"May Fortune guide your journey."
Castle and Beckett investigate a murder at a sci-fi convention.The episode revolves around a fan event organized by a former cast member and a devoted fan of Nebula 9, a Space Opera TV series cancelled after twelve episodes. The fan was murdered with a Frickin' Laser Beam.
The episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes, who also cameos in The Teaser.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Castle is upset that he's dragged into a murder involving a tv show that only had 12 episodes and wasn't even a Joss Whedon show.
- The Alibi: Gabriel alibis out for the murder when he fesses up that he was at the doctor getting treated for an STD at the time, which he caught sleeping with Nebula 9 cosplayers.
- Brain Bleach: Castle is desperate to know how he'll erase Alexis's Cosplay from his mind.
- Breather Episode: A light-hearted Shout-Out to Star Trek coming on the heels of the 3XK nightmare that preceded it.
- Broken Pedestal: Zig-Zagged. Upon first interviewing Stephanie Frye, the actor who played Lieutenant Chloe on Nebula 9, Beckett is obviously a little hurt when Frye refers to the show as an Old Shame. However, after Frye turns out to be the killer Beckett explains she idolized the character, not the actress. She also has to come to terms with the fact that Gabriel Winters, Captain Max from Nebula 9, is a womanizer and heavy drinker, though he does redeem himself somewhat by going from Distressed Dude to freeing himself and flipping Stephanie Frye with an impressive judo throw.
- The Cameo:
- Armin Shimerman (Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) plays the garage inventor who supplied the working laser pistol used in the murder.
- William Shatner's Ideal Woman plays during the last scene.
- Cosplay: It being a con, naturally there's a hell of a lot of extras in cosplay, and Castle briefly takes umbrage when Alexis and some female friends turn up cosplaying as some sort of Fur Bikini-clad Amazon Brigade. Oh, and Beckett used to cosplay as Lieutenant Chloe from Nebula 9 when she was at Stanford.
- Creator Cameo: Jonathan Frakes turns up in The Teaser getting a copy of the Derrick Storm comic book Storm Season autographed by Castle.
- Embarrassing Alibi: Gabriel Winter becomes a suspect when it's found out that Annabelle was threatening to fire him after he was caught having a threesome with two Lt. Chloe cosplayers. His alibi, however, is that he was being treated by a doctor for an STD, which he got from... well, doing things just like that.
- Fan Convention: The con is New York-big and apparently cross-genre, since Castle's pulp Police Procedural fiction coexists peaceably with fantasy and Space Opera IPs.
- Fanon Discontinuity: In-Universe, the Nebula 9 continuation webisodes made by Annabelle (the Oracle on the original show) and two of her friends are regarded as a desecration of the property by a Vocal Minority in the fanbase. They even sent death threats, which Beckett's team briefly investigated before pronouncing them Red Herrings.
- Fan Disservice: Castle spends most of the episode trying to get Beckett to dress up for him in her old Lieutenant Chloe cosplay outfit. She finally gives in at the denouement (first extracting from him a promise to watch a Nebula 9 marathon with her), only to turn up wearing the costume topped with a Creaver mask, at which point Castle runs and hides.
- Fanservice:
- 18-year-old Alexis in a midriff-baring Fur Bikini cosplay (though it's Fan Disservice for Castle).
- Esposito is clearly impressed with a cosplayer wearing a Stripperific outfit of leaves strategically glued to her body, one of which she removes to give him her number.
- Foreshadowing: The episode opens on a Nebula-9 scene, with Lt. Chloe turning on the Captain and killing him. Chloe's actress Stephanie turns out to be the killer (though the Captain gets a happier ending when the scenario plays out in reality).
- Homage: The entire episode is a mad, passionate love-letter to Speculative Fiction fandom.
- I Am Not Spock: An In-Universe example. Stephanie Frye hates Nebula 9, viewing it as an Old Shame despite it being her Star-Making Role. So much so that she murdered the woman who owned the rights to the show to keep the show's expected revival from ruining her non-Nebula 9 acting career.
- Large Ham: Stephanie Frye badly overacts when Castle has her and him act out the murder at the climax. Gabriel Winters even calls her on it, saying she was always "useless without a script".
- Last of Their Kind: Conversed. The premise of Nebula 9 is that the ship's crew are the last survivors of humanity, a shipful of Space Cadet Academy cadets who were offworld on a training cruise when Earth was destroyed.
- Nerds Speak Klingon: One alien cosplay (a big, white, furry Humanoid Alien of some sort) whom Ryan tries to interview refuses to break character, a character that apparently doesn't speak English. Ryan gives up and moves on to the next witness.
- Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: The laser gun that killed Annabelle was one specially made by a tinkerer that actually works.
- Old Shame: In-Universe, Nebula 9 was, by Stephanie Frye's own admission, her Star-Making Role, but she hated the show. So much so that she killed Annabelle in hopes of killing the Nebula 9 IP for good.
- Parental Fashion Veto: Castle is appalled by Alexis's skimpy cosplay outfit. When she protests that he's embarrassing her, he responds, "I'm wearing clothes!" Beckett actually calls him out for it, noting that Alexis's costume is hardly any more revealing than her old Lieutenant Chloe cosplay he wants to see her in, though Castle argues there's a difference between her dressing in revealing clothes for him in private, and his daughter dressing in revealing clothes in public.
- Reboot Snark: A body is found inside a sci-fi convention interactive fan experience for Cult Classic show Nebula 9, which featured one of the show's original stars getting to relive his glory days, playing the trope straight. However, Played for Drama since the murder victim was harassed after buying the rights for cheap and making her own Nebula 9 web series reboot with her friends, and the murderer was another original star who had achieved mainstream success and wanted to distance herself from the show by any means necessary.Stephanie: The fan experience was bad enough, but she was gonna sell the rights, and it was gonna start all over again - the movies, the product lines, Lieutenant Chloe bobbleheads! Do you know how hard I worked to make something of myself, to become a real actress?
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Benjamin Donnelly (Armin Shimerman's character) is a tinkerer who creates and sells replicas of sci-fi weaponry, including, somehow, a working laser pistol. DARPA would pay ridiculous amounts of money for that.
- Reference Overdosed: Dear God in heaven. You'd expect it from an episode taking place at a con, but still.
- When Beckett tells him there's been a murder at the con, Castle queries her on who got killed and how.Castle: So, who is our victim? Did Doc Ock finally catch up with Spider-Man?
Beckett: Think more TV starship.
Castle: Oh! Um, Borg attack.
Becket: Mm-mm.
Castle: Cylon skin job? Please say Number Six. - Moments later Castle rattles off that he's a fan of Star Trek, Star Wars (he apparently has a life-size Boba Fett in his bathroom), and "that Joss Whedon show", though he apparently considers Nebula 9 too cheesy. For his part, Esposito favors Blade Runner, while Ryan is more of a Lord of the Rings kind of guy.Esposito: Yeah, you do look like an elf.
- Castle tries to insist that he's looking for a suspect. Firing. A blaster. In mockery. Of. A certain. Starship. Captain.
- The uniforms worn by Nebula 9 female crewmembers bear a striking resemblance to women's uniforms in Star Trek: The Original Series.
- The Castle writers love to make Firefly references in general given Nathan Fillion's role in both shows, but this episode in particular has a lot of them.
- Castle drops a "Shiny" upon being informed of the murder.
- The "Creavers" are described as being vicious creatures that eat your face while you're still alive, rather like the Reavers.
- Much like Firefly, Nebula 9 ran for only 12 episodes about ten years before the present day. And much like fan efforts resurrected Firefly into Serenity, licensed comics, and a now-vaporware MMORPG after Fox killed it prematurely, The Nebula 9 Fan Experience done by Winters and Annabelle made the IP valuable again. Which turned out to be a plot point: a studio was trying to buy the rights from the Body of the Week, and the killer wanted to ensure that the victim died to prevent Nebula 9 from being revived and "poisoning" her career.
- The Always Chaotic Evil aliens from Nebula 9 are called Creevers instead of Reavers.
- Gabriel Winters hasn't gotten a serious gig apart from The Nebula 9 Fan Experience since Nebula 9 was cancelled and has become a drunken partier, rather like Jason Nesmith in Galaxy Quest.
- Gabriel Winters is a perfect expy of Scott Bakula, with the long 80s hair and the pastiche of Star Trek: Enterprise.
- We also get a few "fraks".
- When Beckett tells him there's been a murder at the con, Castle queries her on who got killed and how.
- STD Immunity: Averted. Gabriel Winters' alibi for the murder is that he was at the doctor's office getting treated for one.
- Three-Way Sex: Gabriel Winters is reported to have had a threesome with two Lieutenant Chloe cosplayers. It got him in some pretty hot water with Annabelle, to the extent she threatened to fire him.
