Podcast / Starship Tempest

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Starship Tempest (also know as Star Trek: Tempest) is a podcast hybrid of the Actual Play and Audio Drama formats, set in the Star Trek universe and played using Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures 2d20 RPG system.

Set in the time period between Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Starship Tempest follows the adventures of the USS Tempest, an Ambassador-class Federation starship and the sister ship to the Enterprise-C (first seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise"). The show features many established elements of the Star Trek universe from the perspective of a new ship and crew, though between the whims of the GM and the RPG nature of the storytelling, it has slowly diverged into an Alternate Continuity.

Starship Tempest contains examples of:

• Adaptation Deviation: The first three missions contain a handful of these, since they come from Star Trek Adventures' first mission compendium book but are adapted to the different era Tempest is set in.
  • "Entropy's Demise": The context of the Romulans is different, since there has been no official contact with them for about 30 years.
  • "That Which Is Unknown": Dr. Ja'Brenn and the Takarans become Dr. Toran and the Angosians, changing a species only known minimally by Dr. Crusher late in TNG to a different alien of the week species from TNG.
  • "Border Dispute": The Nova-class USS Nightingale becomes the Merced-class USS Ellesmere.
• Animal Theme Naming: The various supporting characters of the Tempest crew all have conspicuously animal sounding names. There's Douh the deer-like helm officer; Eele the engineer that specializes in electro-plasma systems (read: an electric eel); and K'at, the nurse that happens to be from an established Star Trek species that bears a strong resemblance to Earth cats.
• The Cameo: In "Sabotage on Station 7" both Milder's and Garcia's case officer at Starfleet Intelligence is Marta Batanides, one of Picard's Academy friends we see in the TNG episode "Tapestry" and who according to beta canon worked in Starfleet Intelligence. She returns to give the players their mission in "The Wise Man Will Wage Just Wars" and becomes the head of Starfleet Intelligence after Admiral Hamidi sacrifices herself in "The Mandate of Heaven".
• Continuity Nod:
  • In "That Which Is Unknown" the Angosians know they can't join the Federation until they end their conflict with the Tarsians, a conflict which had only recently ended when the Angosians were introduced in the TNG episode "The Hunted".
  • In the TNG episode "The Chase", set in 2369, it's been 30 years since Galen and Picard have seen each other, meaning they last saw each other in 2339 — aka, the end of "Boats Against the Current". Thanks to Maddox's intervention, that 30 year gap will be averted.
  • In "Incident at Ivex" the Klingon bird of prey is named "Tong Vey" after a famous battle in Klingon history that is a plot point from the Deep Space Nine episode "Rules of Engagement".
  • In "Tempest Tossed" the main Cardassian ship is the "Kraxon" which is the same ship that takes Thomas Riker into custody in the DS9 episode "Defiant". And Gul Krim is the name of a Legate mentioned in dialogue in DS9's "Behind the Lines".
  • In "Primum Non Nocere" the medical mission that the Tempest is diverted from is delivering antiviral medicines to the plague ravaged colony of Arvada III. In the TNG episode "The Arsenal of Freedom", Dr. Crusher tells a story about how a plague broke out on the colony where she was living with her grandmother. Traditional medical supplies ran out and her grandmother used local plants and herbs as a stop gap before help could arrive. The reason such a stopgap was necessary, according to Starship Tempest, is because the ship carrying the necessary relief was diverted by a different mission - the circumstances of "Primum Non Nocere."
  • Daimon Smeet, first encountered in 2.7 The Butcher's Benevolence, is also the name of the Ferengi Grand Nagus mentioned in the Deep Space Nine episode Ferengi Love Songs, the only Grand Nagus assassinated in office along with his First Clerk. Smeet and Gaxor return in 3.4 In the Long Run as Grand Nagus and First Clerk, having acquired a different replicator after failing to steal the Tempest's and accidentally crashing the Ferengi economy with it, presumably leading to their assassination in the prime timeline, where the Tempest crew did not or could not spare them from that fate.
• Everybody Did It: Sabotage on Station 7, as an intentional send up of Agatha Christie, ends with a version of this. Turns out everyone was guilty EXCEPT the saboteur. And the sabotage was an indirect way of bringing the guilty parties to justice.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Gresham, the Klingon battlecruiser in "The Butcher's Benevolence", is but also the name of the economist behind Gresham's Law, an economic principle that "bad money drives out the good" — foreshadowing of what will ultimately happen to the Ferengi economy as a result of Smeet and Gaxor's scheme to steal a replicator.
  • In "In The Long Run", the Tempest crew help Ferengi Grand Nagus Smeet to correct the Ferengi economy by developing latinum, derived from a rare breed of tulip. This is a deliberate reference to "Tulip Mania", one of the first economic bubbles in human history which happened in Holland in the 17th century.
• Literary Allusion Title
  • "Mutinous Winds," "The Rarer Action," "Abysm of Time," and "Hell Is Empty" are quotes from William Shakespeare's The Tempest.
  • "What We May Be" comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
  • "The Tempest Tossed" is from Emma Lazarus' poem The New Colossus.
    Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
  • "Above the Highest Sky" is an adaptation of the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "Beyond the Farthest Star", and to a lesser extent, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond the Stars".
  • "Boats Against the Current" is a line from The Great Gatsby which likens the futility of trying to return to an out of reach past with trying to row a boat against the water's current.
  • "The Captain in the Arena" is a play on the "It's not the critic who counts..." excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic" speech, which includes the line, "The credit belongs to the man actually in the arena." And of course, also the classic Trek episode the mission is built on, "Arena".
  • "The Wise Man Will Wage Just Wars" is a quote from St. Augustine's City of God.
    But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars. ^note This is the first use of the phrase "just war" in literature and what would go on to be termed "Just War Theory".
  • "Covenants Without Swords" is a quote from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan where he states, "Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all" — meaning that an orderly and peaceful society cannot function without some sort of authority that has a monopoly on physical force.
  • "Deserts Nearer Home" is an allusion to Robert Frost's Desert Places.
    I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places.
  • "Wavelength of Evil" comes from Richard Connell's novel The Most Dangerous Game.
  • "Theory and Practice" is from Albert Einstein.
    In theory, theory and practice are the same. But in practice they are not.
  • "In the Long Run" comes from a quippy retort of John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression. Classical economists argued against government intervention, claiming that in the long run, the market would sort itself out. Keynes retorted, "In the long run, we are all dead [anyway]."
  • "Mandate of Heaven" is the English translation of a concept in Ancient China that said that an Emperor's license to rule could be revoked by heaven if they proved unworthy of it.
  • "If Angels Governed Men" comes from one of the Federalist Papers authored by James Madison, fourth president of the United States and framer of the US Constitution.
    If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.
  • "If Two Are Dead" comes from a quote by Benjamin Franklin on the difficulty of keeping secrets.
    Three may keep a secret, if two are dead.
  • "Deadlier Than Hate" comes from a quote by Eliezer Yudkowsky, saying that the only thing deadlier than hate is indifference.
  • "Ite Inflammate Omnia" is the Latin translation of a quote by St. Ignatius extolling others to evangelize the Christian Gospel, which translates as, "Go and set the world on fire."
  • "Knocking Rashly at Unknown Doors" comes from the Havamal, a book of proverbs from Norse mythology.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Primum Non Nocere": the research outpost is named for the Dr. Frankenstein like character C.A. Rotwang from the landmark science fiction film Metropolis. Also, Budala is the word for 'fool' in several Eastern European languages.
• Mile-Long Ship: The Zandaran Ark ship from "Above the Highest Sky" is this. Also apparently a Generation Ship since the inhabitants have lived in the ship's main volume for generations and the ship originates from somewhere on the other side of the galaxy.
• Mythology Gag: One of the Tempest's shuttles until it's destroyed in "That Which Is Unknown" is the shuttlecraft Cristoforetti, who is an Italian astronaut who did a tour of duty on the International Space Station and, while there, took a picture of herself wearing a Star Trek costume in the station's cupola module.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Vulcan diplomat Sapir never goes into detail about what exactly happened between him and the Tholian scientist Gaseev, saying only that sometimes even trying to help with the best of intentions can end up making things worse.
• Red Shirt: Attempted to be played straight by the GM with Sparrow in "The Tholian Stratagem" but subverted in that Sparrow's unfortunate demise ends up becoming a significant motivation for a main character deciding that starship life is not for him and for the character to be memorialized when the player captain names the captured Romulan warbird in his honor.
• Retcon: Since the later seasons of [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]] in the late 90s, fans have wondered why Starfleet's battle fleets had so many Miranda and Excelsior class ships in them, despite both designs being a century old by that point, often trying to find technological reasons to explain their abundance. "If Two Are Dead" explains that they are part of a reserve surplus fleet built up by Starfleet over the previous decades as an insurance policy against large scale invasion against known elements like the Klingons and Cardassians. The inclusion of so many older designs is actually for political reasons: they were enough to serve as a deterrent but not enough to provoke a conflict they were meant to prevent.
• Ripped from the Headlines: "What We May Be" features a plot by a hostile foreign power to throw an election that will weaken the Federation, using preexisting internal tensions with the help somebody on the inside.
• Shout-Out: The name of the Sentry Station 7 commander is Robert Slocum, the name of the narrator from Joseph Heller's Something Happened, who is also a mediocre middle aged man with a lackluster career and a loveless marriage.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • The premise of "Above the Highest Sky" is almost a direct lift from an episode of The Orville, "If the Stars Should Appear".
  • "Captain in the Arena" is an in-universe deliberate reference to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena" — Intentional on the part of the Gorn, who have decided to model their diplomatic contact with the Federation on the circumstances surrounding first contact.
  • "Flight of the Recreant" is proudly just The Hunt for Red October but Recycled with a Gimmick. The Romulans stand in for the Russians, cloaking technology stands in for Red October's caterpillar stealth drive, and the warbird's captain is even named "Remius".