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Many moons ago, my wife bought me a complete guide to The Simpsons (seasons one through seven, which should tell you how many moons ago that was). I read that thing to death, re-living and relishing each brilliant episode. She must have noticed how much I enjoyed it, because several years later she bought me the next two books in the series.

 

I’m one of those people who believe The Simpsons jumped the shark somewhere around the turn of the 21st Century and I was less thrilled to receive the second of those subsequent books, which to my mind did little more than showcase the program’s sad demise. I read it through once and then didn’t pick it up again until midway through 2013.

 

Around that same period, Star Trek Voyager began screening on free-to-air TV. It was the one Star Trek series with which I was totally unfamiliar. The only reason for this I can venture is that when it first debuted, I was out with friends a lot more and watching TV a lot less. At any rate, it soon became one of my favourite franchises in the Star Trek universe – the early episodes were lacklustre, no doubt, but the addition of Seven of Nine gave it the zing it was sorely missing. Like Mr Spock in the original series, Seven of Nine had conflict built into her character and by dint of that helped enrich and define the characters around her, especially The Doctor.

 

So what’s the link between The Simpsons and Star Trek, and how does it relate to ‘Test Case’? Well, that third Simpsons guide featured the episode ‘Homer vs Dignity’ and one of the quotes listed as a highlight belonged to Comic Book Guy. When Homer says he wants to buy a mint copy of Spider-Man #1, Comic Book Guy responds, “And I want an hour on the holodeck with Seven of Nine.”

 

On my first read through, the quote meant nothing to me, but upon returning to it post-Voyager I got the intended chuckle out of it. And I had to agree – what man wouldn’t want an hour on the holodeck with the impossibly proportioned Jeri Ryan?

 

I imagine the rest of the thought process that brought about ‘Test Case’ is pretty evident: What if the Comic Book Guy did spend an hour on the holodeck with Seven of Nine and she found out about it?

 

In honour of the two characters who gave me the idea, I named my two protagonists after their alter egos: Jeff Albertson (Comic Book Guy’s actual name) and Jeri Ryan. Just to ensure it wasn’t too obvious, I disguised them slightly, changing the ‘o’ to an ‘e’ in Albertson and Jeri Ryan’s surname to Taylor (Jeri Taylor was a producer on Voyager).

 

‘Test Case’ is the closest thing to ‘hard’ science fiction I have written. As both a reader and a writer I’m more of the John Wyndam ‘science fantasy’ stripe and  have little time for stories that take a ten-page break from the narrative to expound on a complex scientific concept. So while I tried to imbue the setting of ‘Test Case’ with a futuristic corporate-industrial flavour, it is at its roots a humanist tale, one that examines privacy issues in the post-digital world and satirises the frailties of the male ego.  

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'Test Case' - Perihelion SF

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