C.T. Young (whose initials don’t stand for anything) appears in the 1953 film Bright Road. C.T. is a troubled student who is singled out by Miss Richards, a new teacher who hopes to turn him around. Indeed, C.T. does not see the point of going to places like school and church, and when there he is completely unable to hide how much he doesn’t want to be there. It takes him two years to get through every grade and the old teachers have given up on him as a “backwards child”. But he isn’t a bad child. He doesn’t really associate with the other schoolchildren much, apart from his girlfriend Tanya, but he is extremely well behaved at home where he not only helps take care of the kids who are younger than him, but also uses the profits from selling his honey to do things like buy paint for the house. For Christmas, he even gives a jar of that honey, his only source of income, to his mother with a note saying it is “from the bees” and that’s pretty cute. C.T. loves other animals too. He has a dog named Come Here (who, incidentally, seems to be smart enough to warn him when he is running late for school), sings along with birds, and is fascinated by a caterpillar going into a cocoon which is a useful metaphor for his own story. Basically, C.T. is a very good child who just doesn’t fit into the usual schooling methods and that’s what Miss Richards sees in him. She recognizes that he is skilled at drawing and encourages him there. She also catches him helping another kid with math problems, proving that he may not care enough to do it for his own sake, but he’ll do it to help someone else.

But I’m not here to review good children. Lets focus on the beekeeping stuff. Of the bees he says, “Me and them, we’re sort of in business. They make a little honey, I sell it.” It doesn’t sound like he makes a lot of money, but the fact he makes any is a good start. At the film’s climax, a swarm of bees comes through the open classroom window looking for somewhere to hive. C.T. is unfazed as he stops the other students from panicking or harming the bees, grabs the queen, places her in a jar, and carries her, his hand covered in bees, to find a nice tree in the woods where they can live.

Unfortunately, that is a redemptive moment for an earlier bit of Beekeeper Rage. Granted, it takes an awful lot for C.T. to work up to that moment of anger. His girlfriend Tanya dies of pneumonia, which is understandably something one would be upset about. Then, after he returns to school, having skipped for a while, he finds classmates singing the “Three Blind Mice” song, which has always upset him for its imagery of cutting off tails of the mice (he loves animals that much). He reacts to this song by grabbing a jump-rope and swinging it around as a weapon to lash out at everyone, then gets into a fistfight with another student.

I like my beekeepers to be good fighters, and though that C.T.’s only fight is a Beekeeper Rage moment is sad, he does acquit himself well. He is also able to take several hits on the hands with a ruler from the principal without flinching. And, though he is told he must apologize, he notes that, after he saved everyone from the bees, he was forgiven without needing to apologize. Way to get a moral victory, C.T.

3 Honeycombs out of Five.

For the record, the movie is based off a short story called “See How They Run” by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, but in that story there is no mention of C.T. keeping bees, so it is not canon here.

The Circle is a small, but very densely populated galaxy (which we encountered as the home to the Dellwellians). With many, many planets making up a galaxy-wide society, there are vast shipping lanes that bring supplies between worlds. This is prime territory for criminal activity, and one crew of such criminals go by the name “The Feral Pirates”.

Murb Deel

Murb Deel is a Drutag, and Drutags are not a species native to the Circle. Back home, Murb was a test pilot who was flying a new type of spacecraft when something went wrong. Murb has no idea of the physics of what happened, but the next thing he new he was in a new galaxy and surrounded by Space Pirates. Luckily, the Drutag are a species who advance in rank by being superior in combat, and that worked with these pirates too. Murb is now in charge of a pirate ship with a crew from a bunch of species from this strange new galaxy. Though Murb is not bloodthirsty, crimes being committed to make a living are fair game. And, of course, proving the superiority of the ship in battle is a must.

In any other story of this sort, this is the role that would be occupied by a human. If it isn’t clear by now that PDR don’t necessarily play that way, I don’t know what to tell you.

Haqwad

Second in command to Murb Deel, Haqwad is the femme fatale of the crew. Skilled with martial arts and espionage tactics, Haqwad’s real skill is the art of seduction. Haqwad occasionally hints at a mysterious past in which she was an assassin, but that is just to draw suspicion away from her real mysterious past as a member of a law enforcement agency.

Henjuen B

Henjuen B is from a species that could best be described as “brain cells inside large floating devices”. Henjuen B is the pirate ship’s chief mechanic, keeping the thing running even when it is being blasted apart by enemy fire and replacement parts are just too expensive to get right now. Perhaps rightfully so, Henjuen B is a cantankerous sort and plays it up, often playfully bantering with the rest of the crew, especially Pilot.

Pilot

Pilot is not a robot, but a member of a species who used their advanced technology to upload themselves into computers. The rest of the species has suffered bad times, with a sort of computer virus corrupting their memory banks and forcing them to go into sleep mode. Pilot now works with the pirates in the hopes of finding the means to save the rest of the species, but is also not averse to having a fun time along the way.

Swobbin

Swobbin is something of a loose cannon. Nobody else on the crew is quite certain if Swobbin is typical of her species, or if even among them she would be considered crazy, but she is almost suicidally reckless and unpredictable. She’s the sort who might betray the crew for the right price, but she’ll probably then kill the payers when she loses interest. She’s the type who might try to trick the crew into going to a planet where there is supposed to be treasure, but there is actually a bunch of people she wants to beat up. They can only justify keeping her around because she is really good in a fight.

Dworreh

Dworreh is the team’s muscle. From a species who are so feared that they aren’t even allowed to leave their home sector without permission from law-enforcement agencies, Dworreh is the secret weapon that the pirates don’t advertise unless they are planning on taking no survivors. Dworreh is less concerned about keeping the secret and is more eager to get into action than the others would consider wise.

Owds People

The People of the planet Owds are ruled over by a royal family who justify their rule purely by might. Perhaps at one time they gave some justification about being divinely chosen or whatever, but if so, that is lost to history. Now, the fact they are the most powerful is reason enough. If you don’t agree, why don’t you do something about it?

The Empress of Owds was featured on a Supervillain Sunday post, which suggests she might not be such a great person. The trippy cosmic hero Astrona has taken an interest in saving this world.

The Owds People conform to most of the standard humanoid features. One difference, though, is their two mouths. While the Owds People do stand upright on their hind legs when still, they move around on all fours. Commonly, if they are moving and want to hold on to something, they will place it in their lower mouth to hold it.

Vethew Tekh is a high-ranking member of the Owds’ secret police service. Tekh’s identity is so secret that no record of his existence can be found outside of his own files and the memories of those who are allowed to know. If a citizen learns that Tekh and the secret police are there, it is already too late for that citizen. Tekh has beaten seventy-three people to death in service of the Empress, and has enjoyed it every time.

Ezbrick Doi is a scientist working for the royal government on a secret reality-warping project. The project, the translated name of which would be something close to “The Godseyes”, is a set of goggles that allow the wearer to modify anything they can see in any way they can imagine. Obviously, this is a lot of power, so only test subjects who are extremely loyal to the royal dynasty can be used to test it, lest they use the power in some way against them. It has not been easy to find subjects loyal enough to trust, and the first nine tried all died in horrific ways. Ezbrick is certain, though, that the Godseyes will be ready for the Empress before too long.

And Iswin Heheka is the average suffering citizen of Owds. Living in a port city, Iswin is employed as a ship-builder. Iswin keeps a low profile, as all Owds people do, because they are always reminded to report any suspicious behavior to the guards. In her own time, though, Iswin composes beautiful music that she does not get to share.

A Fact About Owds People: The biological waste that Owds people produce is vomitted out through their lower mouths. For the species to have existed like that for so long, it is no surprise that they take sanitation very seriously. Owds people (and all the animals on the planet closely related enough to have the same system) expel their waste daily, after which they take baths in the highly acidic ponds that are naturally abundant on their world and are useful sanitizers. It has not been unheard of for Owds people to expel waste on enemies in battle, but… it’s rude, obviously.

Universe: Green