Tournament Debriefing

by Paddy Tye, First Edition Creative Manager

11th September 2020

Mission Debriefing was first released in First Contact, and then re-released in Voyager. Today it gets a new look, with a virtual edition.

It's always been a staple for Borg players (as it only targets mission attempts, not scouting) and also combines well with anything which brings a mission attempt to a halt (Radioactive Garbage Scow, Buried Alive, etc). It's also a Captain's Order so can be downloaded later on with Ready Room Door if you don't want to spend a seed slot on it.

So when the Creative Team was asked to find a story to frame the new card, we started by thinking about what differentiates a briefing from a debriefing. Star Trek features a lot of briefings, conferences and meetings, but usually they are "pre-briefings", before the mission. Not after the mission, reflecting back on what was done, and trying to learn lessons from past actions.

One exception we could think of was from TNG's "Coming of Age" where Dexter Remmick interrogates the senior staff over Jean-Luc Picard's previous command decisions. This seemed to not only tick the "debriefing box" but also seemed to be a great synergy with the recently released TNG Borg from Q Who?

This all seemed great until the TNG only playtesting tournament in June. Borg were a strong contender in that format, and suddenly adding another tool to their arsenal seemed to be making an already strong affiliation even stronger!

So we (very quickly) went back to the drawing board for other examples of debriefings. The Romulan debriefing over Dominion activity in the Gamma Quadrant from DS9's "Visionary" was one option, although it lacked a really stand-out image. Another option was Archer's debriefing after the Xindi mission in ENT's "Home", but that had already been used for "Thorough Debriefing".

In the end we opted for the conference from the beginning of "The Undiscovered Country". Again, this could be viewed as both briefing ahead of what was going to happen next AND an after action report from Captain Sulu and the Starship Excelsior around the destruction of Praxis. We opted to frame it from the latter perspective:

In 2293, a debriefing was held at Starfleet Command to discuss the environmental, economical, and political consequences following the explosion of the Klingon moon Praxis.

Of course, this doesn't eliminate the possibility of there being a TNG Mission Debriefing at some time in the future, however for the moment TNG-only format will have to carry on without it!

Editor's note: This series is being shifted from Fridays to Mondays. Please tune in this upcoming Monday for our next weekly promo!

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