Wasn't Data chief science officer in addition to being operations manager?
Frustrations with Trek lit...
- Thread starter Overgeeked
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Wasn't Data chief science officer in addition to being operations manager?
Effectively, but not officially. TNG was trying to avoid duplicating TOS too closely, which is why it didn't have an official science officer or communications officer, and didn't have a regular chief engineer until season 2. Partly, the assumption was that the Enterprise itself was such an intelligent vessel that it would perform most of those functions on its own. But in practice, it worked better from a story standpoint to have a dedicated chief engineer and a character to fill the function of a science officer, even if he didn't formally have that title. (Harry Kim was also an operations manager who functioned as a de facto science officer, though I attributed that to the survivors having to double up on jobs after much of the original crew was killed.)
Several pages were spent introducing the character, similarly how other new characters were initially featured. It may well be that Elfiki was created with the *possibly* she'd become more than a bit player, but it just didn't happen.
But even as bit players, they're all a little bland. Nondescript even. I think the earlier relaunch novels were better at fleshing out the ancillary characters so they at least left an impression. Although, those books have their own issues.
Only one TOS a book a year? I can't see that flying, commercially or otherwise.
I was thinking about this, and I think 18/year might be a sweet spot. It feels like there's a good amount of slack in the line at the moment with the distribution of authors and series, but I'm not enthusiastic about going back to the 2-books-a-month schedule, with its occasional short novels and padded duologies. More eBooks could also be a solution, or even bringing back hardcovers now and again.
Of course, I don't have any actual information about sales figures or publishing trends, so it could be that there are iron-clad reasons why all of those are bad ideas.
Elfiki did play a bigger role in Watching the Clock, and she's gotten a couple more memorable scenes in the TNG books, so she's got a fairly firm place my mind. In the first few books with her it felt like they were setting her up to be a fairly significant character, so it is a little annoying that she hasn't done much lately. She's still at least gotten more attention than Faur.
I've seen a few people complain about Smrhova, but I was actually pretty happy with the amount of page time Una McCormack gave her in The Crimson Shadow. I haven't read anything past that one yet though, so I don't know how significant she's been since.
I thought the real reason they made up the title of "ops officer" for Data instead of science officer was to explain why he was wearing gold, since Brent Spiner looked better in a gold uniform than a blue one. Also, wasn't Samantha Wildman Voyager's science officer?
If Elfiki isn't supposed to be important then why is Dygan - other than The Crimson Shadow he hasn't had much more focus than her.
Unlike Voyager and DS9 (first time round) the newer characters - Elfiki, Dygan, Chen & Smrhova haven't been particularly well integrated. Just look at the end of the Fall, only Picard, Crusher, Worf & Geordi really knew what was going on so it creates a real us and them situation. Making Geordi second officer really didn't help matters as you now have an elite of the Captain and three Commanders who make all the decisions while the lieutenant's carry them out.
One of the nice things about Choudhury is that she bridged that gap by being a bit older and more senior than the others, or at least that's how it felt. David Mack also did a decent job with Smrhova in the second Cold Equations book, teaming her up with Geordi and actually contributing to their mission in a way he couldn't. Armageddon's Arrow also helped Chen in that regard but we need more of that. Let's also see some more interaction between the characters - we know about the Picard/Chen relationship but before Armageddon's Arrow she'd barely shared any scenes with Crusher, Geordi or Worf. Same with Elfiki, it was nice for her to get some time with Worf in that book as well.
Hopefully with the next few TNG books being standalone they'll be space to include more of those kind of scenes and build up the ensemble to be more than the big 4 and the rest.
Unlike Voyager and DS9 (first time round) the newer characters - Elfiki, Dygan, Chen & Smrhova haven't been particularly well integrated. Just look at the end of the Fall, only Picard, Crusher, Worf & Geordi really knew what was going on so it creates a real us and them situation. Making Geordi second officer really didn't help matters as you now have an elite of the Captain and three Commanders who make all the decisions while the lieutenant's carry them out.
One of the nice things about Choudhury is that she bridged that gap by being a bit older and more senior than the others, or at least that's how it felt. David Mack also did a decent job with Smrhova in the second Cold Equations book, teaming her up with Geordi and actually contributing to their mission in a way he couldn't. Armageddon's Arrow also helped Chen in that regard but we need more of that. Let's also see some more interaction between the characters - we know about the Picard/Chen relationship but before Armageddon's Arrow she'd barely shared any scenes with Crusher, Geordi or Worf. Same with Elfiki, it was nice for her to get some time with Worf in that book as well.
Hopefully with the next few TNG books being standalone they'll be space to include more of those kind of scenes and build up the ensemble to be more than the big 4 and the rest.
You can't mandate in advance how a story will evolve. You set up elements that you hope will have potential, but it's up to the writers of later installments to decide what aspects are more interesting to follow up on. For instance, in Titan: Orion's Hounds, I tried to set up the Gum Nebula as a rich, vast environment with many different species and civilizations that might be worth developing, but the next couple of TTN writers just left the whole thing behind, and I'm still the only one who's ever followed up on any of the races I established there. On the other hand, later writers picked up on my character of Torvig and developed him as a more central player than I'd expected.
I dunno, I think T'Ryssa Chen has been pretty well-developed as a character, as I'd hoped she would be. I feel Bill Leisner and Dayton Ward in particular have understood and used her well.
"Funny" isn't exactly the word crossing my mind regarding Smrhova. She's just another bland security-mannequin among many. I mean... I applaud the intend to give us strong female security officers, but somehow even though this isn't a visual media, they often end up mostly just being "petit" and "slender" and... well desirable, while, at the same time they have to be your typical know-it-all expert soldier.
I really liked Choudhurry at first. She wasn't your typical female-figher, she was a spiritual peacekeeper. She was interesting! But along came David Mack, turning her into yet another slender soldier. Bennett tried to redeem this in one of his short stories, and right when I though, okay, the character is back on track... Mack happened again, killing her off. There was a lot of potential and all they could think of was "hey, let's kill her for shock value"?
The sideline-characters have "Redshirts" written all over them. Whenever a new author might get his fingers at an (seemingly established) secondary cast, he might just toss them away - and brutally so -, to introduce his own cast... which in turn might get tossed in the trash again once another author takes over. That happend quite a few times now during the relaunch novels and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to care for some Stinsons and Wheelers and Smrhovas if even their predecessors got wasted. That doesn't establish a lot of trust, does it?
Thanks. My thinking was that I don't agree with the tendency to treat security personnel like warriors. Security means safety and protection to me, not conflict and violence. So security personnel shouldn't just stand passively in the background and then shoot back when people start shooting; the priority of a security chief should be to try to intervene early and de-escalate a situation before it becomes violent. So I defined Choudhury as someone whose most acclaimed achievement was negotiating a peaceful resolution to a hostage situation.
Beyer did that with the Voyager re-launch. Characters that Golden had established went right out the window as soon as she took the helm, including Campbell, a character IIRC was introduced back during the Voyager numbered series. Don't misunderstand me, I like what she's done with the series, but there were several storylines that were literally wiped out or hand waved away 'off screen'. There was at least one that was never resolved. The only one Beyer carried over was the adventures of Miral Paris.
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