DISCLAIMER: You may not find this funny, but hopefully the germ of the idea will be seen as clever. Or not. It's probably a specialised taste, but hey, give it a go...
Scene: the vastness of space, stars moving forward across the screen like one of those screensavers you used to find on Windows 95 computers. A voice cuts through the stillness.
"Space, the final frontier. These are the --- the --- um, the..."
"Voyages". Another voice, flat, level, devoid of any inflection, cuts in.
"Oh, yes," agrees the original voice. "Voyages. Of course. Yes. Voyages. These are the voyages of the --- ahum --- the, thingummy... you know the one, tip of my tongue..."
"Starship Enterprise", states the second voice calmly.
"Yes. Yes, that's it. Starship Enterprise. Thank you, Spock. How could I have forgotten that?"
"It's quite understandable, Captain," Spock says. Do continue."
"Yes, perhaps I should start from the beginning? Space, the ... ah ... final whatchamacallit. These are the .. the ... the things of the Starship thingy. It's five year mission to zzzzzzzzzz"
A third voice cuts in, a definite Scottish accent. "Hell's bells! He's fallen asleep again, Mister Spock!"
Camera moves back to show the bridge of the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk dozing in his command chair, which is ragged and patchy, and bumps on its axis rather than moving smoothly as it should. Around him, paint is peeling off the walls, tiiles are loose on the floor of the ship and there are wires exposed in many places. To his left, the door to the bridge opens --- or tries to, but sticks halfway, to the accompaniment of the muttered cursing of the crewman trying to gain entrance.
Spock does not sigh. Sighing is an emotional response, and although, contrary to what some believe, Vulcans are not devoid of emotion, they do not exhibit them if possible, and view them with the same sort of annoyed tolerance you or I might reserve for a drunk tramp sleeping in the last seat of the bus beside us. The suggestion of a sigh, however, is in his clear, flat voice.
"Indeed, Mister Scott. Under the circumstances, I do not believe Captain Kirk can be blamed for that. Let him be for now." He turns to the helmsman, requesting an update. Lieutenant Sulu looks at his console in disgust, bangs it twice with the heel of his hand, and grins triumphantly as the previously-dead screen flickers to stuttering life.
"That sensor blip we've been tracking looks likely to be a cloaked ship, Sir," Sulu tells him. "I believe it may be a Romulan Bird of Prey, just out of sensor range." Unheard by Spock, he mutters to his navigator, "Shape this ship is in, EVERYTHING's out of sensor range..."
Again, Spock does not sigh, nor indeed betray the slightest hint of annoyance or irritation, but you can see it in his eyes. They say "Why the Romulans?" Spock's race shares a genetic history with the Romulans, and he is uneasy in their presence.
"Very well, Mister Sulu," he issues the order. "Sound Red Alert."
For a moment nothing happens, then the entire bridge lights up red, like a Soho strip club, before fading out in almost the same moment. Sulu again bangs his console, and the bridge is again awash in red light, this time accompanied by the off-key blaring of a klaxon, startling Captain Kirk from his doze. "Wha --? Who?? Shields up! Fire all phasers!" he shouts somewhat incoherently as he jumps awake. Spock countermands the order, with the tired resignation of one who has done this many times before.
"Not necessary, Sir," he assures his captain. "They are not in range yet."
Kirk nods. "You mean the episode hasn't started yet, Spock." This time it's Spock's turn to nod.
"Indeed, Captain," he affirms. "I believe they are taking a commercial break."
Kirk slumps back into his chair, a tired look on his face. He still looks as young as he did when the series first began, but he knows he is a lot older. He certainly feels it.
"In that case, I think I'll head down to see Bones in Sickbay. Mister Spock, you have the con." And he exits via the door, duplicating the anger and frustration of the crew member who had tried to get through that selfsame door a few moments ago, as this time it nips his foot before he can escape. Spock watches him go, with emotionless eyes.
"Mister Spock, I have a question." The man currently in command of the Enterprise turns to the communications officer, Lieutentant Uhura, who is looking at him anxiously. He knows what is coming, but gives no sign.
"Yes Lieutenant?"
"Why is it that we have to keep repeating the same adventures, over and over and over again, with no rest, no change and no idea when or if we will ever see home again?"
Spock eyes her levelly. The human half of him feels sympathy for her, feels her pain, while the Vulcan half, forbidding that he allow the other side of him, the weaker side, to surface, even for a moment, answers for him.
"It is all about syndication, Lieutenant," he explains to her, as he has done many times --- she never remembers, her memory not being what it was forty-odd years ago. "When we started out on our "five-year mission", that is as long as it was supposed to last: five years. But then the series was sold into syndication, and now it plays all over the world, at all times of the day and night. I believe the current figures have it as being an episode of Star Trek being screened somewhere in the world every three minutes or so. While that situation exists, we are forced to remain here, living out the episodes they watch back on Earth, again and again and again."
"But surely Sir," chimes in Chekov, the navigator, "people vould get tired of vatching ze same old show, veek in, veek out? At zum point, zey vould surely just vatch somezing else?" He shakes his head. "And gif us a break, nyet?"
"Unfortunately that is not the case, Ensign," Spock tells him. "You see, so many generations have been brought up on our adventures, and then introduce their children to it, and they to their children, that it seems unlikely we will ever be off the television screens. Add to that the videos, widescreen videos, then DVDs, remastered DVDs, Blu-Ray ... the list goes on and on, and people just seem to want more and more." In a rare moment of almost emotion, Spock arches an eyebrow. "A wise man once said, I believe, that it is a curse to be popular. I fear we are now reaping the fruit of that curse."
"So there's nothing we can do?" The horror in Uhura's voice, though he has heard it before as they have had this converation many times in the past (though she always forgets it) shakes Spock's human half briefly. "We are doomed to remain here, out here in space, for maybe another forty years or more, repeating the same adventures, unable to stop, because some geeks back on Earth don't want to go out into the real world?"
Spock nods. There is almost sadness in his voice. "Well, I am told that the television is being slowly taken over by what they term reality television, and that less people are watching what they call science-fiction, so perhaps some day they will just stop showing us, and we can rest. In the meantime..."
He cuts off as a communication cuts in from Sickbay.
"Spock! This is McCoy! The captain has just disappeared! I was looking at him, and suddenly he just ... wasn't there!"
Spock acknowledges the doctor, heads for the door, which for once opens without incident (you don't mess with a Vulcan!); Sulu and Chekov watch him go, exchanging weary glances.
"Here we go again," they both say, in unison.
