A Tale of Two No-Ones

by Patrick Tye, Guest Writer; with input from Creative Development

22nd November 2011

As you may have seen, there are two new universal personnel from the Enterprise-E crew featured in Resistance is Futile. Design had seen the need to boost the personnel and skills available for the “First Contact Federation Flagship” deck type, designing an ENGINEER to plug the Transporter Skill hole, and a SCIENCE support personnel to help with staffing the Enterprise-E on the first turn. However, these personnel had no names, images, or lore. It was down to the Creative team to find the story elements that could be used to fill those gaps.

After re-watching First Contact (looking for story elements to be used across all the new cards), there were 5 potential candidates. We were only looking for personnel in blue sciences uniforms or gold operations (security and engineering) uniforms.

Firstly, the runners up:

1. Unnamed Science officer
This was an unnamed extra on the bridge in a blue sciences uniform. He possibly got the best closeup of any background character in the film, during the scene when the bridge crew hear the battle going badly in Sector 001. He was played by Linwood “Woody” Porter.
2. Kellogg
Kellogg was a long-serving extra from "The Next Generation" who also turned up briefly in First Contact. She handed Geordi a PADD just after his conversation with Zefram Cochrane about “taking a leak”. The downsides with Kellogg were that she wasn’t pictured in uniform and had historically always been a security guard, not an engineer or a scientist, despite being a part of Geordi’s team.
3. Armstrong
Armstrong was also a long-standing extra on "The Next Generation" who transitioned to the movies and later appeared as “Ashmore” on Voyager. He was seen at Tactical with quite a good closeup immediately after Woody Porter’s character. He was also seen staffing Data’s usual position at Ops when Picard asks Data to lock out the main computer.

Unfortunately, he too had some downsides. Having a rank of ensign didn’t fit with a gold command icon, and his presence at Tactical implied he should have the SECURITY skill too. His appearance at Ops did justify his ENGINEER status, like Data or Harry Kim, and an ENGINEER staffing Tactical is not unprecedented, like Miles O’Brien in “Redemption II”, but in that case, his skills also reflected that.

Now on to the winning candidates:

4. Jae
Jae was another long-time extra on TNG. She’d spent her time on the show in a gold operations uniform, and had been seen staffing the aft bridge stations, manning the transporter room, filling in for Data at Ops and working in Engineering. In Generations she was at the helm but had switched to a red command division uniform, and by First Contact was now sporting a blue sciences division uniform. She can be spotted at the bridge stations behind and to the left of Data’s usual Ops station, particularly around the time that Picard asks Data to lock out the main computer. As a routine bridge extra, the Enterprise-E icon seemed suitable for her, and her blue science uniform combined with time manning the helm seemed to fit the skills nicely.

Outside of bridge duty, Jae had also been spotted at several shipboard concerts (“Second Chances”, “Inheritance”) and Data’s poetry reading (“Schisms”), hence the “shipboard artistic events” line. And given her “versatile” background on the show and spending so long in a gold uniform, we also made references to this in her lore.

That just leaves the swimming reference: the actress who played Jae (Tracee Lee Cocco) also appeared in Baywatch!
5. Unnamed Female Engineer
This is the engineer who hands Geordi an engineering kit just before he sets off with “Alpha Team” to the surface. We had no existing character name and even the actress isn’t listed anywhere that we could find. We had a completely blank slate. Our first thought was to establish her as a “senior” engineer to ensure the gold command icon would match her character and also to reference transporters to tie in with her skills. We also cemented the transporter link by giving her a fictitious friendship to a previous Enterprise-D transporter operator, Maggie Hubbell.

However, we were still short a name and some more details for her lore. We searched for references to named female engineers who weren’t seen on screen, and eventually we found one we could use: Suzanne Dumont.

Suzanne had been an ensign when she was mentioned in the "TNG" episode “Sarek” so she could have served aboard the Enterprise-D for the 7 years up to First Contact – long enough to now be in a “senior” engineering position. She’d been young enough then for it to be socially acceptable for her to date a much younger Wesley Crusher, so her age by First Contact would be a reasonable fit to the actress on screen. This gave us the extra lore we needed – along with Geordi’s line that she was “way out of Wesley’s league!”

We hope you’ve enjoyed this little inside peek at the goings-on within the Creative Development Team and a bit of background to some of the little jokes in the lore of the new cards. We hope to bring you more such articles in the future!

Cheers!