#I feel like this could be a series of one shots just like the NatM AU

[ailendolin]

I have been watching ST Prodigy and can't get this idea for a BBC Ghosts Star Trek AU out of my head where the ghosts are holograms on an old, rundown ship Alison and Mike find drifting in space.

More thoughts on that under the cut:

the ship is an old training vessel for cadets that has been damaged in a battle and abandoned a long time ago

the holograms all represent different departments within the Federation: the Captain represents security, Fanny science, Thomas linguistics, Pat diplomacy, Julian command (though everyone secretly agrees that Fanny is more suited for the job), Robin tactics, Humphrey operations, Kitty morale, Annie flight control, Mary medicine and the Plague Ghosts engineering

some of the holograms have glitches, most obvious in Humphrey who's sometimes just a floating head without a body and sometimes just a body without a head (and sometimes both in different places at once) and Mary who panics every time she has to treat phaser burns, insisting she can smell them

none of them can interact with the physical world outside of their respective stations though Julian keeps on trying to

Thomas's programming got messed up when Cadet Francis Button thought it would be fun to put him in a holodeck scenario he couldn't win - his own Kobayashi Maru, so to speak - and see how long it would take him to break. None of the other holograms know how often he died in the duel scenario Francis programmed before the Captain put an end to it but they know it irreversibly changed him and made him unfit for combat situations

the former crew also messed with the original engineering hologram. Someone wasn't happy with it being a woman (Jean), so they duplicated and changed her. Unsatisfied with the attitude of the male counterpart they created (Walter), they made another one and then another one until the engine room was filled with a dozen holograms carrying a piece of the knowledge of the original that couldn't be pieced back together into one single hologram

Robin's speech programming was rough from the beginning on. He was one of the first hologram ever, a prototype, and got damaged during an attempted hostile takeover. The engineers did their best to help him but their own glitchy programming prevented them from accessing his code so Robin has been left struggling to communicate

Alison and Mike aren't too happy about sharing their ship with a bunch of weird holograms at first, especially when they realise the ship doesn't allow them to deactivate them

(finding the hologram of a little girl that isn't listed anywhere in the logs hiding in the vents around the holodeck and singing creepily to herself doesn't really help)

over time the holograms grow on them, though. They help them restore power and get the ship maneuverable again, make sure Alison and Mike know what they're doing and teach them all they know about the Federation and operation of a Starfleet vessel

with Alison and Mike's help, the holograms grow beyond their programming. Robin's speech improves, Humphrey's head and body are seen together more often, the Captain relaxes a little about possible intruders ...

eventually, Alison and Mike build them their own portable transmitters that allow the holograms to go wherever they please, both on and off the ship

Pat, realising they can now touch things, suggests they teach each other their respective tools of the trade. Mary learns how to fly, Robin spends hours in the lab with Fanny learning about the stars, the engineers are keen on learning about history and languages, Humphrey manages to coax Jemima out of the vents and so on

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I just really, really like the idea of the ghosts as holograms that evolve past their programming and become part of the world around them again because two chaotic humans happened upon their ship in the middle of nowhere and decided to give them a chance.

[mobius-m-mobius]

Bottle Rocket anon reporting in 🫡

First off I very much appreciate your note about Bob’s big brother in fact being Owen’s big brother—I did think Future Man had a curiously outsized role in the behind the scenes. Granted, that behind the scenes’ whole vibe was ‘we emailed everyone involved, professionally shot three who turned up, and stuck in the self-filmed rambles mailed in by a smattering of others’, so I sort thought maybe his screen time was a matter of ‘well, he did in fact show up’—although itbf his being Owen’s brother doesn’t strictly discount that theory 😆 (Also my other favorite bit of that video was the very opening clip where Wes is talking about how people tend to respond strongly to his films, whether positively or negatively, and the cameraman goes, ‘well, that tells you something!’ and Wes replies with such earnest befuddlement, and a tinge of hope like this cameraman just might reveal the secret of it all to him: “Yes, but what?”

I haven’t properly sat down for another film yet, but I’ve been putting on the Night at the Museum films in the background. I have seen them before when I was pretty young—in fact it’s about the only thing I’d seen Owen Wilson in for more than a cameo pre-Loki. Between having watched the NatM movies at an age when I only vaguely distinguished between actors and characters, and the association being reinforced by Owen’s habitual cowboy hat, for a long time Owen Wilson and that excitable little man were basically synonymous in my mind.

So going back to it now was, silly though it may be, the first time I watched it going ‘oh hey—that actor right there is acting! :D’ And sure it’s no Mobius or Dignan for complexity, but it’s good acting, too! Genuinely I think it’s one of the best performances in the series when it comes to capturing the sort of cartoon-y tone of all the museum-pieces while also giving the feeling that that’s a whole person right there. And he also, once again, a completely different physicality to Mobius or Dignan. I adore the choice to play his physicality in such a way that it sometimes feels like his body just isn’t big enough to contain or express the size of his emotions.

I also didn’t realize I’d never watched the third film until I started it, which was a nice surprise. And I knew about the whole handholding bit with Jedediah and Octavius, but not the context. It has such clearly defined beats of: Oct: “We should hold hands.” Jed: “For what reason 👀” Oct: "No reason! Unrelated, I am in fact gay.” Jed: “Hell yeah, hand holding time.” (With an added dash of sweetness in that it’s become a well-defined character trait that Jed is ready to deploy his dying speech at any time, but once it’s been established as on the table he goes, ‘I’d rather just be close to you, actually). Anyway, to me at any rate it plays as ‘close to canon as we could get away with in a big budget 2014 kids movie’, and I do appreciate it.

Hi again Bottle Rocket anon, always a pleasure!! 😊🚀💖

Oh I'm positive you're right about Andrew getting such a big role in the bts documentary just because he showed up regardless of being Owen's brother lmao, but they did luck out considering of everyone involved from an acting perspective he was the most likely one to actually give them decent talking points regarding the process leading up to filming, set vibes, and more insight on Owen and Wes than Owen and Wes themselves actually wanted to 😂

Definitely feel you too about not finding time to sit for another movie as I'm just the same and when I do manage enough free time to start one it's still not even enough to finish in a single sitting 😅 You're not the first who's mentioned NatM being the main association with Owen pre-Loki which is completely understandable, I hadn't seen any of the movies until after Loki S1 and would've been way happier having grown up with an excitable mini cowboy at the forefront of my mind, lol.

Love that you brought up his physicality and setting the vibe because one major thing that's constantly delighted me about Owen is how he naturally adjusts to not only the tone of a film but the other actors in a scene better than anyone I've seen before and I think people really underestimate how valuable that is?? It's easy to think "oh well that's just what acting is" but actually pulling it off across such a huge range of genres the way that he does is really rare and like you mentioned in NatM it's extremely noticeable that he makes Jed feel real in a very exaggerated premise which also stands out massively in his cameos where I always find myself wishing whatever movie took place during the ten minutes he showed up in is the full movie I was actually watching because he's such a breath of fresh air.

Also constantly get caught up in the way he carries himself because that's such a huge element to the personality of his characters! In comparison to how Dignan approaches people in a unexpectedly blunt way that leaves them wanting more and Mobius intrigues in such a genuine manner that catches everyone off guard, for all Jed's teasing he's direct enough that Octavius knows where he stands but not so much so that there isn't room for the big dramatic moments they both enjoy before settling right back at his side. It's not only nice to see they did get as close to canon as likely was possible in such a big budget kids movie but that we all at least have a lasting ship of Owen's with a happy ending to console ourselves with after the Loki finale! Small victories and all that, haha