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Subject: "(OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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"(OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation"
 
   Notes by Matt
Notes by Gryphon

At one point, everything in both TD01 and TD02 was supposed to be one big story, but not long after I came into the studio and started helping to put some drywall and fittings onto the bones we realized this was getting a bit too unwieldy for its own weight, as it were. At one point the Studio considered just leaving the acquisition of the noDwI' as an "untold tale", but then we realized we had some really fun ideas that we wanted to put out there, and away we went...

what amounted to a review board - B'Elanna's unfamiliarity with the KDF culture plays against her a bit here. She believes this formal review and debriefing is a matter of policy, when Zargh's main reason for requesting this is more along the lines of I have GOT to hear this.

Fleet Engineer K'tarn - I will admit to shamelessly inserting my STO character here.

rode the TDU - Everyone in the KDF (and many another force with similarly-equipped starships) "knows someone who knows someone" who did that. Often the story doesn't end well. K'tarn is delighted because now his rode-the-TDU number is 2. :)

Commander - Technically Zargh is promoting her from Lt. to Lt. Commander here. He fully intends to give her the full two grade jump - he might have done it simply for bagging and tagging Jurdak, but capturing a D-7? That's passing the exam with extra credit.

The grade between lieutenant and commander in the KDF is officially "sub-commander" (see Krattak), but that can get confusing in situations where someone holding the rank of sub-commander is in command of a starship, so the common-parlance use of "lieutenant commander" is fairly common for such officers. (Though it's not much less potentially confusing in practice, given that the Royal Salusian Navy also has something called a "lieutenant-commander" and that means something completely different.) In either case, the officer in question is, by courtesy, addressed simply as "Commander" by other officers when spoken to in relation to matters of command - and will be called "Captain" by the ship's crew, regardless.

less-than-total enthusiasm - Not so much that these were loyal to House Klavaar, though they, like Jurdak, sympathized for the "Old Days" - but that they objected to B'Elanna specifically. It's likely they'd have objected to Karodis, or the Science Gorn, too. They're the dregs of the KDF for a reason.

Clairvoyance is not one of the listed side effects of Melorazine - Have I mentioned that I freaking love writing dialogue for the Science Gorn?

the targ have eaten well - Vokaan displays a fairly dry sense of humor here, for a Klingon; ships the size of the Hwacha' don't carry live targ. He probably shoveled what was left of Jurdak out an airlock.

The one used his own initiative - Vokaan's starting to get with the program. He was never incompetent, but he'd never been given a reason to actually be better.

emergency automation - You may consider this Chekhov's gun being loaded.

... printed materials... - Exactly what you think that means, and as disgusting as you probably imagined.

bastardized the Predator-class blueprints - There are Klingon engineers and military yonks who will defend the B'rel and its eventual successors to the death in debates. B'Elanna....is not one of them.

getting a visit from someone almost every day - As we learn later, prisoner deliveries every 36 hours, bombing freighters arriving to be loaded every 12 hours.

a low rattling noise - If you've seen either of the first two Predator movies, you've heard this sound...

forced labor - TSG would presumably be very displeased - but unsurprised - to learn that Klayvor's Empire routinely uses Gorn as slave workers in hazardous conditions; it's basically what they conquered the Gorn Hegemony for, was to get unlimited access to that "labor pool". Klavaarite foreign policy views the natural hardihood and suitability for physical labor of the average Gorn as a gift from the gods for the express use of the Klingon people. In the old days they might've been though of as kuve, but comparatively, that would be a high honor - to Klayvor and his ilk, they're just pack animals.

a literal transformation - Symphony of the Sword #2, Second Movement: Blue Moon Serenade.

false eyepatch - Not explicitly stated, but this was sealed to her face by the Science Gorn, and appeared to have been bolted in General Chang style, which is why she doesn't simply take it off when her disguise is no longer required.

shaved nearly all of it to the scalp - Hence why Utena is so shocked by her appearance in Among Honest Hearts.

FORM LINES FOR FOOD! - We knew B'Elanna was going to meet (and gain the loyalty of) Karn at some point during this adventure. We struggled a bit with how to introduce him, and then one afternoon this whole scene exploded out.

I borrowed a bit of the idea for Karn organizing the distribution of rations, rather than allowing everyone to scrabble for them, from Lois McMaster Bujold's The Borders of Infinity. Karn's methods of persuasion were a bit more direct than Miles Vorkosigan's, tho.

Marcus Satori - Marcus was originally designed for another project, then replaced during development. I kept him in the filing cabinet in case he was needed, and he found his way back in the end. Besides, we've had, what, six stories involving the modern Salusian Navy in UF without a Satori showing up? That's practically against the law.

a Nausicaan - I'm sure there are Nausicaans who aren't hyperviolent assholes, just as there are batarians who aren't slave-trading terrorist scumballs. They just never seem to leave the homeworld.

Because this was the first time you tried to challenge me, I will allow you to live. - Karn is a Klingon of the old school. Cunning, cool, and acting on a very strict code of conduct. (TNG Klingons talk a great game about honor. TOS Klingons actually showed it.)

She hadn't really expected him to have much interest - Vokaan's improved, but B'Elanna has no illusions about him being a work in progress.

a thoroughly neutralized Klavaarite - Why spend a lot of effort on getting a danish when you can take the other guy's?

I believe this has escalated beyond simply acquiring intelligence. - The note for this in the original beats was: "Then they grab the flare guns, and do something REALLY stupid."

How did you end up here, Karn? - Most people would assume that he IS just some crazy guy who got a biosculpt job, but B'Elanna is very aware that Weird Stuff happened a lot back then, and the physical evidence makes her lean towards Karn's story being true. Not to say that he isn't a little crazy - after all, he's an Augment. That's part of the package.

black-glass - All credit to Our Man Depew for coining this phrase (and translating it into the Warriors' Tongue)!

Kraal, son of Korrg - Last seen back in S3, being captured along with the Amar by Utena and the Duelists. He withstood several months of 'local interrogation techniques', in no small part because he really didn't know where Klaavor had went. Once he was moved into the 'regular' prison system, house Klavaar had enough influence to keep him from getting shipped to Rura Penthe, and eventually "liberated" after taking Qo'noS.

few pockets of Klingons to begin fighting as the food arrived - these included the other couple of crewmen from the Hwacha' who had also been brought along.

"Science Gorn?" - B'Elanna has resigned herself at this point. Karn will learn. Eventually.

"Will you not have anyone crew your own vessel?" - Waaaait for it...

"Have the remaining garrison forces meet me on level 3!" - Kraal isn't an idiot. It's really a shame he's loyal to an unworthy master. In another time, he would have been a solid KDF officer.

"I'd like to see you top that." - Someone asked how much Technical Difficulties and Retaliation were influenced by the STO Klingon campaign. This scene? Gloriously, shamelessly, happily stolen from it.

never bring a gun to a ship fight - This is probably not a literal quotation from the teaching of Kahless (in much the same way that Korra is almost certainly paraphrasing the wisdom of Avatar Kyoshi when she claims that one of the latter's lessons is "don't start none, won't be none"), but the spirit is there.

"Care to push your luck?" - Given the fairly rudimentary controls that B'Elanna was able to set up, accurately sweeping fire over the ridge would have been difficult without slagging herself and the others - but Kraal has no idea that the ship is basically one big combat drone right now, and a little confidence goes a long way with this kind of bluff.

it's nice to want things - She got that from Utena.

"Do you have any idea how long it took me to set up a remote rigging program for that thing?" - 19 hours, 42 minutes, and most of the ship's remaining supply of Mountain Dew. That also doesn't include the time she'd spent previously developing remote monitoring tools for the Engineering systems that we saw back in TD01.

we're going to need an engineer for this guy - I have to admit I had already had the escape well in progress when I realized, oops, who is going to take care of that? Then Gryphon asked if Marcus was going to be sticking around, and the problem sort of took care of itself. :)

controlling craft for their suicide run - The freighters would have arrived in system with a skeleton crew to answer the radio and things like that, then entered holding orbits until the Fist arrived to beam them off. Or at least they would be told that they'd be beamed off. Not sure Klayvor would have actually followed through on that.

As for the posturing and preening once the attack had already begun? Yes, that's exactly what Klayvor planned to do. He's a coward, but I must admit that he's a coward with a sense of theatre.

lontai-Klavaar - As mentioned in the TD01 annotations, this is essentially referring to B'Elanna as property - not even a person, simply an article that belongs to Klavor and House Klavaar. Kraal keeps using it because that's how he thinks of her, and it was about time for B'Elanna educate him about that.

noDwI' - And now we see the ship's new name is meaningful on several levels.

I took the liberty of returning it to you. - I mean, it's only polite.

I almost hated to kill Kraal. - So did I, actually! In fact I'm not 100% sure he did go up with the base. After all, a recurring adversary has potential, and if there's one thing Kraal learned from the last time he tangled with the Duelists, it's the value of a bolthole.

what I have to do to get some respect - Honestly, just shanking Jurdak would've done that. Discovering a plot to destroy the capital of the Union, wrecking it without bothering to call for backup, and taking another battlecruiser off her uncle's forces in the process is likely to get her marriage proposals once the word spreads a little farther around the fleet. (On Tuchanka, they'd be lining up 10 deep.)

sutai-O'Brien, of House tenjoH - B'Elanna isn't strictly part of Utena's house, but it's a convenient shorthand for how the Duelists work... and it's gonna twist Klavyor's tail something fierce when it shows up on the press release.

roving troubleshooter - As G. put it, "Zargh may not be much good at irregular operations himself, but he can appreciate the value of some good irregular operators."

and so of no consequence to me - Also, say what you want about Zargh, he's not particular about personal foibles as long as the work gets done.

Vokaan seems to have redeemed himself - Oddly enough, this is as much true in how we saw Vokaan as it is in the story. In the very first working version of Technical Difficulties, Vokaan was going to take Jurdak's side, and B'Elanna was going to have to go through him to get to the bridge. Then we realized that was a bit too much, and ended up giving him the chance to show a little bit of potential against the Redclaws. But that left us with a character who hadn't appeared in any of the previous callbacks, and the problem of figuring out what to do with him.

He'll be ready for whatever you need - See? He's learning!

---------------------------
Jaymie "BZArcher" Wagner
She/They
@BZArcher / bzarcher at gmail
"Life is change. Let’s live.”


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(OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation [View All] BZArchermoderator Jan-15-15 TOP
   RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation JeanneHedge Jan-16-15 1
      RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Gryphonadmin Jan-16-15 2
          RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation JeanneHedge Jan-16-15 3
              RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Croaker Jan-16-15 4
                  RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation SpottedKitty Jan-17-15 5
                  RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation JeanneHedge Jan-17-15 6
                      RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation SpottedKitty Jan-17-15 7
                          RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation JeanneHedge Jan-17-15 8
                              RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation SpottedKitty Jan-17-15 10
   RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Polychrome Jan-17-15 9
   RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation CdrMike Jan-18-15 11
      RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation eriktown Jan-19-15 12
   RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Zemyla Nov-29-20 13
      RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Gryphonadmin Nov-29-20 14
          RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Zemyla Nov-29-20 15
              RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Nathan Nov-30-20 16
                  RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Zemyla Nov-30-20 17
                      RE: (OOTR-13) Technical Difficulties: Retaliation Nathan Nov-30-20 18


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