MiSTed: All The King’s Horses, Part 2: The Author Notes

And now fresh to you from 1997 — like four or five years ago, can you imagine that long? — we finally step into the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of Stephen Ratliff’s Star Trek fan fiction All The King’s Horses. Last week you missed only the introductory sketches and now we’re going to get … well, a hint of what the title of this story about Captain Picard and his adopted daughter Marrissa — orphaned by virtue being a child character on the Enterprise — could mean.

The whole of this MiSTing of All The King’s Horses should appear at this link. After this week’s segment I’ll explain things that might benefit from the effort.

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[Inside the theater]

[Mike carries Tom to his seat. Crow is still absent.]

MIKE: Maybe we should have had the show broadcast over the Internet.

TOM SERVO: Too late for that now.

>From srat…@runet.edu Wed May 20 18:55:54 1998
>Received: from rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu (rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu
>[137.45.192.101]) by net.bluemoon.net

TOM SERVO [singing]: Bluuuuuuuueee Moooooooooooooon…

MIKE [singing]: Blue Blue Blue Blue Mooooooooooooon…

> (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA02201
>for <mity…@net.bluemoon.net>; Tue, 2 Sep 1997 22:12:11 -0400 (EDT)

MIKE [looking around]: All right, where’s Crow?

TOM SERVO: Watching the last episode of Seinfeld.

MIKE: *sigh* [raising his voice] GPC, get Crow in here, would you please?

GPC [offscreen]: Will do!

>Received: (from sratliff@localhost) by rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu
>(8.8.7/8.7.5) id WAA04255 for mity…@net.bluemoon.net;

TOM SERVO: Isn’t that the ISP that moonlights as a detective agency?

> Tue, 2 Sep 1997
>22:11:29 -0400 (EDT)
>Message-Id: <1997090302…@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu>

CROW: [offscreen] Okay, okay, I’m going! [Crow enters the theater and sits down] Jeez, now I’ll *never* know which one of the fifteen published
endings they used….

MIKE: Watch the reruns, Crow. We need all the help we can get in here.

CROW: Why? What did Pearl send us this time?

>From: Stephen Ratliff <srat…@runet.edu
>
>Subject: All The King’s Horses

CROW [glumly]: I *had* to ask…

>To: mity…@net.bluemoon.net (Mighty Jack)

TOM SERVO: Ecchh! *shudders violently*

MIKE: What? What’s the matter?

CROW: We’ll explain later.

>Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 22:11:29 -0400 (EDT)
>In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.951MOON.970902172749.17581A->100…@net.bluemoon.net
> from "Mighty Jack" at Sep 2, 97 05:31:20 pm
>X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

MIKE [singsong]: Transfer encoding…

ALL: SEVEN BITS!!!

>
>Title: All the King’s Horses

CROW: …and all the king’s men, couldn’t make Steve a decent writer
again.

TOM SERVO: What do you mean, "again"?

>Author: Stephen Ratliff (srat…@runet.edu)
>Series: TNG Marrissa Stories #3
>Part: NEW 1/?
>
>by Stephen Ratliff
>
>Author’s Notes

MIKE [as Ratliff]: Note to myself: I really shouldn’t do this!

>
> Well ladies and gentlemen,

TOM SERVO: And robots.

> it’s time for yet another Marrissa
>Story.

MIKE [as Ratliff]: Unless my demands are immediately met.

> This one is set between "Battle for Bajor" and "Cadet Cruise."

TOM SERVO: So he can rewrite history.

CROW: Retcon! Retcon!

>It’s written in response to several complaints I’ve received in the
>almost four years since I posted the original versions of those works.

MIKE [as Ratliff]: I won’t reprint what they actually said because
there’s children on this newsgroup.

> Four years, it’s been long time.

CROW [muttering]: Tell us about it…

TOM SERVO: It’s been long, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.

> I first started "Enterprized"
>in study-hall in March of 1993.

TOM SERVO: More homework could have prevented this tragedy.

> When I arrived at Radford University,

MIKE [as Ratliff}: … I couldn’t figure out why people kept pointing at
me and snickering.

> I
>discovered alt.startrek.creative.

CROW: … and I claimed it in the name of Spain!

> I started posting "Enterprized" on
>November of 1993.

TOM SERVO: Truly a date that will live in infamy.

> "A Gul’s Revenge," which later became "Battle for
>Bajor,"

MIKE: … meaning we had to sit through it *twice*. [shudders]

> began posting in February of 1994. Since then I’ve put out an
>average of three works every year. (Six in the past year.)

CROW: Nineteen since a week ago Thursday!

TOM SERVO: Three hundred just today!

MIKE: Two thousand and thirty-eight in the last five minutes!

>
> This will be my fifteenth work, beginning what I hope is a
>productive fifth and finial year at Radford University.

CROW: Ah, the American college system… where a four-year degree only
takes five or six to achieve!

TOM SERVO: Pulling out the ol’ Websters here… his fifth year is a
foliated ornament on the upper extremity of a piece of Gothic
architecture?!

> There are more
>Marrissa Stories out there.

MIKE: Right now, Agents Mulder and Scully are retching into their shoes.

CROW: Believe you me, those stories are *really* "out there".

> I’ve got a list of ideas pages long,

TOM SERVO: Don’t threaten us like that, Ratliff.

MIKE: Looks like some other Stephen out there just came down with
Dark Tower syndrome.

> and
>occasionally a new idea will come, like "The Captain and the Doctor,"
>that just flows out without stopping.

CROW: He just *had* to try those Olestra potato chips.

TOM SERVO: I always thought his stories were a kind of mental diarrhea.
Now we have proof!

> "All the King’s Horses" uses many references to thoroughbred
>horse racing, in particular the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the
>Belmont Stakes.

MIKE: Oh, and Humpty Dumpty.

CROW: Mike? Why would *anyone* write a Star Trek story about *horse
racing*?!

TOM SERVO: It’s Ratliff, Crow. Don’t expect it to make sense.

> While the form of the races have maintained the same
>shape,

CROW: Could it be that Ratliff actually knows something about what he’s
writing about this time?

TOM SERVO: We’ll see.

> some rules have been bent for the purpose of storytelling.

MIKE: For instance, in reality, very few jockeys use spray-cheese for
helmets.

> No
>trainer in his or her right mind would let an untried jockey race their
>horse in a Triple Crown race,

TOM SERVO: … but I’m sure Steve will get around this inconvenient fact
by inventing a disease that kills only horse jockeys over the
age of 15.

CROW: Don’t give him any ideas.

> but fortunately, mine is not left-handed.
>:)

MIKE: A subtle Princess Bride reference or a lame joke? You make the call.

TOM SERVO: Well, at least he spelled the smiley right.

>
>Stephen Ratliff.

CROW: aka The Evil Scourge of Usenet.

>
>Some pronunciations
>
>Since this story is set in France,

MIKE [as Ratliff]: I can make up all sorts of stuff in the hopes that my
mostly American audience won’t know I’m blowing smoke.

CROW: Poor France… first Hitler invades them, and now this!

TOM SERVO: Do you think Ratliff is considered a comic genius in France?

> some names are pronounced differently
>that they are else where. The following is a short guide.

MIKE: It’s just a little service for those of you who like to read their
Ratliff stories out loud.

> Robert RO-ber

CROW: Oooh, I remember the Ro-bears, from the "ThunderCats" cartoon.

> Boucher BOO-shay

MIKE: Shay… y’ever jusht… walk into a fanficshion and jusht… shee
pink elephantsh everywhere?

>
>

TOM SERVO: *snicker* Gee thanks, Steve! Our understanding of the
subtle complexities of the French language has increased
dramatically thanks to this marvelously comprehensive
pronunciation guide.

MIKE: Here’s a few other French pronunciations you should know…

CROW: Ratliff PAIN-ful

TOM SERVO: Marrissa EE-go-tist

MIKE: Pearl Forrester VISH-us

>Prologue

CROW: PRO-log.

MIKE: Enough, Crow, enough.

TOM SERVO: And our wild ride into another reality begins….

[ To continue … ]

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I’m pretty sure I didn’t write all the riffs this segment, but many do feel like me. I’m not sure about “Transfer Encoding / Seven Bits”, but Tom Servo’s “And robots” and Mike’s “Unless my demands are immediately met” are absolutely mine. Similarly the cascade about 19 fanfics since a week ago Thursday, 300 just today, and 2038 in the last five minutes; even back then, I was putting the Chuckletrousers number into stuff.

Olestra potato chips — I think they got mentioned on the 90s show — were an attempt at low fat or sugar or something potato chips made with some concoction that was mostly fine but could cause what Olestra’s own marketing people thought was least badly described as “anal leakage”. You can imagine how hilarious that was.

I don’t think the riff about looking up a finial — one of those typos we loved to riff — was mine, but my recollection is I copy-edited it into this form. I’m sorry not to have the notes so the clumsier original could be compared. “At least he spelled the smiley right” was mine, though.

“Evil Scourge of Usenet”, see, this shows you how patient Stephen Ratliff was with us all. It’s a mean line that isn’t preposterous enough to work. “First Hitler invades the, and now this!” has a better balance.

The Bots’ reaction to a mention of Mighty Jack — screen name for the editor of this MiSTing — and Mike’s confusion reflects a thing we did all the time, writing MiSTings back then. No matter how many times on the show Mike referenced something Joel had seen, we wanted the reader to know we knew when Mike wouldn’t recognize something.