The Game Show From Vulcan

Vulcan Master TM

"Is your Logic commanding? Are you a true Vulcan Master?"


‘Vulcan Master’ parodies all the standard 'Star Trek' melodramatic elements, with all the 'Wrestlmania' bombast of 'Iron Chef' and the spectacle of 'American Gladiator', even beginning in boot camp like many 'Survivor' type shows.

The Logic Probe is conceived to resemble the space battles derivative of submarine warfare, while the Warped Core must mirror the standard engineering room crisis scene and the Polemical Clinic parodies the obligatory sickbay melodrama. And then there is to be the briefing in the Away Room, a talk show set up parodying the often mocked long-windedness of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' management style, in preparation for the Away Mission, but with the bathetic lowered stakes of day to day life. This is to be followed, in turn, by The Seduction of the Irrational, a send up of the obligatory Cerci like love interest, inevitably such a threat to the hero's vaunted authority and prowess.

Possibly as a backdoor pilot on some preexisting show, the preposterous ‘Vulcan Master’ concept serves to promote an actually feasible game show concept: The Propaganda Game® an academic game as featured in the National Academic Games Tournament. As an exercise more analytical than the arbitrary rote memory of traditional quiz shows. Thus The Propaganda Game® may also appeal to an extended audience easily bored with anything so pointless than arbitrary rote memory of traditional quiz shows.



Teaser:
Beginning informal banter introducing the topic of the day, different themes for each segment, ranging from Sophistry, Scientific and Pseudo Scientific claims and political demagoguery to advertising hype and common misconceptions.

Also, see: academic marketing as part of curriculum proposals...

Meet the Mentat Acolytes, the studio contestants, each declaring their own unique devotion to prove themselves true Vulcan Masters, and giving correct straight answers to the trick questions of an abusive drill sergeant.

Even now, Mentat Acolytes are eliminated, drummed out from the core!

A character is introduced as the original creator of the show, continually ever more aghast at the bombast travesty that has been made of the original simple educational concept of The Propaganda Game®.

Opening credits rise.

Cut to:

The Logic Probe
Set on a Geodesic high tech bridge, a standard quiz show, but with the challenge of "shooting down", i.e., spotting, identifying and concisely explaining standard logical falsities from topical video and sound bytes, quotations and passages, bearing down on them on the main view screen!

The Warped Core
Like some gigantic puzzle box or transformers toy, the bridge undergoes modular reconfiguration from a circle of outward facing consoles, into a cluster of stations facing inward around a pulsing blue glowing cylinder rising from the deck.

Failed Mentat Acolytes are swallowed up, falling between the deck plates in great bursts of dry ice fog and strobe lights, into the arms of stunt coordinators costumed as deadly alien predators!

At their computer consoles clustered about the glowing and scintillating Warped Core, the remaining Mentat Acolytes must derive conclusions from major and minor premi, beginning from the sensible and straight forward, but progressively more bizarre conclusions from increasingly unusual or even dubious premi.
The Polemical Clinic "It's moot, Jim!"
More failed Mentat Acolytes are swallowed up, falling between the deck plates in great bursts of dry ice fog, as the Warped Core retracts again, replaced by a digital whiteboard table. In the Polemical Clinic, the surviving Mentat Acolytes must find and improve the weak arguments they will find there surviving only on debatable life support!

Until, suddenly, there comes an invasion of marching militarists, and the motif changes yet again, to a futuristic Fascist theme, as in the next round of elimination, the contestants are challenged to identify and counter various propaganda devices, while fending off peer pressure from cyborg leather fetishist zombies.

In particular, a theme of common lies and rationalizations of bullies will make a good tie in with a CliqueBusters TV show or movie. And as a fake-news spin-off, there can even be Vulcan Master special coverage and lightening rounds counterpointing live televised political debates and addresses.

With the next modular transformation, remaining Mentat Acolytes seat themselves the Ready Room, where they are to discuss the theme of the day and must strategize for the Away Mission before a paternally longwinded authority figure.

The Away Mission
Yet more failed Mentat Acolytes are swallowed up, falling between the deck plates in great bursts of dry ice fog, as the initial modular reconfiguration then reverses itself. Back on the bridge, the remaining Mentat Acolytes serve as the Bridge Crew, remotely feeding Socratic Dialectics, argumentative questions, to the Drop Captain, a TV viewer out in the field with a lipstick video camera who has requested help with some vexing argument that they need to win in real life.

This is where any dramatic conflict enters. From the personality and the situation of the Drop Captain, and how that motivates the Bridge Crew.

Points are to be scored not only for convincing the other party, but failing that, squeezing from them cogent explanation of their opposing position and identifying points of disagreement.

The Drop Captain must then appoint from among the Bridge Crew the Jump Captain, to face the concluding challenge. And the Jump Captain, in turn, must choose from among the reigning Vulcan Masters presented by Palas Athena, to challenge for the laurel of Vulcan Master.

The Seduction of the Irrational
The Jump Captain must then be taken to be suspended in mid air against a spectacular starscape high above the Bridge, in bondage, lashed to a set of cross bars, back to back with the reigning Vulcan Master he or she has chosen to challenge.

The Jump Captain and the Vulcan Master must give correct straight answers to loaded questions breathed into the ears of the Jump Captain, by an extremely attractive, languorous and seductively vamping Interlocutor of the appropriate gender, perhaps a celebrity guest (wearing a safety harness, if little else), perched upon and moving about the cross bars at extremely close quarters to the Jump Captain and/or the Vulcan Master.

As close to a lapdance with pole tricks and gymnastics, as Standards and Practices will allow. And in case the Jump Captain has challenged a Vulcan Master of different gender to the Jump Captain, then there must be two Interlocutors of appropriate gender for each.

The Jump Captain must either claim from his/her captor the prize, to be set free ascending to his/her place in the pantheon, at last, as the day's Vulcan Master, dethroning the reigning Vulcan Master he or she has challenged, or else fail the challenge, "kirking out", and be dragged down by the interlocutor as they are cast loose tumbling into the Cosmos, to fall into the mists (and safety net) below!

But even if the Jump Captain fails, the Vulcan Master must still defend his or her laurels as Vulcan Master, and can still fail before his or her interlocutor, to also be cast from the pantheon of the Vulcan Masters!

In such a case, the search must begin by the remaining Vulcan Masters to elect a new Vulcan Master as a replacement. A contest that will be open to the public, to nominate anyone including or oneself.

Roll closing credits. Zoom out: Watching the closing credits of ‘Vulcan Master’ in a board room, an assemblage of executives resolves to reject the preposterous ‘Vulcan Master’ and just go with The Propaganda Game®.