Why Not A Starfleet Ships Chaplain As A Main Character?

[Sindatur]

Considering Earth's growth beyond Religion (Or even disregarding that and considering all the Dominations we currently have) plus all the Religions of all the Star Fleet Member Worlds, I really don't see how a Position of Chaplain could be managed, you strip away the Denomination, and you simply end up with a Counselor, which we already have.

No, I think the only way to have a Religious person like that would be for them have a different function on the ship, say an Engineer who just happens to be Religious, and people seek out that Engineer because of their balance and their morals and ethics.

Or even perhaps someone with the Position of Counselor, who happens to be someone religious. Maybe even center some stories around Religious conflict for them. IE: Their Religious Beliefs lead them to believe the right thing to tell a patient is one thing, but, their Counselor Duties and teachings tell them they should be telling their patient the exact opposite.

So, yea, a Chaplain as a position, I don't think would work, you'd have to give them another position, but, they just so happen to be Religious.

[Drago-Kazov]

It could had worked on DS 9 if more bajorans were part of the regular cast.

[Sindatur]

Drago-Kazov wrote:

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It could had worked on DS 9 if more bajorans were part of the regular cast.

What use would the Bajorans have for a Chaplain? There's a whole Assembly of Vedeks and a Kai just a Vid-call or a couple hour shuttle ride away. They did have the Temple on the Station, so presumably they had weekly services too.

[Drago-Kazov]

''chaplain''

[BillJ]

Someone else to look down on the actions of those around them? Didn't we get enough of that with Picard in the later seasons of TNG?

[The Green Mushroom]

Sindatur wrote:

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...No, I think the only way to have a Religious person like that would be for them have a different function on the ship...

Yeah, that is probably the best way to do it.

They could even go in deeper, say a Catholic priest whose scientific research led him to join Starfleet (or come aboard for one mission and hang around for the next seven years for some reason). He can be shown occasionally performing mass in his quarters or with a small group of people, occasionally providing religious advice of a more general nature, but spend most of his time reversing negative space wedgies to save the ship.

[The Borg Queen]

A Chaplain?

From which culture of which planet?

Do we have to listen about sermons on the Vulcan Katra, for example?

[Knight Templar]

The Borg Queen wrote:

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A Chaplain?

From which culture of which planet?

Do we have to listen about sermons on the Vulcan Katra, for example?

How about a Catholic priest who studied with the Vulcan masters before joining a joint center for religious research on Andor that featured Andorians, Humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, Centaurans, Deltans........

You really don't have to use your imagination too much on this.

Troi IIRC was only shown counseling human crew members. Shouldn't she have been familar with the mental potential problems and needs of all the different crewmembers?

[DonIago]

I'd say she provided counsel to essentially all of the principal characters at one time or another. As the TNG crew never really dealt with mental illness we don't know the extent of her capabilities in that regard.

[Maurice]

Frankly, it probably wouldn't work. How many successful TV series are centered around chaplains/ministers? And is that what audiences would be interested in seeing? People are already incredibly ignorant about other religions and belief systems on their own planet. Adding made-up ones and focusing on a character dealing with those seems like a dramatic non-starter. I'm not saying it's impossible. It's just unlikely to work or find an audience.

[T'Girl]

Maurice wrote:

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centered around chaplains/ministers

Not "centered around," but part of the mix.

[Sindatur]

Maurice wrote:

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Frankly, it probably wouldn't work. How many successful TV series are centered around chaplains/ministers? And is that what audiences would be interested in seeing? People are already incredibly ignorant about other religions and belief systems on their own planet. Adding made-up ones and focusing on a character dealing with those seems like a dramatic non-starter. I'm not saying it's impossible. It's just unlikely to work or find an audience.

Heh, yea, I remember LOST Fans who complained when anything didn't square with Catholicism, depsite the fact that LOST never proclaimed Catholicism as "The Correct Religion" and dabbled in numerous different Religious allusions.

[Kegg]

It's a tricky question. Star Trek is by default depicting a society that in theory is vastly more diverse than our own. It includes the entirety of Earth's population and the populations of multiple alien worlds, any belief systems present are likely far more numerous then we reguarly encounter. MASH was a TV series about American soldiers in Korea. What if it had to take into account the faith of the South Koreans (besides Korean Christians, obviously). And the nearby Japanese? Okay, now how about India.

How about China. How about Iran. How about Somalia. How about Mozambique... and then, inevitably, how about Vulcan, Andoria, Betazed, etc. Star Trek may fall considerably short of the ideal in terms of depiction but that's definitely something it at least notionally has striven for.

chardman wrote:

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KT... You saying you wouldn't mind seeing a Star Trek character perform a gay pagan wedding between two characters of totally different species? You honestly want to see totally alien (both strictly fictional, and those extrapolated from a wide variety of actual faiths) treated with exactly the same reverence as Christianity?

...absolutely.

I mean is that a rhetorical question because I don't see any way of answering that than 'yes.'

On Star Trek the fictional beliefs of alien races - the mythology of the Klingons, the Bajoran faith in the Prophets, etc. - are treated seriously because that matter to the characters from those traditions, and in fiction a fictional character's fictional faith can matter as much to them as a fictional character's faith in a real world equivalent.

That is kind of exactly what Star Trek is all about. Idic, to invoke a fictional principle belonging to a fiction race. Fictional religion obviously doesn't matter anywhere near as much in the real world but in the context of that fiction, that's another story.

Greg Cox wrote:

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Then again, Serenity had a chaplain . . . and look what happened to him!

And he's not even a real chaplain, just a guy with an attitude. He's welcome on Mal's boat, but not his book! ...sept when it is.

T'Girl wrote:

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Controversial matters are good. But it hard to see how a chaplain would in fact be controversial, Star Trek is usually keyed to an American audience, a deliberately generic Christian chaplain who ministers equally to all beliefs would be offensive how?
[...]

If the alternative is absolutely nothing? I would say that acceptance would be positive.

Emphasis added.

Star Trek is American by default and that's always going to colour its perception of the future and human culture in general, even ignoring ridiculous moments like Captain Kirk reading the constitution on an alien planet; it's also why basically the only religiously observant human character on Star Trek is a Native American.

...which does suggest for starters that your choices are not 'Christian' or 'atheist' for chaplain religions, even ignoring invented alien faiths and given a narrow American focus. Why not a Muslim chaplain out of Dearborn, Michigan? A Rabbi from the Southeast? A Unitarian Universalist, whatever. Lot of choices they can make here.

It is playing with hot coals, obviously, because if they write a Muslim chaplain - for example - it would then be important to get his religious references and his or her knowledge of the Qur'an and the hadiths all right, and any given moral judgement he makes would be as debated as... any of the moral judgements ever on Star Trek (look around the forums, seriously) but with the added colour of interrogating it from the religious angle, either averring that the chaplain made the choice because of flaws in his or her faith or that their decision was inaccurate in what someone of that religion would do.

On top of that people may find any suggestion that his or her religion's attitudes have changed towards anything to be offensive or whatever. Lot of issues to work with there, lot of ways it could go wrong, and in some senses having a character who is personally religious but not a chaplain is easier because their actions are less likely to be assumed to be representative of their faith (although that's always also a risk).

...and add to this a lot of what one can write for a chaplain can also be written for a counselor. That's a derided job in Trek for various reasons, but I honestly feel that Troi was at her best when she was actually taking patients and trying to help them get through something, and I think it's a role that Star Trek could still use.

[TheRoyalFamily]

Why do we assume a ship would only have one chaplain? A ship would generally have enough to meet the various needs of the crew, provided they're significant enough in number to warrant it (and the chaplain would also have another job, unless there are large amounts of practicing members of their faith - like a ship full of practicing Vulcans, maybe).

[DonIago]

Because the premise was that they be a main character.