thetubfullofcats: Scorpius from Farscape in a hawaiian shirt and straw hat (Default)
+ Bold all of the following TV shows of which you've seen 3 or more episodes.
+ Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode.
+ Asterisk if you have at least one full season on tape or DVD
+ Exclamation mark if it's an all-time fave.
+ If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

(+ I'm adding the rule that I'll put a # on things I am planning to watch)

24 - caught a few glimpses of it as Martin watched it, but have never watched
The 4400
A League of Their Own -- the recent one? like about lesbians playing baseball? yeah i saw that one...
The A-Team
The Addams Family
The Adventures of Pete and Pete
! Adventure Time -- my addition.
America’s Next Top Model
The Americans
Angel
The Andy Griffith Show
Arcane: League of Legends
Are You Afraid of the Dark
Are You Being Served?
Arrested Development

! Babylon 5 -- finished just recently, it was really good
# Babylon 5: Crusade
Batman and Robin
Batman Beyond
Batman: The Animated Series
# Battlestar Galactica (the original series)
Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Baywatch
Beavis & Butthead -- i'm sorry but i hated that show so much as a kid, despite the bold here
Beauty and the Beast
Beverly Hills 90210
Bewitched
Big Love
The Bionic Woman (1976)
Black Books
Blackadder
The Brady Bunch
The Brittas Empire
# Blake's 7
Bonanza
Bones
Bosom Buddies
Boston Legal
Boston Public
Boy Meets World
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- I watched up to and including the season with her sister, should get back to it sometime
Bug Juice

Caitlin’s Way
Carebears -- I mean yeah 😭
Carnivale
Catweazle
Charlie’s Angels
Charmed -- it was on sometimes
Cheers -- everything I know about Cheers comes from Adventure Time...
The Closer
Columbo
Commander in Chief
Coupling (UK)
# Cowboy Bebop
Criminal Minds
Crossing Jordan
CSI
CSI: Miami
CSI: NY
Curb Your Enthusiasm

Dallas
Dancing with the Stars
Dangermouse
Danny Phantom
Dark Angel
Dark Skies
Davinci’s Inquest
The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd
Dawson’s Creek
Dead Like Me
Deadwood
The Dead Zone
Degrassi: The Next Generation
Designing Women
Desperate Housewives
Dexter
Dharma & Greg
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Digimon
Dinosaurs
Different Strokes
Dirty Jobs
!* Doctor Who (1963 - 1989) -- it is a great great honor for a show to be owned on DVD by me, so it only goes to the best show of them all
! Doctor Who (2005 - present)
Dragnet
The Dresden Files
Due South

Entourage
ER
Everwood
Everybody Loves Raymond
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Facts of Life
Family Guy -- I do not recommend bingeing this show
Family Ties
! Farscape -- maybe there is some recency bias talking here but Farscape is literally so unique it has got to be a fave
Father Ted
Fawlty Towers
Felicity
# Firefly
Flash Forward
Forever Knight
Fraggle Rock
Frasier
Freaks and Geeks
Friday Night Lights
Friends
! Futurama -- I loved this when it was on as a kid and I love it even more now that I am a huge sci-fi nerd

Get Smart
Ghostwriter
Gilligan’s Island
Gilmore Girls
The Golden Girls
Green Wing
Grey’s Anatomy
Growing Pains

Hannah Montana
Happy Days
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
Heroes
Highlander
Highlander: The Raven
Hogan’s Heroes
Hillstreet Blues
Homicide: Life on the Street
House

I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
Instant Star
Inuyasha
Invader Zim
Invasion
Invincible -- it's so good

JAG
Jackass
# Jeeves and Wooster
Jericho

Killing Eve -- it was okay, sorry don't kill me
Knight Rider

Laverne and Shirley
Law & Order
Legend of the Seeker
Lexx
! Life on Mars -- cool show, I love it when things are tragic
Life With Derek
Little Britain -- you bet I was super annoying about it as a kid too
Little House on the Prairie
Lizzie McGuire
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Lost
Luther

! MASH -- left off at S8 I think, should get back to it
MacGyver -- I mean. it was on sometimes
Magnum PI
Malcolm in the Middle -- used to hate this show too. i kinda get it now but like damn i had to leave the living room bc it pissed me off so much
Mama’s Family
The Man from U.N.C.L.E
Married... With Children
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Melrose Place
MI:5
Miami Vice
The Mighty Boosh
Millennium
Miracles
Mission: Impossible
The Muppet Show
My Mad Fat Diary
The Mythbusters
Monk
Mork & Mindy
Murphy Brown
My Life as a Dog
My Little Pony
My Name is Earl
My So-Called Life
Mystery Science Theater 3000

NCIS
North Shore
Numb3rs
NYPD Blue

The O.C.
The Office (UK)
The Office (US)
One Tree Hill
Oz

Perry Mason
Person of Interest
Phil of the Future
Pokemon
Popular
Power Rangers
Primeval
Prison Break
Profiler
Project Runway
Psych

QI
Quantum Leap -- should start actually watching this myself sometime
Queer As Folk (US)
Queer as Folk (UK)

! Red Dwarf -- the best show in the universe. no one did it like them (for better and worse)
ReGenesis
Relic Hunter
Robin of Sherwood
Rome
Roseanne
Roswell

# Sapphire & Steel
Saved by the Bell
Scarecrow and Mrs King
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Scrubs -- might as well be italicized but i am not sure
seaQuest
Seinfeld
Sex and the City
Six Feet Under
Skins
Sliders
Slings and Arrows
Smallville
So Weird
South Park
Space: Above and Beyond
Spaced
Spongebob Squarepants -- i'm one of those spongebob adults. if you can't enjoy the original spongebob film like a man then you have no whimsy left in you
Sports Night
! Star Trek
Star Trek: Discovery -- haven't seen all of the new episodes yet
! Star Trek: The Next Generation -- my childhooood
! Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- the best trek, don't even argue
! Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise
! Star Trek: Prodigy -- my addition. best modern trek
# Stargate Atlantis
# Stargate SG-1
Starsky and Hutch
Superman
Supernatural -- i was very strong and loyal until they like. killed Death himself. and then I was like okay enough

Taxi
Teachers
That 70’s Show
That’s So Raven
The Famous Jett Jackson
The Flintstones
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Jetsons
The Love Boat
The Lucille Ball Show
The Nanny
The Outer Limits (1963) -- my addition; i preferred it over Twilight Zone
The Pretender
The Real World
The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The Sentinel
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Sopranos
3rd Rock from the Sun
! Torchwood
Transformers
The Twilight Zone
Twin Peaks

Veronica Mars

WandaVision
Weeds
The West Wing
Wheel of Time
Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?
Wonderfalls

! The X-Files -- should get back to watching it, it's so good
Xena: Warrior Princess -- watching rn (season 3), this show sure is something. they don't make em like that anymore
X-Men: Evolution
thetubfullofcats: A blonde woman in a white dress and hat holding a book while sitting in a canoe (Romana -- Dr Who)
TitleFalling out of bounds
Writer[personal profile] thetubfullofcats
RatingT
FandomDoctor Who
Warnings:Suicide, Suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts
SummaryWhat if you were Isekai'd to a world you don't give a shit about and everyone was annoying and you were just waiting to go back to dying. But make it classic Dr Who
Chapters:1/?


Read on Ao3

Read here

Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End of the Beginning of the Beginning of the End of the End of the Beginning



On a clear day, he could see for miles out of his sky scraper corner office with the glass facade. Paul Ambrose Ock was a successful man, one of those who were too busy being good at what they did to even brag about it. He had once taken great comfort in the fact that he had come by his position fairly, rather than through nepotism. He had liked to look back on his life, admiring the greying man in the nice suit he saw in the mirror and comparing him to the poor child he had once been.

Except, that nice suit wasn't looking so nice anymore now. His accomplishments didn't have the same kick to them as they used to, it was not their fault---nothing brought Ock much comfort anymore. And his office, one of the best in terms of position and view, didn't seem quite so nice from the outside as it did from the inside. Or if it did, it only seemed impressive from the ground. Not to one who, say, was falling off the building and viewing it from just outside the window as he was going down.

Paul Ock had not dreamed of flying since he had been a little boy, but he chose the few seconds he had left to reflect back on what he had thought it would feel like. Little Paul hadn't imagined it would be quite so scary. It's wasn't that he didn't want to be here, falling off the building and all, but there was something about falling from a great height that was just unnatural, even to one who had knowingly and wantingly made the jump in the first place. Had he had the time, he would have frowned then, maybe stroked his chin even, but there were but a few seconds left to his impact with the pavement, so he imagined himself doing these things instead.

Then he imagined what may be left of him once this whole business had concluded. He would not a be very pleasant sight, he mused. But then, he had probably peaked in high-school, looks wise, and not been a very attractive man for some years now. Average, maybe.

Ock remembered what he had heard and seen a thousand times on television, about people's life's flashing in front of their eyes before they died, and wondered what could be wrong with him that all he could think of was the sunlight reflecting off the, what he was slowing deciding was an ugly, ugly glass sky scraper---or how long it would take city personnel to clean up the mess he was about to make.

Perhaps, he thought, I have thought too much about what brought me here already; about how my life has progressed and everything. Probably there's nothing left to consider that I haven't obsessively reviewed already.

He nodded internally. That was an okay answer, he decided. He managed to close his eyes, despite the pressure on them from the constant airflow. He'd seen enough. Ock had once received many compliments for his capacity for patience. He would patiently wait for the end now.

A second went by, so did the air. Another second. Another. Ock frowned. What was the holdup?

After 5 more seconds passed he opened his eyes. He was a patient man but this was getting a bit silly now. Besides, either he had gone numb or there really was no more air rushing all around him. Suddenly all the pressure on his ears had gone and it was almost quiet now, apart from a consisted low humming noise.

Once he had opened his eyes he noticed that he was sitting on the floor, but not an asphalt road, rather a sort of brown-ish, maybe even wood-colored laminated floor. And he felt disappointingly alive. There was a man standing over him, with a helpful hand stretched out. His hair was chaotically curly and he wore a combination of the worst overall and the worst scarf Ock had ever seen, in addition to a red coat that was sort of okay.

"How do you do?", he said cheerfully, "I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor?", Paul Ock wondered, out loud, "So I survived?"

He looked around. This was certainly no hospital room. With its almost entirely wooden interior it looked more like someone's grandma's living room, if you ignored the strange hexagonal table at the center of it, surrounded by railings and lifted from the ground slightly on a round platform. Well, maybe that depended on how bananas your grandma was.

"No," he said clearly, "No, that can't be. I must be dead then." He nodded, proud of his assessment.

"Must you?", asked the man with amusement in his voice, "What would that mean for me then, am I dead as well? Oh I would terribly hate being dead, I still have that book I wanted to finish."

Paul Ock tilted his head as he looked up at the man. Was this what death looked like? Was this the afterlife, then: an awfully furnished wooden prison? Or had he been knocked out by the fall and was making all this up in the last second of his life? The man did seem strangely familiar.

Ock took the mans hand and let himself be helped onto his feet.

"Where am I?"

"You're on my ship, and what a lucky man you are as well. I picked you up, floating without any protecting through open space. Now, what would a man like you be doing in a place like that?", asked the Doctor.

Whatever he was a Doctor of, Paul could not say. Perhaps he was some sort of escaped mental patient who had convinced himself that he was one of the Doctors of the place and just walked straight out at the end of the day. Part of Ock was worried about what implications this would have about the amount of danger he was in at the moment, but the rest of him either didn't care or thought that being killed by a looney was a more exciting way to die than the drab old "throwing yourself off a building" way.

Besides, none of this could be real anyway. Due to that same "throwing himself off a building" part that had occurred a moment ago. So if anyone was having delusions, surely it was Ock himself?

"That is a good question," he remarked out loud with his forehead folded to a frown.

The Doctor smiled. "Thank you."

There was a lot of patronizing humour in his voice, but Ock suspected some honest worry and fascination in it as well.

"Now, listen here you... strange man--"

Ock was interrupted by a calm voice entering the room with a friendly: "Hello."

He looked up and saw a grown woman in her 20s wearing the clothes of a little girl.

"You must be the man the Doctor talked about. The one who took a little business trip to the depths of space and forgot his car? Hi! I'm Sarah-Jane Smith," she said, stretching her hand out for a greeting.

Ock reached for the woman's hand, but was knocked off-course by a sudden earth-quake that shook the room and transported his hand (with the rest of his body) back into a sort of horizontal position on the laminated floor.

The Doctor (of some kind) and his little friend held onto the hexagonal table in the center of the room, as if this sort of thing happened to them on a regular basis and they had protocols in place that kept them from taking a nap on the hard ground.

Their eyes were fixed upon a flat-screen TV that was definitely hanging too high for comfortable viewing. Upon it, Ock thought he saw about 5 to 10 flying saucers. Actual flying saucers. Not a creative Enterprise sort of space ship, just a flat disk with lights coming out of it.

I have never been praised for my creativity, thought Ock, who had come to accept the "my dying mind is making all of this up" theory as his best one.

The picture of space was suddenly replaced by the image of a collection of sort of bumpy novelty salt shakers with toilet plungers and kitchen utensils strapped to them. The sticks someone had attached to the top of them were pointing a little light straight at the screen.

Suddenly, Ock remembered where he had seen them before.

"R2D2!" he cried triumphantly.

A shattering mechanical voice disagreed with him over the speakers: "Doctor, you are an enemy of the Da-aleks. You will be Exte-erminated."

The screen cut back to the view of space and the flying saucers appeared to charging for a large energy beam type weapon to fire at the wooden living room Paul was in.

"Doctor!" cried the woman with a shriek in her voice.

The man turned towards Ock pleasantly and looked at him with almost undivided attention and a smile on his face as he said:

"I'm dreadfully sorry, I have been rude to you, haven't I?"

Paul Ock gave him a confused stare for a response.

"Why, I haven't even asked your name, man. What is your name?"

Ock blinked five times. This was getting way too silly for him. This was not how he had planned his day to go. He wondered how much longer his last second alive was intending to take.

"Ock," he answered plainly.

The Doctor nodded sagely. "Welcome to the TARDIS, Mr. Ock. I am afraid we are about to die terribly."

Finally, thought Ock.




thetubfullofcats: Liz Shaw, a brunette woman, wearing a cute little red hat and an olive-green coat (Liz Shaw -- Dr Who/P.R.O.B.E.)
TitleElementary, Dear Patsy
Artist[personal profile] thetubfullofcats
FandomDoctor Who, BBV P.R.O.B.E.
RelationshipsPatricia Haggard/Liz Shaw


A digital painting of two women resembling a famous Sherlock Holmes illustration by Sydney Padget. One of them, the redhat, is holding a pipe, while the other is sitting with her arms crossed
thetubfullofcats: a Vulcan woman with a ponytail (Soleta -- Star Trek)
TitleWhat if I told you that the ship was gonna blow up / And you had 5 minutes to spend with me or your friends
Writer[personal profile] thetubfullofcats
RatingG
FandomStar Trek, Star Trek: New Frontier
SummaryCriminally few New Frontier works on the internet!! Here is a little rendition of what might have happened in those 5 minutes before the Excalibur blew up between Dark Allies and Requiem. I made an effort to include all details Shelby dropped in Restoration, if there are notes on this in later books then I don't know about them because I have not read any further yet.



"Commander . . . it's alright. All of you . . . really . . . it's all right. The important thing . . . the thing I'm not going to lose sight of . . . is that he went out like a warrior."
There were nods from all around.
"It was very . . . Xenexian of him, believe it or not. The notion of dying in one's bed is anathema to my people. To die in combat, on the other hand, is very much to be desired . . . and to die in combat while saving others is the highest, most notable passing that anyone could wish for. I will miss him . . . and regret the time that we did not spend together, and the time we will not have . . . but the bottom line is, he dies heroically. All of us . . . should only be so fortunate as to have that opportunity," said Mackenzie Calhoun, five minutes before the Excalibur blew up . . .


Read on Ao3


Read here



5 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

The heads of the bridge crew were lowered silently, as they pondered the words of the Captain and the sacrifice of his son. However, a minute of silence would not be granted to them—their thoughts were quickly interrupted by a beep from the ship's computer:

"Warning: Self destruct sequence has been initiated. Warp core overload in 5 minutes."

Everyone's heads shot up and looked around the bridge in alarm.

Despite his melancholy disposition, the Captain reacted immediately. He jumped from his chair:

"Computer, terminate auto-destruct sequence. Authorization: Calhoun-Gamma-1-8-Zeta."

A disagreeable beep sounded from the computer. "Authorization not accepted. Time to overload: 4 minutes 39 seconds."

As second in command, Elizabeth Shelby hoped that her authorization might do the trick somehow but this was fruitless.

Calhoun tapped his communication's badge:

"Calhoun to Engineering. Burgoyne, what the hell is going on?"

Chief Engineer Burgoyne's fingers were racing over the controls as the sweat slowly started to build up on hir forehead.

"Captain", s/he said over the open link, "this is impossible. I'm locked out of everything. It's hopeless."

The agitation in hir voice was clear, but then no one on the ship would be surprised by that.

"I wouldn't think you lose hope that quickly. What's causing this?", the voice of the Captain asked from the speaker of hir badge. His voice, despite everything was calm and forceful. The only one who could have suspected even a hint of terror and exhaustion in it was Shelby, back on the bridge.


4 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

Burgoyne scanned the readouts on hir console with top-speed, until s/he eventually stopped dead and looked upward. For a few miliseconds s/he pondered the consisted glowing and humming of the warp core and said: "Double Helix."

"How is that possible? We got rid of the Double Helix virus", said Shelby's voice.

"Apparently not", said Burgoyne.

"Why didn't you pick this up earlier?"

"It seems to have . . . hidden itself from our scans. Created a null-field around itself to revert all scans back on thems—"

"Can you shut it out and regain control?", asked Calhoun. Every second was precious now and he could review the facts once the crew made it out of this disaster.

There was a second's hesitation. "No", said Burgoyne 172 earnestly.

Calhoun resisted the urge to press his temples. "Prepare the ejection of the saucer section"

An opposing beep could be heard in Engineering. "I'm sorry Captain—"

He understood. He tapped his comm badge.

"Calhoun to all personnel of the Excalibur. Evacuate immediately."

No repetitions, no explanations. There was no time for such things and he knew his crew would do as they were told.

He looked around the bridge. "That goes for all of you as well. Go!"

Behind him the voice of science officer Soleta chimed calmly.

"Captain—"

"I hope you're not about to say something about staying on the bridge to the last minute to find a way out of this", interrupted the captain.

Soleta raised an eyebrow, in that irritating way Vulcans tended to do such things.

"From what we know of our options, that would be most illogical, Captain. I simply wished to inform you that my scans determined the auto-eject sequence of the lifepods to be equally impaired."

Calhoun sighed ever so slightly. "Understood, thank you Soleta."

She nodded and turned to leave the bridge.


3 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

As the engineering staff headed out the door and to the escape pods, Burgoyne kept trying anything in hir power to counteract the virus that had infected hir ship. S/he felt personally responsible for letting the Double Helix virus ingrain itself so deeply into the Excalibur's systems and putting everyone aboard in mortal peril.

But on top of this, s/he also felt like s/he had failed the ship itself. Like a parent taking their eyes off their child and letting it catch a deadly fever from playing outside in the cold with no shoes on.

Yes, absurdly, the ship felt like a child to hir, but then Chief Engineers tended to be peculiar like that about their ships.

And if s/he failed hir child so terribly, what would that mean for hir and Selar's newborn baby? What sort of parent would s/he be if s/he let something like this happen on hir watch? On some level Burgoyne knew this was illogical, but s/he couldn't help it. Someone was saying something.

S/he turned around. It was Ensign Janos standing in the door.

"Are you coming, sir", he repeated.

Burgoyne snapped out of it. "Selar," s/he said simply and stormed out of the door toward sickbay.

In sickbay, the evacuation was swift and practical. Luckily it was largely devoid of patients at the time, and those who were there presented very minor sicknesses and could thus be evacuated with ease. The only patient who needed support was Lieutenant Wright, who had sprained his ankle on the holodeck while reenacting some Earth battle or other.

Were Dr. Selar an emotional sort of person, she might have cursed him for presenting an obstacle to a clean evacuation by injuring himself from engaging in such a frivolous activity, but she wasn't so she didn't. Damning one's patients was highly illogical as well as a terrible work ethic, anyway.

As soon as everyone else had left in a calm and orderly fashion, Selar exited sickbay with Xyon in her arms—and narrowly avoided walking into Burgoyne.

"There you two are," s/he cried, "Let's get you to the escape pods."

"I was heading there already", said Selar calmly despite everything.


2 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

Si Cwan was holding Kalinda's hand as they rushed to the escape pods. What luck. He had finally gotten his sister back, finally known she was safe, only to bring her to a ship that was about to explode. A practically regular display of the never-ending luck of a ruler of a beaten Empire with a destroyed homeworld.

"It's going to be okay, Kally", he called.

Kalinda knew better than to let her brother know that she was no little child who needed these sort of false affirmations—not at a time like this. She knew that he needed her to be his image of the little sister he knew right now, not someone who argued a futile point of independence. She nodded.

As they reached the escape pods, they saw people from all over the ship helping each other into the pods and manually ejecting them. From across the room, Si Cwan saw his aid and her mother enter. He nodded to Lefler in recognition, then gently threw his sister into one of the pods. There was no argument from her. The sooner he knew she was safe, the sooner he would be willing to get to safety as well. She simply smiled mutely as her brother ejected the pod.

Robin walked up to Si Cwan.

"Now it's your turn, Ambassador," she told him.

He watched his sisters pod gliding gently away from the ship to safety. Without taking his eyes off of her, he nodded.

After ejecting Cwan's pod, Robin felt someone pull at her. It was her mother, who was now pushing her toward one of the empty pods.

"'Now it's your turn', dear."

"But mother, there are still people who—"

"Nonsense, Robin, there are plenty people on this ship, I'm sure they can manage without you."

"Then let me at least eject your pod first, mother."

Morgan smiled warmly. She didn't seem all too bothered by the whole situation, thought Robin.

Well, that may be an unfair way to put it, but she did seem significantly less scared. Robin wondered, whether her immortal mother was even in danger on an exploding ship. Would it even faze her? Would Morgan just be able to walk off something like a giant explosion? She didn't really understand how her mother's immortality worked—Morgan Primus didn't like to talk about it.

Was there indeed anything that could kill her mother?

"2 minutes to warp core overload"

The voice of the computer interrupted Lefler's thoughts. Not for the first time she noticed the jarring similarity between the voice of the ship's computer and the voice of her own mother.

"Fine," she said simply, and got into one of the escape pods.

Mark McHenry's thoughts were a 6-lane highway, as was to be expected.

How big was the ship, how many people were aboard and how long would it take them to evacuate? Exactly how fast would he Double Helix virus have had to develop, for it to take control of the ship in this way? Were there signs for its presence that McHenry had somehow failed to spot in time? Could he have spotted them if he had been less preoccupied? Presuming that the multiverse was real, was there a parallel universe out there where mullets actually looked good? How long would it take him to reach the escape pods at his current speed?

As all of these questions were being answered in his head, he raced through the ship with most of the bridge crew. The Captain and first officer were still on the bridge, to secure the data from the virus in some way, so that the incident could be thoroughly analyzed once they made it out.

McHenry knew that if the auto-ejection was non-functional, one person would have to stay on the ship as it went up in flames. He thought most people probably knew what this meant, even if many didn't realize it yet, as they were too focused on surviving at the moment.

But since McHenry had a very large capacity for considering multiple things at once, he perhaps got a head-start on mourning Captain Mackenzie Calhoun.

As he assisted the large security chief of the Excalibur in somehow fitting into the impractically human-sized escape pod, he wondered how Kebron might react to the Captain's passing. He concluded that he would be one of the people who would manage the best. Stable as rock. Or some rock-themed pun like that.

Next to him, Mark McHenry saw Burgoyne ejecting Selar and her child into space. He found that he had almost gotten over his infatuation with the Hermat soon-to-be former chief engineer of the Excalibur. He reasoned that the couple would probably be too focused on figuring out their life to miss the Captain much.

He walked over to Burgoyne and wordlessly helped hir follow Xyon and his mother into open space.

As he climbed into his own pod, he surveyed Soleta curiously, as she readied herself to eject his pod.

Her face was calm as ever. He knew the Vulcan would not cry over the death of her Captain. No, if he had her figured out right, Soleta would try to analyze the situation and make a scientific study of it. In a way, it would probably be her way of dealing with grief. Vulcans were subtle like that, they didn't have much outlet for strong emotions. If she did show herself to care at all, it would be under the guise of accumulating scientific knowledge.


1 MINUTE 11 SECONDS

In the end it came down to this: two people left on the ship, two escape pods, but only one of them would make it off. As they raced down the corridors, Shelby's mind raced as well. If there was anyone beside McHenry who was painfully aware of the Captain's ultimate fate, it was her. But she didn't want to give up that easily. She knew Calhoun would never let her eject his lifepod and let her die in his place. There was as much chance of convincing him of that as there was of making a star-ballerina out of a Brikar.
But there had to be a way he could still make it off. If he ran, could he make it to the shuttle bay? No chance. The Excalibur's computer voice was gently counting down to her own destruction. Shelby couldn't think of anything. Damn it!
She wanted to scream. She wanted to curse the computer for doing this to her, she wanted to scold it into behaving correctly, namely not blowing up.

As they entered the room with the two remaining lifepods, Shelby stopped dead in her tracks. She spun around and looked at Calhoun. What she was about to say would be useless.

"I'm not leaving."

Calhoun shook his head. "Now, Eppy. That's an order."

She was grasping at straws: "The Captain is too valuable a commodity to lose. Starfleet has too much invested in you."

She knew it was useless, but she would've given anything to die in his place. It was selfish, in a way.

"The captain goes down with his ship," he said.

Shelby laughed humorlessly. "There is no up or down in space."

And then he kissed her. Until then she hadn't know how much she needed it. She wanted to hold onto him until the end, and she wondered what it would be like to make love as the ship went up (or down). He lifted her up and she thought that at least they had this—at least they would go out together and it might even be a bit poetic that way.
Then she felt him letting go of her, she felt herself falling and before she knew it she was sitting in one of the last escape pods. She cursed his name internally, but before she could externalize the sentiment, she was distracted by the sword he had thrown into the pod with her. His sword—it was the only thing that reminded and connected him to the life he had once lived, of the man he once was and the man he had become and he clearly didn't want to take this prized possession to the death with him. Maybe he wanted it to survive as the last piece of him that would mean anything—for it to live on so that he could live on. And he entrusted her with it.
Calhoun mouthed two words, shut the door of the pod and ejected it into space.


11 SECONDS

He watched as Shelby's pod floated to a safe distance from the doomed ship and sighed.

Calhoun thought about what he had said just a few minutes ago and smiled with gallows humor.


10 SECONDS

"When I said I'd be glad to have the opportunity to die heroically," he said, to no one in particular, "I didn't think I'd get the chance quite so soon."


9 SECONDS

He looked around the room to inspect the ship one last time,


8 SECONDS

then turned his attention to the open space again.

"Computer," he said, "mute all voice warnings."

Space was beautiful in a way he didn't take the time to appreciate enough. As a young boy, who knew only the violence and terror on his own home planet, he never thought about how vast space was and how beautiful it might look from a closer view.

The lifepods of his crew floated gently between the stars of an endless universe.

They say that before you die, your life flashes in front of your eyes. Mackenzie Calhoun had been close to death enough times to know this was not true. Or if it had been true for him once, it had long stopped to be the case.
Before you die, you only think about the things you regret specifically. You know how most brains are built to remember the bad things more than the good things that happened to them? This is no different when they die. Rather than think about the good moments of the life that is about to end—and go out happy and content—the brain tends to show you all the things you messed up. It's like one last middle finger from the universe.
Despite this, Calhoun tried to focus on what he did right. He saved his crew. In the last few seconds with Shelby he had confessed his love. And as for the rest of his life, well, he had made it from a scared child to the liberator of his planet and a captain in Starfleet. What more could he want?
He wondered briefly how long he had left now. Truly, he didn't love the idea of dying now. He had committed most of his life to not dying and it was a shame to break his streak now. But at least he had no regrets, right?
Well, apart from the little things such as the death of his son, with whom he never formed a proper relationship and who he had not been able to protect and who, had he been anyone else's, might still be alive today. Additionally, he might have had a great life with Shelby to look back on, if he hadn't constantly avoided building such a relationship, instead of hooking up with Mueller when he was in pain, because it was easier.

And so, as the computer silently counted its last second, Mackenzie Calhoun remembered all the mistakes he had made in his life.

"Grozit," he said.

And outside the ship, from the many escape pods, a massive explosion of white light could be seen as the Excalibur's captain, presumably, breathed his last, regretful breath.

thetubfullofcats: young brown man with an afro wearing glittery heart shaped sun glasses and a jacket with a lot of glittery patches and the most awful and wide collar you have ever seen. he is standing in front of a microphone (bby Lister -- Red Dwarf)
TitleHome Again
Artist[personal profile] thetubfullofcats
FandomRed Dwarf


A digital painting of a man riding a giant cockroach over a mountain of green glass bottles


“Lister did something then he wouldn’t have done in any other circumstances whatsoever. He started to eat a sofa.

This seemed to go down well. There was a cacophony of whirrs, clicks and whistles, and the cockroaches circled in delight.

‘Well, it’s been absolutely wonderful,’ Lister found himself saying. 'Terrific place you’ve got here,’ he said to the mother roach. 'And you serve a wicked rotting sofa. But I really must be going.’ He nodded, threw in a few clicks and whistles for good measure, and climbed on the first roach’s back. It waddled speedily down the length of the cave, and flung itself over the mountain side. ”
Better Than Life by Grant Naylor
thetubfullofcats: A CD cover for the Big Finish audio drama The tub Full of cats. It shows two women being reflected in an astronaut's helmet and around him are a few cats (username -- Bernice Summerfield)

i am having such a hard time understanding this site. the "friend" or following system on this site is kind of hard to understand and has more cutomizable options but this also makes it harder for me to "follow" people because I don't wnat to overstep


additionally, it is sort of hard to interact with people? i don't want to annoy anyone but there is no way to "like" to let people know i like their post or anything


how do i even post this
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