City on the Edge of Never

City on the Edge of Never

April 8, 2010, 9:18 am
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Star Trek: Online, Star Trek: Online - City on the Edge of Never, Star Trek: Online - Klingons, Star Trek: Online - Time Travel, STO, STO City on the Edge of Never, STO Klingons, STO Time Travel

I had hoped to go my entire career without a visit from the Department of Temporal Investigations.  Unfortunately, after the events of the last few days, Admiral Quinn has advised me to expect a visit from them soon. 

After we turned over Singh and his data to Starfleet Intelligence, we were contacted by Admiral Quinn.  Among the notes on genetic augmentation, Starfleet Intelligence also found several notes regarding historical events.  There was even a recording of an experiment that had been interrupted by Ambassador B’vat, who had dropped by to ask Singh what he knew about temporal anomalies.  Admiral Quinn wanted us to investigate if B’vat was attempting to find a way to manipulate the timeline.  Starfleet Command had been notified by the USS Kirk that they had found some evidence as to what B’vat may be planning.  The Tirpitz was sent to rendezvous with the Kirk to review their findings. 

Saving the USS Kirk

When we arrived in the Hromi Sector, we picked up a distress call from the USS Kirk.  It was reporting that it had come under attack by a number of Klingon ships.  We set an intercept course at maximum warp to render aid.  As we approached the Kirk, we picked up small task force of  Klingon ships attacking it.  Several of the Klingon ships broke off their attack on the Kirk and came after the Tirpitz as we neared, forcing us to defend ourselves.  After driving off the Klingons, we scanned the Kirk to determine their status.  Our sensor picked up Klingon life sings onboard the Kirk, as well as weapons fire.  We decided to send an away team over to assist the crew of the Kirk with the Klingon boarding parties. 

The Kirk's crew fights back

Our away team’s orders were simple.  They were to locate Captain Thelin, or whoever was now in charge of the Kirk after the attack, and find out what had happened.  When they arrived, they found that the crew of the Kirk were still fighting back against the boarding parties, and they were happy to have our assistance.  The crew made its way through the corridors of the ship, and were able to reach Captain Thelin just in time to see the group of Klingons he and the Kirk’s bridge crew had been fighting beam away.  Captain Thelin filled us in on what happened.  The USS Kirk had been ambushed by the Klingons, and as soon as the Kirk’s shields had failed, ambassador B’vat had led the boarding parties over.  Their target it would seem had been the Kirk’s chief of security, Lieutenant Miral Paris.  According to Captain Thelin, B’vat had revealed that he intended to take Lieutenant Paris to “the right place at the right time to cure a virus”.  Because of the damage the Kirk took in the battle, they were unable to follow the escaping Klingons, so Captain Thelin asked us to follow B’vat and rescue Miral. 

The Guardian of Forever

Using the frequency from Lieutenant Paris’ combadge, we were able to track the ship that was carrying her to the Gateway system.  It quickly became apparent what B’vat’s plan was, if not how he came by it.  One of the planets in the system was the location of the Guardian of Forever, a seemingly sentient device capable of transporting people through time.  The Federation had quarantined the planet for close to one hundred fifty years in an attempt to prevent people from using the Guardian to go back in time and alter history.  Of course, a Federation quarantine didn’t seem to be enough to stop some fairly determined Klingons.  After dealing with a few Klingon ships in the system that tried to prevent us from reaching the Guardian’s planet, I led an away team to try to stop B’vat before he was able to carry out his plan.  Mr. Scharf attempted to protest, but I insisted that if I was going to risk a visit from the Department of Temporal Investigations that I wanted to be able to give a first hand account of what occurred.  Unfortunately, B’vat had planned ahead to prevent interference.  The ground forces he deployed around the Guardian of Forever prevented the away team from reaching him before B’vat escaped into history with Lieutenant Paris.  

After mopping up the rest of the Klingon ground forces, we spoke with the Guardian of Forever.  It revealed that not only had B’vat and Lieutenant Paris been sent back in time, but that the Klingons had sent a ship back in time as well.  We were able to convince the Guardian to allow us to take the Tirpitz back in time to try to stop B’vat from altering history.  The away team soon found itself back onboard the ship and in a different sector of space.  It took Mr. Toran a few minutes to determine our position in space and time.  The Guardian had sent us to 2270.  We soon picked up a distress call.  We set a course to investigate and soon found the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701, under attack by three Klingon ships.  The presence of Lieutenant Paris’ com badge signal aboard one of the ships revealed that it did not belong in this time.  We attacked the Klingon ship from our era in an attempt to even the odds for the Enterprise.  I ordered  T’Lol to attempt to disable the ship’s systems, as we didn’t want to destroy the vessel with Miral still onboard.  Before we could do much damage, B’vat’s ship fled from the battle, leaving us with the Enterprise and the two other Klingon ships.  Once we helped the Enterprise to drive off the remaining Klingons, we were hailed by Commander Spock.  To try to minimize our impact on the timeline,  we sent a text only message to the Enterprise stating that our communications systems were down, before setting a pursuit course for B’vat’s ship. 

Captain B'vat

Catching up with B’vat, we found his ship being protected by a couple of D7 battle cruisers.  At first I was concerned about attacking the D7s, worried that they were from the time period we were in.  The first few shots we took from them changed my mind.  Either they were D7s that B’vat had brought back to this time with him, or they were using weapons systems from our era.  In either case, we couldn’t let them remain in this time period where they could provide a huge advantage to the Klingons.  We engaged the Klingons in battle, and were able to destroy the D7 battle cruisers before we disabled B’vat’s ship.  Leading an away team over B’vat’s vessel, we had to fight out way through a number of Klingon warriors from our time and from the time we were currently in.  We made our way to the bridge, expecting to find B’vat there.  We did, but it was the B’vat from 2270.  He attacked us in a rage, and we had to defend ourselves.  I’ll admit that I was sorely tempted to kill the younger B’vat.  After all the trouble he’d caused over the last few months for the Federation in 2409, this was a chance to stop him before he got started.  But we were back there to prevent changes to the timeline, not make our own.  In the end, we knocked the young B’vat unconscious.  When he woke up, he said he knew who we were.  He called us the protectors of the Kuvah’magh, the religious leader that many Klingons believe Lieutenant Paris to be.  He said he was willing to help us after he saw the dishonor in the man he would become.  He asked us to give the older B’vat a “good death” when we saved the Kuvah’magh.  The young B’vat then told us we could find his older self in the ship’s mess hall, along with Miral, before he beamed off of the ship with some blood samples taken from Lieutenant Paris to cure the augmentation virus that had affected the Klingons of his time period.  When we reached the mess hall, we found ambassador B’vat guarding the force field where Miral was being held prisoner.  He attacked us, and we ended up killing B’vat in the fight. 

The Enterprise to the rescue

After we freed Lieutenant Paris from the force field, we decided to destroy B’vat’s ship to make sure the Klingons of 2270 couldn’t salvage any technology from it.  We then set a course for the Guardian’s planet, hoping to return to our own time.  When we arrived, Mr. Toran picked up a temporal anomaly on sensors.  We also picked up several Klingon ships on an intercept course.  With the destruction of all of the technology B’vat had brought back with him, they saw the Tirpitz as the last source of future technology they’d have a chance of getting their hands on.  We tried to clear a path to the anomaly, but our hands were tied by trying not to cause any unnecessary deaths in the past.  That’s when the Enterprise came in firing.  We were again hailed by Commander Spock telling us that he knew where, or rather when, we had come from.  The Enterprise engaged the Klingon ships, providing cover while we made a beeline for the anomaly.  We soon found ourselves back in 2409 above the Guardian’s planet. 

I’m confident that my crew and myself took every precaution to prevent polluting the time stream.  As far as we can tell, no changes seem to have been made to the timeline.  Of course, from what I’ve been told, most people who have ended up traveling through time have said that. 

 Out of Character

This story mission is a follow-up on the original series episode The City on the Edge of Forever.  City is one of the original Trek’s best episodes, even winning a Hugo award in 1968.  I’m not a huge fan of the original series, having been introduced to Star Trek with the Next Generation when I was growing up.  But City is one of the few original series episodes I really enjoy. 

Both the episode and the story mission both feature one of the classic time traveler’s paradoxes.  If you could go back in time to try stop some terrible event, would you?  In the episode, the twist is that to stop the changes to time, Kirk has to let a woman he cares for die.  In the game, the player is sent to prevent someone else from changing history, only to see that they have a chance to change history to eliminate one of the Federation’s enemies.  I know it’s not realistic for the developers to have included some way to actually let the player actually make that choice.  But I still like that Cryptic kept the idea of the choice to change the future in mission. 

I really liked this mission.  The level of detail Cryptic went into on this mission was great.  I have to admit that I spent a few minutes standing in front of the Guardian of Forever just watching the slide show of history.  The one nitpick I have is in being contacted by Spock when the player goes back in time.  It’s no secret that Cryptic managed to get Leonard Nimoy to provide some voice over for the game.  Usually he’s used to provide a voice over about a space sector the first time a player enters the area, as well as to congratulate the player when they level up.  Here, Mr. Nimoy reprises his role as Spock, providing a voice over for when the player is contacted by the Enterprise.  However, because the player is contacted after they’ve rescued the Enterprise from a beating by the Klingons, being contacted by Spock instead of Kirk may make the player wonder just how badly the timeline has been altered already.  Did the player arrive to late to prevent Captain Kirk from being killed in the attack?

2 Comments

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI