Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [231]
KD: There’s always an idea when you’re creating a crew that there are bridge stations you have got to fill. With Idun, did you create her character to fill the helmsman’s slot, or did you create a great character and then decide later that she would be a good fit at the helm?
MJF: I probably started with the slot and filled it with her, and I’m not sure at what point I decided to make her twins. I guess I decided that when I realized what the plot of Reunion was going to be.
KD: I wondered whether that also was the case with Pug. To me, if I saw this guy walking down the hall, just from his physical description I’d pick him as a natural for security.
MJF: Yeah. Pug was named after a friend of mine, Peter Joseph, but they don’t call my friend Pug. He looks nothing like Pug, and he’s not in security. He doesn’t even wear red shirts as far as I know. But I needed a guy, and I had a sense of who he would be and how he would fit in and where he would figure into the plot. I had to consider two things in a macro sense. One was an array of physical and social personalities who looked different and acted different to distinguish one from the other, with the exception of the twins, of course. The other thing was I needed suspects beyond the guy who actually did it.
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