Prisoners (television story)

  This article is from an Out-of-Canon perspective 

Prisoners was the fifth episode of the twelfth season of Station Zero. As originally planned, it would have featured the death of Vanessa Sharpe.

Summary
The cargo hauler Gethes drifts near to Station Zero and is pulled in via TracWeb when it becomes obvious that something is wrong. An investigative crew finds all aboard dead under violent circumstances, and when an illness that was harboured aboard the ship begins to spread, it could spell the end for much of the station's crew.

Plot
Tracking crew from one of the outlying pods of Station Zero picks up electrical signals from a drifting ship. They ascertain that it is the cargo hauler Gethes, long overdue to land at a nearby colony on a moon of Lustros. When the crew of the ship fails to answer hailing frequencies, Commander Sharpe orders deployment of the TracWeb, which pulls the ship into Station Zero for investigation.

A small crew, led by Lieutenant Malda Craig, boards the Gethes to investigate while preliminary scans are ongoing. They find the entire crew, as well as a small group of passengers who had hitched a ride, dead. All appear to have been killed in violent and brutal ways. Just as Lieutenant Craig prepares to make a report, a call comes through from the medical technicians that everyone must evacuate the ship and the bay in which it is docked. Scans indicate the presence of the virus which causes Illion fever, a usually non-fatal but still dangerous disease.

Vanessa Sharpe relays news of the disease to her brother in the command centre; he orders her to her quarters so that she will not risk exposure to the illness, then goes to meet with Chief Medical Officer Keltor Pitt. Pitt informs the commander that while sufferers of Illion do not generally die directly of the illness, they often suffer severe delusions while under the effects of the fever. This can lead them to lash out, harming themselves and others. Commander Sharpe orders the crew who entered the Gethes to be quarantined. He then orders the communications team to send for the remote navigational codes of the ship so that it can be sent out to pilot itself into the nearest sun, as per Imperium regulations.

Characters

 * Lieutenant Malda Craig has served on Station Zero since "Commander Richardson's wife died," placing her arrival sometime during or just after the events of TV: Catachresis.
 * Vanessa Sharpe is nearly 17 years old as of these events.
 * Jordan Richardson is conspicuously absent for the one and only time during the character's run.  He's said to be off on an educational trip with Sub-Officiant Keller.  This was necessitated by actor John Peeves having taken ill with flu.

Government

 * The Imperium apparently has a protocol requiring disease-contaminated ships to be piloted remotely into the sun nearest their point of recovery.

Locations

 * Commander Sharpe orders Vanessa to her quarters; Coriola later visits her there.  Two episodes afterward, in TV: Overclock, Vanessa visits Coriola in what is apparently her room, yet which is obviously the same set barely redressed.  This stemmed from confusion when writers failed to differentiate between the two areas in scripts and the cheapness of simply reusing the same set without always taking care to disguise it.  The incidents later led to the infamous fan joke that Vanessa and Coriola obviously shared quarters (later confirmed in the expanded universe.)