We’re here with another interview with a newer member of our community. The title of this column is “Lower Decks,” hearkening back to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode titled “Lower Decks,” in which junior officers aboard the Enterprise-D speculate on the reasons for recent unusual actions taken by the command crew near the Cardassian border. The theme was further popularized with the animated series Lower Decks which spent five seasons following the antics of an engaging group of Junior Officers as they carried out missions aboard the USS Cerritos.
This month’s interview is with the writer behind Civilian Science Liaison Samantha Richards playing a Human Civilian in the Science department of Amity Outpost. As the only primary civilian character in the fleet, Richards has a unique perspective to share with us.
Harford: Hi Sam! Help us get to know you, the writer behind Samantha Richards. What part of the world do you call home? What are you passionate about outside of this community?
S. Richards: Hello! Well, my name is Beky and I am from the good ole U.S.A in the little old state of Idaho. I am a mom of 3 wild kids who keep me pretty busy. In my free time I like to get crafty. I paint, draw and do all sorts of crafty kinds of things.
I happen to know that you had a bit of a unique introduction to SB 118. Can you tell us the story of how you became a member? Maybe share some insight into Sam’s unique family connection on Amity.
So, I actually wrote for my character before she was even my character. My husband who writes for Nathan Richards (Sam’s older brother) asked me if I was willing to write a letter from Sam to Nathan. I had fun with it and then I was asked to help out in a joint post and again, write for Sam. I ended up falling in love with writing Sam and really got a small sense of the type of community this was and the idea to join the group was thrown out. I had already spent about a year hoping that Nathan and Robin Hopper would become a thing and I had established a friendship with Robin’s writer (Keegan) and I had a ton of support right off the bat so I took the plunge, did the Academy training, and here I am almost a year in and couldn’t imagine life without this crazy community!
Now, before joining SB 118, you weren’t really a Star Trek fan. That’s quite the opposite of most members of the fleet. How do you think that affects your experience writing with the group? Have you become a Trekkie in your time here? If so, what shows or movies have you enjoyed the most so far?
Before I joined, I had never willfully watched a full episode of Star Trek. Since joining I found out pretty quickly that I am in fact a Trekkie! I still have a lot to learn and a TON to watch, but I’m slowly making my way through the shows and movies. Sometimes it makes writing a bit more difficult because I do have to do more research and ask more questions than a typical player, but it’s been really fun to learn everything Trek related. I get some crap for it, but my favorite is season 3 of Picard (thank you Frontier Day)! I have also enjoyed a lot of Discovery!
Samantha is the fleet’s only primary character serving in a Civilian capacity. Tell us what that’s like. How has being a civilian impacted your writing, your experience. What advice would you give to someone who is considering playing a civilian character?
When I was first considering joining the fleet I was nudged in the direction of a civilian to play specifically on Amity. There were some challenges right off the bat. People treated my character differently for being civilian and there was some contention out of character with people treating me like I was less because I wasn’t playing an Officer. After some soul searching and a tiny bit of tears, I was helped by someone to really take a hold of civilian life and run with it. I gained a huge amount of confidence and I wouldn’t trade this experience!
For anyone wanting to play a civilian you have to be aware of the implications that come along with it. In character and out of character people may treat you differently, but there are a lot of plot lines in the works as we speak to make the civilian presence more known and seen as more of an equal to the Starfleet Officers. If anyone wants to reach out to me and talk more about it, I welcome them to!
Writing, it’s what connects all of us here. Tell us about your process. When you sit down to write a sim, what helps you focus?
My process really depends on the scene I am working on. Sometimes I will hang out in the Discord Voice Chat and have the background noise of people chatting to write my sims. If it is a more emotional or time extensive sim I like to put on some music and really get in the zone.
Do you have any career aspirations for Samantha? Will she continue growing in her capacity as a civilian? Do you think she’ll ever join Starfleet and put on the uniform?
Sam is forever a civilian. For a while I considered enlisting her into Starfleet, but as I gained my civvy legs I knew that Starfleet wasn’t for her. Right now Sam is happy working in the SRC on Amity and growing as a scientist and helping run the civilian side of things.
Finally, there was recently a pretty big reveal that’s going to impact Sam’s life quite a bit. Care to share the news? How do you plan to incorporate this big life event into Sam’s story?
As most people know, Sam spent a particularly wild night with the First Officer of the Artemis, Talos Dakora. She went back to join the Artie crew on shore leave where Sam and Talos discovered they were going to have not one, but two babies!
We decided to see how things are going to play out from here. There are a lot of things they will have to contend with. Distance, jobs, friends, family and all sorts of other things. For now they are working on getting to know each other better.
Thanks for your time, Civilian Scientist Samantha Richards!
You can read more about Samantha Richards on the wiki, here!