Clarke makes an excellent point, so I'm cheerfully going to avoid comparing my first fiver, "One," to my subsequent parodies, except to note that it's still among the shortest fivers I've ever written. In those days, keeping things a brief as possible was a top priority; since then, trying not to repeat myself has gradually become more important, and my fivers have been getting longer as a result. I estimate that if the present rate of expansion is left unchecked, the final Next Generation fiver I write will be three times longer than the script of the original television episode.

"One" dates back to the summer of 2001. I had just discovered Zeke's site, which at the time contained only Voyager fivers; these were lots of fun to read. I was intrigued to see that guest submissions were welcome, so I decided to give it a shot. The site's leading guest contributor, J.D. Curran, had already parodied a total of five episodes; this was clearly an insurmountable lead, and most of the Voyager episodes not yet done had already been reserved, so I figured that my involvement with 5MV probably wouldn't last much beyond the summer holidays.

Of the episodes which Zeke told me were still unclaimed, "One" was easily my first choice because there were several things I liked about it. It was a story I enjoyed. It was one of the episodes for which the entire script was available in the Star Trek Scriptbooks collection, which would be a helpful supplement to my videotape of the show. It focused on Seven and the Doctor, Voyager's two "outsiders" -- the type of character used by every Star Trek series to explore the question of what it means to be human. An added attraction about the Doctor was that I could relate to his dry, sarcastic sense of humour, which is very much like my own. An added attraction about Seven was that, earlier in the fourth season, she had made quite a striking entrance with her "dermoplastic garment" -- technobabble for the silver spandex catsuit which was notorious for cutting off the blood circulation in Jeri Ryan's carotid artery and for increasing it in certain segments of the viewership. Seven had shed (by which I mean "replaced") her silver outfit by time "One" aired, but first impressions are hard to overcome.

Prior to starting work on the episode, I re-read all of Zeke's fivers and extracted all the paragraphs I found funniest. I then looked at these extracts in greater detail to see how the jokes worked and to figure out exactly why I liked them so much, so that I could use them as a starting point for my first fiver. It's no coincidence, therefore, that its style resembles some elements found in Zeke's fivers -- specifically, those elements which fit best with the way my own sense of humour works. (Further exegesis on this subject can be found in the "Canada Dry" section of my FAQ.)

Voyager had just completed its final season when I started writing "One." An advantage of this late date was that I was able to use referential gags that would not have been possible if I'd fived the episode at the time its original broadcast. These include the joke about teaming up Seven and the Doctor with Naomi Wildman, and the "Fun will now commence" quote. And speaking of allusions, I was amused when one of my favourite jokes in the "One" fiver ended up being quoted verbatim in Zeke's parody of "Doctor's Orders," an Enterprise episode which is a virtual clone of "One." For marketing reasons, I won't say which joke I'm talking about; feel free to read (or re-read) both fivers for yourself if you'd like to find it.

As a last comment on "One," I'd like to mention that the concluding joke about Tom trying to get into B'Elanna's statis chamber had an unintended side-effect. It made a very favourable impression with a community which, like 5MV, I had discovered in the summer of 2001: the distinguished folks at Deltachat, the site where Zeke's fivers first appeared. There are a goodly number of P/T shippers at DC, and I'm told that one of them freaked out when Zeke gave her a preview of the concluding paragraph. I had no idea at the time that the Paris/Torres relationship was so popular at DC, and it took a while before anyone at DC realized that their newbie was the same Marc who'd started contributing fivers to Zeke's site. I still have a copy of the hilarious "That was you???" message which one of the members posted when the connection was finally made. (In the interests of full disclosure, I hasten to add that I'm the one who made the connection for them, but I'm pretty sure that someone else would have noticed it anyway. Eventually.)

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