Female Captains poll

[BrentMc]

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?

 

[zarkon]

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.

 

[BrentMc]

The poll options are of course meant to be a joke. I will have to read Children of the storm. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Defcon]

Don't really care whether it's a he, a she, a s/he or an it, as long as they're interesting,

That's pretty much what I meant to post.

 

[zarkon]

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.

 

[Mage]

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.

 

[Gotham Central]

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?

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.

 

[BrentMc]

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?

It could be someone entirely new.

 

[BrentMc]

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.

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.

 

[BillJ]

Count me in the sexist pig camp.

Seriously, I don't care as long as the character is well written.

 

[JD]

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.

 

[Christopher]

I refer the reader to the words of Greg Rucka:

The Quick Answer goes like this:

Q: How do you write such strong/well-realized/positively portrayed women?

A: I don't. I write characters. Some of those characters are women.

The Long Answer:

Writers don't write Men or Women or Dogs or Salmon. Writers write characters, and at our best, if we do it well and with care and with thought, we invest in those characters a spark of life, a realism and nuance that makes them believable and relatable. We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy, characters our audience will care for, and as a result, will care about what happens to them, and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey.

No character - no well-created character, at least - is defined by only one trait, by one aspect. Sherlock Holmes is not simply brilliant. He's also a malfunctioning human being who, perhaps ironically, possesses a strong moral compass and such a compulsion to pursue justice that it eclipses any fealty to the law. He's also a junkie.

Harry Potter is not the scar on his forehead, nor is Matthew Scudder solely an alcoholic, nor is V.I. Warshawski just a "female" private detective. Character is biology, countless cells and processes, many of them invisible to the naked eye, yet together forming a whole. A character's gender, like their religious upbringing or their faith, like their favorite book or food, like their sexual orientation and experiences, like their education and their childhood, is a component of character.

That said, some components certainly weigh heavier than others. Green eyes don't tend to affect character, unless that story is Big Trouble in Little China, for instance. But to define any character by gender alone makes about as much sense as defining a character by hair-color, or - ahem – judging a book by its cover.

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?

 

[Kertrats47]

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!"

 

[BrentMc]

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.

 

[Shon T'Hara]

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.

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.

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.

 

[BrentMc]

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?

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.

 

[Christopher]

Unfortunately the TV shows and movies never got there -- in TOS they weren't even allowed in command...

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.

 

[BrentMc]

Ideally Trek should strive for a 50/50 split.

While I welcome more stories with female captains, I don't feel like Star Trek should aim for a quota to be politically correct.

 

[sonak]

I want to see Guinan and Leeta given the chance to be captains.

 

[Christopher]

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.