You created a Star Trek hero for your story - WHY?

[Robert Bruce Scott]

I want to know why you made your hero character - please choose only one from your main fanfic story group.

What did you have in mind when you created that character?
What drove you to craft your hero's characteristics?

Of course, I'll take the opportunity to start... With Captain Ronald Howard, XIV, of the U.S.S. Beagle (Skip Howard).

Skip isn't just gay. He's a very effeminate gay man. He prances, he giggles, he wears eyeshadow and fingernail polish, in colors that reflect his mood or the impact he wants to create. But he is very much the captain of the U.S.S. Beagle and can be quite intimidating, even while smiling (which he does pretty much all the time.) I also chose to make him a physically small man, about 5'6" and very slight of build. At 34, he is the youngest captain in the fleet. While he wears his hair long, he is evidently balding.

Both his father and his grandfather (who both appear in the series) are completely bald and are also small and slight of build.

So why an effeminate gay man for the main hero?

Because there aren't any. While modern fiction and television are finally starting to show gay men as somewhat normal, the out, loud, and proud effeminate gays are still, when they're portrayed at all, are portrayed as either jokes or tragic characters. So I wanted to show such a man in a leadership role.

I also wanted him to be primarily a scientist. He has the equivalent of a master's degree in exobiology - which makes him the perfect person to command a deep space biological and cultural survey mission.

More importantly, I wanted to break the overused trope of unhealthy father/son relationships that are a staple of drama throughout television and especially for space operas such as Star Trek and Babylon 5. When the Howards get together, there is no discomfort at all, only laughter and joy. A very healthy relationship among grandfather, son, and grandson.

I especially wanted to show this family dynamic with an openly effeminate gay man, whose father and grandfather (and pretty much everyone else around him) accept him as he is without question, comment or reservation.

While a lot of writers have moved Star Trek into a dark place and written some fairly dark things about the future of humanity (myself included), I wanted to showcase this part of Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future. That healthy grandfather, son, grandson relationship was probably the best thing about DS9 and I wanted to echo it in the Star Beagle Adventures.

So tell us about the main hero of your Star Trek fanfic...

Thanks!! rbs

 

[Alexander Corrino]

Since my guy is basically me and more a snarky bartender than a typical Star Trek hero... not sure if I fit into this but I'll give it a try!

I basically wanted to show a civilian in the Trek universe who (much to his mother's horror) gets involved with a certain Starfleet captain whose initials are JLP and ends up slowly turning into a family man along with him, until both of them eventually, at the end of the main series, realize it's time to leave Starfleet and starships behind and focus on their son's emotional well-being.

He often provides advice from the perspective of an outsider, and he has a much less rose tinted glasses view on Starfleet. He accepts that it's part of his husband's life, of course, but he also feels some of its tactics and ideas are somewhat questionable.

And I also tend to focus on happy family life. I'm sick and tired of the whole "bury your gays, everything is tragic" thing that goes on these days, so, my stories make it a point to show a happy m/m couple. The threats are usually coming from the outside (although I'm not saying there aren't any arguments).

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

I'm sick and tired of the whole "bury your gays, everything is tragic" thing that goes on these days, so, my stories make it a point to show a happy m/m couple.

Going to have to give you an amen on that one. Thanks!! rbs

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Because the format was of a TNG episode, technically Picard is the hero of "Poor Relations." But Harris is the guest captain, and the original (if I can call it that) hero-esque creation. From the Afterword in the story thread:

In the pitch game, the idea of 'poor relations' in the context of Star Trek immediately suggested to me Gillian Taylor's assignment at the end of Star Trek IV. That connection was the genesis of my pitch and this story. In the film, we see Gillian in a uniform, but it is not Starfleet. Although it is not stated, the possibility that she will be on a seagoing vessel to support the whales is understood. The idea of there being at least one other uniformed service in the Federation besides Starfleet follows from this scene. It may also have been implied by the scientists at Regula I in The Wrath of Khan, and the mentioned ongoing tension between scientists and soldiers. It also more or less follows from the recurring debates on TrekBBS about whether Starfleet is a military. In multiple discussions, I've proposed the idea that Starfleet could be regarded as a uniformed service first and foremost, that performs military functions when necessary, in addition to other functions, as appropriate. (In the phaser control room, Harris stops just short of implying that there exist uniformed services in the Federation that use military vessels with offensive armaments. Is he referring to Starfleet, some other branch of uniformed service, or both? That's intentionally left ambiguous, as a direct reference to the never-ending debate regarding whether Starfleet is a military.) When you talk about uniformed service in the real world of the United States, you've got the military services, and then you have the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and you have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps. That brings us back to seagoing vessels, again. Plus, what else would a poor relation of a starship be, but a planet-bound seagoing vessel?​

​

With the idea of some sort of nautical adventure determined, without hesitation I took Jacques Cousteau as the prototype for the captain and his vessel Calypso and its submarines as the prototypes for what became Theseus and her pods. The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau was a regular viewing staple in my parents' house when I was growing up. Considering that Jean-Luc Picard is (supposedly) French, as Jacques Cousteau actually was, and considering that the captain's yacht of NCC-1701-D is named Calypso and NCC-1701-E's is named Cousteau, it's not hard to think of Picard as being cut from the same cloth as Cousteau, if Cousteau were written as a mythical explorer. I leaned into this in the story, by making Harris and Picard physically similar, at least in terms of their hair and general age. Since Cousteau is the rough prototype for both captains in the story and Harris is the closer reflection of him, Harris was made senior.​

 

[DarKush]

When it comes to Terrence S. Glover, the main character in my Dark Territory series, I wanted to see more Black representation in Star Trek. I am a Black American male, born in the ‘70s, and there was a dearth of Black characters in much of the genre entertainment I loved growing up. There still is, as far as I’m concerned (even though there has been progress).

I was inspired by Avery Brooks and Ben Sisko, and I initially modeled Glover after the late Tony Todd, and his doomed captain on Babylon 5. Eventually 24’s Roger Cross, a genre stalwart, became the face of Terrence. Glover’s wife Jasmine was initially modeled after Miss USA Kenya Moore. Eventually I settled on Danny Glover as the face of Admiral Samson Glover. I draw a lot on Black history when I’m naming things in my stories, and even Terrence’s name came from a Black poet in ancient Rome. (The Starship Cuffe was named for Paul Cuffe). Glover came from Smallville’s John Glover and Danny Glover.

For Terrence Glover, I didn’t want tokenism. I wanted to create a hopefully well-developed character with more dimensions than were typically afforded Black characters in genre fiction. As a (still) budding writer, I also wanted to write a character that interested me and so I gave him flaws, edges, dark corners to turn down that could open new storylines.

I wanted a character very good at his job but not good at his home life. I chose to have Glover married because we have yet to see a Trek main character married during their series. They start off or end that way, but we haven’t seen a captain attempt to balance those dual responsibilities, so I thought that was different and interesting to write.

I can’t recall for certain but I’m sure I made Glover an admiral’s kid to get Samson into more stories. If I had known the commodore rank was still a thing in the 24th century I think I would’ve just made the elder Glover a commodore to stand out even more. I also made Glover’s mother Dietra (the name taken from the Black female pilot on the original Battlestar Galactica) a person who wanted to be a captain but didn’t make it to give him the motivation to achieve that for himself, and for her. His relationship with his mother is very important. Glover is a lot like her, and he is still attempting to gain her approval and affection (even though she was lost in space over a decade by the time of the first Dark Territory story I wrote, The Valley of Peace).

Glover is perhaps more of a protagonist than hero. I didn’t want a stolid, sturdy, do-right lead character. Glover is very self-assured (some would say arrogant), ambitious/careerist, and can even be a bully. We see this most in his chilly relationship with Captain Sandhurst from Gibraltar’s stories. When Gibraltar and I decided to tie our series together I recall not wanting to do the typical thing and make both lead characters old friends or whatnot. I thought it was more interesting to make them dislike each other (like how Sisko felt towards Picard in the DS9 pilot) and I was okay with making Terrence the goat of those interactions. In Glover’s mind, Sandhurst wasn’t ambitious enough, he wasn’t sure of himself, and those are big no-no’s for Terrence (especially when he was making his way up the ladder).

I also drew inspiration from career climbing characters like Shelby on TNG. To balance out the sharp edges, I gave him a loving relationship with his dad, he genuinely loves his wife, he loves kids and wants to have a family, and he’s a very loyal friend. He’s the kind of starship commander who is out front. He demands the best of himself, so he naturally demands that of those who serve under him. But he also knows how to blow off steam and have a good time.

I also made sure that Glover is a ladies’ man. When it comes to Black characters, especially Black males, there’s been a reluctance to depict many in healthy romantic/sexual relationships. I noticed it with Geordi and even LeVar Burton later expressed his belief that they made La Forge a “eunuch”. That wasn’t going to happen under my pen. Not all of Glover’s relationships are “healthy” to be honest, though his libido is, and I wanted a virile captain.

I made Glover a warrior because I wanted a Black lead character who could handle themselves. I didn’t like how Hollywood too often made Black characters comic relief or not as good at fighting/taking care of business. I used to love it whenever Sisko would barrel into the Jem’Hadar. I loved the TNG episode with Riker on a Klingon ship and did the same thing for Terrence. I also made him an admirer of the Klingons which isn’t something we had seen much of before, and I thought it would set him apart from Samson, who is a Romulan scholar.

Before I came up with the Glover character, I was going to expand on the canon DS9 Charlie Reynolds character, the captain of the Centaur, who was mentioned but never seen. Sisko said they were friends and that’s where the idea of Glover being Sisko’s friend came from. I also brought Cal Hudson into it to give more spotlight to him. I also created a relationship between Glover and Tryla Scott to place more attention on her character. It was a great missed opportunity to not revisit Scott in another episode or novels and comics. I still don’t buy that she died in “Conspiracy”. I wanted to use Dark Territory to not only highlight Black history but Black characters in Trek too.

 

[Hawku]

I just wrote my Captain, in various Trill host states, to go from bad-at-being-Captain to juuuust alright, as well as to channel various one-liners like,

"What in the name of awkward Kirk-movements is going on here?" (Myth's and Lore)​

and

"You look like a Vidiian with Terrellian plague on Boranis III." (Celestial Dynamics)​

and

"Intelligent life is the worst." (Gender Swap)​

​

My thoughts on our protagonists is that they're usually some reflection of ourselves present, past or future used to examine conflicts we may or may not get to explore in real life. I like Seifer as a Trek fourth-wall breaker the same way people can take a stepped-back view of the world at any time.

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

Since Cousteau is the rough prototype for both captains in the story and Harris is the closer reflection of him, Harris was made senior.

I recall quite enjoying that story and especially the idea of a uniformed service with submarines serving in several different oceans on several different worlds. You opened a very rich vein for stories.

Glover is very self-assured (some would say arrogant), ambitious/careerist, and can even be a bully. We see this most in his chilly relationship with Captain Sandhurst from Gibraltar’s stories.

I first encountered Glover in the Gibraltar series and immediately pictured Michael Beach in the role primarily because his one-time character in Stargate Atlantis seemed very similar. Handsome, charming, strong, definitely a lady's man, and, also, occasionally an asshole. But a big enough man to admit when he's wrong and apologize for it.

I didn't know about him being married. (Captain Ronald Howard is also married.)

I like Seifer as a Trek fourth-wall breaker the same way people can take a stepped-back view of the world at any time.

You don't just break that 4th wall. You totally demolish it!

Thanks!! rbs

 

[DarKush]

I recall quite enjoying that story and especially the idea of a uniformed service with submarines serving in several different oceans on several different worlds. You opened a very rich vein for stories.


I first encountered Glover in the Gibraltar series and immediately pictured Michael Beach in the role primarily because his one-time character in Stargate Atlantis seemed very similar. Handsome, charming, strong, definitely a lady's man, and, also, occasionally an asshole. But a big enough man to admit when he's wrong and apologize for it.

I didn't know about him being married. (Captain Ronald Howard is also married.)


You don't just break that 4th wall. You totally demolish it!

Thanks!! rbs

Beach is not a bad choice at all. I did enjoy his Atlantis character. Glover isn't married in every story I've written and even in many of my stories where he is, the marriage isn't a focal point. It took me a long time to figure out the marriage and if I could do it over again, I think I would've done more to develop it. Off memory, the stories where either their courtship or marriage are more prominent are:

-The Needs of the One
-False Colors
-Maelstrom
-Corruption of Blood
-The Valley of Peace
-Night Catches Us

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I recall quite enjoying that story and especially the idea of a uniformed service with submarines serving in several different oceans on several different worlds. You opened a very rich vein for stories.

Thanks!

I still don’t buy that she died in “Conspiracy”.

Yeah, based on what's on screen in the episode, Scott could very well and quite believably have survived, just as Admiral Quinn did. If you look at her entry on Memory Alpha, her status is listed as deceased, but that's based on speculation by the contributors.