There's No Place Like On The Air...For The Holidays...

 

    One of my IRL gigs is morning host for one of the local radio stations, in fact, the local NPR affiliate. Thing you need to know about NPR listeners, is that they do tend to be a smart, erudite, elevated crowd. But...they do self-estimate themselves to be on an even higher plane than they actually are. Which is why they absolutely take seriously certain notions, like a man can be woman because of his feelings, or that what happened Jan. 6 was an insurrection, no matter what the FBI said, or that Donald Trump's collusion with the Russians swung the 2016 election, no matter what Robert Mueller in the end said. So...it is what it is.

    So, today, I was doing my thing. And like any non-liner reading on-air type, I will noodle and freestyle a bit. I commented that the 12 Days of Christmas began today, the 13th of December, as I realized we have 12 days to Christmas, as of Monday morning. I warbled a bit about that on the air, some friendly, holidayesque on air improv, then was off to the next element.

    Well, lo and behold, I get an email from the station manager, forwarding an email from a listener. This listener caught my performance and wanted to make sure I was corrected in my errors, in that this was not indeed the 12 Days of Christmas. Those don't actually start until Christmas Day. As of a week ago, we fell into another season, the one before the musical 12, that being Advent.

    Honestly, I did not know how this actually fell, calendar-wise. But I also was not intending to be a fount of actual information, just doing some holiday thinking out loud.  She signed off with this...

"I just find that many Texans are confused about the 12 days of Christmas. I can't resist asking CALL LETTERS REDACTED to be more aware."

I appreciate you supplying the correction, ma'am. I in turn have to resist telling you to pull the stick out of your 4th point of contact on the air, and will have to merely thank you. Here, I will also thank you but also request, for the peace of the season, specifically your own, to lighten up.

Merry Christmas!  Ho ho ho.

 Star Trek vs Warhammer 40k

Even more than the Mirror Mirror Universe, the Warhammer 40k universe, with its myriad hostile xenos and a militant, fanatical anti-alien human empire beset on all sides by a universe determined to destroy it, the bright and shiny setting and utopian ethos of the Star Trek universe sees its negative opposite in this setting. A thread I perused on the Star Trek BBS broke it down thus...

BTW, been gone awhile, glad to be back. Lots has happened. We  will take time to catch up.

An ancient wormhole awakens that span the two realities. This is detected by a Rogue Trader, that travels through the wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant, say on the border of Federation space.

The Trader finds trouble with navigating and loses all FTL. They are found by a Federation scout ship. While somewhat suspicious of the visitors, the Fed captain renders assistance. The Rogue Trader realizes the idealism and squeamishness of the Feds, and puts his best face forward until he gets the engines attuned to the new reality.

They put in to a small Fed colony world and begin contact. The Rogue Trader's crew steals a replicator, and the resultant conflict kills a few Federation citizens. The Trader flees with its new found treasure, the Fed scout ship pursues but realizes its massively outclassed.

The Trader returns through the wormhole, and sells the device to a planetary governor for a small fortune. As he plans to return to find new wonders the Inquisition appears and puts him to the question. The Inquisition reports the findings to the High Lords of Terra. They garrison the wormhole, and send a small fleet through.

There a techpriest makes the necessary adjustments, but the fleet gets uneasy as the Navigators lose contact with the light of the Emperor, the Astronomicon. The Feds meet them and tell them to stand down, hoping for a successful diplomatic resolution. The Admiral of the Imperial battlefleet incinerates their small ships and pushes forward, with his directive to spread the word of the Emperor among these humans. At this point, it is believed that this is a lost colony, they lack the science to discover they've passed to a different reality.

A battle breaks out over the nearest large colony, which the Imperial Fleet wins. They send down the Space Marines and the Priests with their Sisters of Battle. The Feds retreat and call in their allies, the Klingons. Several more worlds are invaded. The 40K forces are overwhelming, but are impressed with several aspects of the Federation defense. Phasers make armor a moot point, and the Space Marines suffer unexpectedly high casualties. Transporters allow for an impressive mobile defense. Klingon shock troops fare well against the Imperial Guard, and earn respect from even the Sisters of Battle.

A few more battles occur, and while the Imperial ships are far more massive with greater weaponry, they are slow, working in an unfamiliar space, and they have little understanding of their own tech.

The Feds eventually manage a tech answer to equalize the relative powers of the fleets, as even with a Tech Priest they are far superior in their understanding and adaptability of the respective technologies. They successfully mine the wormhole with cloaked replicating mines, which the 40K ships have no way of countering. Some reinforcements get through due to the simple size of the ships, but all of them sustain damage.

The Imperium creates a bulge in space out from the wormhole, with dozens of captured minor colonies. One planet successfully revolts, as the Imperium fails to understand the power of phasers. They pull out the Marines and bombard it from orbit.

This incentivizes the Feds, and they start receiving support from some of the other powers, as a genocidal human Empire is not the long term interest of any other faction. The Federation/Klingon alliance manages to hold the line at a major planet, and the war becomes a stale mate as the Trek powers begin to build up their strength and the Imperium tries to solve the riddle of the mines.

At this point however enough Imperium humans are present to begin to realize the nature of the new reality. The Warp does not exist here, nor do Chaos Lords. Defections to the Federation begin to happen, at first intermittently, then with greater and greater frequency. The Federation is able to assimilate the tech that the Imperium is using.

A temporary truce is called as an Orc Waagh breaks out near one corner of the Imperium, a Chaos tainted uprising has to be purged, and a Necron Lord destroys several planets on the rim. When the Imperium finally gets enough momentum to continue, it sends a mighty array of ships with nova cannons to clear the mines with brute force. This succeeds. When they arrive they find that fully a third of their forces have rebelled, trying to break free of Imperial yoke. What’s more, cloaked probes have been sent through to the Imperium promising freedom from oppression for any group that can make it into Federation space.

They are forced to stop and perform additional exterminatas on both sides of the wormhole. In the meanwhile they are facing new Trek ships with enhanced weapons, as the centuries of weapon technology of the tech priests of Mars are incorporated into Federation and Klingon designs.

A hero Starfleet captain turns the tide in an epic battle, and the forces of the Imperium are called back. The Federation stops there, but the Klingons pursue. A boarding action on a shattered Cobra destroyer leads to a jump into the warp, and the Klingons see what happens when the Gellar field doesn’t protect the ship. A new type of daemon is born that day as the Klingons onboard are corrupted, but their message to the Klingon fleet shocks the superstitious warriors who return to Trek space.

And just as well, because the native uprisings due to the Fed psyops campaigns gets the full attention of the Imperium. They muster several Battlefleets and Space Marines chapters. Up to this point this had been the personal project of one High Lord of Terra, but now the Imperium has been aroused. Probes send back images of fleets far beyond anything the Federation had seen to this point. The Federation uses technologies it had gained in the decades long study of the Bajoran Wormhole to close the interdimensional breach once and for all, knowing that it barely survived a its war. However, this had been a mere probe by the Imperium. A Starfleet captain stares off into the rift as it closes, driven nearly to despair at the life the poor humans of that reality are imprisoned within.

Demiurge, Jun 16, 2012

#37

For those interested in the full thread... Warhammer 40k vs Star Trek | The Trek BBS