Table of Contents
Ze Poorly-Disguised Pilot
Season: 4
Episode: 23
Written by: Zyzzyva
Air date: January 18, 2009
Trivia: Zyzzyva's second outing.
Plot
The Kapitan Steffen is docked at the Hub and the crew are grumbling that Susano keeps ensuring they don't get paid after completing their mercenary work because he always takes offence at something (see CITATION NEEDED). However, Ian has a mission for them: to ascertain whether a planet has been interfered with by the ASBs and, if so, to stop them.
They go there and find it's a Germanwank world where the German Empire is controlled by Hesse, and specifically by an alternate of Susano. Susano finds this world so appealing that he ignores the obvious evidence of ASBs and tries to back out of the mission, so Alayta mutinies and makes himself captain, locking Susano up.
Alayta leads a team to deal with the problem, which is summarily captured by the local authorities. Susano breaks free on the ship, and helped and hindered by the Steffen hologram (who has been turned into a hippie by Kabraloth's attempts to fix him) and the Cyborg Robots With Green Blood, plans to rescue them. However, he needs allies, and the only locals in a position to help are…the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth!
Susano busts them out, takes back his captain's hat, and they fulfil the mission, driving the ASBs away. However, he insists that that day never took place. The Germans get paid for once and, at the end of the episode, the Steffen hologram is finally repaired and they have a proper political argument at last.
Continuity
This episode established that it's not only the AH.commers who are being given anti-ASB missions by Ian… As the title suggests, it's a prequel or early bird pilot for the then upcoming AH.com The Next Generation series.
Reception
Space reserved for notes.
Behind the Scenes
This was an attempt at doing a 'something completely different' (yes, it's by Zyzzyva, so every second line of dialogue is the name of a trope from TV Tropes.org) by focusing on The Germans rather than the regular AH.com crew, who only appear in a brief cameo.
Easter Eggs
Space reserved for notes.