Star Trek

Why I Am Happy My Story Did Not Win Post of the Month

This post refers frequently to Star Trek. I am going to presume that anyone who continues reading this essay is familiar with the various series of the show. If you are not familiar with the delightful universe in which the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet exist, go watch the various iterations, and then come back and read this article — or boldly continue reading about something you’ve never paid attention to before, and enjoy the ride!

I am part of the leadership team of a wonderful Star Trek-based writing club called Starbase 109. I like to think it’s wonderful, anyway. I love writing for it with the other members of the crew, and I’ve been writing in 109 for about five years in its current iteration. In the club — or ‘sim,’ as it’s called — each member creates a main character that s/he writes about, as well as any number of bit players.

I generally like to give my characters some kind of traumatic incident in their past that they are still having to deal with to the present day. Sometimes I know what this event is when I create the character; other times, I find out what it is as the character grows and develops.

Damion’s trauma percolated in my brain for quite a while, and I only realized what it was a few months ago. It was pretty awful. He was born on the same planet that Tasha Yar was, a failed Earth colony called Turkana IV, which had fallen into a state of anarchy, ruled over by two constantly warring factions and terrorized by rape gangs. In his childhood, Damion did a Bad Thing and only realized how bad it was after escaping to the Federation, entering Starfleet Academy, and taking psychology courses there.

I had decided early on that Damion, who was born and raised in an underground city, had agoraphobia. He can control it well enough to do space walks — but only by sheer force of will. If he didn’t like his job as an intelligence officer so much, he wouldn’t put himself through the agony.

Then I had an epiphany. It wasn’t the vastness of space that terrified Damion, it was the stars — because they reminded him of flashlights. If you remember the episode in which Tasha Yar thinks she’s back home on Turkana IV, you remember the scene with her and the tabby cat in the…