Geordi in future TNG novels

[Stevil2001]

There's a great scene in Invasion!: First Strike where Spock is missing, and Kirk has to call half-a-dozen different scientists onto the bridge, each one an expert in something different, to figure out what he needs to know, and he realizes how exceptional Spock is.

 

[Rosalind]

I agree with David and Christopher, we have a "chief scientist" in every one of our divisions, their job is to provide a rough science goal, lead all the "science leaders" in the various fields within the division, and generally lots and lots and lots of management stuff. but yeah, TV shows in general don't portrait scientists accurately.

 

[KRAD]

Tom: the answer to your question is "Of course, seeing as how I wrote the next book," but this isn't a spoiler thread.

As of the beginning of Resistance, here's the senior staff of the Big E:

Commanding officer: Jean-Luc Picard
First officer: Worf, son of Mogh
Second officer: TBA
Chief engineer: Geordi La Forge
Chief of security: Lio Battaglia
Conn officer: Sara Nave
Chief medical officer: Beverly Crusher
Ship's counselor: T'Lana of Vulcan

 

[od0_ital]

KRAD said:
Tom: the answer to your question is "Of course, seeing as how I wrote the next book," but this isn't a spoiler thread.

That's why I used the code.

 

[Trent Roman]

Christopher said:
A perennial problem in science today is overspecialization -- too many scientists are too focused on their own narrow fields and don't know enough about anything else to recognize the larger connections and patterns that link fields of knowledge and that can provide deeper insights. I've often thought our pursuit of knowledge would advance faster if there were more people trained as generalists to balance the specialists and help establish lines of communication among different scientific disciplines.

If only that was the scientists' problem to solve. I'd love to be able to make my education more well-rounded, to absorb knowledge from a more diverse range of disciplines and fields. But our education system is designed with eventual specialization in mind; high school is really the last bastion of general education, which isn't saying much. Post-secondary education gets narrower and narrower as one progresses through degrees. But it's the market that is the greatest offender, and probably why the education system is, in many ways, designed as it is. Nobody is interested in hiring generalists; corporate culture dislikes people who aren't focused on their narrow, designated tasks, and there's an argument to be made for the fact that an information society makes general knowledge more readily available, and so less dependant on specific individuals. Employers want candidates who are better at what they do they any other applicant, and that means being as much of an expert as possible in one or two fields in able to be able to compete for posts.

Still, if one considers the moneyless economy of the Federation means that employment isn't as much of a concern, that might explain why we have more people who are free to pursue their interests in a wide range of scientific fields as opposed to becoming highly specialized in one or two functions. And despite the fact that it should be easier than ever to look up general information, generalists appear highly valued for the creative potential arising from a broad educational spectrum, and for their ability to comprehend and deal with complex systems arising from the interaction of multiple natural or 'human' sources.

Sigh. Is it the twenty-fourth century yet?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[BrotherBenny]

Trent Roman said:
If only that was the scientists' problem to solve. I'd love to be able to make my education more well-rounded, to absorb knowledge from a more diverse range of disciplines and fields. But our education system is designed with eventual specialization in mind; high school is really the last bastion of general education, which isn't saying much. Post-secondary education gets narrower and narrower as one progresses through degrees. But it's the market that is the greatest offender, and probably why the education system is, in many ways, designed as it is. Nobody is interested in hiring generalists; corporate culture dislikes people who aren't focused on their narrow, designated tasks, and there's an argument to be made for the fact that an information society makes general knowledge more readily available, and so less dependant on specific individuals. Employers want candidates who are better at what they do they any other applicant, and that means being as much of an expert as possible in one or two fields in able to be able to compete for posts.

Still, if one considers the moneyless economy of the Federation means that employment isn't as much of a concern, that might explain why we have more people who are free to pursue their interests in a wide range of scientific fields as opposed to becoming highly specialized in one or two functions. And despite the fact that it should be easier than ever to look up general information, generalists appear highly valued for the creative potential arising from a broad educational spectrum, and for their ability to comprehend and deal with complex systems arising from the interaction of multiple natural or 'human' sources.

Sigh. Is it the twenty-fourth century yet?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

I agree with your sentiments entirely. I did Creative Writing and English at university and there were several Film and Media Studies modules that I was hoping to do since they were essentially creative writing, such as Scriptwriting and Novel/TV/Film Adaptation. But there's nothing I can do about that, now since I graduated in '05.

 

[DarthPipes]

Technobuilder said:
Even thought Scotty was chief engineer of Kirk's Enterprise, he was also the second officer, and I don't see any reason why LaForge can't be the second officer as well.

Heck, Sonya Gomez (who was his subordinate way back when) outranks him as a Commander in the first SCE Novel (Which I've finally started) and I Believe Worf's inching his way up the ladder as well. Even if he stay's in Engineering and doesn't become second officer. He's been a Lt. Commander since 2366. It's 2380 in Resistance that's 14 years or so...The guy needs a promotion to Full Commander.

Sometimes I wonder if Scotty was still second officer of the Enterprise during the time of the films. He seems to stay exclusively in engineering during this time. He outranks the other officers but his presence is almost always required in engineering.

In Star Trek, nobody ever moves on in their careers. A great example of that is with Mayweather. In Demons, he tells his old girlfriend that he's thinking of settling down. In the series finale, we see he's still at the exact same job six years later.

 

[od0_ital]

^

Had the same rank, too, same as Archer, Hoshi, T'Pol, Trip & Malcolm. They even still had Doc Phlox onboard.

Six years between the Terra Prime Crisis and 'These are the Voyages...' and nobody did anything different except add pointless name tags to their uniforms.

At least TNG tried to do different stuff with their characters - Yar's death in season one, Crusher's absence & Geordi's promotion in season two, Wesley's academy admission in season four. And DS9 did that a bit, too, what with promotin' Sisko, Jadzia, Worf, Kira and Nog. But VOY didn't do much with their characters, since they really couldn't without becomin' "top heavy" & ENT followed that example instead of the better one set by TNG & DS9.

 

[JWolf]

Tino said:
I googled and that's part of the ebook-series coming out soon right? Well ... as a Geordi-fan, you might have convinced me to buy an ebook for the first time in my life. And I'll have to buy the entire ebook-series then of course. Or is there any chance that "Slings and Arrows" will be a book sometime? Then I'd rather wait.

According to KRAD this won't be printed in dead tree form for a few years. So good luck waiting. I'll already have bough, downloaded, and enjoyed while you sit there and wish it was in dead tree form.

 

[JD]

od0_ital said:
^

Had the same rank, too, same as Archer, Hoshi, T'Pol, Trip & Malcolm. They even still had Doc Phlox onboard.

Six years between the Terra Prime Crisis and 'These are the Voyages...' and nobody did anything different except add pointless name tags to their uniforms.

At least TNG tried to do different stuff with their characters - Yar's death in season one, Crusher's absence & Geordi's promotion in season two, Wesley's academy admission in season four. And DS9 did that a bit, too, what with promotin' Sisko, Jadzia, Worf, Kira and Nog. But VOY didn't do much with their characters, since they really couldn't without becomin' "top heavy" & ENT followed that example instead of the better one set by TNG & DS9.

Well, we did get Tom's promotion and demotion, and Tuvok's promotion in Voyager.

 

[Ethros]

^ And Lt. Ayala was demoted briefly to Ensign for no reason whatsoever!

 

[Therin of Andor]

^ Weren't there two Ayalas anyway?

 

[Christopher]

Therin of Andor said:
^ Weren't there two Ayalas anyway?

Huh? What do you mean?

 

[Therin of Andor]

I had a feeling there were two distinctive VOY crewmembers called Ayala. Maybe I read a fan site once, and they did the old "twins" explanation to explain discrepancies?

 

[Christopher]

^^Nope, I can't find any suggestion of that on Memory Alpha or the other usual VGR info sites. As far as they reveal, the name "Ayala" was always applied to perennial extra Tarik Ergin's character. The only discrepancy noted is that he was referred to as "Ensign" in "The Gift" and "Lieutenant" in every other instance.

Maybe you're thinking of Ensign Lang and Crewman Timothy Lang?

 

[DarthPipes]

od0_ital said:
^

Had the same rank, too, same as Archer, Hoshi, T'Pol, Trip & Malcolm. They even still had Doc Phlox onboard.

Six years between the Terra Prime Crisis and 'These are the Voyages...' and nobody did anything different except add pointless name tags to their uniforms.

At least TNG tried to do different stuff with their characters - Yar's death in season one, Crusher's absence & Geordi's promotion in season two, Wesley's academy admission in season four. And DS9 did that a bit, too, what with promotin' Sisko, Jadzia, Worf, Kira and Nog. But VOY didn't do much with their characters, since they really couldn't without becomin' "top heavy" & ENT followed that example instead of the better one set by TNG & DS9.

Mayweather was still an ensign? Geez, that's a little extreme there. Always thought it was strange that there wasn't a human doctor onboard Enterprise with Phlox seeing as it was the first Warp 5 ship of humanity. Then there's Trip accepting a sideways promotion to Chief Engineer of Columbia briefly. Guess Starfleet didn't believe in new personel.

Enterprise was literally a crew of seven when it came to the Enterprise. Almost no recurring crewmembers at all.

Anyway, back to Geordi. I hope he eventually did work his way up to captain. But given what we see in Enterprise, I suspect he'll still be in the engine room.

 

[Trent Roman]

DarthPipes said:
Always thought it was strange that there wasn't a human doctor onboard Enterprise with Phlox seeing as it was the first Warp 5 ship of humanity.

The pilot established that Phlox was fully fluent in human physiology, so there would be no issues with him treating humans, and the fact that he was well traveled and had extensive experience treating illnesses from a broad spectrum of species made him an ideal candidate for CMO of a starship that was going places no human doctor was likely to have any familiarity with. Personally, I thought it was both a logical decision, from a functional standpoint, and a good one from a symbolic standpoint as well: this early into the humanity's interstellar age, Starfleet feels comfortable enough with itself to call on the talents of individuals regardless of species, and learn to value the different perspective of alien cultures. (Yeah, there was T'Pol too, but she was initially forced on the crew, where Phlox was Archer's choice.)

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Ronald Held]

I tend to agree with this asseesment of Phlox.

 

[DarthPipes]

I'm not knocking Phlox being there. I understand why it is. But having a human doctor there to learn from him should be a no-brainer by Starfleet.

 

[William Leisner]

^ Except the NX-01 was a pretty small ship -- somewhere around 100 crew, if memory serves. You wouldn't need, or really want, more than one doctor on a ship that size. Besides, you have the Interspecies Medical Exchange set up specifically for educational purposes.