In the 2nd season of Starship Troy ...

Season 2 commercial (14 meg mp4)
Season 2 introduction (5 meg mp4)

Episode 1: Cowboy Macbeth  Apparently, the Scott The Parrot hijacking thing was resolved while we were all off watching Vote For Uncle Marty. Turns out he just wanted to migrate. However, as punishment for allowing his garbage scow to miss its pickup schedule, Bernard is demoted to Ensign (2meg mp4) and Jean d'eau is given a civilian oversight position that puts him in charge (2.5meg mp4). With everything back to abnormal, we find Shamu in the Pretendy Room, reenacting either the Gunfight at the OK Corral or a Pace Picante commercial, depending on whom you ask. Bernice enters to take her turn - visiting the last day of Pompeii - and that causes an overload on S.A.M., so they get locked in. Enter Schmata for her turn, wearing a prom dress to not reenact the time she didn't get stood up at her prom, which never happened since she's a Schmandroid and not a human in Schmandroid drag to avoid the emotional pain of rejection. Next up: Link Hogthrob in full Eastwoodarian Paint-Your-Wagon-Regalia, for his musical theater Pretendy. Chicks dig tassels, he reveals. Last locked in is Bernard, now hooked up to Mr. Peeps (a Fluffybunnyrian) for life support and pretending to be ... the captain of an intergalactic garbage scow. That's sad and completely unsurprising on many levels. After some hijinks about what their Pretendy selections say about each of them (duh!), S.A.M. fixes the program loop and here comes the blazing lava.

Episode 2: Fame  Still off duty while Jean d'eau is at a leadership retreat, Ensigns Bimple and Bimple, Commanders Hogthrob and Shamu, and Doctor Schmata arrive at the Academy for the Cowboy Arts. Someone didn't read the whole brochure, though, because they're all in tights, leg warmers, and sweat bands. The camp director Cowboy Allen lines the group up and they share their life stories, but he's too busy texting on his cell phone to pay much attention. That sets the trend for their cowboy instruction: Cowboy Allen shows them the cowboy way - walkin' 'n spittin', sittin' 'n thinkin' - then wanders off to do a non-cowboy thing, like shopping at Ross Dress for Less or attending an environmental sustainability conference. After a night around the campfire eating s'mores and reciting cowboy poetry almost as bad as real cowboy poetry, Cowboy Allen shows them a final vital cowboy skill: how to fake a bar fight by throwing phony punches and flopping around like noodled catfish. In the end, they're all winners, just like the kids in Fame.

Episode 3: American Gods  Bernard is on the ship flying area, pretending he's still captain. He's suddenly taken over by Snorri Sturluson, a godish alien being who makes him wear an "S" on his head, talk with a Scandinavian accent, and make a "snorri-snorri-snorri" sound when he walks. Snorri thinks that taking over the "captain" of a "powerful starship" will be the first step toward total universal domination. Elsewhere, Jean, Shamu, Link, and Schmata are playing D 'n D and reminiscing about Thanksgivings on their home planets. Bernard/Snorri interrupts, and demands tribute to his rank, and is summarily ignored. B/S realizes that he's inhabited the wrong body, and decides to try Schmata, since as dungeon master she's bossing everyone around. Snorri leaps into Schmata's mind, and now the pale one has a bright yellow "S" and is speaking like a Finn who can't use contractions. Schmata/Snorri has as little luck at getting some adoration, as the rest ignore her and go off to plan a Thanksgiving dinner. S/S is left alone, with only about a hundred people in the audience, who eventually tell her who the real captain is. At dinner, Snorri jumps from Schmata to Jean, and has a little better luck getting his way, since Link is ready to obey any order his captain gives him. But even Link balks when commanded to sign a petition giving Snorri god-like authority, so Snorri jumps into his muscle-head. Jean decides to annoy L/S with a double purple nurple, and Snorri escapes into Shamu's body, forcing the ape to sign the petition, then jumps from body to body for more signatures. In the ensuing chaos, the Thanksgiving turkey ends up on Bernard's head, creating the galaxy's first TurDorken. In his excitement, though, Snorri's just signed "Snorri" over and over, and that causes the exasperated pseudo-god to give up. So it's so long to Snorri, and to Shamu's favorite Thanksgiving of all.

Episode 4: Dragon Tales  Bernard somehow screwed up the Automated Nuclear Automatic Laser by trying to make toast with it. In desperation, he decides to try and learn how to fix it like he used to learn everything - retreating to a Magical FordClubWagonland to communicate with his imaginary friend Dragon the Dog. -"Dragon" because the mission suggestion is the PBS show "Dragon Tales", and "Dog" because they could borrow a dog costume from tRUNks. So it's flashback time to remember how it all worked. Bernice goes along, because in the flashback they're still connected. While learning lessons in cooperation and some pidgin Espaņol, Bernard is distressed because although everyone's supposed to be good at something, he doesn't seem to be any good at anything, but then Dragon points out that he's the best at nothing at all, which delights him. It makes a loopy sort of PBS kid's show sense, I guess. So back to the present, then after a musical interlude and pledge drive interruption, back to Magical FordClubWagonland. This time Bernard learns another valuable lesson: jiggling the wires of things like Ford Club Wagon engines or Automated Nuclear Automatic Lasers is dangerous, so let Ensign McCoy do it, and stand back while he does. The end, and everyone gets toast!

Episode 5: Mo-Town  Jean d'eau has again decorated the Troy with walls of shiny round bumpy booby things, and it looks FAB-u-lous. He's decided that the Troy needs to take garbage hauling up another notch, beyond service to celebrity, and what better way than a bespangled drag act? So Bernard, Shamu, and Link are recruited to become The Rubbishers, and Schmata agrees to manage them to glory. We launch into a "Behind the Garbage" documentary, complete with a dapper - if somewhat snarky - narrator. The road to trashy glory proves to be a rocky one, as Bernard insists on hogging the spotlight, Shamu is fraught with insecurity about his looks, Link becomes addicted to anti-bacterial hand sanitizer, and Schmata spends most of their money on furs and flying Lamborghinis for itself. The group fires Schmata, but that's not enough for a fickle galactic audience to dump the Rubbishers for the hot new trash-hauling group, The Garbagettes. Years later we see - via some weird TV-enabled time-warp occurrence - Shamu reforms the group, replaces Bernard with Dr What?, and Link with Prince Lee Earbuns, and tour as The Original Rubbishers. Same actors, different accoutrements, just like Mo-town!.

Episode 6: Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner  The Troy's shuttle crash lands like a broken-down merry-go-round on the arid planet of Ne-Va-Da, but since we're doing Roadrunner and not Dune, the space sirocco that whips around the crew just gives them bad gas and alters their personalities in interesting, cartoonish ways. Shamu develops a kennel cough and whirls around like a ravenous Tasmanian devil. Jean d'eau races across the desert like a Benzedrined ground-foraging cuckoo. Lt. Hogthrob is a bundle of barely-repressed rage, like a slightly retarded, skinny, feral canine, or a red-mustached gunfighter from Yosemite, or a moderately demented water fowl, or maybe a balding Republican with a speech impediment. Most interesting is that Ensign Bimple has switched places with his symbiotic counterpart Mr. Peeps, reducing him to the size of a fashion doll and turning the Peepster into a tall carrot-crunching wiseacre with a Brooklyn accent. Even Schmata succumbs, becoming an amorous cad who slips in and out of French (including occasional French contractions). Various hijinks entail. Link makes several attempts to trap and do harm to both Bernard/Peeps and Jean d'eau using various devices manufactured by the Acme Corporation, to little avail. Schmata sets out a trap of green glob to capture its paramour, and manages to entrap them all, turning them into a gigantic multi-limbed creature such as Mavin the Martian might encounter. When all seems hopelessly ridiculous, Rickshaw Spanks contacts them from the Starship Troy and rescues them, and Shamu signs off with a stuttering "That's All, Folks".

Episode 7: Call Me Lucky by Bing Crosby  Every Blankday night for 7 years, Link Hogthrob and Bernice Bimple have met at Dr. What?'s Drop It Like It's Hot Supper Club & Automatic Firing Range and attempt to win the chance to be the night's entertainment, which is chosen by random drawing. How that worked out when Bernice was conjoined to Bernard is left to the continuity zealots among you. Bernard thinks that on this night they've come to help him write his autobiography, which is another self-esteem move by the rank-obsessed former Captain. Enter Harry and Lillis (aka Ding and Ka-ching), from planet 1940s in the Fedora Galaxy, arch rivals of L & B, because despite the fact that Link has put 253 entries with his name in the entertainment pool bowl, they always win the raffle. Call them lucky. Link is outraged, despite the couple's explanation (in cool hep-cat lingo that only Tom Waits can get away with anymore) that the raffle isn't really a competition, but just a bit of fun, with no consequence to who is selected. Link and Bernice are not consoled. Fate takes a turn this evening, though, and Link and Bernice are indeed selected as the entertainment! Before they can perform, though, Bernard - desperate to create material for his woefully anemic autobiography - butts in with a montage of all the stupid dances from the 1940s to the present (meaning the future), and faints in exhaustion. Link and Bernice miss yet another chance to perform. Call us all lucky!

Episode 8: The Writer's Strike  Rickshaw Spanks and Bernice Bimple are assigned to the Deck 12 Cineplex, or is it the Deck Cineplex 12? Things are a little slow, so they sneak into the manager's office to goof off, just in time to be caught by Bernard (the fore-mentioned manager) as they are calling in a bomb threat to themselves. That's when the writer's strike hit, and the rest of the episode involves unscripted time-wasting (as seen on TV). Brian Colonna imitates several popular late night talk show hosts, various actors recreate performances by the missing Evan Weissman, and they reenact a scene from the MacGyver episode from the first season. Highlights included improvised music by Brian's sidekick Adam Stone, and a confrontation between Erin and an audience member who spoke in Klingon and wondered why the Troy actors aren't going to be part of the upcoming World Science Fiction Convention. The argument led to a Trek-style battle involving a genuine L. Ron Hubbard Writer's Of The Future trophy. Man, we miss those writers.

Episode 9: The Motorcycle Diaries  Zoloft, Bernard, Link, and Jean d'eau are spending an all-night sleep-over lock-in fundraiser on the Deck 12 Cineplex (or is it the Deck Cineplex 12?), and Spanks is on duty to make sure they follow the rules. They're raising funds for rich people, to help them pay for their luxury taxes. Dr. What? is helping out by taking pledges for the number of laps he can do on his futuristic miniature motorcycle through the aisles of theater 2. Spanks questions the sense of raising money for the rich, but Zoloft points out that the poor don't have any luxury taxes to pay, so raising money for them would be even more ridiculous (that's called red state logic). Spanks refuses to be persuaded, and tries to unite the others in a cause to help each other as equals, and break the bonds of the oppression by the wealthy - but she still won't comp them for some Red Vines. Caught up in the spirit of her own revolution, Spanks dons a beret and a Che-style stencil-face T-shirt with her face on the front and her other "face" (2nd set of eyes anyway) on the back. She tries to sell copies of the shirts to others for raise funds for her cause, but has no takers. They all conclude that truly helping the less fortunate probably would take more effort than any of them were willing to make, so the rich and the poor were again left to fend for themselves, probably to everyone's benefit.

Episode 10: The Rocky Horror Picture Show  Bernard, Schmata, Jean d'eau, Link, and Shamu are at the Deck 12 Cineplex (or is it the Deck Cineplex 12?), dressed up and ready for fun night of group-participation movies. However, Ensign McCoy screwed the pooch and ordered Rocky instead of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Everyone got the email except Link, so in attendance are 4 Stallones and 1 Frank-N-Furter (correction: 1 fabulous Frank-N-Furter!), so the mistake doesn't stop them - or the audience - from playing along. Hijinks ensue, like shouting out "Pooch Screwer" whenever McCoy is mentioned, singing along to a series of parody songs, and throwing marshmallows at the crew. Shamu and Schmata fight throughout the show, because both had chosen the "Rocky in sweats running up the steps" costume. The confrontation ends when Schmata gets a small cut and starts bleeding, which is weird for a schmandroid, but it explains it's fake blood, a prop for the movie (indeed). Jean creates his own game, taking a drink from a whiskey flask every time Rocky yells out for Adrian. The others try to convince Link to pantomime the Adrian scenes, but he refuses to be humiliated - which is hard for a man wearing a bodice, fishnet stockings, and 6-inch platform shoes to refuse. By the time the final bell rings, everyone's convinced they can make a show about anything, and they're probably right - it's making an entertaining show about anything that's tricky. Ouch!

Episode 11: The Godfather  It's pasta night on the Troy, and you know what that means: everyone calls the Captain Don d'eau, so he'll break out the good sauce. Turns out that, even in the future (-uture, -uture), the carting industry is mob-controlled, and d'eau has been skimming a significant profit by smuggling primo Marinara to restricted planets. Bernard is incensed, and sees an opportunity to regain his captaincy. Don d'eau isn't too worried, knowing that he can make Bernard an unrefusable offer. Later, Bernard wakes up to find his surrogate twin Mr. Peeps decapitated, much to his dismay. Link and Schmata witness his horror, and decide that Don d'eau must pay. Meanwhile, d'eau tells his right-hand-man Zoloft (who is looking decidedly effeminate this episode) to bribe Bernard by repairing his model station-wagon collection, treating him to a free mud-bath treatment at the ship spa, and giving him a new pair of "Finding Nemo" pajamas. Zoloft misinterprets the "fix his wagon", "dirt nap", and "sleep with the fishes" mobster-lingo, and thinks the captain wants him to murder Bernard. Back with Bernard, we discover that he beheaded Mr. Peeps himself by hugging him too hard (again), and his plan for revenge consists of nothing more than sending a strongly-worded letter to Space Command. Too late, though; Zoloft is facing off against Schmata and Hogthrob, and a gang war ensues, leaving a multitude of Ensign McCoys dead in the corridors. Don d'eau straightens out the confusion, and agrees to forego his sauce-smuggling if Bernard agrees not to rat him out to Space Command. Hugs, ring-kisses, and orange slice eating all around!

Episode 12: Cirque Du Soleil  Turns out the reason we haven't seen Bernice and Earbuns for several episodes wasn't because Jean d'eau and Link Hogthrob have been so busy. They ran away to the circus - or rather, were captured by Le' Cirque du Soleil - indentured to a miserable existence of awkward posturing to pulsing music in ridiculous costumes under flashing lights and fog. Not much different than duty on Starship Troy, in other words, but they're sick of it and manage to escape. They relate their fantastic tale, but Schmata's BS circuit keeps engaging, even when they demonstrate the act they were forced to perform, which admittedly looks pretty stupid. It's the music, lights, and fog, Bernice insists, but Schmata ain't buyin' what she be sellin'. Nevertheless, Bernice convinces them to go into hyperdrive to escape any Cirque du Pursuit. Nine light years and a fitful night later, who should show up but a big balancing bird thing and a blue bouncy babe thing; the Cirque has arrived! All crewmembers are conscripted. After getting appropriately outfitted in Cirque du Apparel, their training begins, which involves not much more than contorting and huffing acid-gas under a colorful parachute. The crew rallies to rebel, but a performance by the two Cirque du Aliens hypnotizes them into paying obscene amounts of money for tickets and Cirque du Merchandizing Crap (it really was the music, lights, and fog, after all).

Episode 13: The GREs  So, you're captain of an intergalactic garbage scow, your crew has been abducted by Cirque Du Soleil, and your beautician's license is up for renewal. Who do you use to demonstrate your prowess to Mr Terry the Tester? Androids, that's who! So Jean d'eau whips up some humanoid replicants of his absent compatriots, with their personalities amped up to increase the drama. And he makes them skip all the time, to increase his amusement. First up: Dr What? gets a (much needed) trim-and-straighten, Earbuns gets 3-foot pigtails, and Spanks gets permed-and-pigmented into little-ole'-lady chic. D'eau passed round 1 with flying colors! Next, android/schmandroid Schmata gets a skin-tone, Bernard dips into a full-body wax, and android Hogthrob tries to kill itself over unrequited love for Schamata. Seems the drama personalities are maybe a little too amped-up, and the beauty sessions degrade into tantrums and MTV-esque antics over who is lubing whose servos. Jean d'eau aces the oral/written part of the beautician exam, but the customer satisfaction surveys are abysmal, as the drama-droids are too full of self-loathing to be happy with their doos. Kiss your license bye-bye, Jean. When he threatens to disconnect the androids, they surround him and play the HAL-game of benign aggression, using those horrifying flat voices to scare the bejebus out of him. But they were just joshing ... we think. To be cliff-hangered.