Old Wounds

Old Wounds is the first episode of the first season of The Valkyrie, and is therefore the premiere or "pilot" episode of the series overall. It marks the debut appearances of a large majority of the main protagonists: Jenna, Martin, Eve, Hank, Connor, Andrea, North, Arthur and Markus.

Synopsis
Commander Jenna Kaufmann is promoted to Captain and given command of the exploration ship U.S.S Valkyrie, but soon receives news that puts a damper on her good spirits: her ex-boyfriend is to be her First Officer. When the colony world they're delivering supplies to comes under attack from an enemy of the Planetary Union, though, the two have to put aside their history to work together.

Act 1/3
The episode opens with an explanation of the series' setting, after a thought on the existence of extraterrestrial life being one of the biggest questions asked by mankind: in the year 2058, the Human race made first contact with aliens - a race called the Xelayans. The latter reached out to Earth in response to the Humans managing to invent the warp drive, an engine which would allow their spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light and therefore achieve exploration and discoveries outside of the Sol System. The Xelayans, who were already war-capable, sent their leader, High Chancellor Dealdra Lezar, to meet with Earth's U.S President Gene Baxter, and in subsequent years Humanity also encountered two other warp-capable alien species, the Voldorians and then the Zolans. The four races formed an interstellar government together in 2079 called The Planetary Union, which gradually attracted more and more members over time.

Centuries later, in 2276, a young woman working for The United Interstellar Fleet Agency arrives at her apartment in New York City, hoping to spend the shore leave she's been given with her boyfriend, fellow officer Commander Martin Keates. However, she enters to find him kissing an Orion woman, causing her and the latter to hurriedly leave while Martin begs for a chance to explain himself. His girlfriend refuses and exits in a lift.

A month later, Admiral Bruce Sullivan summons the girlfriend, Commander Jenna Kaufmann, to his office at the main UIFA headquarters in San Francisco, Union Command Central. Jenna is currently the First Officer of the U.S.S Zephyr, a Flagship-class starship. Bruce, a friend of hers, tells her that a promotion to the rank of Captain has become available for her, and also with this comes command of the U.S.S Valkyrie, a "middle of the road" Exploratory-class ship. Jenna expresses her enthusiasm to accept the offer and asks to be allowed to appoint her friends, Dr. Eve Ferencz and Lieutenant-Commander Hank Anderson as her Chief Medical Officer and Second Officer respectively, during which she and Bruce recall - both cringing - a memory of an incident where Hank, having once gotten into an argument with his then-commanding officer, retaliated by drawing "a certain appendage" onto the back of the latter's chair on the bridge.

Jenna, Eve and Hank fly in a shuttle to the Valkyrie through the Earth-orbitting shipyard, noting that Jenna, who is currently twenty-five years old, is the youngest Human UIFA officer to be made a Captain in decades. The two then notice Hank is drinking a flask of whisky while simultaneously piloting the shuttle. Jenna tries to take it from him, with Hank himself protesting that he doesn't intend to drink so much of it that he becomes intoxicated, but the two are interrupted as Hank has to think fast when another shuttle comes their way while he's distracted.

In the Valkyrie 's shuttle bay, the trio meet the members of the senior officers who are currently present: Chief Engineer Lieutenant-Commander North, Chief of Security Lieutenant Andrea Kitan, Navigator Lieutenant Markus, Science Officer Lieutenant-Commander Connor, and Helmsman Lieutenant Arthur Doyle. The group then head off to their quarters, during which Eve goes to meet Connor in his and the two get acquainted amicably, after Eve reasons that they should try to get to know one another because of their jobs as the ship's main medical doctor and main scientist.

Later on, the Valkyrie departs from the shipyard on a routine mission to deliver scientific supplies to the colony planet Epsilon-Iota.

Act 2/3
On the bridge, Andrea reports an incoming message from Bruce to Jenna regarding a First Officer who has just become available, which she sends to the latter’s data pad. To the confusion of the bridge crew members present, Jenna instantly reacts to it with worry and runs off.

In the office section of her quarters, Jenna, enraged, lashes out at Bruce in a video call: the First Officer who has been assigned to the Valkyrie is Martin. Bruce tells her that he’s sympathetic for her situation but also says as her friend that she and Martin are going to have to learn to work together if she wants her position as the Captain to run smoothly. The ship continues on its way to Thurisaz Station, a Union space station on their route to Epsilon-Iota, to pick up Martin.

Upon his arrival, Martin hesitantly enters Jenna’s quarters to talk to her, greeting her pet dog Everest in the process. He tries to apologise for the incident which ended their relationship, the day when she caught him cheating on her with the Orion woman whose name is Tharela, but the conversation soon turns into an argument between the two of them, with Martin telling Jenna that she was so focused on her career and advancement in the UIFA that she was neglecting him and placing her own ambitions above the needs of her boyfriend. Martin tells Jenna that he was dreading she would shut him out and not listen to his points in this discussion, and sarcastically thanks her for proving him right before leaving.

As he walks away down the corridor outside, Martin and Eve meet each other and she, too, reunites with him. When Eve notices that Martin looks troubled, he asks her about how things are between the two of them and with Hank, as his cheating and his and Jenna's subsequent breakup damaged his friendships with these other two. Eve replies that she doesn't know where Hank currently stands with him but that she has forgiven him and wants to reinitiate their friendship, as she tried to remain neutral during the breakup so as to assign as little blame as possible. Martin, somewhat relieved, thanks Eve and the two then continue off in their separate directions.

The ship arrives at Epsilon-Iota some time later, where the director of the planet's main scientific institute, Dr. Manya Chaudri, tells Jenna and Martin when they're put through to her via a communication channel that, in actuality, they're not in need of supplies. She elaborates to the confused pair, somewhat panicked and worried, that she needed to send out a simple request for supplies so as to not attract attention and that she'll explain further if they come down to meet her on the planet's surface. Jenna and Martin leave the bridge with Connor and Andrea to beam down to Epsilon-Iota.

After a greeting, Manya leads Jenna, Martin, Andrea, Eve and Connor through the facility, passing other impressive areas of its research in the process, until they get to a particular laboratory which Manya says houses the invention that the Windermereans would want to steal. She demonstrates this invention on a banana: the Epsilon-Iota scientific institute has created a device for speeding up the passage of time on a chosen objext, to the awe of the away team. When Andrea then voices her concerns about it potentially being used as a weapon against armies, Manya fully explains why she summoned the Valkyrie to Epsilon-Iota: if the Windermere Kingdom found out about the device, they would want to seize it and then use it against the Planetary Union, and to stop this from happening, the planet needs protection against them from a Union ship. However, they're interrupted as Kyle Ashton, one of the lab technicians, pulls out a pistol and demands that the away team put down their weapons and comply with him.

Act 3/3
It's then revealed that Kyle is working for the W.B.C Terati, a Windermerean battlecruiser which has indeed come to steal the time accelerator - and whose presence Hank alerts Jenna to via her communicator. Arthur and Markus realise that they're not going to have an easy job with the mission report paperwork later.

As the Terati beams down several of its officers, Kyle, still holding everyone else in the lab at gunpoint, orders Jenna to tell Hank that the Terati comes in peace. After a momentary ruse in which she and Martin claim that the crew of this ship have come to attend a gaming party at the scientific institute, though, Andrea manages to subdue Kyle by knocking him unconscious with a nearby electrical generator part, and Martin and Jenna then tell Hank to keep the Valkyrie on red alert. Eve also discovers that, as she suspected, "Kyle" was never a Human: this entire time for the last few months, he's been a surgically-altered Windermerean sent by the Terati to Epsilon-Iota as a spy. Manya and the away team then make a run for it with the device, so as to find a place for the Valkyrie to beam them up.

Despite a shootout ensuing in the main atrium of the facility, the six eventually make it through to the outside of the facility after going through a connected supplies warehouse and are beamed up to the Valkyrie, which is in the middle of a space battle against the Terati. The latter is hailed so that Jenna can buy enough time for Arthur to restore the damaged engine power that they need to flee, during which Martin and Jenna end up getting involved in another argument, this time in public, where the Terati 's Captain, Etrem Obrexim, takes Martin's side after the nature of their break up is explained due to him being a third party, to Jenna's annoyance. However, Obrexim is growing impatient and demands that the Valkyrie hand over the time accelerator. Martin asks Andrea to put him on hold and tells Jenna and the others that he has a plan: on their way out of the facility, he took a tree seed, which he plans on accelerating the growth of with the device so that once it's handed over, the tree's rapid growth can be induced and it'll grow large enough to destroy the Terati.

Jenna, agreeing to this plan, agrees to give Obrexim the device, and after it's beamed over, Martin wishes him a "happy Arbor Day" and Manya uses the device's controller keypad to activate the time acceleration process. This reveals the ruse to Obrexim, but it's too late - the tree seed, which has been glued to the top of the device, grows in mere seconds into a giant fully-grown redwood, breaking apart the Terati from the inside and also destroying the device in the process.

The next day, Martin visits Jenna in her quarters, and after the two both comment in agreement with each other that the device's destruction was probably for the best, he tells her that other Commanders have become available, meaning that he can leave and allow her to have a different First Officer. She also thanks him for the plan that saved the ship the previous day, and the two both lament on the mistakes they made which led to the end of their relationship.

Martin apologises for cheating on her, admitting it to be a cowardly act, and she apologises for triggering that event in the first place; her ambition and career arrogance were what drove him away, to which he replies that she should rely more on others and she doesn't have to do everything all by herself or advance herself on her own. She then asks him to not leave the Valkyrie and to stay with her as her First Officer, saying that even though their romance is over, they can still be platonic friends and work together, so as to help each other better themselves. Martin accepts this offer, to which he and Jenna shake hands, sealing their reconciliation.