I would like to see more female captains at the center of Star Trek novels. I really like Ezri Dax as captain of the Aventine. Who else wants to see more female captains?
Ahahaha, that's quite the loaded poll. Don't really care whether it's a he, a she, a s/he or an it, as long as they're interesting, which rules out Ezri as far as I'm concerned. Of recent ones, I really liked Captain Farkas in Children of the Storm. guess that counts as a yes.
The poll options are of course meant to be a joke. I will have to read Children of the storm. Thanks for the tip.
Just as long as you're aware she doesn't feature hugely in it(part of a nine ship fleet so unavoidable), but the fleet commander(Afsarah Eden) is also a woman. And it's a fantastic book. Would have loved her to be "fleet captain" instead though, would have been a cool TOS callback.
There's definatly been a good share of female captains, both human and alien, in TrekLit. Vanguard had two, DS9 had captain Kira, and the female captain of the Gryphon (perhaps more that I'm forgetting). Voyager had Eden as Voyager's captain first, then as Fleet Captain. And there have been so much more in other parts.
Well with the exception of New Frontier and Vanguard, all of the trek books have been led by established characters. So really what you're asking is which established female character could serve as the center of her own series? Uhura Troi Crusher-Picard Dax (already captain of the Aventine) Kira (Lead character in the DS9 Relaunch) Torres Seven of Nine Of those, the only character that I could see as a potential lead is Beverly Crusher-Picard as the captain of a medical ship. That would not be entirely out of order given what we saw in "All Good Things..." and it would be a new/unique series since we've never had a trek lit series that focused exclusively on Medicine. Given what has happened post Destiny, a book series about the USS Pasteur as a roving hospital could actually be interesting. Plus, if Pocket decides to embrace the Countdown comics then Jean Luc will be due for retirement from Starfleet at some point to become an Ambassador. That would open up the possibility for Beverly to leave the Enterprise and assume command of her own ship. The only thing I would not want is for them to break up the Picards.
There have been many female captains, but how many stories have they led? It seems to me to be relatively few. Voyager and Janeway is an obvious exception. There are many Voyager books. I wouldn't mind an new ship with a female Captain even if it didn't have established characters.
We've actually gotten quite a few female captains in Trek Lit, so I don't know if we need more, but I wouldn't be against new ones popping up.
I refer the reader to the words of Greg Rucka: So do we want to see "female captains," or do we want to see captains who are well-drawn characters with distinctive and varying traits, including different genders?
To heck with that, I want to see the first cogenitor captain! They've been held back long enough! In all seriousness though, I strongly agree with what Christopher just posted. I want to see interesting, distinctive characters with a multitude of traits, not just "hey, it's a woman captain, how progressive!" or "wow, a person who is a Native North American, let's focus on only that!"
I am not saying that we should have more female captains to balance it out or be progressive. I am way beyond that. I think you guys may be confused because the options on the poll were meant to be a joke. Strong characters are very important to me. I am not saying go write a story with a female captain to be politically correct or anything like that. I'm just saying I welcome any new stories featuring a female captain. I would love to see more of Ezri Dax and the Aventine. I enjoyed reading Erica Hernandez in Destiny, I would love to read a story of her and the Columbia before the crash. It was also nice to read about Rachel Garret in the Lost Era series.
Ideally Trek should strive for a 50/50 split. Unfortunately the TV shows and movies never got there -- in TOS they weren't even allowed in command, and even with Next Gen era shows, the Janeways and Scotts were outnumbered by the dudes. Treklit is doing a much better job, though I haven't been keeping track to see how close to parity it is. What about Saavik? She's already been established as a captain in the Vulcan's Soul series, and given the Vulcan/Romulan lifespan, she has plenty of time for adventures. On a side note, everyone should check out the anime Bodacious Space Pirates (based upon the novel Miniskirt Space Pirates -- yes, really). The two main characters are basically female versions of Kirk and Spock.
I agree completely. This is exactly what I want, but if a new, exciting well-drawn female captain were to come along in a new book I would welcome it. The options in the poll were just me being silly.
Well, no -- the last episode of TOS seemed to claim (or at least had a paranoid schizophrenic character claim) that women couldn't be captains, but that same episode also contained some continuity errors (like saying General Order 4 was the death penalty rather than GO 7) and was just generally pretty stupid. I don't think its claims can be considered binding on the entire series, especially since the Enterprise had a female first officer in the original pilot and she did command the ship for most of the episode while Pike was held captive.
While I welcome more stories with female captains, I don't feel like Star Trek should aim for a quota to be politically correct.
And I agree, it would be silly to do it by the numbers and make sure there was one female captain for every male captain. That's making the same mistake Rucka so eloquently shot down, defining characters by their gender above all else. Just create characters, make them different from each other in a variety of ways, and don't reduce them to single traits or simplistic formulae.