I was watching the “Into the Electric Castle” blu-ray and while thinking of ways to say that it’s pretty fucking amazing, I stumbled upon this idea courtesy of listening to Arjen Lucassen and John de Lancie:
Why not have a concert ship in the Star Trek universe?
As far as I know, there isn’t one. At least not in the older series. The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager didn’t specifically mention anything about music, except concerning The Doctor and his interest in singing (along with his holographic son). There was also an episode or two in The Next Generation where Worf was trying to teach his son about Klingon culture and we heard Klingon opera. That was pretty amazing too. People had musical interests for sure (like Commander Riker played the trombone and Lieutenant Commander Data played the violin, among other things), but it was never fully explored.
So here’s how we do it:
It takes place a few years after the Dominion War on the USS Flying Dutchman, registry number NCC-420, captained by the cultural diplomat Captain A.A. Lucassen, along with his second-in-command Joost van den Broek.
The Flying Dutchman’s mission is to go into the Gamma Quadrant through the Bajoran wormhole and spread cultural understanding and better diplomatic relations with the Dominion after the armistice was signed. The somewhat uneasy peace was deemed important enough by Starfleet and the Federation to send out a diplomatic mission with the newly-designed and built Eternal-class starship, equipped with the most state-of-the-art communication and sensor systems, able to receive and send audio on a yocto- to yotta-hertz range, along with similar video qualities, and subspace speakers able to broadcast the crew just rocking the fuck out to an entire sector.
The crew would consist of the aforementioned Lucassen, van den Broek, and with them would be in no particular order:
Simone Simons as the science officer, in my opinion very Vulcan or Bajoran
Fish would of course be the chief engineer, since I hear the Scottish are great at engineering
Anneke van Giersbergen would be the ship’s counselor, maybe at the same time some sort of musical therapist
Damian Wilson would just be there
Ed Warby would be the helmsman
Marcela Bovio would be at Operations, responsible for analyzing different forms of music and entertainment
John Jaycee Cuijpers would be a Klingon bartender, just because look at the fucking dude
Edwin Balogh would be manning the Tactical station, maybe as a – holy shit – a Cardassian exchange officer
Edward Reekers could be a diplomatic attaché of some sort. Maybe a time-traveler, since he already has a future space wizard costume
John de Lancie would of course be Q, appearing mostly to enjoy some bangin’ tunes every now and again.
Everyone else from the “Into the Electric Castle” DVD would have roles as different Dominion species’ leaders and such. AYREON also has a ton of fans that’d probably be willing to play extras whenever needed. We’ll figure out the names later.
The overarching plot would be a Jem’Hadar or Vorta plot to overthrow the Founders after Odo’s assimilation into the Eternal Link and the non-belligerent approach to other species that the changelings undertook afterwards. Maybe the Jem’Hadar finally found out a way to break their genetic addiction to ketracel-white or maybe the Vorta got sick of their shit and wanted some of that sweet Dominion pie. The increasingly belligerent subservient species of the Dominion are threatening insurrection and consequently another invasion into Federation space. The Flying Dutchman‘s mission on the surface is a diplomatic cultural exchange, yet the exceedingly volatile state of the Dominion demands some proactive diplomatic measures, forging treaties with some of the more moderate factions within the Dominion and the rebels. Mostly through playing kickass music.
You’re already a Trekkie, Mr. Lucassen, so don’t tell me you wouldn’t want to see Jaycee Cuijpers in Klingon makeup serving drinks, sage advice, and assorted knuckle sandwiches. I would buy that DVD. Shit, I’d buy two. Just narrate an intro for us, we’ll take care of the animation. How about:
“Space,
the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Flying Dutchman.
Its ongoing mission:
To seek out new life, new civilizations. To boldly rock where no-one has rocked before.”
And then the intro theme kicks in and everyone loses their minds. I would – I already have – since I wrote literal Star Trek-AYREON fan fiction for the last two hours since that’s more or less what this post is. Let’s get Robert Picardo to do an a capella performance, since he’s really fucking good too. Just pull out all the stops, it’d be amazing.
Alright, I think I’ve gotten this out of my system. I’ll get back to watching the blu-ray and failing at describing how good it is.
PS: Seriously, if you send us that narration, I will die and my ghost will do the animation for an imaginary show that will never exist.
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