In the 1st season of Starship Troy ...
Episode 1: Beat the Meetles In the first episode, the Troy journeys to the planet Rhonda to pick up a new pilot, and along the way introduced the characters we'll all soon grow to love and emulate:
Episode 2: Weekend At Bernie's The crew is tasked with shuttling a Lomaxian ambassador from Starship Silverman to Starship McCarthy,
which Captain Bimple sees as an opportunity to impress his superiors and get out of the garbage hauling business. He assigns Jean d'eau with sprucing up the ship, resulting in walls of hot-pink 50s-sci-fi tacky round bumpy booby things. It doesn't matter anyway, since the ambassador dies the moment she arrives on board. Fearing retribution, Spanks and Shamu try to mask her demise by dragging her corpse around and treating it like a meat puppet. The ruse works, until the ambassador is passed over to the McCarthy. Looks like Bimple will have some 'splainin to do.
Episode 3: Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook Captain & Ensign Bimple, Earbuns, Schmata and Zoloft are sent to the planet Graupel Bay to live in isolation and without their ranks as a corporate team building exercise. As soon as they stop pretending and start getting real, they drive each other crazy with annoying personal habits and petty complaints. Bernice - who has had years of dealing with her annoying brother - teaches them that knitting can distract them from the aggravation, suppress rage, relieve boredom, induce bonding, connect with their feminine selves, encourage heartfelt communication, and generally kill time. As a bonus, you get a nice scarf. But, they conclude, one thing knitting can't do is make them like each other.
Episode 4: Magnets On The Fridge Season 1 Inspired by a book about the old US Empire (How a Nation Got Rocked to Sleep by Television and Fake Food), Jean d'eau convinces Spanks, Zoloft, and Hogthrob start an antiquities club. One of the ancient objects they find to discuss is an old lunch box with a note inside, from Ernie, to remind the future how much he rocked. Also in the box is Paul's journal, in which he confesses to having loved Paula - not Bridget and not Elizabeth - all along. Like we didn't know. Paul appears (insert your own sci-fi-gobble explanation here), retrieves his diary, and retreats back to the obscurity of the past. Thus endeth antiquities club.
Episode 5: Cats: The Musical The crew is assigned to planet Feline 9, which is basically one huge litter box ripe for changing. Captain Bimple asks for a volunteer, to resounding silence. He decides that Jean d'eau is the best choice, since litter box cleaning is kinda sorta like decorating. On Feline 9, d'eau finds a gay pride of giant performing colorful cats, who sing and dance about their incredible catness and not much else. The cats are competing for the chance to go to Heaviside Layer, leading to a lot more singing and dancing. Suddenly a large yellow cat named Mcpoopenstein appears, threatening to crap all over the place. Jean d'eau whips out a spray bottle, and Mcpoopenstein scatters. The other cats are so grateful they reward him with the trip to the Heaviside Layer, which coincidentally is where the Troy is parked.
Episode 6: I'm Too Sexy Shamu arrives at the ship-flight-control-region sporting a different look: instead of his noble apeish facade he is clean-shaven and missing his Alveolar prognathism, although his eyebrows retain their Scorsese-esque distinction. He's had reconstructive surgery, and not just because the rubber damn-dirty ape mask was unworkable on stage. It all began long ago, before he was a cunning linguist for an intergalactic garbage scow ... when he was hired to be a front for a brilliant-but-unphotogenic musical phenom to tour the galaxy miming "I'm A Sexy Monkey", which with its catchy lyrics and poppy, easy-to-dance-to rhythm made it a dancefloor hit. But fame had its price, and Shamu couldn't connect with his old friends anymore, mainly because they resented an ape debasing himself by referencing monkeys in Bojangelic ridicule. Shamu left the music business, but wasn't able to leave his shame behind. In final desperation, he had Dr Schmata reconstruct his face so he no longer saw the "Sexy Monkey"
(I thought Davy Jones was the sexy Monkee, but what do I know?) when he looked in the mirror. Maybe Schmata overdid it by making him into something more humanoid than ape-annoyed, but at least the audience will be able to hear what he's saying in the future (-uture, -uture, -uture).
Episode 7: Extreme Makeover Home Edition Schmata, Dr. What?, and Zoloft join Jean d'eau in his fabulously decorated quarters to watch Home Makeover Extreme Edition, which is apparently Ty Pennington's spin-off show from Extreme Makeover Home Edition in the future. They soon discover they are trapped by a force field of unknown origin. Not too bad, until Schmata starts making wheezy noises and imitates Rainman in claustrophobic panic. In an effort to secure the room's limited supplies, Schmata separates the group into two tribes: she and Zoloft against d'eau and What?. The d'eau/What? tribe seems to have more fun, thanks to d'eau's seemingly endless supply of cocktails, recreational pharmaceuticals, and multi-media porn. Zoloft defects, the tribes dissolve, and Schmata is voted to be the one to crawl through the air ducts to get help, but she ends up just circling back to the room. All seems hopeless, when Ensign McCoy enters looking for Zoloft since it's time to steer the shop. McCoy is pummeled to death, even though he has rescued the group by getting M.A.T.T.'s attention, who is suffering from short-timer's affliction and just isn't paying that much attention. One can't blame it.
Episode 8: MacGyver Bernard is enamoured with the upgraded computer S.A.M. (Super Augmented M.A.T.T. (Mechanical Articulating Technical Translator)), because of its sultry feminine voice modulation. He tries to impress it with a feigned love of science and other sensitive things, with little progress. Bernice tells him that women - and probably S.A.M.s with sultry feminine voice modulations - like men of action who are funny and creative with nice hair, so it's off to the Pretendy Room for a MacGyver adventure, natch. What ensues is a typical episode of the show, with a lot of dialogue lifted from actual scripts (hey, that Goodsearch.com is pretty nifty, isn't it?), with Bernard as Mac. Mac goes back to his alma mater to meet his old professor, who's having problems with his drug-abusing sub-par genius son, who feels so much pressure from his dad he can't get off the junk or commit to his long-suffering fiancée, who is trying hard to stand by her man, but the stuff, the junk, the hootch, the damn drugs get in the way. Drug-addled David builds a bomb and booby-traps the room where he's keeping it so it would take some sort of bright gadget-savvy adventurer with great hair to get in and disable it. While Bernard/MacGyver is preparing to do that very thing,
Bernice connects with David on a human level and convinces him to defuse the bomb. Crisis averted, but now S.A.M. is more impressed with Bernice than with Bernard, and they make a date for coffee or beers or something. End program.
Episode 9: The Vatican The Troy is assigned to Earth, to haul away the Secret Archives of the Vatican - the most recent secret being why the Vatican wants to get rid of its Secret Archives. While idly perusing some of the 85 kilometers of material, Schmata discovers a copy of Catholicism: How We Did It: An Idiot's Guide to Creating a Powerful Religion, and determines that starting a religion might be a pretty good gig. She recruits Earbuns as her first acolyte, declares her cabin the Vaticant, and starts dressing funny, spouting Latin and engaging in Mysterious Holy Gestures. Being a Schmandroid and a quick study, she decides that encouraging fear of others, fear of self, fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear of death, fear of life, and fear of anything in between would be a useful doctrine. As she begins recruiting others on the ship to join the Church of Beliefism, she finds herself at odds with Captain Bimple, who stands behind his own bullet-headed, blind devotion to the Federation. Among the rest of the crew, however, it looks like Beliefism might be winning, with its promise of absolution through anonymous contrition, clothes that are snazzier than the Federation unis, and a free Disney-pass to eternity after you die. The competition enters the commercial arena, with Shamu siding with the Federation by wearing a "Go Troy" sign, and Earbuns countering with a sign showing a fish eating the "Go Troy" sign. Exasperated, Shamu declares that henceforth he'll follow his own path, not cajoled by the shallow rhetoric of governments or religions, and make moral decisions based on clear deliberation. Either that, or whoever gives him five bucks. Capitalism turns out to be the most important -ism of all.
Episode 10: Bring It On Old business: Captain Bimple orders the reprogramming of Schmata to eliminate the whole Beliefism thing from last episode, and S.A.M. to avoid the embarrassment of having a computer more attracted to his sister than to him. While looking for the ship's manual to affect the repair, they discover the ship's Manuel, who affects the repair. Sometimes it's just that easy. New business: The Annual Intergalactic Space Chess Competition is coming up, and the crew of the Troy is determined to take the championship away from their hated rivals of the starship Debbie. Commander Hogthrob surprises everyone by volunteering to develop a strategy for victory by reviewing all the prior competitions' tapes, which just happen to be in his room. The suspicious Spanks gets the truth out of Hogthrob; he's in love with a girl from the Debbie.
They train real hard in slow motion, Zoloft actually gets them to the tournament on time, and in a dramatic five-against-five sci fi chess/dance/battle competition, it comes down to Hogthrob and ... (wait for it) the Deb he's in love with, who uses his affection against him and crushes him like the soft bug he's become. The Troy loses the tournament, but gains a valuable lesson, about trusting your feelings and staying true to your school or some such.
Episode 11: Hotel Rwanda Jean d'eau decides to make socially relevant performance art a' la Hotel Rwanda and Snakes On A Plane by staging a play based on the historical drama Star Wars. After shaky auditions, d'eau decides to cast against type to keep the actors off-balance, so instead of Obi-Wan, Dr. What? is Chewbacca, Schmata (a natural for C3PO) is Leia, Earbuns (who should be Han, or maybe Leia because of the earbuns) is C3PO, Shamu (Chewie? Ewok?) is Luke, and Ensign McCoy is Han Solo until he/she is killed by a errant light saber. After running her reluctant cast through various theater exercises like throwing an imaginary ball around and walking like elephants, it's show time and d'eau takes the plumb role of Han for himself and forces all the other characters to perform wearing pencil-thin moustaches. Earbuns - relegated to a minor role and backstage musician - challenges Hogthrob's rendition of Leia, and chaos ensues. It was the best Star Wars ... ever!
Episode 12: The Long War Using a song by The Cages as a touchpoint, Bernard takes us on a voyage of discovery via a Remembery Helmet, which unblocks his traumatized memory. It turns out that Bernard and Bernice are not twins, and weren't attached at birth.
Back when Bernice was a high school senior and Bernard a sophomore (with the ubiquitous football-faceguard-wired-retainer that shows up at every Buntport show featuring teenagers), Bernice was in a band with her friends Fork (from Ork; you can guess the rest), Lefty (a three-armed blonde with a Russian accent who is an awesome drummer), Ed (who looks like a ficus), and Ficus (an androgynous goth who doesn't quite have the goth attitude - or the androgyny - down). Bernard wanted to join the band as a third tambourine, but Bernice nixed that plan, since he was an untalented dork on top of being just a sophomore. Various sophomoric hijinks ensued, when Bernard suddenly collapsed, gasping like a noodled catfish. Turns out that along with an incredible blossom of Acne vulgaris, adolescence had given him a fatal self-esteem deficiency, and only being attached to someone with a compatible SE type via a shiny tube would sustain his life. All Bernice gets out of the deal is the ability to fly, which she can't do since she's tethered to a couple hundred kilos of über dork. Tough break, Bernice.
Episode 13: tRUNks Captain Bimple is bereft of self-esteem, being disconnected and abandoned by his sister Bernice, who's enjoying a tubeless vacation. Bernard's on the intergalactic SE donor's list, but in the meantime Lt. Hogthrob and Schmata enjoy bossing him around for a change. Meanwhile, Shamu has a visitor who he met on-line, Scott the tRUNks Parrot. After quick introductions, the two head off to Shamu's quarters to try out some of the e-fantasies they shared. Jean d'eau tries to help the Captain by giving him a makeover, but apparently all the glitter in the known universe isn't going to help his self-esteem. In fact, his mood is depressing everyone else. Back at Shamu's pad, it turns out that Scott was playing with Shamu's affection as a ploy to board the ship and take control with special manual override codes like they always have in the sci fi shows. Without S.A.M. to assist them, the crew is overpowered by Scott.
The evil parrot hijacks the ship and steers it toward who knows where. We won't find out until next season.
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