The Nightstar Zoo

The “Steel Duck” is exploring the galaxy….

Mayberry is obsessed with seeing the “giant Space Amoeba” episode of “Star Trek” instead of allowing Sam to see where he’s steering just as Ralph mentions food, causing Sammy to stop running on his wheel. This causes the ship to crash in Junebug County, USA, Earth.

A native duck, mistakes The “Steel Duck” as one of its own kind, and starts hanging around Ralph as he repairs the ship.

Ralph begins perfecting a few of his inventions for use as get-rich-quick schemes – most notably, the Dup-o-matic, the Cerebral Swapper, the Foolproof Alarm Clock and the Automatic Mind Reader. None make any money.

Mayberry gets conked on the head and thinks he’s William Shatner. While searching for him, the Duck is made captain and Ralph discovers Roberta Smeffifeffer – a Melotian that was left on Earth by the GRAISE, who mistook her for a human being,

Ralph duplicates himself and creates Ralphie.

Ralphie creates a time machine out of a VW bug and travels back to 1966 with Mayberry. They cause “Star Trek” to be cancelled eight weeks into its initial run and strand themselves in the past. Mayberry inexplicably disappears in 1974 and Ralphie ages 30 years until he meets up with an alternate Roberta (without “Star Trek,” Mayberry and co. never come to Earth) and they fix the timeline. Refugees from an alternate dimension, Old Ralphie and Roberta II go live in the year 2180.

Mayberry sends away for a mail-order Jedi kit and gets lessons from No-Da, Yoda’s black-sheep brother.

Ralph fixes the spaceship and they blast off.

En route to Zinobop Sam is tagged, Sammy suddenly puts on 200 pounds and Roberta swaps places with a human that looks almost exactly like her (the clerical error that caused her to be left on Earth). Ralphie and Ralph, realizing that this is the work of the GRAISE, use time travel to undo the meddling and leave Elvis and the human girl in charge of the newly Christened “GRAISELAND.”

The “Steel Duck” begins running out air, so they head back to Earth and crash in the La Brea Tar pits.

The crew meet up with No-da in line for “Star Wars Episode I” and end up subletting his apartment in Los Angeles.

Roberta gets a cat. The cat and the duck become fast friends,

Ralph builds a crude Zinoboppian Cryogenic spaceship and accidentally sends Sammy 182 years into the future. He meets up with Roberta II and Old Ralphie who are now married and expecting their first child. While returning Sammy in the time machine, Roberta and Mayberry help Roberta II give birth to Gilligan Tiberius. The happy family return to the future, but leave the time machine with the crew.

Ralph has a garage sale to sell off a bunch of junk No-da was storing in their garage, only to find out too late that most of it was priceless “Star Wars” props. Among the things left over are two of the four boxes marked “J-LB8.” Ralph assembles the contents into a makeshift (and incomplete) protocol droid that can’t do anything except sing pop songs.

J-LB8 is given a synthetic skin covering and begins touring as Jalea Bates. An appearance at the 2001 Grammies alerts the “It’s Walky” crew that there are aliens in Los Angeles.

The “It’s Walky” Head Alien raises The “Steel Duck” from the La Brea Tar pits and studies it at the Bermuda Triangle. They kidnap Ralph and SEMME agents Walky, Joyce and Sal team up with Mayberry, Ralphie and Jalea to thwart the Head Alien’s plans. In the aftermath, Jalea is blown in two, and Ralph, Ralphie and Mayberry are marooned in the crippled “Steel Duck” on the top of Devil’s Tower, Wyoming.

Three months later…

Ralph has completely rebuilt The “Steel Duck” into a new, more streamlined version. They return to Hollywood for the rest of the crew, only to find that No-da has evicted them for selling his stuff. We learn the J-LB8 used to be a man and C-3PO’d has the same conversion done to him. No-da steals both droids and takes them on tour, singing in seedy Las Vegas lounges.

While searching for the rest of the crew, Mayberry and Ralphie discover the time-traveling bug and that The “Steel Duck” is missing! They travel to the future and Mayberry learns that an asteroid will hit the Earth in 2002 and that the GRAISE will enslave humanity in 2003. Ralph, Ralphie and Gil refurbish the time machine. Upon returning to 2001, they find the rest of the crew – and that Old Ralphie has restored the ship to its former, less-streamlined self.

While in line for Star Wars Episode II, Mayberry, Sammy and Ralphie buy Jalea’s robot remains from a panhandling No-da. They return to The “Steel Duck” and promptly leave her parts on Ralph’s workbench next to all of his other neglected inventions.

They blast off.

The crew encounters an asteroid on collision course with Earth. The crew overpowers Ralph in order to divert it. Ralph comes to in his lab, where Jalea and he swap bodies with the cerebral swapper and Jalea finally puts her body back together – this time with some personality! The “Steel Duck’s” turbines become fused from being overused, marooning the crew on the asteroid.

Ralph uses a little-known process called Zinoforming to make the asteroid more livable while he repairs the turbines. Mayberry accidentally gets Gilligan’s Island data mixed into the matrix and the asteroid becomes a deserted island – but not before destroying Jalea in the process. Luckily, she’s able to transfer her mind into the ship’s computer.

A native girl starts terrorizing the crew. When it’s discovered that it’s actually Jalea zinoformed into a human being, her mind is restored back into her new body and she begins learning how to be a human girl – from a bunch of aliens.

Ralph’s Mirror Universe counterpart enlists Ralph’s help to thwart the plans of Mayberry’s counterpart Rasputin – an evil dictator bent on universe domination.

Ralphie repairs the remaining turbine and fixes the Dup-o-matic so that it no longer creates opposites. An amplified beam hits Ralph, creating a “more evil version” that throws the original into a lava pit, traps Ralphie and Sam in a cave, freezes Mayberry in carbonite and fuses Jalea and Roberta together and Sammy, the duck and the cat together.

The hamster/duck/cat hybrid lays an egg. Jaberta rescues the badly-burned Ralph from the lava pit and they end up defeating Evil Ralph – but not before he builds Mecha-Sammy.

Mecha-Sammy manages to kill Sam but Roberta resuscitates him using Ralph’s coffee. Ralph steals the evil Ralph’s non-burned body and blows the head off The “Steel Duck,” making it light enough to escape the gravity of the asteroid with only a single turbine. Evil Ralph adopts the moniker “Fauntleroy,” Ralph’s middle name, which he despises.

Sam comes to and thinks he’s a human. Having never set canine paws before, Roberta’s doctoring results in Sam growing opposable thumbs. He and Jalea become friends, as each tries to come to terms with their own humanity.

The crippled “Steel Duck” stumbles upon a derelict GRAISE spaceship on its way back to Earth. The ship appears to be the same one that Elvis and Roberta’s counterpart were in command of a few years earlier! Apparently, they were responsible for the asteroid’s trajectory towards Earth. Ralph rebuilds the essential parts of The “Steel Duck” and upgrades her weapons system using GRAISE technology.

Ralphie, guilty about his role in the various time paradoxes, gets himself stranded on Earth as the rest of the crew heads back to Zinobop. When Jalea and Sam realize that he’s missing, they sabotage the instruments to return back to Earth to rescue Ralphie. In the process, they get stuck in a time loop for two years. When finally retrieved, Sam has his memory back and Jalea is a little more grounded. Roberta rescues Ralphie along with the refugee GRAISE crew, causing the “Steel Duck” to crash in New Mexico… Roswell, New Mexico.

Roswell is declared a reservation for space aliens by a corrupt politician and the entire crew goes to work in a casino. Ralph enlists the help of No-da to win everything back. The crew finally leaves Earth once and for all after Ralphie and Roberta start dating and Mayberry finally sees the giant space amoeba episode of “Star Trek.”

Ralph and Mayberry decide to duplicate Roberta in an attempt to make a girlfriend of their own (each is convinced that the opposite of Roberta will be in love with him). Because Ralphie rewired the Dup-o-matic, they instead create an exact duplicate of Roberta.

Having left the Fuse-o-matic on the asteroid, they head to Zinobop for spare parts to build a new one. When they arrive, they find the planet deserted. The Zinoboppians have moved on to their next planet.

En route to Melotia, the ship is attacked by a mystery ship, which cripples “The Steel Duck” and captures the entire crew – except for the pets and one of the Robertas. It’s revealed that Fauntleroy has joined forces with Mayberry’s mirror-universe counterpart, Rasputin, who is as obsessed with Khan as Mayberry is obsessed with Kirk. Fauntleroy, determined to get his old non-scarred body back, takes Ralph to his makeshift Cerebral Swapper. Ralph is rescued by the free Roberta and the two of them rescue the rest of the crew, resulting in the head being severed off the ship again and the offspring of Sammy and the pets (Merv) being sucked out into space.

In one last-ditch effort to get revenge, Rasputin detonates a Fuse-o-matic bomb that joins the parts of The “Steel Duck” into a Millennium Falcon-like vessel and the two Robertas back together. The rest of the crew become joined as well until Ralph and Ralph fix the teleporter to unfuse them.

Ralphie and Ralph use time travel to undo their meddling and leave Elvis and the girl swapped places with Roberta in charge of the newly Christened “GRAISELAND.”

I don't know if I made this apparent already or not, but this will be presented in comic form -- probably about 10-12 pages that has individually-linked panels. So, if there's some story that piques your interest, you can click on the panel and it'll take you to that section of the archives.

But, if you simply read the comics, then you'll have a genral idea of what went on up until that point. This is just an outline for me to use as the basis for the comic.

Steve