First of all, this is not really what I usually write. In other words, it has no real point. There’s no moral to this story. It’s not even really a cohesive story, even though it is roughly in chronological order. I suppose you could say the last part is the real story and the others are the stories leading up to that.
As I mentioned briefly in the author’s notes, I was kinda writing this to bemoan the inconvieniences of being 17 in an adult world. I mean, I was trying to get a library card and the librarian told me she technically wasn’t allowed to give me a card unless my parents drove 200 miles to look over my shoulder. Thankfully, I still got the card, but I had to wait a good year before I could sign my own consent forms. Yeah, it’s annoying.
But this story is about Star Trek, not me. This is, of course, because Star Trek is a very good movie, and I like the way they did all of the characters. I had to do a double take when they turned Chekov into a genius, though. I guess, in retrospect, it made sense. And everyone was a whole lot smarter in this movie than in the original series, as my sister remarked. They pretty much have to be; hand waving and muttering about antimatter just won’t cut it these days. (Not that any of the phony physics I use in here would cut it, either. To the average reader it might sound okay, but it would get laughed out of any of my classes. Though the supernova collapse timescale is correct. I did my homework 
)
Anyway, so those two factors combined gave rise to this story. And I quite like the first sentence, too. Speaking of which, I decided that was the best way to explain just what Chekov was doing on the Enterprise (not as a cadet, evidently, or if he was, it wasn’t clear) and as an Ensign. I’m not quite sure how Starfleet Academy works – the Wiki articles weren’t that informative – but if it’s like any other military academy, cadets should graduate as Lieutentants (but how Uhura got that title in the movie, after just being a cadet, is still a mystery to me). So I decided that the regular enlistees are the yeomen and such, and the NCO’s start at ensign. Having Chekov drop out also makes it more believable, I think. A fifteen-year-old in college is uncommon but not unheard of, but any younger (especially in a military academy) would be pretty absurd. Especially boys – they wouldn’t even know how to do their laundry, much less survive in competitive academia.
Hmmm.. other comments. Oh, yes. On the movie website, it says Chekov was the youngest cadet to win the Starfleet Academy Marathon. Obviously whoever wrote that probably doesn’t know how long a marathon is, much less what kind of people win them. He (or she) probably just took a look at the actor, said, “Oh, he’s skinny, let’s pretend he’s a distance runner!” (no offense to Yelchin if he actually is) and wrote that in the bio. HA HA HA HA HA. What rot. Even in a field of 18-23 year old cadets, you’d probably have to get under 2:30 to win. Which is pretty fast. And unless you’re Ryan Hall or Sammy Wanjiru, I don’t think you’d manage that at 17. The only reason I used that part of the bio was because I thought it might be interesting. But that was definitely a FAIL on whoever put that in in the first place.
Oh, and I’m definitely not encouraging underage drinking and whatnot. But people do tend to be kinda funny when they’re drunk. I was debating whether or not to keep the scene, but decided that I liked it enough even though it’s not like stuff I usually write. It makes up a little for the lameness of the scene before, which was pretty heavy handed. At that point I was trying to showcase different reactions to the ‘how old are you’ question and decided that, for a teenage boy, violence should be included. But I really am not to fond of that scene. I could go back and rewrite it, I suppose, but I’m lazy and this is all an experiment anyway.
And unless you want a rundown of all the physics I used in the last parts and what’s real and what isn’t, I guess that’s all I’ve got to say. Except that this is the first non-evil Russian I have written about. And I still can’t explain why I write about Russians so often. I wonder if Yelchin would make a good Yassen Gregorovich, though…. anyway….irrelevant…that’s a topic for another day.
