And I apolgise for the "Does that Chell is" part of the sentence.. Wasn't sure how to phrase it and fused two ideas togehter.
Also Mendon was a Benzite who appeared on TNG. And not the one you might think of.
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Germany exclusive Star Trek trilogy "Prometheus" coming in 2016
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Also Mendon was a Benzite who appeared on TNG. And not the one you might think of.
Yes, there are three characters in this list you might know from the shows: Mendon, Sarita Carson and Chell. The trilogy was written with the 50th anniversary of "Star Trek" in mind. So we wanted to add one or more supporting characters from every show to our crew (if possible - we don't have a 250 years old officer from ENT 
).
Jenna Kirk's history is something I will not reveal at the moment. But you are free to think about it, of course.
).Jenna Kirk's history is something I will not reveal at the moment. But you are free to think about it, of course.
Nice! And I like how the artist went with the more "logical" registry the art department had on the inside of the ship, rather than the one the SFX team had on the hull in the episode.
Mueller's a captain now! 
I recognized the names of Mendon and Chell, but I admit I had to look Carson up on MA...
Maybe she's a sister or cousin to Jamie Kirk!
It could've been someone from another European country. We've already had a French (though very British) captain, so maybe a captain from Spain or Poland or Greece or something? You mention Edward James Olmos as your model -- he's Latino (his father was from Mexico), so Spain would be a good fit. (He was actually David Mack's original mental model for Diego Reyes in Vanguard, although when he was cast as Adama in Galactica, Dave shifted gears and "recast" Reyes with Tommy Lee Jones in mind.)
I can understand that motivation.
Did you think, though, that you could do something like have Richard Adams spend a year or two of school in Germany? Would that be too intrusive of an element of Germany?
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I did too, so now I don't feel bad. I always love it when the books take these kinds of obscure one off characters and develop them.
Or Turkish, Austrian, Czech, Solavakian, Polish, Greek, etc. - any of the cultures and nationalities that are not really found in Trek but which Perplies & Humberg you would know relatively to very well! It's just both dull and unfortunately 'stockholm syndrome american cultural colonialism' to have *another* American captain - unless this is a smart Zizek critique of Americana
Or do what Mack did and create a non-Earth-born captain, as Reyes was from Luna, or an alien like Calhoun.I'm glad he's not white though - it's good to have another person of colour in the centre seat (after so many such commanding characters in Vanguard, inc. Reyes, Nogura, Okagawa, Zhao then Khatami, etc.).
Isn't he? Sure, Bernd said they used Olmos as a model, but the character looks white in the cover art posted above -- and "Richard Adams" is a very "white"-sounding, English name (though "Richard" is ultimately of German derivation).
Not just Vanguard (and Seekers) -- other PoC captains in the literature include Chakotay, Sonya Gomez, Mahmud al-Khalid, Demora Sulu, Bryce Shumar (whom I made Pakistani-English in Rise of the Federation), Afsarah Eden, possibly Parimon Dasht of the Esquiline (Dasht seems to be a Persian name), etc.
You are right about the name! But Bernd says he is not how he imagined and that he pictures EJO. If one is picturing EJO he has throughout his career made interesting comments on the complications of his own race or races.
As for the second - indeed! I just picked it because it is perhaps the biggest collective of characters from the get go who were the captains (or commodores/admirals), and thus the 'centre' of their own little stories, and were not white - and more so, there is that list of almost everyone in the series on Memory Beta in one place
But if i remember right from scanning earlier - and it was a nice surprise - I think only Hayley Gannon and the cameo starfleet captains - Decker, the Defiant cap and Kirk - are actually white.
That's an interesting discussion. But there are three more things to consider:
1) "Star Trek Prometheus" is not only for the veteran fans, it's was also written with "casual" fans in mind. We want to bring new readers to the franchise, utilizing the "Beyond"-movie and the ST anniversary to get as much attention as possible. So we didn't want a captain with a name like Afsarah Eden or Mahmud al-Khalid. As interesting as these characters are, they are for specialists like you.
2) The U.S.S. Prometheus is a warship. You can't deny that. It's like that aircraft carrier the U.S. military sends if a crisis in the Middle East arises. If you send the Prometheus, you send a message. So I think it fits that an American is her captain. (Even a war-weary American.)
3) Don't judge a ship by her captain. We have an Andorian female chief of security, a Benzite chief science officer, a Caitian XO, a German with Sudanese roots as communicaton officer, a red skinned Renao helmsman, a Bolian bartender. So I think all in all it's a quite colorful crew. We also took great care that the "supporting actors" come from a lot of different Earth countries and planets.
1) "Star Trek Prometheus" is not only for the veteran fans, it's was also written with "casual" fans in mind. We want to bring new readers to the franchise, utilizing the "Beyond"-movie and the ST anniversary to get as much attention as possible. So we didn't want a captain with a name like Afsarah Eden or Mahmud al-Khalid. As interesting as these characters are, they are for specialists like you.
2) The U.S.S. Prometheus is a warship. You can't deny that. It's like that aircraft carrier the U.S. military sends if a crisis in the Middle East arises. If you send the Prometheus, you send a message. So I think it fits that an American is her captain.
(Even a war-weary American.)3) Don't judge a ship by her captain. We have an Andorian female chief of security, a Benzite chief science officer, a Caitian XO, a German with Sudanese roots as communicaton officer, a red skinned Renao helmsman, a Bolian bartender. So I think all in all it's a quite colorful crew. We also took great care that the "supporting actors" come from a lot of different Earth countries and planets.
Bernd, with the greatest respect, this is a frightening view! And perpeptuates the idea that Trek is centrifugally limited by a white, anglo-saxon perspective. Consider who, on the internet, is as popular as (and even perhaps more popular than) Nimoy and Shatner - George Takei. And he is not someone who subscribes to the idea that Trek should be fundamentally white and anglo-saxon (or indeed male or heteronormative). That the future can't be led by a black, middle eastern, latino, central asian, eastern asian person, of either gender, feels so typical to the limitations of TV trek and so poorly representative of the ideas of Trek.
I am optimistic (especially based on point 3), but this is disappointing, especially given the important debates about race going on both here in Europe (concerning Turkey and immigration and the EU) and in America (concerning racial representation in hollywood).
Anyway I am sorry to be critical, and thank you for your reply! But I think it's dangerous to presume that a minority of people care about non-white captains. I think having a non-white captain could have garnered you a lot more positive reception. I understand the need to be conservative when launching a new line in a new language, but that is the equal of Ridley Scott's “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up.”
2) The U.S.S. Prometheus is a warship. You can't deny that. It's like that aircraft carrier the U.S. military sends if a crisis in the Middle East arises. If you send the Prometheus, you send a message. So I think it fits that an American is her captain.
So Top Gun? So is this a critique of a war ship culture? Is this Zizek in Trek - using americana to critique ideas of american culture? Or again just a Top Gun vibe?
Sounds much better!
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I think that's a self-defeating perspective. One thing that's happening a lot over here in the States is that movie studios, comics publishers and the like are slow to embrace female and person-of-color leads because they're operating under the assumption that their primary audience consists of white males who would be less interested in characters not like themselves -- when in fact the audience base consists heavily and increasingly of women and people of color who are delighted when characters more like themselves are represented for a change. (Look at how Wonder Woman and Black Panther have been the breakout characters in this spring's superhero movies.) Those aren't "specialists" or some kind of exception; they are and always have been a large and integral part of fandom, and they're even more so today. So you'll get more new readers if you don't feel you have to narrow your appeal to one specific type of person.
And speaking as a white male of Anglo-Scottish ancestry, I got tired of seeing stories dominated by people who look like me a long, long time ago. Nothing wrong with having them as part of the mix, of course, but there shouldn't be any kind of preference for them as lead characters over other types of people. If you think that's what your audience as a whole would prefer, you're probably underestimating your audience.
2) The U.S.S. Prometheus is a warship. You can't deny that. It's like that aircraft carrier the U.S. military sends if a crisis in the Middle East arises. If you send the Prometheus, you send a message. So I think it fits that an American is her captain.
Speaking as an American, I find it disquieting that that's what we look like to you. Certainly there are factions in the US who feel that we should exert our influence in the world through military force and gunboat diplomacy, but I side with those Americans who feel that it's better to do so through peaceful means, to inspire and invite cooperation rather than intimidate.
Perhaps we should talk about this when the books have been published.
You give the person of Adams too much weight. But "Star Trek Prometheus" is not centered around Adams. It's not like TOS with Kirk stealing everyone the show. We tell our story from many perspectives. Lenissa zh'Thiin and Jassat ak Namur are very important characters. And don't forget our Klingon ship, the Bortas. Nearly one third of the trilogy is told from a Klingon perspective. I think most of the readers won't even think about it. A book is not a movie or a TV show. Black or white are just words and you read them and forget them, because it's not about how someone looks like, it's about how he or she acts and behaves. That's what brings a character to life on the pages.
Then you will like Adams, because he might be the captain of a warship, but he upholds the principles of the Federation as much as Jean-Luc Picard does. He constantly "fights" for solving this crisis without fighting.
This is definitely a common European (British and Continental) view of US foreign policy and also a reflection of how American is perpeptuated through its media and policy language and, every election, the candidates. It is why I kept bringing up Zizek - whom we should all read since I think his views, representative of and indeed endemic in leftwing european intelligentsia, are rather important - as exactly these views of and perpetuated by America form some of the basis of his critique of the country.
I agree what matters is what people do - but whether someone is protagonist or antagonist, moral or unethical, extra or not - it does matter what greater narrative or racial history someone ties into. It's white privilege to assume that white and non-white skin colours and races are equal, rather than suffering from vastly disproportionate states of living. I'm looking forward to Adams and the crew, but this was a worrying way of responding! And the Bortas for sure!
Of course it doesn't matter and you are probably right because books have little power versus what is seen; what matters is who is cast for CBS Trek and how their characters are written! And given that the only names floating out there are African-American is very telling, and that Hannibal has a good pedigree, yay!
But this reminds me of The Expanse - both the books, which have conspicuous and widely placed people of colour in almost all key roles, and the series, which introduced early its most powerful non-white person (who of course is now the head of Starfleet in Beyond probably because of The Expanse
). I loved this from a in-production interview in The Verge:But I wanna say, I'm really excited for the trilogy & your work. I'm sure you've done excellently and it is really interesting, always, to have non-American writers write an ultimately American cultural product. I think different cultural perspectives are on show in Una McCormack's and James Swallow's and other past non-north american writers' works. It's great!
You know what's funny? I just looked through all three scripts. We never even mention the country Adams is from. It was just a background information I added on my website. So I removed this little fact. Now he was just "born". It's true, personally I always thought that Adams is American and my role model was Olmos. But (!) it's not written down somewhere. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps Christian thinks, he is Australian. Or Welsh. Some readers might even think he is German, since you can pronounce his name in a German way. It just doesn't matter for the story. And of course in the future of "Star Trek" "white and non-white skin colours and races are equal". That's part of the ideal we celebrate in this universe. Is this realistic? Perhaps not. But it's something to strive for.
(Oh, and by the way: Since "The Fall" the two most powerful persons in the Trek lit Federation are both not even human. )
(Oh, and by the way: Since "The Fall" the two most powerful persons in the Trek lit Federation are both not even human.
)
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Bernd I'm sorry this was too pushy of me - please feel free to be consistent with your vision
anyway, you are right about the vision & I'm super excited for the trilogy, although my german is in its infancy, so will wait for the translation 
I was thinking about this, being as I'm English and (at the moment) the UK is part of the EU, I identify as more European than English when asked, so, by the time the late twenty-forth century comes around in Star Trek and a unified Earth would have been over two hundred years old, surely individuals from Earth will identify as being from Earth and not a country that hasn't existed in over two hundred years in the same way Vulcan's identify themselves as from Vulcan, Bajorians from Bajor etc.
Of course I know the reason why this doesn't happen, Star Trek is American and from my experience most Americans will identify themselves from a different country (say Irish American) even though their descendents had gone to America in the 1840's and needlessly identifying oneself like that is a hold over from that.
So anyway, my point being, yes there may be regional accents that identify a person from a specific region on Earth that may correspond to a now defunct country, but this Adams chap could be from anywhere on Earth, even "darkest Peru."
Of course I know the reason why this doesn't happen, Star Trek is American and from my experience most Americans will identify themselves from a different country (say Irish American) even though their descendents had gone to America in the 1840's and needlessly identifying oneself like that is a hold over from that.
So anyway, my point being, yes there may be regional accents that identify a person from a specific region on Earth that may correspond to a now defunct country, but this Adams chap could be from anywhere on Earth, even "darkest Peru."
I like this idea! I'm not quite sure if Earth in the 24th century a federal entity or simply a single state?
And I imagine that the increasing role of migration in the next several centuries means that Adams can belong to anywhere also and have any race.
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