Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [229]
KD:Reunion remains one of the few straight-out “whodunits” in Star Trek fiction. I’m assuming that is something that appealed to your readers. Not only do they get some insight as to Picard’s past, but they get a fun story as well.
MJF: I think so, yeah. At least that was the intent.
KD: With Reunion, you were working under these basic tenets: Jean-Luc Picard was a crew member and later the captain on a twenty-two-year mission to explore space. And that was about all you had with which to work, correct?
MJF: We knew that Jack Crusher was on the ship, and there was a crewman named Vigo. We knew that in “The Battle,” one of the first-season (ST:TNG) episodes, where we first see the Stargazer as a hulk, Picard has sort of a flashback and someone is crying out “Vigo!” Later on, there was an episode in maybe the sixth season or so where we see Picard’s supposed son, Jason Vigo (“Bloodlines”). I think that was an attempt to make that connection, but then somewhere along the line they kept the name but changed the character so there could not have been that connection. So I had Vigo to work with. I also knew how the Stargazer’s mission ended—in a clash with the Ferengi.
KD: So that was a pretty blank slate for you to work with, which I’m guessing made it that much more fun.
MJF: It was fun, but I wouldn’t have minded a few other points to bounce off of. It makes for good ironies and so on. But it was fun in that respect. I was able to come up with a lot of characters I enjoyed.
KD: Regarding the core seven officers who show up in Reunion, you built that crew with Picard as captain, not Picard as a lower-ranks officer as he appears in The Valiant.
MJF: Right.
KD: Let’s start with the first officer, Gilaad Ben Zoma. Where did you go to come up with him?
MJF: Without thinking about it too much, I went to my childhood. I have vivid memories of my father reciting the Passover service, and one of the rabbis that gets mentioned in that service is named Ben Zoma. There hadn’t been any Jewish characters in Star Trek that I could remember, so I figured why not plunk one in there. And the visual I had for him was sort of Dean Martin. Dean Martin is kind of olive-skinned and has a ready sense of humor. And I remembered him fondly from my days of watching his variety shows as a kid. Not that I would build my life on Dean Martin’s.
KD: And you didn’t fill out the rest of the Stargazer’s crew with the Golddiggers.
MJF: (laughs) There you go. And that might not have been such a bad idea. But those were the things that kind of converged. And I wanted somebody who was different from Riker, but not so different that Picard would not be able to work with him.
KD: It definitely struck a different tone in relationship. Where Picard and Riker might resemble the teacher and student, Ben Zoma comes across as a contemporary to Picard.
MJF: Very much so. They work together, they confide in each other, there are no protocols separating them.
KD: How about a character who took a darker turn by the end of the book, Carter Greyhorse.
MJF: Yeah, Carter Greyhorse is an interesting character to me, still. In terms of how he looked, I was thinking of the Indian character in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
KD: Chief.
MJF: Right. Big guy, kind of taciturn, and different in one regard in that Greyhorse is a little more intellectual than Chief.