Halloween - for lindahoyland
Title: Halloween (working title)
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Star Trek - Voyager
Rating: G, suitable for all
Summary: The crew wants to celebrate the old Earth feast of Halloween. Captain Janeway is reluctant - until she gets an unexpected visitor.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Captain Kathryn Janeway stared at her chief pilot as if Tom Paris had suddenly sprouted a second head.
"You want to celebrate what?"
"Halloween," Tom explained readily. "It's an old Earth holiday. People used to believe that on this particular day the wall between our world and the Otherworld was particularly thin and the dead could pass through to visit the living. They decorated their houses with all sorts of spooky things: jack'o-lanterns, plastic skulls, fake skeletons, bats, artificial cobwebs and the likes. In the later years it was all for fun, of course."
"We could create a great environment on the holodeck," Harry Kim supported his best friend. "And I'm sure Naomi would enjoy trick-or-treating."
"She would enjoy what?" Janeway asked, flabbergasted.
The two young men fell into each other's word in their eagerness to explain the concept to her, but after a moment of listening she shook her head.
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't think that something like that would be appropriate. Try to think of a different kind of entertainment to cheer up your shipmates."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Can you imagine it?" she said in mild exasperation somewhat later. She was sitting in her Ready Room with Chakotay, the two having their daily relaxing coup of coffee and tea, respectively. "Ghosts! Bats! Skeletons! Children begging for sweets and playing silly pranks when they don't get any... What a ridiculous concept!"
"Some people still find it funny," Chakotay replied in amusement. "And I wouldn't reject the idea of visiting spirits out of hand."
"Oh, come on!" Janeway rolled her eyes. "Your spirit walks are one thing; commercialized superstitions are a different couple of tea. Besides, why should we want to celebrate some obscure Earth holiday no-one has taken seriously for centuries?"
"Perhaps because it might give people - at least the humans among us, even if they aren't from Earth - a sense of home?" Chakotay suggested. "I've read somewhere that Captain Kirk used to order a special meal at Thanksgiving(*) on board the Enterprise each year; and that holiday was every bit as outdated by then as Halloween."
"Captain Kirk used to do a lot of rather strange things in his days," Janeway said. "All of them did. They'd all be booted out of Starfleet now."(**)
"Oh my, my," a deep, amused voice said, and a short, middle-aged, Asian-looking man in an outdated Starfleet uniform appeared in one of the empty seats, holding a cup of tea, complete with saucer, in one hand. "Aren't we full of ourselves?"
The captain and her first officer stared in surprise at the man, noticing that he looked semi-transparent. They could vaguely make out the outline of the chair through his body. Nonetheless, he looked strangely familiar... at least to Chakotay.
"Captain Sulu?" he asked uncertainly.
"In the flesh... well, not exactly," the apparition replied. "As those young officers said, this is the time when we can occasionally slip through, and so I thought I'd pay you a visit. See how the young man I helped to get into Starfleet Academy has been doing. Then I happened to hear that throwaway remark and decided to make an appearance."
Janeway actually blushed, which didn't happen to her too often. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so... patronizing."
"Oh yes, you did," if anything, Captain Sulu seemed amused by the situation. "But that is all right. You are still young, compared with me. And as one of the most famous twentieth-century fictive detectives said, young people always believe that old people are fools. But old people know that it is a young people who are fools."(***)
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Janeway demanded.
"Oh, nothing much," the apparition replied nonchalantly. "Only that you might consider taking a leaf from Captain Kirk's book. It could lift morale on board."
And with that, he was gone.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Halloween party on the holodeck was in full swing. The decoration was half creepy and half trash, but nobody seemed to mind, and Neelix had outdone himself, creating fairly disgusting desserts that looked like spiders, eyeballs, bugs, and the likes. The music was rather creepy, too, the illumination dim, and from time to time somebody screamed when another horrifying detail popped up unexpectedly.
Chakotay, who was watching the events from a quiet corner, smiled tolerantly.
"All right, Q," he said in a low voice. "Care to tell me what was this all about?"
The capricious entity popped into existence next to him, still wearing the outdated Starfleet uniform but his own face.
"It was about respect, Chuckles," he replied. I thought Kathy needed to learn showing some respect for those who have paved her way to the stars. She's a good girl, but she had to realize that she's standing on the shoulders of Kirk, Sulu and the others. Besides," he added with a wide grin, "this is fun. I like people who know how to have a good time."
~The End'
Notes:
(*) See the TOS episode "Charlie X".
(**) Janeway actually made this remark in the episode "Flashback".
(***) That statement came from no-one less than Miss Marple.
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Star Trek - Voyager
Rating: G, suitable for all
Summary: The crew wants to celebrate the old Earth feast of Halloween. Captain Janeway is reluctant - until she gets an unexpected visitor.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Captain Kathryn Janeway stared at her chief pilot as if Tom Paris had suddenly sprouted a second head.
"You want to celebrate what?"
"Halloween," Tom explained readily. "It's an old Earth holiday. People used to believe that on this particular day the wall between our world and the Otherworld was particularly thin and the dead could pass through to visit the living. They decorated their houses with all sorts of spooky things: jack'o-lanterns, plastic skulls, fake skeletons, bats, artificial cobwebs and the likes. In the later years it was all for fun, of course."
"We could create a great environment on the holodeck," Harry Kim supported his best friend. "And I'm sure Naomi would enjoy trick-or-treating."
"She would enjoy what?" Janeway asked, flabbergasted.
The two young men fell into each other's word in their eagerness to explain the concept to her, but after a moment of listening she shook her head.
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't think that something like that would be appropriate. Try to think of a different kind of entertainment to cheer up your shipmates."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Can you imagine it?" she said in mild exasperation somewhat later. She was sitting in her Ready Room with Chakotay, the two having their daily relaxing coup of coffee and tea, respectively. "Ghosts! Bats! Skeletons! Children begging for sweets and playing silly pranks when they don't get any... What a ridiculous concept!"
"Some people still find it funny," Chakotay replied in amusement. "And I wouldn't reject the idea of visiting spirits out of hand."
"Oh, come on!" Janeway rolled her eyes. "Your spirit walks are one thing; commercialized superstitions are a different couple of tea. Besides, why should we want to celebrate some obscure Earth holiday no-one has taken seriously for centuries?"
"Perhaps because it might give people - at least the humans among us, even if they aren't from Earth - a sense of home?" Chakotay suggested. "I've read somewhere that Captain Kirk used to order a special meal at Thanksgiving(*) on board the Enterprise each year; and that holiday was every bit as outdated by then as Halloween."
"Captain Kirk used to do a lot of rather strange things in his days," Janeway said. "All of them did. They'd all be booted out of Starfleet now."(**)
"Oh my, my," a deep, amused voice said, and a short, middle-aged, Asian-looking man in an outdated Starfleet uniform appeared in one of the empty seats, holding a cup of tea, complete with saucer, in one hand. "Aren't we full of ourselves?"
The captain and her first officer stared in surprise at the man, noticing that he looked semi-transparent. They could vaguely make out the outline of the chair through his body. Nonetheless, he looked strangely familiar... at least to Chakotay.
"Captain Sulu?" he asked uncertainly.
"In the flesh... well, not exactly," the apparition replied. "As those young officers said, this is the time when we can occasionally slip through, and so I thought I'd pay you a visit. See how the young man I helped to get into Starfleet Academy has been doing. Then I happened to hear that throwaway remark and decided to make an appearance."
Janeway actually blushed, which didn't happen to her too often. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so... patronizing."
"Oh yes, you did," if anything, Captain Sulu seemed amused by the situation. "But that is all right. You are still young, compared with me. And as one of the most famous twentieth-century fictive detectives said, young people always believe that old people are fools. But old people know that it is a young people who are fools."(***)
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Janeway demanded.
"Oh, nothing much," the apparition replied nonchalantly. "Only that you might consider taking a leaf from Captain Kirk's book. It could lift morale on board."
And with that, he was gone.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Halloween party on the holodeck was in full swing. The decoration was half creepy and half trash, but nobody seemed to mind, and Neelix had outdone himself, creating fairly disgusting desserts that looked like spiders, eyeballs, bugs, and the likes. The music was rather creepy, too, the illumination dim, and from time to time somebody screamed when another horrifying detail popped up unexpectedly.
Chakotay, who was watching the events from a quiet corner, smiled tolerantly.
"All right, Q," he said in a low voice. "Care to tell me what was this all about?"
The capricious entity popped into existence next to him, still wearing the outdated Starfleet uniform but his own face.
"It was about respect, Chuckles," he replied. I thought Kathy needed to learn showing some respect for those who have paved her way to the stars. She's a good girl, but she had to realize that she's standing on the shoulders of Kirk, Sulu and the others. Besides," he added with a wide grin, "this is fun. I like people who know how to have a good time."
~The End'
Notes:
(*) See the TOS episode "Charlie X".
(**) Janeway actually made this remark in the episode "Flashback".
(***) That statement came from no-one less than Miss Marple.