Winging It
| Star Traks: Waystation | |
| Episode name | Winging It |
|---|---|
| Season | Stardate 58--- |
| Episode number | 2 |
| Writer(s) | Alan Decker |
| Year | 2381 |
| Stardate | Unknown |
| Chronology | |
| Previous in series | And They're Off |
| Next in series | Waypoint Harbor |
| Previous in timeline | Happy Trails [VEX] |
| Next in timeline | The Ballistic Substitute [VEX] |
Since her arrival on Waystation, Dr. Diantha has done her off-standish best to avoid getting involved in the lives of the rest of the crew. But now she needs a favor, and Lieutenant Commander Sean Russell is going to find himself involved in her life whether he likes it or not.
Summary
In need of assistance, Dr. Diantha goes to the Waystation Security Office in Starfleet Square Mall to see Lieutenant Commander Sean Russell, but Russell is busy monitoring Captain Lisa Beck's attempt to get information out of Federation President Bradley Dillon about the whereabouts of Tiffany Beecher, the teenaged girl Bradley's Special Secret Section took into custody for the destruction of Krilik's Klingon Formal Wear Shop, the explosion of which almost killed Bradley. Beck is at a reception with Bradley and, with Russell listening through an earpiece, she tries to maneuver her conversation with the president toward the subject of Tiffany. When she gets close, though, Russell loses contact due to a jamming field. Beck backs away from Bradley, leading Bradley to believe that he must have bad breath. Horrified, he retreats.
With the effort having failed, Russell turns his attention to Diantha, who suddenly kisses him. After releasing Russell, Diantha tells him that the kiss was the beginning of the favor she needs from him and that he will be told of the rest later. That evening in the mall food court, Russell tells Lieutenant Commander Craig Porter about what went on. During their talk, Russell is suddenly yanked out of his seat and flown up into the air by an avian being. It isn't Diantha, though. It's an angry male. Diantha shows up and forces the male Keetooan, Owylin, to land with Russell. As Russell and Porter watch, Diantha and Owylin begin arguing. Owylin is Diantha's husband, at least he believes he is. Diantha disagrees. Owylin tells her that she has a responsibility to their daughter. Diantha agreed to bear the child, but after that it was supposed to be Owylin's problem. She never wanted anything to do with parenthood.
After that, Diantha decides she's had enough of the plotline and steps outside of the story reality to have a word with the author. She feels the plot is totally unoriginal, but the author says that he needs to do something to develop her character. Diantha, however, is perfectly fine with remaining a secondary character and is happy to pass on this "development" crap. She gets the author to dump the plot and skip ahead to the end of the story, which she isn't a part of.
Suddenly in Ops, Porter feels like the universe just skipped over the boring stuff and dumped them back into the middle of the plot. Beck emerges from her office having decided to take a different approach in locating Tiffany. She comms Tiffany's parents and finds that Tiffany is with them. All three Beechers look terrified, though. Evidently, the Special Secret Section terrorized them into not talking about what happened. Bradley has gone outside of the law, but with Tiffany home, there's little Beck can do about it.
Featuring
- Captain Lisa Beck
- Commander Walter Morales
- Lieutenant Commander Craig Porter
- Lieutenant Commander Sean Russell
- Yeoman Tina Jones
- Dr. Diantha
- Bradley Dillon
Also Featuring
Author's Comments
I suppose that you would call this one a bit of metafiction, fiction about writing fiction. Traks has always had a slightly-intrusive narrative voice, but "Winging It" took that idea a lot farther than I ever had before. But it's the last run of short stories; it's as good of a time as any to try something a bit different.
I wish I could claim that this was my plan all the way along. To be honest, though, I originally intended for the story to be a regular story about Diantha and her background. The opening came easily, and I zipped right along up to the scene in the mall where Russell gets grabbed when I just stopped.
And I mean stopped. I didn't touch the story for a couple of weeks. This is usually a sign that something is very wrong. It took me a while, but I finally figured out what the problem was: the plotline didn't interest me at all. Now I don't exactly get paid for writing Traks, so if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to do it. I needed to go back and rethink things.
The rethinking wasn't going very well. Everything I came up with felt done. The breakthrough finally happened while I was laying awake in an uncomfortable motel bed somewhere in Virginia. Not to sound schizophrenic, but I had a conversation with myself very similar to the one that's in the final story. And that's when I had the idea to make the story about the process of writing a story (at least to an extent). Now that was fun to write.