I am enjoying the Voyager re-launch novels and miss Tuvok being on the bridge and was wondering why the decision was made to move him over to the Titan. Who gets to make that call? Is this some nefarious plot to try and get me to read those books?
I suppose it was just about adding another familiar character to the Titan crew. Since Voyager was back home at the time, its crew scattered, they were available for other assignments. And IIRC, Tuvok didn't have that much to do in the Christie Golden post-finale books, compared to most of the other characters, so he could easily be reassigned elsewhere. And the VGR books were dormant at the time, so the character wasn't being used anyway. It's probably also because Andy Mangels & Mike Martin had already written about Tuvok and his relationship with Leonard James Akaar in The Lost Era: The Sundered and wanted to pick up on that story thread.
Considering Taking Wing is over a decade old (!) now, the name of this thread certainly threw me off.
Sorry. For a long time I wasn't interested in the re-launch books so I lost track of what was happening where. The explanation does make sense. I have a LOT of catching up to do.
I liked the first three Titan books and Over a Torrent Sea. Nr. 4 and 6 were dull (I love James Swallow's Terok Nor novel and TOS Cast No Shadow, so it's not the author's fault ). Nr. 7 (Fallen Gods) and the Typhon Pact novel (Seize the Fire) are definitely better. You get to know a multi species crew. Essentially I like the idea. I must admit that I was a bit out of my depth at the beginning with all the aliens, some of them completely unfamiliar (never been seen on screen). But Christopher and the other Titan authors do a great job when it comes to describing them. I'm a Riker fan and simply wanted to know how he handles his own command.
I miss Tuvok in the new Voyager novels, too, and hope to see or hear from him soon either in Atonement or Pocket Full of Lies. But then again, I think his new position on the Titan, a bigger ship, might be a step up for him, so don't begrudge him taking on a new job!
I wonder if the editors at Pocket Books had known that Voyager would be coming back in such a big way with Kirsten Beyer's books if they would have let Micheals & Martin move Tuvok over to Titan?
I think it was mentioned somewhere that he will be in Pocketful of Lies, but don't hold me to that. To be honest, it's probably best things worked out the way it did. At least someone in Starfleet's not hanging out with the same crew for a decade plus.
The same editor, Marco Palmieri, was in charge of both Titan and the post-Golden retooling of Voyager, although I'm not sure when he took over the latter.
Why not? They're quite distinct characters. They fill different roles in the crew (security vs. astrometrics) and have very distinct personalities, backgrounds, worldviews, relationships, and goals, despite a superficial similarity in their formal manner of speaking.
^ Quite alright. Whilst there seems to be a few people who want a "Captain Worf series" I'd much rather see one that focused on Captain Tuvok.
Why do so many fans want every character to become a captain? Trek fans seem to have this notion that it's the natural or necessary endpoint of every character's career, but that's not the way navies work. Command is a single specialty out of many. Most officers never become ship captains or admirals, just like most employees of a company never become directors or CEOs. Plus, it's just not fair to the characters to assume they all have the exact same career goal as each other, rather than letting them have their own diverse goals and ambitions. Not every character should want to be a captain. There are other things that can bring career or personal satisfaction. In Tuvok's case, I see no indication that he's ever been interested in command. He was a science officer in his first brief career, then retired after three years to pursue a family. When he returned, he spent 16 years as an instructor at the Academy (with occasional security missions according to the novels), then served as Janeway's security officer for the next 11 years (four years before "Caretaker," seven years after). In the books, he then returned to being an instructor for 2 years before becoming Titan's tactical officer for the next 7 years. That's 36 years in his current Starfleet career, 39 in total. If Tuvok had been at all interested in commanding a starship, surely he would've already done so by now. Clearly he finds more fulfillment in serving others, whether as an instructor, a protector, or an advisor. (And yes, I see from Memory Beta that Star Trek Online has "Rear Admiral" Tuvok commanding Voyager in its future setting, but STO has made a lot of decisions that just don't seem logical to me.)
I've long appreciated what I consider to be realistic change in the characters' circumstances. Having members of the ensemble move on and take up positions elsewhere makes the setting feel more convincing to me, and it helps the characters feel more like interesting and actualized people rather than just props populating that setting. With Voyager it might touch on some interesting points regarding character, I suppose, given the conflicting personal draws between picking up where they'd left off/embracing opportunities denied them for seven years VS the bonds they formed as a crew/family during the journey. Tuvok's willingness to move on does potentially say a lot about him, and to my mind helps the character by reminding us that seven years isn't very long to a Vulcan, that he's had quite the life outside of and prior to Voyager, that periods away from home and family and new experiences are something he's long accepted and embraced. Someone like Kim will always see Voyager as the definitive experience of his career and indeed his life; people like Paris and Torres found or remade their lives there and must hold the Delta Quadrant experience as central to their life experience. To Tuvok, it was just another part of the tapestry. It serves him well to remind us of that, I think. I'm looking forward to the "How were you when I was dead?" conversation, of course.
I believe Tuvok would be serving other by moving up to First Officer and later Captain. I doubt he would actively seek it, but if offerred I believe he would accept it. As a Vulcan he still has time to make career changes.
If I had to guess, people want their favorite characters to become captains because they look at how over half the TOS ensemble later became captains (Spock, Sulu, Scotty, probably Chekov, etc) and they extrapolate from there. I agree it's silly, though.
There is also a distinction between becoming a captain (in terms of achieving the rank of captain) and becoming a captain (in terms of being the commanding officer of a vessel or starbase). Not all people in Starfleet with the rank of captain necessarily commanded a vessel, I'm sure; Scotty, for example. You could always have captain as simply a step towards admiral without being a commanding officer of something.