posted
In "How to Write Sci-Fi and Fantasy" OSC discusses what I will call the 'start trek quotient' for the purposes of this thread. The gist of the 'star trek quotient' refers to a characters freedom to act and respond to a situation. The idea being that while in Star Trek Captain Kirk can run around as the hero, while in reality a ships captain would likely never leave the ship on an away mission or to fight the alien hordes.
In a story I am developing I find that I am running into this problem. One of the main characters is the commander of a starship. The characters background is in the military, what would be the equivalent of special forces training a la navy seal/army ranger/marine force recon etc. This person became a commander through promotion and advancement based on his skills.
Currently in the story this character has an "action" sequence in the beginning and the end of the story, while the mid section is primarily focused on verbal exchanges and commanding a pair of smallish space environment battles.
My current thoughts as to resolving this issue to give my character a 'Darth Vader' promotion scheme. Think of it like this, in "Star Wars A New Hope", think about the scene in the Death Star where Vader attends a meeting of high ranking military officers (this is the scene where Vader strangles a military officer with the force after he questions his 'sorcerers ways'). We see in this scene that while the officers are in command of the Death Star and the supporting ships, Vader has a rank above them. The idea I am implying is that I could give my character overall command of his starship while he has an executive officer who would be the equivalent of the ships captain, commanding battles and the day to day activities of the ship.
So my question to the community is thus: Have any of you had this same problem? Where the character you plan to base your story around is, in OSC's words, lacking the power and freedom to act? How did you decide to overcome this problem? What are your thoughts on having a character in a place of authority who also gets his hands dirty? Please comment, criticize, devil's advocate, and otherwise remark in response. Much thanks in advance.
quote:The idea being that while in Star Trek Captain Kirk can run around as the hero, while in reality a ships captain would likely never leave the ship on an away mission or to fight the alien hordes.
Well, there are actually various legitimate reasons for the captain to leave the ship. He wouldn't be leading the way into the unknown, but, for example, he would leave the ship to meet with planetary leaders, etc. Security is the key -- as long as it appeared the situation was secure, then he could reasonably leave the ship. But he wouldn't be leading a combat mission except under extraordinary circumstances.
David Weber's Honor Harrington series handles the issue pretty well, I think. She's a starship captain who sometimes gets involved in various person-to-person combat situations, but it's usually because she just happens to be somewhere in the perfectly normal and reasonable course of her duties when something happens. (For example, dining with the family of a planetary leader when an assassination attempt is made.)
I do find it strange that a special-forces type is given command of a starship, rather than someone who has worked up through the ranks serving on a starship. It's kind of like giving a Marine command of a battleship, instead of giving it to someoene from the Navy. But that's not an insurmountable problem, as there are various possible explanations for it. (The starship has been assigned to assist your character in special ops. Or the space marines and space navy have a unified command structure and often swap officers between assignments in order to give them more general experience. Or the marine types are known for their loyalty to the government, whereas the navy has tried a coup in the recent past, so every naval vessel has a marine officer in overall command, even if he doesn't manage the routine operations.)
posted
It isn't unusual, particularly in a unified command structure (which is the model we are familiar with in modern militaries), for a high ranking officer to be in command of the overall mission even though each asset (the ship, the insertion team, the air support wing, etc.) is commanded by its usual commanding officer.
Think owner, captain, pilot/helmsman for a vessel, and you'll see that there are several separate levels of command that go into deciding what a ship is doing. The owner sets out the ports of call, the captian decides a bunch of stuff, the pilot is setting the actual course of the boat (usually under the captian's orders).
If you have a general that has come up through special forces, he might be in overall command of the mission, he tells the ship's captian where he wants the ship and when, and what other mission objectives the ship must achieve. Laying out the orders that will accomplish this is the captain's problem. He still has authority over his ship, except that he cannot put anything above accomplishing the objectives given to him by the general.
Of course, in such a case, the general wouldn't be going in with the troops either. But the major or whatever commanding the intsertion team is going to have the general's ear, much more so than the captain of the ship will. After all, the ship is there to serve the insertion team, not the other way round.
So that means that while the major isn't really in command of the ship, he can tell the general that he needs the ship to do x, y, and z, and the general will order the captain to do x, y, and z.
Darth Vader is a special case, because he has personal superpowers.
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