gone dead. Esha had assumed Starfleet was blocking it, but they were able to prove to him that wasn't the case—having failed Zotabia's movement, the pirates had been abandoned by it. They were thus able to persuade Esha to give the testimony required.
But this was the twist: when they went back to Mazio, he told them this probably wasn't good enough to secure Esha's release. Anyone could say Zotabia was in charge of the pirates. Wouldn't it be better to release Esha, let him go back to Zotabia's base, and get a recording of him? Nevan and Gurg were pretty dubious that Esha would even survive this!
Consul Vrossaan (image generated by ChatGPT, based on a cosplay photo)
I think this played out nicely. Neither Gurg nor Nevan are characters built for social conflict, so they had to stretch themselves to work their way through this tangled web of mayhem and intrigue. Eventually, Nevan was able to get Consul Vrossaan, the Diplomatic Corps's envoy on DS10, to back him up and negotiate diplomatic immunity for Esha in exchange for Esha entrapping Zotabia on a comm channel, a deception Nevan had to help facilitate, thus turning a diplomatic problem into a technical one. And Nevan and Gurg were able to give Esha the sense of purpose he had lost: SI gave him an impounded pirate vessel so Esha could start a new life as an independent space merchant. Plus we got some incremental advance on the Nevan/Susu romance!
"The Early Days of Oz" was a series of books from Books of Wonder back in the 1990s, all written and illustrated by Donald Abbott, chronicling, well, what it says in the title. There were six, two of them being prequels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the other four set in the gap between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, when the Scarecrow ruled the Emerald City. I assume this was all mostly because Abbott's illustrative style (at least in these books) is very imitative of W. W. Denslow. As a kid, I owned the two prequels, but just one of the interquels, The Speckled Rose of Oz. I am not motivated to pick up the other interquels (Magic Chest, Father Goose, and Amber Flute), but I was willing to read the one I already owned to my kids in the gap where it takes place.
The Speckled Rose of Oz by Donald Abbott
Published: 1995 Acquired and previously read: late 1990s Read aloud: April 2026
Rereading it, I feel validated in this decision because it is, quite frankly, awful. There are probably some ingredients here for a good Oz adventure, but the plot is terribly constructed. At its beginning, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion are judging a flower competition. (Abbott always calls the latter simply "Lion" because he's no longer "cowardly," which I guess makes sense, but is not really consistent with any of the following books.) One of the entrants is Sir Gyle, who turns out to be the brother of the Wicked Witches of East and West out for revenge, and who attempts to assassinate the Scarecrow wirh a fire-breathing flower. Then all the flowers of Oz begin to disappear, because of an evil living tree called Poison Oak. You might think these two things are linked... but no, it's a complete coincidence! The three friends of Dorothy travel to stop Poison Oak, secretly being harassed by Sir Gyle. On their way, they bump into Lady Minerva Moonstruck, the daughter of the Old Man in the Moon, who is searching for her missing husband. When they find Poison Oak, they defeat him quite easily, but then his pet spider turns out to be Lady Minerva's husband, who also wants to take over Oz... but don't worry, they don't need to do anything interesting or clever, because she turns up and recaptures her errant husband. The threesome then has to go back and defeat Sir Gyle.
None of it is interesting or clever. I did like the idea of Sir Gyle (I'm always down for peeks into the lore of the wicked witches), but reading it right after Wonderful Wizard, where this trio is clever, kind, and brave when they have to do things, the contrast here is stark, given they mostly bumble their way around and accomplish everything either by accident or with the assistance of Glinda. Abbott is a very sloppy plotter; there's a particularly bad bit where the Lion falls into a chasm, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman go on without him, and the Lion catches up to them a bit later, and we learn that in the same amount of time they walked to Poison Oak's cottage, he landed in an underground river, was carried away by it for miles until it flowed to the surface, and then somehow tracked the other two to the cottage.
At least it's short, and at least the pictures are nice. My kids were, as always I suppose, entertained well enough, but I'm pretty sure a couple days after we'd finished it, had already forgotten its insubstantial happenings.
Continuity note:
At the beginning, Gayelette is mentioned as one of the participants in the flower competition. Gayelette is the sorceress mentioned in Wonderful Wizard as binding the Winged Monkeys to the Golden Cap. She was never mentioned again the Famous Forty, so it's weird to me to imagine her as someone still alive in the present day of Oz, as opposed to being a distant historical figure.
I like to build little playlists of soundtrack music for myself to listen to as I work. A lot of these are pretty obvious: I have a Star Wars one with all the opening and closing tracks from each film, plus significant character themes.
One of my favorite ones draws from the Star Trek movies, which is based around tracks from each film that focus on the Enterprise. Here's the complete set:
Jerry Goldsmith, "The Enterprise" (from Star: The Motion Picture: Limited Edition)
James Horner, "Enterprise Clears Moorings" (from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Newly Expanded Edition)
James Horner, "Stealing the Enterprise" (from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Newly Expanded Edition)
Jerry Goldsmith, "A Tall Ship" (from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: The Complete Score)
Cliff Eidelman, "Clear All Moorings" (from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: The Complete Score)
Dennis McCarthy, "The Enterprise B" (from Star Trek Generations: Expanded Collector's Edition)
Jerry Goldsmith, "How Many Ships" (from Star Trek: First Contact: Limited Edition)
Jerry Goldsmith, "Star Field / Positronic" (from Star Trek Nemesis: The Deluxe Edition)
Michael Giacchino, "Enterprising Young Men" (from Star Trek)
Michael Giacchino, "Undersea Enterprises, Inc." (from Star Trek Into Darkness: The Deluxe Edition)
Michael Giacchino, "Yorktown Theme" (from Star Trek Beyond: The Deluxe Edition)
The Enterprise theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture of course needs no introduction or justification. Say what you like about the six-minute flyby of the ship, but the Enterprise has never looked better on screen, nor has it ever been treated better by a filmmaker. Part of that is, of course, Jerry Goldsmith's beautiful score for the sequence, which captures the majesty and the beauty of the starship in a way no one else ever has, before or since. My iTunes tells me it's not my most-played track on the list, but that's only because I originally had the non-limited edition of the TMP soundtrack; if you added my plays of the same track from that version, it would take the top spot.
Goldsmith reprises the Enterprise theme in the other tracks from him I have on the list: "A Tall Ship" from ST V, "How Many Ships" from First Contact, and "Star Field" from Nemesis. "A Tall Ship" is good stuff; I think on the whole, the ST V soundtrack finds interesting things to do with Goldsmith's original themes from TMP in new ways, and this track is no exception. Unfortunately, the directors of the TNG films never gave the Enterprise-E the kind of extended beauty shots the directors of the original films did, so the tracks from FC and Nemesis just feature brief restatements of the Enterprise theme from TMP over short establishing shots. (I'm sure there's a reprise of the Enterprise theme somewhere in Insurrection, but I don't have it on my list.)
For both ST II and VI, my list uses the track in the movie where the Enterprise is launched from spacedock. Arguably, neither James Horner nor Cliff Eidelman composed an "Enterprise theme" the way that Goldsmith did (or Giacchino later would), but both of these are great bits of music that turn something procedural into something majestic. Horner's piece is exciting and thrilling, while Eidelman's is almost mournful—the last time we would see the "original" Enterprise on the big screen. (Yes, I know the Enterprise-A is not really the original Enterprise, but it looks like her and it has the original cast on board.) I use the version just called "Clear All Moorings" from the original ST VI album, not the one that adds the "Spacedock" theme from the complete score.
Other than Goldsmith's original theme, my favorite Enterprise-focused piece of music is certainly "Stealing the Enterprise" from ST III. This is the thrilling piece that plays during what is the very best sequence from the entire film, when the Enterprise crew steal the Enterprise in order to travel to the Genesis planet. I could watch that sequence a million times and never be bored. "And... now, Mr. Scott." "Sir?" "The doors, Mr. Scott." "Aye sir, I'm working on it." The surprised relief on the faces of William Shatner and James Doohan as the doors finally open is utterly convincing. Oh, and then "GOOD MORNING CAPTAIN." Listening to the music never fails to bring me back to this.
There are actually two versions of this track on the ST III expanded soundtrack; I have the one closer to the music used in the finished film on my Enterprise playlist, but there's also one with some nice Prokofiev-esque flourishes as well.
Lastly, there are the three tracks composed by Michael Giacchino. Though his style of scoring isn't totally to my taste, one can't deny that his score was the first to treat the Enterprise with the reverence she deserved since the original films—though this is because J. J. Abrams gave him the space to do it. The scene where Kirk first sees the Enterprise in space has this amazing theme under it. (I prefer the 2:40 version from the original soundtrack to the longer version from the deluxe edition, since what's added onto the longer version is not Enterprise-focused.) The scene from Into Darkness that most prominently reprises this is the reveal that the Enterprise is hidden underwater on the planet Nibiru. Can you hide a starship underwater? Who cares, so long as it looks and sounds this cool.
The track I selected from Beyond isn't Enterprise-focused per se, but it's in the spirit of the tracks I selected from ST II, III, and VI, except in reverse: instead of the Enterprise launching from spacedock, it's from a scene where the Enterprise returns to spacedock, a beautiful scene of the stasrship making its way into and through the amazing Starbase Yorktown. Yorktown is the focus here, not the Enterprise, but still it's a worthy track anyway. As one of the commenters on the YouTube video I've linked says, "Yorktown is the Federation itself represented in one city. We the audience, and the characters on the Enterprise, get to see this beautiful 'snow globe' filled with people from all walks of life and all races living and working together harmoniously. All the while they're surrounded and supported by technological marvels so advanced that they're damned close to magic.... This sequence tells the audience, and Kirk's crew, 'This is worth fighting for.'"
Put all this together, and you have a beautiful 34-minute journey through some of the best film music ever composed. Will the playlist ever get any longer? The prospects on this front seem pretty dim at the moment (it has been ten years, the longest of any such gaps), but I live in hope.
I like to build little playlists of soundtrack music for myself to listen to as I work. A lot of these are pretty obvious: I have a Star Wars one with all the opening and closing tracks from each film, plus significant character themes.
