There's a story I wrote... No, that's not right. There's a teaser I wrote over a year ago. The question was "what television show would you like to see Callisto make an appearance in?" Now, there actually weren't that many answers. But as I thought about it a bit, I ruled out most of the shows I watch. You can see that character-type appearing in JAG, or Pensacola, but that's not as interesting to me. The idea that started forming was this scene in my mind, one of those Dr Who episodes where Leela is stuck in some sort of space ship or other futuristic edifice, with the Doctor. And the cool thing I like about that situation is her reactions to these things that are obviously a bit beyond her ken, and how she can depend on her "primitive" skills even in that type of situation.

So making the leap, the next thought I had was Callisto in that situation. Some sort of futuristic setting where her skill and cunning can come into play to help her hold her own against the more advanced people with lasers and such. The scene I had was Callisto loose in the Enterprise, causing havok for one reason or another, while security tries to apprehend her. This is not as suited to the Next Generation, as their technology is really good and by then people have thought about these situations and have good countermeasures. But the old Enterprise under Captain Kirk could work. Technology isn't quite as advanced, it's not quite as simple as using the sensors to find her. It's also a situation that I think is more believable in the wilder, frontier aspect of the original series compared to the other series.

Next thing was how to get Callisto to the Enterprise. The obvious answer is to bring the Enterprise to her, via time travel. You could also have one of the Greek Gods zap her into the future, but that's not as in genre to Xena as time travel is to the Star Trek milieu. Why would the Enterprise go back? Well, they have to stop someone. Some enemy goes back in time and they have to go back to stop them. Then I thought that having the Enterprise go back in time would give Kirk and company too much of an advantage. So let's only have them go and try to deal with Ancient Greece by themselves. How do you do that? First answer is the Guardian to Forever, or whatever it's called.

By now I wanted to answer the original question by writing a short teaser to introduce the concept. I realized that most of this back story would not show up in the teaser and it was just a mental exercise. And I actually spent a day or so thinking up of reasonable ways to get Kirk and Co. to Ancient Greece without the Enterprise and then somehow bring Callisto back to the Enterprise. I also had a fair idea of the problem that forces Kirk and Co. to go back in time, although I didn't write it down so I don't have as clear a picture now. I'm not going into all the details to avoid spoiling the plot.

The other thing I wanted to do with the teaser was delay as long as possible what the actual show was. I described the scenes without saying "Romulan" or "Klingon" or any specific names until the final sentence. Heck, I didn't even name Callisto until the final paragraph, to make it more suspenseful. So one of the other objectives was to write one of those intros when the actual people aren't introduced until the end, since they're so famous it would give away a lot to mention Spock or McCoy.

One of the purposes of this journal is for me to have a daily prod to write some of the stories that I've always thought I'd write but never got around to. Now is the time to continue to write this story and hopefully get it done. I'm in kind of a low point in writing about my life and events, so this is something that I can do to fill up journal entries, although it may take me even more time to write than a journal entry. So in the next few weeks I'll be working on this story on and off, intermingled with other entries.