Three interactive memes!
1: The icon meme! From nenya_kanadka.
1. Reply to this post with "UNICORNS", and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.
( Under a cut for babblage )
1. Reply to this post with "UNICORNS", and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.
( Under a cut for babblage )
In the mumblety-somethingth century, two great empires face off in an uneasy peace. There are border skirmishes, planets lost and won, but both sides are too fearful to start a full-out war. There are also a lot of scuffles and bad situations going on that have nothing to do with the main conflict, or that only spin off it as a pretext.
Into this situation comes the D.S.S. Phoenix, the first of its kind, an unarmed Diplomatic StarShip affiliated with no one government. (It used to be the D.X.S. Phoenix, a Diplomatic eXperimental Ship; I'm not quite sure what changed after the first season. *g*) Her commander, Pete Thornton, is one of the best and wisest diplomats around, although now elderly and going blind.
Pete's right-hand man, best friend, unofficial ship's engineer, and general troublemaker gofer is MacGyver - his only name - who can fix almost anything with sticky-tape and a multitool knife, and whose apparently fashion-forward hairstyle can in fact be traced back to Ancient Greece1 (as he will tell you in a drawling voice-over if the subject ever comes up).
Another of the Phoenix's crew is Nikki Carpenter, less technologically inclined than "Mac" but a better diplomat in some ways. She and/or Mac are part of the advance guard, sent in when a situation is too volatile to risk Pete and his cohorts on the ground right away.
Mac and Nikki each have one of the Phoenix's shuttlecraft at their disposal, but when extreme secrecy is needed to avoid upsetting a delicate bit of negotiation, Mac also knows an incorrigible freighter bum named Jack Dalton who's willing to fly anywhere for the right blackmail price.
(Presumably Nikki has her own network of not-quite-official favors and friends to help her get her work done, but the show's about Mac.)
There's also a fairly broad spectrum of guest-stars and recurring characters who live on different planets or work on different projects the Phoenix gets involved with, such as:
* Penny Parker, the lovely and secretly savvy "skyjet girl" *koff* whose fluff-brained act lets her sail through life on the arms of the rich and famous with something to hide. She's one of Mac's (and therefore Pete's) best sources of information about skeevy doings.
* Mama Colton, who manages to be quite above-board herself while being somehow connected with the "Colton gang" of Robin-Hood-like space pirates. Probably she does this by sheer force of personality.
* The Challenger, a space-station in a "docklands"-type sector, run by a small group of volunteers whose goal is to provide shelter and a fresh start for "stardrifters", the orphaned or abandoned or generally down-on-their-luck kids who manage to survive knocking round the spacelanes long enough to wind up there. They want to expand into a network throughout the galaxy, but right now they're just getting started.
Of course, the Phoenix team have to have an arch-enemy, since neither of the two Great Powers in the background is up to the task. Therefore, there is Murdoc.
Nobody quite knows who or what Murdoc is, besides a psychotic hitman... hit-person? Xe might be a shapeshifter; xe's certainly good enough at disguise. Xe certainly seems to be more, or at least different, than human, to judge by xir knack for surviving deadly situations. Xe's rumored to be a personification of Death, but Mac is almost 99% sure that isn't true. ;-)
The Phoenix crew can't solve all of a given planet's problems in one episode a week, so they don't try to; they focus on helping the galaxy one person, or a few people in one conflict, at a time. This makes them a lot more realistic and less annoying than certain other TV spaceships. *dry grin*
I find myself running out of ideas around the point of actually making up a typical episode, but I can try if anyone wants me to...
1: No kidding. Plutarch describes a men's hairstyle called "the Theseus", short on top and long in the back, ascribed in origin to the famous Theseus of Athens.
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