After the best part of a month away, I finally made it back on board the ship.

I was the only survivor.

When the storm first hit, there was a general sense of camaradarie as we all huddled together and played campfire games to keep our spirits up. However, the mood turned sour after a few days.

The storm blew itself out, but the instruments said that we could not transport due to excessive irons in the atmosphere.

I suggested to the crew that maybe we could reduce the amount of irons by fashioning a board out of some dead trees, then using my torn shirt as bait. That way, there would be less irons in the sky to crease up our signals if they were all busy ironing my shirt.

They just looked at me.

I wished some of my senior officers were present to assist in explaining this radical idea to these naive young cadets. The concept was too much for their fragile young minds, so they just went back to playing with their tricorders.

2 days passed.

By now, all the batteries in the equipment were dead so we could no longer monitor the number of irons in the air. Even my Gameboy was no longer functioning. That high score on Tetris shall forever elude me.

3 weeks passed.

There was barely enough food and water to keep us alive. Eventually all the expendable crew members perished because the Starfleet Handbook indicates that all food supplies must be given to the senior officers of any away team.

Well, it does now.

There was some protest at the time as the handbook we had on the planet was old and hard to read. Some people claimed that this wording wasn't there, some people claimed I was hoarding and some were hallucinating etc.

Anyway, that's beside the point.

Once they had all passed on -some peacefully, some not so - I arranged the uneaten bodies into a rudimentary SOS sign. An immeasurable time passed before I fainted, tired from all the jumping and waving.

I woke in sick bay to find Spock red faced and gushing apologies.

Sulu had apparently struck a deal to make a lucrative TV show with a Ferengi whilst drunk. The premise was this; An away team would be stranded on a planet, then as we tore each other apart in the name of survival, we would be watched in record numbers by millions of Ferengi who would bet increasing amounts on the eventual survivor. The Ferengi had offered Sulu a 30% cut if he would participate in the ruse.

Spock told me that Sulu had been fiddling the sensor logs to hide our whereabouts. He had also switched the Energizers in our equipment for supermarket own brand batteries, which further crippled our already heavily disabled chances of escape.

I ordered him to get me Sulu

When he arrived I ordered Sulu to demand a higher cut of the profits from his contact, otherwise I would blast the Ferengi homeworld to smithereens and blame the whole affair on him.
Spock's mouth hung open and he jabbered something about 'a massive breach of conduct'. I told him that he could object to my orders if he fancied being courtmartialled for losing his Captain for three weeks.

I also asked for some batteries for my Gameboy.