The Unfamiliar

“Captain, I sense an almost pathological distaste coming from them. I think they find us... repulsive. To a very high degree.”

Shortly after returning from their fight with the Borg Queen in the Earth’s past, the crew of the Enterprise under Captain Picard encounters a new alien species, the Torvath. They are a highly cultured, technologically evolved civilisation, but are also extremely xenophobic. At first, the Torvath are bemused by the humans who attempt to make contact and befriend them, but that feeling rapidly turns to disgust and paranoia as they learn of the Federation. They consider it a dangerous rival, an unnatural hegemony of the unlike, a collection of intermixed abominations who must be wiped out if the cosmos is to remain pure for the Torvath. Can Picard convince them that peaceful coexistence is possible, or does the Alpha Quadrant face yet another galaxy-spanning conflict?

“Do you see? That unity you fear, it is not something easily won. You have to fight for it, every day, because that’s how important it is. That’s how much it is worth.”

The Unfamiliar was a mission for the Star Trek Fleet Command release that focused on the Next Generation movies. These missions were to feature the crew of the USS Enterprise as they appeared in their cinematic outings, some years on from where they were at the end of the television series.

When writing these missions, I felt the key to their success was making the dialogue ring true to the characters and to make the situation recognisable as something very much of ST:TNG, something that would allow not just action, but also the diplomatic, philosophical approach to conflict resolution for which Captain Jean Luc Picard was famous.

For that, I wanted an enemy who was the very antithesis of Picard’s inclusive methodology, so I created a brand new alien, the Torvath, a pathologically xenophobic race that resemble gigantic prawns, who Picard would attempt to talk out of their nativist-driven violence and expansionism.

However, before any encounter with this new adversary, I wanted to begin the mission, as is my wont, with some character pieces. The first mission consists of a set of objectives that function essentially as an unrelated prologue, reminding us of who these characters are and clearly situating the story right after the events featured in the movie First Contact.

Below then is the first objective, which does exactly that, expressing character notes and clarifying our setting and timeline.