Voyage to the Center of the Leno!

Captain's Log: Stardate January 16, 2010.

It had been a week of upheaval in the Mediaverse. The NBC quadrant of the Broadcast Galaxy had been rocked by a bloody civil war. Little did I know that I was soon going to plunge head-first into that heart of darkness....

Oh, wait, I already parodied Heart of Darkness.... Okay, then perhaps I was going to go on a FANTASTIC VOYAGE!

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Anyway, I was on the bridge, seducing an alien chick from Pandora, when I got a call from headquarters.

"Captain Furious D!" said Admiral Exposition. "We need you for an important mission!"

"I better be really important," I said, "because they say once you go blue, nothing else will do."

"It's very important," said Admiral Exposition. "We need you to solve a mystery."

"Doesn't that belong in one of my Private Eye parodies?" I asked, "This is a sci-fi parody."

"Just get your ship to the NBC system pronto," ordered the Admiral. "And meet an informant on the fringe of the system."

"Fine," I said, "but can it wait until I finish with the lady from Pandora?"

"I guess it could wait two whole minutes."

"Very funny."

#

The NBC system was a real mess, all but a handful of Cable Channel Planets had been all but destroyed by The Zucker. The Zucker sort of resembled a doughy Death Star, with glasses, and roamed from planet to planet, bombarding it with terrible brain-farts that take once prosperous worlds, and reducing them to rubble.

The Cable Planets were able to ward off The Zucker, and avoid the Zuckerfication, but they couldn't hold out for long. No one knew exactly why the Zucker was allowed to roam free, spreading chaos and destruction, or what made it seem so indestructible. It was only a matter of time before it cast it's vaguely egg shaped shadow on those worlds, and brought them down with the others.

I had to meet my contact in the battered wreckage of canceled shows that drifted in empty space, unseen and unpromoted. I beamed myself onto a piece of wreckage and came to a door marked "Andy Barker, PI."

I rapped three times, specifically "Fuck Da Police," by NWA.

"Come in," said a weak and battered voice, and I went in.

"You're Andy?" I asked.

"Yes," answered Andy Richter sitting in a pool of his own blood. He looked like he had been put through a wringer, then a blender, and after that the digestive system of a polar bear. "I need you to find out something."

"Like why you and Conan got boned off the Tonight Show after seven months," I asked, "even though they gave Leno three years to beat Letterman?"

"I know the answer to that," said Andy. "The Zucker just decided to attack. It didn't need a reason to attack other than to show the world that it could."

"Then what do you need to know?"

"I want to know why Leno went along with this!" barked Andy. "We thought he was a friend, a fellow comedian, and there he goes and becomes the Zucker's bitch, ruining everything for everyone!"

"What do you mean?"

"First he goes along with that 10 PM idea," said Andy, "when everyone with eyes could see it becoming a black hole within seconds. Then when it doesn't work out, he goes along with Zucker and usurps Conan from the Tonight Show. It can't be greed, he's got more money than Xenu, and it can't be revenge, because the change was all Zucker's idea. So why did he do it?"

"I'll find out," I said. "So, you're hiding out here?"

"Until a ship from Fox can come pick me up," said Andy. "And I hope they bring a bottle of Febreeze, so I can get the stench of brain-fart off me."

"I'll catch you later."

#

I beamed back to my ship. There was only one way I was going to get to Leno, and that was to get to the Zucker.

I turned on my cloaking device, and crept very carefully to the massive lumbering form of the Zucker. An Ebersole probe zipped by, screaming into empty space that it was all Conan's fault, and that all should hail the great and glorious Zucker, while $200 million in burnt bills floated in its wake. I crept by the mouth of the Zucker, the crushed limbs of Pimpbot 5000, and the Masturbating Bear pointing out for just a second before being sucked into its maw, never to be seen, or used profitably again.

I scanned the head of the Zucker, and there was no sign of Jay Leno. In fact there was no sign of anything in that bulbous head, just the noxious chemical reactions that made his brain-farts so destructive.

I swung along the bulk of the Zucker, scanning for any sign of Leno's presence. Then I saw it. Leno was there, wedged deeply in the Zucker's massive mighty rectum. Well, one thing was for certain, I wasn't going to dock there. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if that's your thing, it's just not how this Space Cadet plays.

I activated my transporter, and prepared to beam in to the lower intestines. I was so close to finding Jay Leno I could smell it, or maybe that was the burritos I split with the chick from Pandora.

#

The lower intestines of the Zucker were strewn with the semi-digested wreckage of shows, both good and bad, all destroyed by the stomach acid of synergy. Good thing I wore my bio-hazard suit.

I turned a corner, and there he was, Jay Leno himself.

At least my scanner was telling me it was Jay Leno, but what crouched before me was an emaciated Gollum-like creature with puffy silver hair, and a massive chin.

"My precious," muttered the creature, clutching something close to its chest, "Jay is nothing without his precious."

"Jay Leno?" I asked.

The creature looked up. It was Jay Leno, but there wasn't much left of him.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

"I got my precious back," hissed Leno. "Leno's nothing without his precious, he doesn't exist unless he's on TV every weeknight. He needs his precious."

"Are you saying that you helped the Zucker screw Conan," I asked, "not out of greed, or revenge, but because of your deeply rooted insecurities?"

"Go away!" hissed Leno. "You want to take Leno's precious! You are like having comedians as guests! They do too well, and they'll take Leno's precious! It's Leno's he's nothing without it!"

"Can I see the precious before I go?" I asked.

"Just a glimpse," hissed Leno. "You can see Leno's precious for a glimpse because you're not funny and can't take his precious away."

Leno opened his hand for just a second, but it was long enough for me to see his "precious." It was the Tonight Show, but it had been reduced to ashes and covered in shit.

It was then, for the first time in my life, I actually felt a glimmer of pity for a multi-millionaire.

Just a glimmer.

Then I turned on my communicator and said.

"Beam me up."

Voyage to the Uncanny Valley

Captain's log, Stardate November 29th 2009...

It was an ordinary day on the bridge of the USS Furious when I got a call from Starfleet's Chief of Exposition, Admiral Tellitall.

"How can I save the Movie Galaxy today?" I asked the Admiral as I stroked my manly chin in a way that made me seem both intellectually curious, yet didn't detract from my ruggedly handsome good looks.

"This is a very important mission," replied Admiral Tellitall, "the sort of mission that only a dashingly handsome adventurer like you can pull off."

"Oh please," I said in all humility, as I scoped out my own reflection on the monitor, "you're giving me a big ego."

"I'll cut to the chase Captain Furious," said Admiral Tellitall, "one of Hollywood's top directors has lost his mind."

"That's not exactly uncommon," I replied.

"Except this director seems completely disconnected from common sense," added Tellitall.

"That too is pretty common."

"He's wasting hundreds of millions of dollars!"

"Still pretty ho-hum."

"Listen Furious," snapped Tellitall, "just get to the planet Animatia, find Robert Zemeckis and..."

"Terminate with extreme prejiduce?" I asked.

"No," answered Tellitall, "just slap some sense into him. He's barricaded himself somewhere in the jungles of Animatia, and he's saying that he should get an Oscar category for Motion Capture movies."

"That's one way to get an Oscar without making another Forrest Gump," I said.

"Just beam down and find him."

"Will do sir."

***

Animatia lay in the heart of the Movie Galaxy's Hollywood Federation, but it was still a wild and unruly frontier. Empires rose and fell on a regular basis, and competition was ruthless.

I decided to avoid the perpetual war zone that lay between Disney and Dreamworks, and beamed down in the former Realm of Independent Animated Features. All around me were the remains of the movie Delgo, reduced to nothing but bones. Something was sniffing around the bones.

"James Cameron?" I asked.

"Nothing to see here," snapped James Cameron, "I didn't rip them off. They ripped me off! Yeah, that's the ticket, it's not like both stories are from the same grab-bag of hackneyed sci-fi/fantasy cliches, we were both completely original works that have nothing in common! I have an Oscar! I have an Oscar!!"

"I don't care about that Cameron," I said, "I need to find Robert Zemeckis."

"Oh," said James Cameron. "He on the fringe of Disney territory, he's gone past Pixar, and into some dangerous territory."

"Where is he?" I demanded. "Or I swear I'm going to tell you what I really think of Avatar and completely shatter your illusions of genius!"

"All right!" pleaded Cameron. "He's lost deep in the heart of the Uncanny Valley. But you'll need a guide. Go to the mouth of the Valley and ask for a guy named Moe Capp, he'll take you to Zemeckis. He's the only person Zemeckis will deal with now."

"All right," I said, "now scram," wondering I had started talking like my character in my Private Eye parodies.

***

"Are you Moe Capp?" I asked, keeping my hand hovering above my phaser, not out of fear but simply because this guy looked like he was going to be very annoying.

"I'm the future man," replied the scrawny man with the raggedy beard and stringy hair, "Mo-Cap is the future. Soon man, we're not going to need actors, sets, cameras, or anything man. All we're going to need is a computer full of motions that we captured!"

"I need you to take me to Robert Zemeckis," I commanded.

"He sees the future man," continued Moe Capp, "he know that the revolution will be digitized!"

"Can you take me or not?" I said cramming my phaser into his face.

"All right dude," said Moe Capp. "But when it's gone, he's gone, there's going to be nothing left but motions, and they'll all be captured!"

"Let's go," I said, dragging him out of his hut, and together we plunged into the depths of the Uncanny Valley.

***

The trip down the river into the Uncanny Valley was pretty uneventful, sure the boat's crew had all been killed, but since they weren't the star, namely me, they really didn't matter.

"Here we are!" hooted Moe Capp as he danced in glee at the prow of the boat.

Before me was a massive temple built in the shape of a hard-drive, but that wasn't what shocked me.

"I see you noticed that it's made out of heads," said Moe Capp, "well he needed those heads man. To capture their motions man."

The temple was made out of head, their faces covered in little tiny dots to measure and record their movements.

"Wait here," I said, setting my phaser to maximum pimp-slap, and stepping off the boat, "I'm going in."

***

"Who are you?" asked a voice from the shadows.

"I'm Captain Furious of the Federation," I said.

"You're an errand boy," croaked the figure in the shadows, "send by snack bar clerks to butter the popcorn."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Quiet," roared as he stood up in the light and I could see that it was Bob Zemeckis, wearing a tropical print mu-mu and his eyes drunk on the potential of technology. "I have another motion capture movie to make. This time I'm going to do a remake of Singing In The Rain, completely digitally."

"Dude," I said, "I'm here to snap you out of your madness!"

"I'm not mad!" snapped Zemeckis, "I'm ahead of my time!"

"No you're mad," I said, "your movies make less money each time, and get worse reviews each time. You're not improving, and that's a creative dead end."

"It's not a dead end," replied Zemeckis, "I just need finer rendering of the pores in Scrooge's skin."

"It doesn't matter how well rendered they are," I said, "they still look like corpses being pulled around on strings. They don't thrill audiences, they make them think of death."

"Go away!" barked Zemeckis. "I'm taking cinema on the next step in evolution!"

"I'm sorry I have to do this," I said as I aimed my phaser, and hit him with a full power shot. Zemeckis flipped over his throne and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. It was a heavy dose of common sense, but any less wouldn't have had any affect at all.

"Captain to the USS Furious," I said into my communicator, "two to beam up. It's time to leave the Uncanny Valley and return to the real world."

THE END

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CLUSTER FLUX

Captain's Log, Stardate September 18th, 2009.

My ship the USS Furious had just left my usual shtick of parodying old detective novels and started doing something in the vein of science fiction when I got two important messages from my communications officer Lt. Youtuba. First was to wake up, and the second was that I had a call coming in from Starflick Command.

"Come in Furious D," said Admiral Tellitall, chief of the Exposition Department of Starflick Command.

"Captain Furious D here," I said jutting forward my strong chin, and puffing out my mighty chest, so my loyal crew could bask in my raw sex appeal. "How can I save the galaxy today?"

"The USS Weinsteinco is currently in a state of flux," said Admiral Tellitall, "films are getting shuffled, delayed and disappearing altogether. We need you to bring your blend of sheer genius, incredible sexiness, awe inspiring manliness, and simple modesty to the Minimajor System and find out what flux is going on there."

"I'm on it," I said, my deep voice matching my rugged good looks. I then turned to my ship's navigator, "Mr. Hulu, the MiniMajor System, maximum warp."

"We're on our way you fat bastard," said Mr. Hulu.

"What?" I asked, wondering how I could be narrating the story, yet still missing things that I'm writing about.

"I said 'We're on our way much faster,'" said Mr. Hulu.

"Very good Mr. Hulu," I said in a patronizing and condescending way. "Mr. Spec-Script, as my chief science officer I will need all sensors running."

"Well d'uh," said Mr. Spec.

"What?"

"I said 'Well done,'" replied Mr. Spec.

"Yes," I said, "everything I do really is well done." I then turned to the nearest mirror to bask in just how wonderful I really am.

#

The MiniMajor System lay where the main-stream of the Indie Quadrant met the fringe of the Hollywood Quadrant. It was tricky territory, dotted with the wreckage of many a rebel ship. The USS Vestron, the USS Carolco, the USS Polygramfilmedentertainment and dozens of others, drifted in this part of movie-space, their libraries and assets stripped by bigger ships once their engines died.

"I see the USS Weinsteinco," said Ensign Jakov, annoyed at having only one line and not being able to say anything snarky under my nose.

"I am detecting an incredible amount of flux," said Mr. Spec.

"Put it on the main viewer," I commanded, and got a bitching hi-def picture of the USS Weinsteinco. "Wow, that really is fluxed up." I had never seen anything quite like this before, the ship was badly damaged, and drifting. The ship's hull was dotted with big holes, employees were spewing out of every orifice, cast into the outer darkness of movie-space, and films were drifting, their release dates getting farther and farther away. "Great Zanuck's Ghost," I exclaimed, "that company looks really fluxed up."

"What do you want to do Captain?" asked Mr. Spec.

"Tell Spotty to get the transporter warmed up," I said, "you, me, and Dr. McGoy are going to beam over there to investigate."

#

After a few special effects I Mr. Spec, and Dr. McGoy, were in the ship's main reception area. The ship was swaying beneath our feet, and an Englishman dressed like an extra from Mad Men was sitting in a seat reading a copy of Variety.

"Hello," said the Englishman, "are you a new film acquisition?"

"No," we said, "we're from Starflick command to save the day."

"Oh," said the Englishman, "I'm A Single Man and I've just joined the crew heeeeeeereeeee."

In an instant the Englishman was gone, vanished, kaput, leaving a trail of festival awards and Oscar consideration ads.

Spec whipped out his tricorder and started scanning the area.

"He been fluxed away," said Mr. Spec.

"He's dead Jim," said McGoy.

"Whose Jim?" I asked, "and whose dead?"

"Listen," growled McGoy, "I'm a doctor Furious, I don't do script continuity."

"Let's just find out what's going on," I said, "and we can find the answers at the bridge."

We stormed our way to the bridge of the USS Weinsteinco, dodging clouds of pink slips, and hearing the wails of lost and forgotten films. Then we reached the tastefully appointed bridge of the ship.

"If anyone knows what's going on on any ship," I said, "it's the captain."

"Like you know so much," said McGoy.

"What?" I asked.

"I said 'Mike do blow too much,'" replied McGoy, then he grumbled, "fuck it, I'm no good at this game, you're a dumb-ass."

I opened the door and went into the bridge, and was shocked. Then I took my finger out of the light socket, and saw something incredible.

It was a black hole in the centre of the bridge, it was sucking away all of the films into oblivion.

"What is it?" I asked Mr. Spec.

"It's a collapsed star," said Mr. Spec. "It burned brightly for a while in the 1990s, but it started spitting out money to suck in Oscars. The Oscars caused an increase in the ego density of the star, and then it collapsed in on itself, and started sucking in the company with it."

"Well," I said, "there's nothing I can do to save this company, but at least I solved the mystery."

"Don't you mean I solved the mystery," said Mr. Spec.

"Never question the star," I snapped, remembering that I didn't have to put up with this when I was doing solo detective parodies. "Let's go. Beam me up Spotty!!"