Captain Disaster Episode 7 - "Correctness, Politically Speaking."
Jan 03 '04 (Updated Jan 06 '05)
The Bottom Line In Episode 7, CD crusades against the evil of PC...
Captain Disaster
Episode 7
"Correctness, Politically Speaking."
It wasn't every day that you fell through a freak wormhole in the space-time continuum (unless, of course, you're a member of the Enterprise crew), but that was exactly what had happened to Captain Disaster. (I mean, every other day maybe, but every day was frankly ridiculous.) After his previous encounter with a wormhole (and wormcast) in space, CD was a bit sceptical about the effects on his olfactory senses, but fortunately the ship's Smell-o-FilterTM was working that day.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, as this happens so often in Skiffy stories, he came across earth in the future. (Same world, different dimension / parallel astral plane, different part of the space-time continuum sort of thing.)
"London looks a bit like a frog these days" commented CD, who had caught up with the plot remarkably quickly. This was especially exceptional due to the fact that, in the previous 6 episodes, not one plot had been chanced upon.
"No, that's Paris" remarked the remarkably unremarkable computer, Zero-Bit.
"Ah. Now I understand why my geography teacher joined MI6."
Landing on the floor in Paris was forbidden, so they did it anyway. The person who came to meet them from Customs spoke English with an over-the-top accent.
"Yo cinnot lond har. Et eese fobeedan."
Zero-Bit thought it was all a bit stereo-typed and shot him with a Scum-NeutraliserTM. With that they went to London, hoping to find them speaking normal English, and not the type of English spoken by the "English" in American films. They also hoped to avoid anyone who might make the kind of stomach-churning speech that the president did in Independence Day. In both respects, they succeeded.
"Right, you're nicked." (Okay, so they didn't completely escape inane stereotypes.)
"Why? What have we done?" asked a confused Captain.
"We ain't done noffink wrong, we ain't!" interjected ZB, quickly dispelling the myth that computers can't speak bad English.
"For not speaking properly! And, prior to that, for parking in an unauthorised parking space, with an unidentified space-faring vessel, for an undisclosed purpose. You are hereby charged with traffic-code violation number 21435b subsection g paragraph 42f line 465r, footnote #*@@. You have the right to remain silent. But I must warn you that if you later remain silent when not doing so now, or relying in the future on
something you say in the future but not now, or if you forget what you've said at any time and then try to rely on it in court, or say something, forget it, then remember it and fail to rely on it in court when asked to restore certain details omitted from your testimony when I ask you in five minutes, or say nothing, then say something, I forget to write it down, then remember it, and you try to claim you never said it even though you did and I managed to recall it and made a record for the court, you may be liable to hanging. In the event of none of these things happening, you may be tried for treason, or heard for heresy. If I don't like your face, I have no right whatsoever to shoot you like a dog on the spot, but that won't stop me from doing it. If
you get on the wrong side of the Masonic Lodge, especially the local one of which I am a member, you will be forced to walk through the House of Commons wearing a white apron and some pretty little bells, and hung upside down in a block of concrete under Tower Bridge, and then tried for committing suicide. Is that perfectly clear and understandable?" asked a slightly out of
breath Sergeant (soon to be made DCI).
"No" replied CD and ZB in perfect unison.
"Right, off to the station with you then."
The station was of a completely unremarkable design which I won't remark on. There were signs up everywhere advertising the latest craze: personal police people. These were people, who also happened to be police, who provided a personal service. (You'd never have worked it out by yourself, would you?)
The Chief Superintendent intentionally inclined his head so as to make it appear bigger than it was. As no-one was looking, this was something of a wasted effort, but at least there was a mirror close by for him to note the effect. His moustache draped into his cup of tea. The lice from his moustache gladly jumped in and drowned themselves. Theirs, after all,
had been unhappy existences. He flossed thrice daily, and little bits of plaque attached themselves to the hairy protrusion above his lip, sometimes disembowelling a louse in the process.
"Name?" he growled gruffly, gleefully glancing at Glenda, who was perching her pencil precariously in a predictably ponderous position.
"Pardon? My ear-wax just proliferated" said Captainos Disasteros, the famous Greek gusset gleaner.
"Obstructing the course of justice, are you? Right, take him to the dock charged with first degree murder. And find him guilty." He leant back on his chair, sneering an evil sneer evilly. As he fell over backwards, that evil sneer became something more akin to the expression of a man who's just made himself look very stupid indeed.
"And charge him with burglary, too!" said the chair (apparently).
"Capitan Disatser" mispronounced the judge, "you are hereby charged with lots of rather naughty things and thereby sentenced to death by halitosis."
"Do I have right of appeal?"
"No."
"What about a lawyer?"
"No."
"Cigarette?"
"No thanks, I just ate."
"What?"
"Yes, I know."
"Can I at least go to the toilet, then?"
"Well all right then, but only if you promise not to climb out of the window and escape. Do you promise?"
"Of course I do. Don't you trust me or something?"
"As a precaution against litigation, of course I'll say I trust you."
Captain Disaster should have kept his promise. The toilet was on the twenty-ninth floor.
As he stood in front of the very old people with very bad breath, trying to put his teeth back in, CD reflected on the time his nostrils had been subjected to the unbearable stench of a freshly made space-wormcast. (See episode 3 for more details - see how neatly it all fits together? And you thought it was a less than tightly-plotted series, didn't you? Go on, be honest.)
This present stink was nowhere near as bad, and his executioners would probably pass out (or pass away) long before he even felt faintly nauseous.
But he hadn't reckoned with Grandma Gloom. She had never failed to wreak a vile destruction upon any of her victims, even if they'd been dustbinmen (dustbinpeople) or farm-hands (farm-limbs). CD felt the world was about to end.
Yet salvation was at had.
"Stop!"
Granny stopped breathing.
"Look, I'm sorry about this. Could you please describe your ethnic background again?"
"White Caucasian male, IC1" Captain D managed to gasp through the fumes.
The young attendant who was asking the questions began to take off his gas mask, but then thought better of it. "It seems there's been a bit of an administrative blunder. We've filled our quota of white Caucasian males for this tax year. If we beat budget we'll have to do more next year as well. So you're free to go."
"What? I'm free to go? Does this sort of thing happen a lot? How much can I sue you for? Is there any grounds for sexual or racial discrimination to be claimed? Have I been the victim of malicious ageism? What do the Europeans think about all this?"
The young attendant who had been asking all the questions looked slightly peeved. "Look, I ask all the questions around here. Got it? It says so here."
He pointed to his name badge and, sure enough, it said "I ask all the questions around here."
An innocent little old lady walked past. She had purple-grey skin (as most people did who lived in Sellafield in the twenty-fifth century. (Don't ask how I know it was the 25th century. It just was. And no, CD didn't bump into Buck Rogers while he was there, although that might happen in a future episode if I'm really stuck for ideas...))
"Oi! You! You're nicked and hereby sentenced to death by Bodily Odour!"
And so it was that the quotas were filled evenly and correctly. Thus peace, justice, The American Way and equality were ensured for all, and no-one got upset because the section of the population they belonged to were accused with committing a disproportionate percentage of felonies. (Although, of course, in reality a certain section of the community I won't mention for legal reasons were still responsible for something like 80% of all crimes.)
The Europeans as a whole didn't like the fact that The American Way hadn't been eradicated, but then no-one liked the Europeans as a whole (although, of course, everyone loves the English), and Hollywood still ruled the film world, so no-one really cared. (Except the Europeans - but then no-one cared about them, you see. It kind of makes sense, if you have two
bottles of Bacardi and a banana.)
"How's the Brave New World then?" asked Zero-Bit.
"Bizarre. Well, let's get out of here."
"How do we do that then?"
"Just create a field replicating the wormhole we came in by and we'll be back where we started from, no problem."
"It all sounds a bit unlikely to me, not to mention a contrived way of avoiding a tricky part of the plot. Are you sure it will work?"
"Why not? It did in First Contact."
Zero-Bit made it so.
And so another episode comes to its natural (unnatural?) conclusion, with all the tricky parts of the plot that would have been difficult to explain tactfully ignored, thus proving that the prime directive was only there to be broken in every single episode anyway, that Shakespearean actors don't snog as many women per episode as T.J.Hooker, and that the force was probably
never with Mark Hammil's acting career after Return of the Jedi.*
Footnotes
* Please address all libel claims# to:
HAL 2000 Mailing Systems Inc.,
PO Box Infinity (careful drivers will be crushed by the not-so-careful-ones) and Beyond,
Jurassic Park,
The Lost World,
West World,
How-Many-More-Films-And-Books-Can-I-Rip-Off-Here-Land,
42 Reality Dysfunction Central,
The Land That Time Forgot,
I'm-Pretty-Sure-The-Above-Must-Be-Better-Than-TLW-Even-Though-I-Haven't-Seen-The-Former,
I-Wonder-How-Many-Copyright-Laws-I'm-Breaking-Here,
Oh-Well-This-Is-Getting-Ridiculous-Now-And-I'm-Getting-RSI,
Beta Centuri.
Footnotes to the footnotes
# Please only submit intentions to sue if you're serious. The scandalous comments were all made in good faith and it's only right and fair that you should respond in kind.
Copyright 2004 Dave Seaman
The Captain Disaster Series
Episode 1 - "The Planet-Eater of Acturus"
Episode 2 - "A Beta Burger"
Episode 3 - "Wormhole"
Episode 4 - "Mecenaries"
Episode 5 - "A Newish Hope"
Episode 6 - "Timedrive"
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Read my review of
Red Dwarf Series 1-4
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