It’s Day 5 of ST:NOC and, at last, the full ST:NOC crew is revealed for your viewing pleasure! Joining the rest of our ST:NOC crew is Captain Benjamin Sisko in the captain’s chair! Also, our NOCs voted Star Trek‘s only space station locale — Deep Space Nine — as the franchise’s Best Starship.
Vote for your own favourites after the jump!
Captain: Captain Benjamin Sisko (DS9)
Runner-up: Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (TNG)
Like the First Officer category, the first round of voting for Best Captain resulted in a tie between Sisko and TNG’s Picard; perhaps because forcing a Trekkie to choose between Picard and Sisko is about the most cruel and soul-wrenching thing a person can do.
(This is what happened when J. Lamb was asked to fill out the NOC survey.)
Sisko eventually emerged victorious after eking out a narrow victory in our tie-breaking head-to-head. And why? Because Sisko is awesome. So awesome, in fact that all I’m going to do is link the following Sisko-inspired posts written for Star Trek Week.
- My Grandfather Was My Dealer
- The Sisko, part 1: Our Living Black Manhood
- The Sisko, part 2: Unapologetic Blackness
Sisko was played by actor Avery Brooks, who is so awesome that he is the subject of the third part of “The Sisko Trilogy” due out later today.
Best Ship: Deep Space 9
Runner-up: Three-way tie between Enterprise 1701-D, Enterprise 1701-E and the Defiant
What is there to be said about Deep Space 9 that hasn’t already been said? One of the Alpha Quadrant’s most important locations, the station was built by Bajoran slave labor and occupied by the Cardassians under the name “Terok Nor” as the seat of power for their occupation of the Bajoran homeworld. However, it’s importance is due primarily to its location next to the Bajoran wormhole which was discovered by Starfleet days after the Cardassians abandoned the station, which provides nearly instantaneous access between the Alpha Quadrant — home to the Federation — and the Delta Quadrant, particularly during the Dominion War. Deep Space 9, which boasts a unique blueprint due among Federation stations due to its Cardassian origins, is characterized by its rich cultural history contrasted against its bleak aesthetic. In terms of the Star Trek canon, Deep Space 9 is also noteworthy due to being the set for the franchise’s only series set on a non-moving starship, and for also being the last real model built before the franchise moved to CGI effects.
Think you can do better? Vote for your own favourites here:
Dudes, is it just me, or is that one HELL of a bridge?!?!?!? We did such a good job! As Capt. Picard would say, MAKE IT SO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZxHAZChcYU).
I’m afraid it’s not one hell of a bridge, unless by “one hell” you mean “mostly men.” Just like TOS, Uhura’s the only woman on our bridge, and in arguably the lowest role. Guinan has to share her post with a male character.
I’m including myself in this critique: what’s wrong with us that our “perfect” crew only has one woman on it?
I generally don’t view things that way: look at something and see what’s wrong with it first. I like celebrating what’s right about things first; please let me do that.
All the characters on this “dream team” are intelligent, competent, honorable…AND the variety of races and seasons is intriguing. That’s cool! I would love to see a mash-up episode with these characters.
I’m of the opinion that this reflects Star Trek’s generally weaker and less memorable characterization of female characters relative to male characters, and the paucity of female characters in general compared to men. It’s worth noting that in several categories, women came in second, but virtually no female characters could win a head-to-head against a male character that held the same position in another show.
If Star Trek should be criticized for anything, it should be its general failure to depict its women in a compelling way as to make any of them instant fan favourites to the same level as Worf, Data, or Geordi La Forge. The women tend to be written a little more hollow, a little more one-dimensionally, a little more schtick and a little less like character examinations. And if nothing else, the NOCs gravitated towards characters that are nuanced and complex over those that are almost literally the sum of their parts.
I think it’s also worth noting that no characters from Voyager or Enterprise made it into this cast. Reflecting the generally weaker caliber of writing in those later shows, and the fact that the franchise was trying to return to its TOS roots with those later shows as a direct reflection of how DS9 received fan backlash for being such a deviation (to good effect, IMO), Voyager and Enterprise intentionally tried to go a little more campy, a little more episodic, a little more formulaic. It’s my memory that this resulted in both fans feeling these later shows were stale, and that the characters are in general a little more stock. Given that both of these shows contain at least 40% of the number of women in the running, I think that also contributes to the general female underrepresentation in our crew.
But, in the end, this was each position being considered individually and going in a head-to-head. We didn’t vote with the final crew makeup in consideration. And yet, we ended up with what seems to me as a very diverse crew full of very sophisticated and dynamic personalities. Like Julie, I would be very interested in seeing this crew in action.