10 years ago today we joined the crew of the Dreadnaught Nemesis, not only on their journey through space and time, but also on their journey to discover emotions in the show ‘Starhyke’. I say joined, but this British show produced from 2004 through to 2008 was not picked up by any channels and so this anniversary is for the DVD release, it would make its way to British television in December 2011 and achieved a wider release on Amazon Prime in October 2017.

 

At some point in the 29th century humans moved from controlling their emotions through drugs to completely suppressing them, to the extent that by the time 3034 comes along, the death of a close colleague, someone you’ve served beside for years, is described as ‘inconvenient’. During the 30th century humans found the chaos of emotional beings to be troublesome and those that would not undertake the same conversion to remove their emotions, were considered unpredictable and therefore wiped out to preserve order. Through this process humans wiped out 1245 alien races by 3034. The Reptids realising that their race was next and that they did not have the technology to hold back the humans indefinitely devised a plan to release a nano-virus on Earth to reintroduce emotions. The first part of that plan was to detonate a ‘bridge time weapon’ aboard the Dreadnaught Nemesis, which was done, instantly giving the crew emotions which they had to then learn to cope with. The second part of the plan was to travel back to the 21st century and harvest an element rare in the 31stcentury but common in the 21st century, that would alter human’s neurological pathways on a ‘prodigy scale’. There are hints that the element was chocolate but that remains unconfirmed. The Reptids only got as far as traveling back to the 21st century (around 2008), but had not achieved the element gathering or the device building by the end of the 6 episodes.

 

19 year old Chief Engineer Sally Popyatopov designed and built a ‘white hole and black matter propulsion system’ that provided the Dreadnaught Nemesis with the ability to timeslip so they could follow the Reptids to the 21stcentury, it was during the timeslip process that the nano-virus device was set-off. The nano-virus didn’t just affect the humans aboard the ship, but infected the ships computer making it ‘almost human’ only the independent hologram program remained unaffected.

 

The ship was Captained by Belinda Blowhard, 2ndin command was Commander Willain C. Cropper, with Navigator Lieutenant Commander Dotty-Ky, weapons and security Lieutenant Commander Wu Oof with Doctor Yul Striker, Nurse Sandy Beach and Ensign Bul Ox, although we should not forget the maintenance crew Reginald Montague Duck and Vilma Maureen Down. The ship had 13 decks, A through to M, with the bridge on Deck A, although no size is mentioned on screen, based on shape and functions I would equate the ship to the size of the USS Voyager which had 15 decks. What makes sizing particularly difficult is the lack of external windows, causing the ship to appear to be smaller than it is. The bulk of the ship is within the main body, an elliptical cylinder with a stepped design on the top side, leading up to the control deck and bridge. On either side of the main cylinder are two large curved arms, which are both defensive and offensive. They are defensive in that they protect the main body from attack from a wide degree of angles. However it is within these arms that contain the main weapons, both beam weapons and torpedoes, meaning that a direct hit on the weapons themselves is designed to only destroy the arm and not the body of the ship. The arms are connected to the body at the rear, within this connected space are forward facing thrusters, to halt or reverse forward momentum. In addition to weapons the arms also emit the energy needed to enter ‘one dimension’ which allows the ship to go to quantum speed. The main engines at the rear of the ship are for sub-light travel. Critical areas of the ship such as the arms, arm connection zone and engines have their own shield emitters, which work as an energy grid moulded to the shape of the area it is protecting, to minimise the amount of energy required.

The ship has no recognisable shuttle bays or cargo holds, transport to and from the ship is done through the Molecular Transporter, more commonly referred to as the Molly Port. The ship is not designed for atmospheric landing but can survive in an atmosphere in an emergency situation, which is most likely proceeded by a crash landing, which the ship would need additional support to be recovered from.

Off screen the ship was modelled by Chris Harnwell through Lightworx media.

 

As to the show ‘to be continued’ … probably … unlikely … THE END.

“I’ll take you higher, I’ll take you on a Starhyke, so high.” What is a Starhyke anyway?