Star Trek: Pantheon (55 page)

KD:
And some suspicion was loaded pretty quick, such as Guinan hinting that Pug may be an alcoholic with a temper. In this kind of story, I suppose that you have to put a dark shade on everyone.

MJF:
But I like Pug a lot. He’s just an earnest guy, especially in the
Stargazer
books. In
Reunion,
he was a little more seasoned and older.

KD:
The interesting thing is that in this first story with the
Stargazer
crew, you are showing them at the end of their careers. But in the new books, you’re showing them more at their fighting weights.

MJF:
And that’s very cool to me.

KD:
So we’re left with, and I almost can’t say it with a straight face, Captain Morgen. As soon as I saw his name, I thought someone was mixing drinks.

MJF:
(laughs) No, no, it was nothing like that. Actually, I conceived him as a very angular and hairless man, contrary to what you see on the original cover. And I came up with the Daa’Vit culture because it gave us the hook to bring them all together. It was just a plot device. While I was at it, I made Morgen someone that Worf could interact with. When these new guys are standing off by themselves, it’s not nearly as interesting. I wanted as many different points of contact with the
Enterprise
crew as I could get. Wesley was able to interact with Simenon, Worf with Morgen, and so on. Interestingly enough, the one character besides Picard who should have interacted with this crew the most chose not to, and that was Beverly.

KD:
For the reason that it was painful. It would be as if someone lost his wife and then went to her high-school reunion. And with that in mind, you had to create the character of Jack Crusher just so you could make sure to be true to him in his absence. The others have to refer to him consistently. So who is Jack Crusher?

MJF:
Actually, in a book called
The First Virtue
(No. 6 in the
Double Helix
series, written with Christie Golden), I actually portray Jack in a buddy story with Tuvok. So what kind of guy is he? He’s a nice guy, a good guy. He’s not complicated. He’s eager to do his job. You wouldn’t call him devil-may-care, but he’s willing to accept a little danger to do his job.

KD:
With all this in the mix, it seems that the
Stargazer
crew is one with a lot of possibilities.

MJF:
I agree. I like the crew. And the reason I added crew members in
Gauntlet
is that you already know what happens to these guys. In one sense, it’s a good thing. You have the advantage of creating all of these ironies, but you also have the disadvantage of knowing they all survive except for the couple who don’t. You want some sense of jeopardy, so I created the additional characters. They have something that the others do not have by virtue of our not knowing their fates.

KD:
So it was eight years later that you revisited this crew for
The Valiant.

MJF:
Yes, but other things happened in between. I did a book with Kevin Ryan called
Requiem (ST:TNG
No. 42), in which some of the characters appeared in an extended prologue. Then I did
The First Virtue,
in which the crew appeared with Jack. In a three-issue arc of the comics, I did a story featuring Picard, Jack, and Ben Zoma, so there was a little whetting of the appetite along the way. But what happened was that my book
Starfleet: Year One
was supposed to be the first of an original book series. When official details about
Enterprise
started coming out, it was clear that my vision of the beginning of Starfleet was going to conflict with that vision. Rather than that series happening, we considered a
Stargazer
book series instead. But actually the decision to do
The Valiant
was independent of that. Originally, this was going to be a stand-alone book. When it became obvious that
Starfleet: Year One
was not going to be a series, we then switched gears and made
The Valiant
into essentially the first
Stargazer
book.

KD:
Did that affect your plans for the story in any way?

MJF:
To me, the seminal story in
Star Trek
is (the original-series episode) “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” That may still be the best hour of
Star Trek
in my mind. The idea that Gary becomes superhuman has stuck in my mind and has surfaced in a few of the
Star Trek
books I have done and will continue to surface, as it did in the
My Brother’s Keeper
trilogy. But I wasn’t done with Gary Mitchell. I thought it would be cool to connect what happened on the
Valiant
to something later on in
Star Trek
continuity. Originally, I wasn’t thinking of a
Stargazer
story for that. But I figured that I already had a crew that I could use again, and Kirk’s already been connected to the old
Valiant.
So let’s go ahead and connect Picard and do it in a way that also relates to another big element in continuity, which is how he got his command.

KD:
And it was received well by readers.

MJF:
I think its biggest virtue was that it connected all of these points. You have the Gary Mitchell back-story, the
Valiant,
the Kelvans from (the original-series episode) “By Any Other Name,” and Picard’s battlefield commission. That’s a lot of interesting points.

KD:
Tell me about what it’s like to write Picard as a junior officer and captain on the
Stargazer
as opposed to writing him as commander of the
Enterprise.
To me, it might seem like writing the adventures of Superboy.

MJF:
Yeah, it is. But it’s very difficult, actually. If you go back to (the
ST:TNG
episode) “Tapestry,” Picard’s a hothead and he learns not to be one.

KD:
But once you get your heart poked out by a Nausicaan, usually, it tones you down.

MJF:
That’s gonna happen. (laughs) So now he’s toned down. But it sort of implies in “Tapestry” that once those events were over and he learned that lesson, he could have become a Milquetoast and never been a captain. So he’s kind of forced into a middle ground, and that works very well for him in
The Next Generation
era, because he’s an older guy. But in
Stargazer,
from that incident on, what is he like? Is he like the sixty-year-old Picard from the time he was twenty-five? What the hell is he like? It’s always interesting to portray him in the
Stargazer
era. You don’t want to portray him too much differently from where he ends up, but you don’t want him too similar, either. He makes mistakes. It’s difficult, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I always succeed. Really Picard is the most complex captain we have. I love Kirk, but Kirk was on for three years and I don’t think he ever became as complex as Picard.

KD:
So even though it initially was not meant to be,
The Valiant
was the introduction to your series of
Stargazer
novels, which are going strong today.

MJF:
The Valiant
very much sows the seeds for what happens later in the
Stargazer
series. And I am having fun with the new books.

KD:
This is very interesting insight, Mike. Thanks for sharing it with your readers.

MJF:
It was my pleasure.