The Unauthorized Trekkers’ Guide to the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine

COMMANDER WILLIAM RIKER

Not since the first starship Enterprise 1701 was under the command of Captain Christopher Pike has the executive officer been called “Number One.” William Riker has been given this honor by his commander, Captain Picard, to whom he is responsible for vastly important duties. When a landing team, or Away Team, is assembled, Riker is generally in charge of the team. Although it is not strictly prohibited for the starship captain to head up the team, Riker correctly recognizes that too much depends on the captain remaining safe to guide and protect his vessel.

Sending the most experienced officer down into an unknown situation is deemed too dangerous by Number One until he checks out the status of the planet and its culture for himself. Picard isn’t entirely happy being forced to remain behind, but he understands and respects his executive officer’s viewpoint.

Riker is also in charge of overseeing the condition of the vessel and the crew. When a Federation propulsion expert came aboard in “Where No One Has Gone Before,” Riker would not allow him to run tests on the system until they had been fully outlined to him and approved by the ship’s chief engineer.

“Number One” is an expression whose meaning has not appreciably altered since Earth’s seventeenth century, when the second-in-command of a sailing ship was generally known as a “first lieutenant” (hence “Number One” is used in the sense of “first”). The term also implies executive officer and captain-in-training.

THE CAPTAIN IS NOT EXPENDABLE

In those bygone days, the executive officer was also generally in command of shore parties for the same reason Riker takes such tasks upon himself now—the life of a ship’s captain is not considered to be expendable. But even though Number One is in charge of the Away Team on the ground, Captain Picard retains final authority over their actions.

William Riker joined the Enterprise crew when it picked him up at the Farpoint Station, which is where he also met some other crew members for the first time, including Beverly and Wesley Crusher, and Geordi La Forge.

Riker regards his captain with a mixture of awe and affection, but is also privy to Picard’s self-doubts, such as his annoyance at having to deal with children and families in a starship setting. As time passes, Riker has seen the captain adjust to this new situation.

While Riker has a lively interest in women, he considers it a point of honor never to let it come between himself and his duty. He is intellectually committed to sexual equality and tries to live up to that. This was put to the test in “Justice,” in which the people on Edo proved to be extremely affectionate and greeted the opposite sex with deep hugs and kisses instead of a bow or a handshake. The whole truth is that, at thirty, Riker is still young and hasn’t learned yet how completely different the two sexes can be.

Number One was surprised to see Deanna Troi after beaming aboard the Enterprise. They had been in a previous relationship and had a strong attraction for one another. Riker is slightly uncomfortable thrown into a situation where he deals with Troi every day, but each treats the other with respect, and they seem to have put their past relationship behind them.

ACCEPTING DATA

While Riker can accept Troi, and even the Klingon Worf, Lt. Commander Data posed some problems at first, but Riker has come to accept the android as an equal. He agonized when he was obliged to act as prosecutor in “The Measure of a Man,” but carried out his duty, perhaps too well for his conscience. Data helped him cope with this by pointing out that if he had declined to fulfill that duty, the judge would have made a summary judgment against Data, but the full hearing gave Picard a chance to mount his most persuasive arguments.

While Riker is called Number One by the captain and crew alike, this distinction is reserved for starship personnel and not for people who are not a part of the ship’s complement.

JONATHAN FRAKES

“I knew this was a real part, a big one,” says Jonathan Frakes regarding the six weeks of auditions he went through for the role, “and I had to get it.”

The actor credits Gene Roddenberry with giving him the needed insight into the character that eventually became his.

“Gene was so very non-Hollywood and quite paternal. One of the things he said to me was, ‘You have a Machiavellian glint in your eye. Life is a bowl of cherries.’ I think Gene felt that way, which is why he wrote the way he did. He’s very positive and Commander Riker will reflect that,” states Frakes.

The actor sees Riker as, “strong, centered, honorable, and somewhat driven. His job is to provide Captain Picard with the most efficiently run ship and the best-prepared crew he can. Because of this he seems to maintain a more military bearing than the other characters in behavior, despite the fact that salutes and other military protocol no longer exist in the twenty-fourth century.”

While Frakes cannot help but regard this role as “a real step up in my career,” he’s had recurring roles on other series such as Falcon Crest, Paper Dolls, and Bare Essence. For a year he was even a regular on the daytime drama The Doctors. Other television appearances include a role in the made-for-TV movie The Nutcracker and critically praised roles in the miniseries Dream West and both parts of the extended miniseries North and South. The actor has also appeared both on and off-Broadway and in regional theater productions.

FRAKES’S ROOTS

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Frakes did undergraduate work at Penn State before going to Harvard. He also spent several seasons with the Loeb Drama Center before moving to New York.

“I gave myself a five-year limit,” he reveals. “If I wasn’t making a living at acting in five years, I would find something else to do. After a year and a half of being the worst waiter in New York and screwing up my back as a furniture mover, I got a role in Shenandoah on Broadway and then landed a part in The Doctors.”

Frakes spent the next five years in New York City and then moved to Los Angeles in 1979, at the suggestion of his agent. “I really have been very lucky. There’s a cliché in this business that says the easy part of being an actor is doing the job. The hardest part is getting the job.”

Jonathan Frakes resides in Los Angeles and is married to actress Genie Francis, who appears on Days of Our Lives. He’s also started directing episodes of The Next Generation, including “The Offspring,” “The Drumhead,” “Reunion,” and “Cause and Effect.”

LT. COMMANDER DATA

Data is an android so perfectly fabricated that he can pass for human. It was thought that he was the product of some advanced alien technology until the discovery of an earlier model, Lore, revealed him to be the work of Dr. Noonian Soong, a human cyberneticist believed to be dead.

Much of the information given by Lore may be false, as is learned in “Brothers,” when a homing signal brings Data face-to-face with his creator, who in fact created both of his androids quite literally in his own image, with his own face.

The only clues to Data’s true origin are his peculiar yellow eyes, pale skin, and encyclopedic memory comparable to that of a Vulcan, but actually more extensive. It takes a skilled biologist to detect that Data is composed of artificial tissues instead of real flesh and blood. Although he only uses it in extreme circumstances, Data also possesses superhuman strength.

Data was discovered by a Starfleet Away Team investigating the disappearance of an Earth colony. The colony was completely destroyed, but the android was near the site, deactivated, and programmed with all the knowledge and memories of the lost colonists—except for the memory of what eradicated them so utterly. All this was rediscovered later, when Lore was reassembled.

At the time of his discovery, Data had no memories of his own, and was impressed by the humans who rescued him. He chose to emulate them, hoping to become more human in the process. His remarkable abilities do not give him a superiority complex. In fact, he seems to feel a bit less than human, as he cannot feel emotions, but he seems somehow to overlook the truth that his loyalty and actions toward others would actually qualify him as an exemplary human being.

He excelled in the Starfleet Academy entry tests and has never received a mark against his performance. Data benefited from the Starfleet regulation that prevents the rejection of a candidate so long as it tests out to be a sentient life form. This was later put to the test by Commander Bruce Maddox, whose efforts to classify the android as a possession of Starfleet were thwarted by Jean-Luc Picard. Picard’s spirited defense of his colleague also served to strengthen Data’s rights and liberties.

DATA CAN DO IT ALL

Data was created in the male gender, is fully functional (see “The Naked Now”!), and seems incapable of falsehood. While he speaks a more formal brand of English and does not use contractions, he tends to ramble on a bit because of his vast knowledge. He does learn and adapt, however, and discontinued calculating times to the exact second because he learned that this often annoyed humans.

He has difficulty understanding humor and idiomatic language, although he can learn vast glossaries of slang, such as that of the 1940s (“The Big Goodbye”), when he deems it relevant to the situation at hand. He also involves himself in amateur acting. Picard has shared his interest in Shakespeare with him, and Data’s researches in theatrical history have led him to become an adherent of Stanislavsky’s Method approach to acting, although his reasons are peculiar. The Method is rooted in drawing on deep emotions to bring characters to life; Data hopes to reach emotional depths through creating characters onstage, in essence reversing the original Method concept.

While Data appears to be an adult in his late twenties, he has probably existed a much shorter time than that. Because Data was never a child, he seems particularly interested in children such as Wesley Crusher, as they mark an aspect of existence he has never experienced and represent another example of his goal of being human.

In fact, his older “brother” Lore was given basic emotions, but Dr. Soong had overreached himself in this attempt and did not try to give emotions to Data after they went seriously awry in Lore. Years later, Soong developed circuitry to remedy this, but was fooled by the jealous Lore, who obtained the implant himself. Soong died soon afterward, leaving Data much the same as before. Data, despite his misgivings, continues to learn and grow as a sentient, and certainly very human, being.

BRENT SPINER

“I’m one of those people who believes that mankind will find all the answers out in space,” says Spiner, “but the first step is to get off this planet. The sun is going to burn out eventually and we better be somewhere else as a race of people by the time that happens. I think that’s why everybody digs Star Trek, because they know it’s a part of all of our futures and represents a vision of home.”

“As the series opens, we don’t know much about Data, only that he was constructed by beings on a planet which no longer exists. He’s the only thing left. His creators programmed him with a world of knowledge—he’s virtually an encyclopedia—but only in terms of information, not behavior. He’s totally innocent. However, he does possess a sense of question and wonder that allows him to evolve. His objective is to be as human as possible.”

Brent Spiner was born and raised in Houston, Texas, where he saw an average of three movies a day between the ages of eleven and fifteen. “At fifteen I was already a major film buff. I could quote lines from movies, tell you who was in it and in what year it was made. I always fantasized about being an actor. I was also lucky enough to have a brilliant teacher in high school named Cecil Pickett, who was capable of seeing potential, nurturing it, and making me aware of it.”

SPINER’S EARLY DAYS

Spiner did a lot of “gritty, ugly plays” off-Broadway after college. “The one that finally pushed me over into the serious-actor category was a Public Theater production of The Seagull for Joseph Papp.” The actor went on to roles in the Broadway musical productions of Sunday in the Park with George, The Three Musketeers, and Big River, based on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 1984, he’s appeared in such plays as Little Shop of Horrors at the Westwood Playhouse. His feature-film credits include the Woody Allen film Stardust Memories. On television he has appeared on such series as The Twilight Zone, Hill Street Blues, Cheers, and Night Court.

One could say that he was very well prepared for his role as Data by his belief in extraterrestrials. “Obviously I’m from another planet.” He laughs, but adds that he seriously does believe in beings from other planets and will continue to do so until such things are disproven.

LIEUTENANT WORF

The prediction made by the Organians nearly a century before has come to pass. The Klingon Empire and the Federation are at peace. Even so, Worf is unique as the only Klingon officer on a Starfleet ship. When his family was destroyed in a treacherous Romulan attack on a Klingon outpost, Worf was rescued and raised by humans of Slavic extraction, who did their best to keep their adopted son in touch with his Klingon roots. He joined Starfleet and is treated with the same courtesy and respect shown any other bridge officer—possibly even more, since the Klingons still have a remarkable reputation for violence.

Although Worf is still very aggressive by nature, he is able to control his anger even when he feels he has been provoked. As a bridge officer, and the third in the line of command after Picard and Riker, Worf takes his duties very seriously. In combat situations, when the Enterprise or its crew is threatened, Worf instinctively wants to respond in kind and confront the menace head-on. The Klingon Empire does not stress cool deliberation as the preferred method for problem solving.

Worf rarely talks about himself and his culture, but in “Justice” Riker inadvertently gets Worf to talk about Klingon sexual attitudes. When Riker wonders why Worf is not enjoying the pleasures offered by the sybaritic Edo, Worf explains, quite casually, that only Klingon women could survive sex with a Klingon male. When Riker wonders if this is simply bragging, Worf is confused. He was merely stating a simple fact of Klingon life.

Eventually, Worf did renew a long-unconsummated relationship with the half-human K’Ehleyr, who came back into his life as a Federation emissary. Their encounter in “The Emissary” produced a son, but unfortunately K’Ehleyr was murdered in “Reunion,” a crime that provoked Worf to a bloody and time-honored Klingon revenge. His son now lives with his Earth grandparents, since Worf’s status in the Klingon Empire had at one point become a precarious one.

UNFAIR BLAME

Years after Worf’s rescue, the Klingons captured a Romulan ship whose records revealed the identity of the Klingon who betrayed the outpost. This Klingon was a member of a very powerful family, and his son was an important Klingon, so the Klingon High Council decided to avoid societal disruption by altering the records and blaming Worf’s father for the crime.

They did not believe that Worf still kept the Klingon ways, or that he would even learn of this dishonor. They were unaware that he had a younger brother who had been secretly raised by another family. Worf’s brother contacted Worf, drawing him into the Machiavellian intrigues of Klingon power politics. Ultimately, Worf underwent discommendation rather than let his brother be killed. This act corroborated his father’s guilt to outside eyes, but also gave him time to set matters right. He had already scored one victory, for his enemy in this matter was also the killer of his mate. Worf’s family honor was restored in “Redemption I & II” when he aided Gowron in a Klingon civil war.

It seems that Worf may turn out to be a key factor in Klingon-Federation relations. Klingons as a rule do not feel comfortable with humans, often holding them in contempt, and there may be a faction (see “The Drumhead”) that favors improved relations with the Romulans. Even though Klingons have a deeply ingrained hatred of Romulans, they understand them better than humans, whose manners and motivations often must seem strange to the warrior Klingons. Worf occupies a unique position between these two cultures, and may provide the key to future developments between them.

MICHAEL DORN

As a longtime Star Trek fan, Dorn says that this role “was a dream come true. First, because I’m a Trekkie, and second, I’m playing a Klingon, a character so totally different from the nice-guy roles I’d done in the past. Worf is the only Klingon aboard the Enterprise. That makes him an outsider, but that’s okay by me because Worf knows he’s superior to these weak humans. But he never lets the other crew members see that, because he’s a soldier first and second.”

The actor gives enthusiastic praise to series creator Gene Roddenberry for having the “genius and vision” to depict an optimistic future in which a peaceful alliance could be struck between Earth and the Klingon Empire. “Gene believed there is good in everybody—even Klingons!”

But the actor enjoys playing very different kinds of characters, and knows what it’s like to appear in a series after playing a regular on CHIPS for three years. “I love doing cop roles, and as a highway patrolman I got to drive fast and never got hurt.”

Dorn hails from Liling, Texas, but he was raised in Pasadena, California, just minutes away from Hollywood. He performed in a rock band during high school and college and in 1973 moved to San Francisco, where he worked at a variety of jobs. When he returned to L.A., he continued playing in rock bands until a friend’s father, an assistant director of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, suggested the young man try his hand at acting. Dorn can be seen in the background, as a newswriter, in episodes from that classic comedy’s last two seasons.

“I had done a little modeling by this time and had studied drama and TV producing in college. Once I started, I caught the bug.”

THE HUMBLE START

His first acting role was a guest spot on the series WEB, a show based on the satirical film Network. Dorn was introduced to an agent by the producer of the show and began studying with Charles Conrad. Six months later Dorn was cast in CHIPS. Following that series, Dorn resumed acting classes. “I worked very hard; the jobs started coming and the roles got meatier.”

Dorn has made guest appearances on nearly every major series, most notably Hotel, Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest. He has also had recurring roles on Days of Our Lives and Capitol. His feature film credits include Demon Seed, Rocky, and The Jagged Edge.

Dorn hopes eventually to direct, but for now, “I want to take one step at a time and do the best work I can do.” He’s still interested in rock music, plays in a band, does studio work as a bass player, and writes music in his spare time.

DOCTOR BEVERLY CRUSHER

Beverly Crusher worked long and hard to secure her posting aboard the Enterprise, where she is stationed along with her brilliant son, Wesley. Beverly’s husband, Jack Crusher, was killed while serving under Captain Picard aboard the USS Stargazer. Jack Crusher died saving Picard’s life, and to show his respect for the man, Picard accompanied the body back to Earth when it was returned for the funeral.

While Beverly knows that it is not logical to blame Picard, she associated him with her loss and was not, at first, certain how she would react to working with Picard. When Picard offered to have her transferred if she so desired, she declined, since she wouldn’t have been there if she hadn’t requested the position. Any initial misgivings have given way to mutual respect and understanding.

Dr. Crusher chose to sign aboard the starship commanded by Picard because she had an enviable Starfleet record that had earned her this prestigious assignment. As demonstrated by the position held by Dr. McCoy on the Enterprise commanded by James T. Kirk, a starship’s chief medical officer is in no way regarded as a rank inferior to that of Captain. In fact, outside of a court martial, the CMO is the only force capable of removing a starship captain from his or her post.

Beverly is an intelligent and strong-willed diagnostician. She has a profound sense of medicine, the kind of skill that takes years to develop. Often she uses her diagnostic skills to confirm what she has already seen and sensed about a patient’s condition. First and foremost she is a brilliant ship’s doctor.

THE TRUTH REVEALED

In “The Naked Now” there were many truths revealed about various crew members. In Crusher’s case it was revealed that she is interested in Picard, and certainly no longer harbors the suspicion and resentment she feared might affect her job performance. Being in her late thirties to early forties, the attractive Dr. Crusher has not escaped the notice of Captain Picard, but it is doubtful that this could develop into anything, as any good officer knows that complications arise when key personnel become involved.

Dr. Crusher’s most difficult moments on the Enterprise generally involve Wesley, as in “Justice,” when Wesley was sentenced to death for an inadvertent crime, only to be saved by Picard’s intervention. She has also been trapped in a false reality inside a static warp field, which she narrowly escaped from, and recently found romance only to have it shattered by the bizarre secrets of the alien humanoid she’d fallen for in “The Host.”

Her most difficult time with Wesley occurred in “The First Duty,” when Wesley narrowly escaped death in a training exercise off Saturn, in which another cadet did die. Her son admitted to participating in a coverup of the accident. While Wesley Crusher did the right thing at the end, he was humiliated in front of all of his Starfleet Academy peers and was forced to repeat his final year at the Academy.

GATES MCFADDEN

Dr. Crusher is the first regular role in a television series for actress Gates McFadden. Her character is presented with more background than most of the others, as she is the mother of Wesley Crusher, and the widow of the man who died while saving Picard’s life on an earlier mission.

Gates trained to be a dancer when quite young, while growing up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. “I had extraordinary teachers: one was primarily a ballerina and the other had been in a circus. I grew up thinking most ballerinas knew how to ride the unicycle, tap dance, and do handsprings. Consequently, I was an oddball to other dancers.”

Her interest in acting was sparked by community theater and a touring Shakespeare company. “When I was ten, my brother and I attended back-to-back Shakespeare for eight days in a musty, nearly empty theater. There were twelve actors who played all the parts. I couldn’t get over it—the same people in costumes every day, but playing new characters. It was like visiting somewhere but never wanting to leave.”

She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Theater from Brandeis University while continuing to study acting, dance, and mime. Just prior to graduation she met Jack LeCoq and credits the experience with changing her life.

“I attended his first workshop in the United States. His theatrical vision and the breadth of its scope were astonishing. I left for Paris as soon as possible to continue to study acting with LeCoq at his school. We worked constantly in juxtapositions. One explored immobility in order to better understand movement. One explored silence in order to better understand sound and language. It was theatrical research involving many mediums. Just living in a foreign country where you have to speak and think in another language cracks your head open. It was both terrifying and freeing. Suddenly I was taking more risks in my acting.”