What would happen if you pit Star Wars Stormtroopers against Star Trek Redshirts?

The saddest thing about all this is that we would never really know how it happened.

Have you ever noticed that you have never actually seen a red shirt die or that you have never actually seen the storm troopers do a good job? In the classic episodes at least. Even though there are dead Star fleet and jawas laying around to point out that, yes the red shirts are always dying and yes the storm troopers are actually pretty good shots, you have never really seen it happen. Therefore, all of this battle will happen off screen.

What we would see, however, would look something like this. Kirk and the gang arrive in orbit around the moon of Endor. They beam down and Kirk sends off the red shirts to a various sundry of improbable demises. Meanwhile, he himself meets a female Ewok and seduces her. After his show of manly bravado he is reminded by Spock that the away team hasn’t reported in the several hours of Kirk’s raucous lovemaking. Kirk and all the other command officers of the ship, who, by the way, are the last people who should leave the ship… leave the ship, and go off gallivanting to investigate the missing crewmen.

Meanwhile, a large ship, too small to be a moon, but still freaking huge is detected on the other end of Endor on the view screen along with a fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers. Since the ship is left without any semblance of leadership, mostly because of the incredibly poor command choice that they all need to all abandon their posts in search of adventure or some other frivolous pursuit, the Enterprise is destroyed. Don’t worry, somehow the force or benevolent aliens or just something else cool and fortuitously unexpected will bring them back in the last three minutes of the episode. Don’t cry for them. They’ll be fine.

Kirk and team find the missing crewmen, all shot in the chest by laser fire ( The question is now answered and you can stop reading if you choose, but I wouldn’t suggest it.) Now Kirk and the gang spend the next thirty minutes trying to understand how all their crewmen died through perfectly aimed laser blasts to the chest. They’re not going to set up defenses or anything, even you know, take up a defensive posture. They’re just going to investigate curiously. As a reminder, that’s “curious”, not “cautious”, which would probably be the more appropriate manner, given the situation. I mean there are many things that could have caused this, why prepare for a battle to the death that happens every week?

During the half hour lull in the plot, Spock melds a force sensitive tree or his tricorder doohickey beeps or something and he is able to deduce that a spacial anomaly has sent them back in time and to a very distant galaxy. They are now taking part in a story set long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. They eventually meet with the Storm Troopers and a seven hour duel with the squad begins. No one in Kirk’s party is ever hit. Well, that’s not true. Scottie takes one to the leg, but it is mostly just a heroic, yet superficial injury. He isn’t in any real danger, but it adds suspense. McCoy can’t fix him since he left his gear on the ship. From this we can see something else important. McCoy is never prepared for the near certain death and destruction that is sure to follow Kirk wherever he goes. Seriously, they went out to investigate the complete annihilation of a team of trained Star Fleet officers killed in their prime by laser blasts to the chest! I guarantee you he didn’t even bring band-aids.

Eventually Kirk and Spock get the upper hand. Scottie throws a stick (heroically) and kills several of the troopers before he succumbs to more superficial injuries. Kirk valiantly takes down several more with oddly choreographed air punches he and McCoy set up a routine for during the stand off. Spock takes down the rest with a series of neck pinches. Yes neck pinches… through the armor… he just did…stop asking.

That is the end of the story for the red shirts and storm troopers, but not the end of our story all together.

Enter: Lord Vader.

Vader kills Kirk. He just does. I’m sorry I didn’t go into detail, but it just happens. It’s quick and unceremonious. Seriously, Kirk is an idiot and it was a long time coming. If it wasn’t Vader it would be the Space Herpes. Kirk is and always has been doomed from the start, mostly because of his own stupidity and the fact that his carelessness means he has to constantly keep training red shirts and falling on the capabilities of his much more capable officers. Well, now he isn’t a problem anymore so let’s just move along.

What happens next, though, is that McCoy is able to knock out Vader with his hypospray. Yeah, he brought that along. Meanwhile, Scottie is now raving deliriously with pain and poor medical treatment. Spock seizes the moment and conducts a Vulcan Mind Meld. Why? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time. With this Anakin’s mind is calmed with the presence of logic and wisdom as he shares the thoughts of Spock in his own mind. He is now capable of seeing that he has been a pawn of the Emperor and has been manipulated from the start. Sadly though, this kind of turned Spock evil. And even though I am pretty sure it goes against the laws of the Star Wars universe, gave him force powers as well. Oh dear God yes. We now have an evil Spock with powers of a Sith Master. His indomitable logic is now sullied by Anakin’s boyish angst and fits of post-pubescent rage. He now also has the command of the powers of Vulcan strength and telepathic abilities augmented by the combined strengths of dark Jedi and Sith teachings, along with an added asset of a mind immense with tactical and strategic value. His first most logical choice? Kill the newly reformed Anakin Skywalker. The Universe is screwed.

Now free of the incomprehensible Kirk, and with the hapless Vader disposed of, the empowered Spock takes charge of  what’s left of Vaders ship and his crew to confront the evil Emperor. They meet aboard the Death Star and a duel between Sideous and Sith Spock ensues. Well, sort of. Now Spock has the power of the new and improved Vulcan Neck Pinch – Now with Force Powers! and knocks out Sideous from across the room. Yeah, he can now neck pinch you from the other side of the galaxy. Done. He has no moral qualms with killing the treasonous villain either and does so promptly, and gruesomely I might add.

With this Spock now takes on the mantle of Emperor and is the most powerful being in the Star Wars galaxy. Thank you for asking.

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I Drew a Monkey in a Math Book – Chapter 3

(Start at chapter one)

It’s a year later now, somewhere around halfway through Junior year. I had gone through a string of bad pseudo relationships and was depressed at my complete inability to attract any among the population of the fairer sex. I moved when I shouldn’t have, but worse, I was afraid to move when I should have. The dance baffled and befuddled me. I was hopeless.

I had recently endured a particularly damaging attack on my own self-esteem. Leave it to say that girls of a certain age can be lacking empathy what they are more than blessed with in beauty and grace. Perhaps that isn’t enough to say. I had fallen for a girl who made me feel special, only to find out a few days later, I was just being used to make her old boyfriend jealous. Give it six more months and this same girl got the drop on me again, same story, but with a different guy, and on my birthday, no less. It was a devastating ordeal at that age, but as I understand, not all that too uncommon.

Tangentially speaking, I’m willing to venture that most people remember that one person they just wanted so badly, but that tore them to pieces, instead. I think that we as a society worry too much about the cruelty visited upon each other in war and poverty. I think if we really wanted to avoid unnecessary suffering we should just outlaw teenagers from dating, but if that were the case this story might not have happened, along with so many other beautiful stories as well.

Returning then to my story, I spent about a month mulling over my loserdom, listening to an endless cycle of The Calling’s CD, Camino Palmero. You might remember them for their one hit Wherever You Will Go, which somehow still plays from time to time, serving as the never ending reminder of misbegotten misadventures and misfortunes of an ill spent youth. It also serves as a reminder of mercifully unanswered prayers, at least for me, anyway. Safe to say, that entire album exists as the soundtrack to one of those months every soul goes through at some point or another in isolation alone in their room. Either way, the ordeal made me certainly reevaluate the meaning of beauty, though I wasn’t aware of such things at the time.

Eventually I left the cave and was able to put it out of my thoughts, for the most part anyway.

It was around that time that I started looking around and noticed a certain girl. I had noticed her before and she entered my thoughts from time to time, now for a while. I had actually been thinking about her before the whole thing with this other girl, but then that happened. You’d think by this point I would have learned my lesson and focused on living the virtuous life of the ascetic monk, freeing myself from the worldly burdens of the feminine form. To be honest, I’m not a particularly wise person. I don’t profess to be a quick learner and often need to have things repeated to me. I was open to another mistake.

This other girl was quiet. I mean she was seriously quiet. She never said a word. Literally, in the three years I had known her, she had spoken all of maybe five words aloud, to me or to anyone else as far as I had seen. You probably know the girl I’m talking about. Not even after a rather odd encounter we had endured two years earlier in an art class did she ever have anything to say that I could hear. She always just sat quietly by herself, with her head down in a book or off somewhere else entirely. But she was cute and I was seventeen so that was the only real qualifier. I really didn’t plan anything with her, I just looked over and thought there was something different about her. She was still mesmerizing in her mystery. Something about the look she had that just seemed like she was someone you could really trust.

I suddenly became aware of my thoughts, and as the very young often will do, did what I could to stifle the notion. I remember in particular the very thought in which I dismissed the idea that of a look of trustworthiness would be a worthy trait in a potential mate.

(“’Someone you could really trust?’ What are you, gay?”)

I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed your modern sensibilities, but this is how seventeen year old boys of the age thought. So I did nothing about this idea of the trustworthy girl, and did what I could to dismiss it. After all, a trustworthy look wasn’t a factor in the algorithm of love, or at least not the love which boys of a certain age imagine, which might more readily be described as something between overly enamored infatuations or even more appropriately, lust.

Still, the feeling lingered. It lingered for perhaps another month or two. It lingered even for perhaps another momentary crush or two.

As the months rolled on during our junior year, she became part of my thoughts more and more often, most often of which during this class which we shared. I was distracted from my studies, mostly due, once again, to my own boredom and unchallenging teachers. I had more than enough time to stare off into the nothingness and fantasize about whatever my heart desired, least of which being American History. One day, a day not so uncommon that I can remember anything else significant about it at all, I remember sitting in class watching her again, specifically.

The room was buzzing as usual. Cliques were chatting throughout the room. Most days I would have attempted to be part of those coveted social circles in which the valued relationships of my little society exchanged information, opinions and the other forms of social currency still valued today. Conversations, gossip, storytelling and the flirting that is exchanged among youth was all that could be heard. Certainly not instruction, to be sure. Remember that this whole time we have been in History class.

That day, however, I was more distracted than most and not even on the sidebar conversations taking place around me. Instead, I was quietly watching the unobtrusive girl sitting on the edge of the room beside the wall. She was focused on her math. She must have wanted to get all of her homework done while there was time to do it. Smart girl. She was hunched over intently, shutting the rest of us out masterfully.

It wasn’t that I was interested in watching her study. I’m relatively certain that a poll of any number of young men at that age wouldn’t rank “The way she studies” as a key turn on. No, it was just her. She was the focus. Something about her was now engaging my attentions more than just her dedicated and scholarly aura. As the days went on, leading to that day, I began to realize just how pretty she was. I am not sure I could have articulated it as such, but that was what I started to see. She was a very attractive girl, I just never noticed it before. Her hair was bobbed again, shorter than two years before. She had experimented with a very short, spiked look during Sophomore year, which was rather flamboyant for the quiet mouse. I thought it was different, in a good way, despite what others openly thought. By now, it just flowed down to the nape of her neck, the waves dangling over her bowed head catching the light fancifully. Her lightly freckled skin accented a subtle tan. Nothing she wore was particularly amazing. Her fashion sense was clean and conservative, modest, but not prudish or pretentious. Just an ordinary look, barely worth mentioning except to note that to her, dress was a function. She gave it only so much focus as to not attract any unnecessary attention either for caring not enough about her looks, or for caring too much. Her eyes also lacked an intensity and vibrancy, which often I coveted in the girls who want to be noticed. It might sound odd that such a statement be said as complimentary, but the way her eyes rested their gaze was a calming one, which is not valued as the eyes of those too easily excited. No, she didn’t seem to be the violent gale of other storm ridden waters, but instead she might be the soft warm breeze on the water’s edge. She had a soft expression, one which showed her focus, but little particular attachment to the activity with which she was engaged. I never would have noticed such a girl if not for the rare and misfortunate experiences which had befallen me, but today, I really didn’t want to stop watching.

I remember being so curious about this mysterious girl who tried so hard to disappear from the rest of our view. I could have stared all day if I had wanted to do so. She would never have noticed if I had, but nothing comes from looking at things be pretty. I was in luck that I was in the middle of a phase that suited me. Personally speaking, I had been engaged in something of an adventurous streak, as much as such a streak could get for me at the time. I had started taking more risks, nothing noteworthy, but a lot for me. I was overcome with the foolish sense of adventure that has led to the greatest expeditions as well as the sinking of the greatest ships.

Eventually, I worked up the courage to go over and talk to her. Not all of a sudden, mind you. These things must be done delicately. I had to be cool about this sort of thing. You don’t just walk up to a girl and say, “Howdy,” with whom you’ve barely ever shared a word with. I’d have to find a way to show interest. I have to open her up. Let her know that I was interested in her without telling her I was interested in her. This was a dangerous situation, you know. All my friends would be watching, to be sure, if she turned up her nose and dismissed me. Plausible deniability had to be maintained, lest my intentions become the talking points of their gossip throughout the whole school.

Of course, even if such a thing were to happen, it’s funny to consider it such an important issue as to necessitate the illogical strategizing of teenagers trying to appear aloof in spite of very fervent desires. It’s a thing of beautiful nonsense to be young.

Of all the thought that went into it, the best plan I had come up with was what might be rightfully described in some applications to have been an ambush. I walked over and plopped right down in the seat directly in front of her, one arm on the desk, one arm on my new chair and leaned against the wall behind me. I was looking directly at her with a smirk as I said in that first second,

“Hey Jennie.”

It would appear that one could simply walk up to a girl and say “hello” like a fool. All that really mattered was the rationalizing that took place prior, if a defense were needed. I think my plan was to catch her off guard. I doubted that asking her for permission to have a conversation would have come off as anything other than odd.

The interruption indeed gave the impression that it set her off balance. She was indeed working on homework and didn’t change its focus as her face remained locked to her textbook. Her eyes, however, told a very different story. They made her confusion, and perhaps annoyance much more apparent. They danced back and forth as if searching for explanation from some otherworldly source within her view.

With a closeted defensiveness, she politely replied to my greeting with little more than a nod.

And then nothing else. It was awkward, to say the least.
I wondered what I was doing. She was doing the same, I am sure. I knew I had to find something to talk about or this would be a quick exercise in how not to approach girls.

“So… watcha’ workin’ on?”

It was obvious and in hindsight kind of a stupid question. Still, it filled the void.

“Math.”

Her reply was less than inspiring for further conversation. This would indeed be harder than I thought.

“I see… Whose class do you have, Blevins or Hunt?” I replied.

She answered back, “Mr. Blevins.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I know how boring he can be. Almost everyone in our class would fall asleep, like, every single day.”

She laughed a little. A crack in the oaken façade!

“Do you like him?” I asked.

“I guess. He’s not bad, but I guess he is pretty boring.”
She was smiling just a touch. Still reserved, still shy, but I could feel as if I wasn’t unwelcome in this space. It was only small talk, but it was nice. There was still the issue of the horribly awkward, forced moment we were sharing, but it was at least pleasant enough not be too unnervingly uncomfortable.

I was trying to discover somewhere else where our conversation might go, trying desperately to discover some sort of inspiration. The conversation was dry and I was beginning to wonder if I actually was welcome or if she was just polite. I was about to give up when I thought that maybe I could find something by looking at what she was studying. I had been in her math class the year before, so maybe I would remember it and we could talk about that. I’m sure that many a happy marriage was founded upon deep discussions of mathematics. I looked down to see if there was something worth starting a conversation about.

Among the facts and figures I noticed a peculiarity in her book. It had a small clock drawn on the bottom corner of the page. I recognized that clock. I recognized it very well. I too once had a math book with a clock in the bottom corner of the page. In fact, it had many, and in fact, I had drawn them. At first, I wondered if there could be a possibility that two people in this tiny school could have vandalized their Algebra books in the very same way.
Inquisitively and hoping not to reveal too much, I quietly asked her,

“Jennie… who had your math book last year?”

Continue on to Part 4