Poor Bastard by Ryker Piccard - Short, Thriller - The poor bastard is stuck on the other side. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Poor bastard - perfect title. Very cool setting and conflict. Easily visualized for any Star Trek fan. I like that the guy in the cafeteria hadn't been assimilated and the Captain hears him getting torn apart. Nice touch.

No real complaints - good work, writer.

Decent SciFi, can't work out if we can see the Captain or not, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Liked the twist, didn't expect it, good job.

I thought this worked well. Nice turn at the end.

It turned a little comedic for me in the middle. "What if I just stick my head in?" So, that was just a bit of a tone shift that could be either expanded or cleaned up, depending on what feel you're going for.

Overall, good job.

Good title.

Neat idea. Alien monsters that take on human form never gets old and the comeuppance at the end made it different enough. I would have Rikard be a bit more furious and desperate at it goes along instead of resigned to his fate, but that's just me. Solid effort overall.

I like it.  Another good entry.

I've no complaints.  Nice and easy to read.  Ticks all the sci-fi boxes.

Good job overall.

Nice morality tale. What goes around comes around. Might be a bit too visual for some but a good entry.
Well done.

Hi writer,

Yeah, if it’s that alien from John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’, then I’d wanna be shot in the head too… poor bastard. The Captain receiving the same retribution as Rikard is a strange twist of fate, he probably didn’t see that coming.

Works well for the challenge, lots of sound effects, but way easier to create as an audio file than a visual. Well done, best of luck.

I quite enjoyed this little morality tale in space.  I thought the arc was perfect - a man condemning someone to death for the sake of duty soons suffers the same fate.

Writing was top-notch - Excellent work

Not a bad little Sci-fi story.

Karma for the Captain.

The set up was great and the ending worked perfectly.

Great job on entering

Hi writer,

You aren't fading in and out of anything. It's a visual transition, here we have no visuals.

Decent script, the ending felt a bit rushed, what can you do, it's 4 pages.

Quality writing on display and a good setting for a much-used theme.

I didn't like the title, I think you can come up with something better IMO. It just doesn't fit with the tone on the script.

All the best.

Nice little sci-fi that fits the parameters.

I thought at the end it was going to be revealed that the Captain had been assimilated.

I think the dialogue needs a bit of work, but overall a very solid entry.

Hi Writer

Yeah, I liked this. Good sci-fi space fare.

Not much to add other than we could have had a bit of a reaction from the Captain at the end, bring it full circle, have him plead "I have a wife and kids!"

A morality tale that isn't actually straight forward for me, Captain did the right thing logically by not letting him in and endangering the rest of the crew, morally? who knows.
He decided to stay and be with his crewmate, and was paid back by also being abandoned - so not really a comeuppance sort of deal in my book - but a good moral tale.

Best of luck

Interesting twist and turn there at the end.  The writing was well done and the parameters of the challenge were met in my opinion.  You kind of floated with it being a morality sci-fi drama and then sort of a comedic bit there in the middle.  Probably don't want to straddle the fence here -- stick with one genre and run with it.

Overall a good effort.  Best of luck with it.
Gary

Good job... Easy to understand, entertaining, well-paced, and with a satisfying end (to the Captain).

Touching on what others have said -- that it turned comedic in the middle -- well, I for one liked that. Because I read this as sci-fi comedy, not sci-fi horror.  

And that line: 'in the heavens as it is heaven', was classic!

Cheers!

I really enjoyed it. I just wish we went a bit deeper about them, learned these two in person.

But good story, all on the page, well told.

I really liked this one. Creative and horrific. I do wish we would have gotten more of a reaction from the Captain at the end. Definitely meets the challenge. Writing is great, no complaints there. This is a good one. :)

The action and dialog were good, but I think what’s missing is a stated reason for the existence of the thing in the space ship. Was it an experiment gone bad, or did it come from out “there?”

Insert usual disclaimer here, not a pro, just an interested reader.

I'm a sucker for “space" movies —

I read this a couple of times to form an opinion. I thought that was very serviceable for a Sci-Fi, it works good as an audio here, you painted the picture well enough.

I’m known for not having a sense of humor, but the ending did elicit a chuckle.


All the best.

Ghost

Neat idea, good job with the descriptions. The tone was a little wobbly. It could have been a dark comedy and flirted with that in the middle with the whole stick-my-head through bit, and that would have been great. As it is, the ending seemed to light and fluffy instead of grim. I still like it, the captain expects to be obeyed and that's turned on its head like a mirror being held up. Which is a missed opportunity, I felt, to echo the captain's own words about the entity mimicking speech.

Good entry, just not effective enough for me.

Writer,

Kind of on the fence with this one. I liked it, but it didn't grab me tight. Actually, the truth is, there was another script in this challenge that had a similar premise -- same type of reveal -- that was just better, IMO. So, as this was a decent story, it gets a decent mark. Good work.

Steve