SD 10/28/06 - "The 2006 Halloween Special"
iPADD Message - 129.426.892.33142118986mail/FNN Main Office/New York/Terra
"Your daily news message has been received. As your main terminal is innoperative, we have sent you a condensed version the nearest space radio will send to your PADD. Please press play ...
"Welcome to the Federation News Network News Minute. By your best news network approved for viewing. Heck, it's the ONLY news network approved for viewing."
"Romulan-Gorn relations remain tense, 'Any week without an incident is a good one,' one diplomat alegedly was quoted.
"Revenues from Risian tourism continue to decline. Experts wonder if the current advertising campaign, 'Risa - twenty percent fewer tentacle monster attacks than last year,' is backfiring.
"On a sad note, the Federation Association of Culinary arts held a memorial service for Miss Mary Shelly. An Ensign in Starfleet, she was making a name for herself in gastronomical circles in her use of direct electrical current in the cooking of food. Her favorite method of electrocution involved uses of arching equipment one would find in labratory setups in 20th Century Earth fiction. Supposedly, her death occured when a pudding she was cooking for an Ensign Frank N. Stein suddenly animated and attacked her, 'Who knew pudding could be so mean?'
"Shelly was stationed on the USS Freedom, which has one of the highest rates of accidents, desertions, and Section-Eight discharges in Starfleet. Captain Payne was unavailable for contact as the ship is currently involved in wargames.
"This just in, A Ferrengi frieghter, the Latinum Princess, was just found in space with its warp drive disabled, it's cargo stolen, and it's damion kidnaped. Although individual Ferrengi have been described as saying the piracy was done by a Federation ship manned by a crew wearing pirate costumes reminiscent of a bad pirate holodeck movie and spouting cliche bucaneer quotes, a statement by the assistant damion assured that the vessel in question was neither of Starfleet design or any of the crew of Starfleet orgin, or that a quarter of the stolen goods in question were illegal contraband, or that Starfleet agreed to repair his warp drive only after they agreed to keep the 'real story' quiet.
"Although there are wargames featuring a pirate scenerio not far from where the raided Ferrengi freighter was found, Starfleet officials reminded that the border of the exercises is not close enough to regularly-traveled space lanes to be a problem and assured that traffic and continue.
"Imagine that! A Starfleet vessel turning pirate. Ridiculous."
NARRATIVE Lynx plays Mad Doctor, with Tarra being her "Igor," by trying to reconstruct a redshirt by the name of Mary Shelly out of old transporter records and the remains of her and several other crewmen & crewwomen, with electric-arching electrodes over the makeshift transporter pad and a vat of goo. Unfortunetly, as things so often do in the genere, the monster goes amok and runs off on a rampage, "NO HURT TEDDY BOMB!". Meanwhile, Lott hears about the Ferrengi prisoner's transporter accident making him look half-gerbil, and deciding to indulge on her serpintine urges, lets him out of his cell then swallows him. Pleading for his life, he offers the combination of a safe taken by the Freedom's crew in exchange for being let go.