After waiting for “what seemed like centuries”, Starfleet’s flagship USS Enterprise has finally taken delivery of new state of the art i-Communicators. In a special communiqué, broadcast from the transporter room as he waited for the consignment to be beamed aboard, Captain James T Kirk thanked his crew for their patience and paid tribute to the maintenance teams who had managed to keep the old communication devices working against all the odds by salvaging parts from NBC’s dwindling supply base and hovercar boot sales.
Kirk had despaired of ever getting his hands on the new communicators. In a recent log he recorded his irritation:
“Stardate 1376.6: Still no communicators. Starfleet are blaming the latest delays on the universal recession and an unexpected cost overrun on the London to Birmingham high speed train link.”
“We captured a Klingon ship two weeks ago and a Romulan insurgent vessel yesterday. All their crews had the latest communicators, yet all we have is crappy 1966 technology. You can’t even text on our useless things; and there’s no camera or MP19 player. There is certainly no way you can visit your Spacebook page on them. I’d boldly use the captured devices if I could; but there isn’t a market stall anywhere to have them unlocked.”
But the frustrations of captain and crew were soon forgotten as they tried out their new i-Communicators. However, the general consensus that the mobiles were exceptional devices was not shared by Chief Medical Officer McCoy. “There is a major flaw with communicators loaded with the new phaser app,” he reported to First Officer Spock, “if you hit the mute button on a call, the phaser fires as if it were on the old weapon’s “stun” setting. Several of the crew have literally been knocked out by the pesky new gadgets.”
Undaunted, Captain Kirk is not letting this irregularity stop him from using the new device, but he has acknowledged that he will have to alter the standard instructions given to landing parties. The next time he beams down to a gaudy planet with a security detail, he will be issuing the order “Communicators on mute, gentlemen.”