|
Starfleet Career Summary
2358 – As ensign, first assigned to U.S.S. Pegasus test project under
Capt. Erik Pressman
2361 – As lieutenant, stationed with Starfleet detachment on
Betazed
2362 – Assigned to U.S.S. Potemkin; decorated for rescue of ship's away
team on Nervalla IV six weeks later and promoted to lieutenant
commander, transferring from operations to command division. Named first
officer of U.S.S. Hood under Capt. Robert DeSoto
2364 – Promoted to commander, named first officer of U.S.S. Enterprise
by Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
2366 – Temporary field promotion to captain by Adm. Hanson during Borg
crisis
2369 – (*) Accidental double, retaining rank of lieutenant from Nervala
IV crisis, assigned to U.S.S. Gandhi and uses middle name "Thomas"2370 — Temporarily detained due to earlier involvement with Pegasus
project; charges dropped
2371 – (*) Riker "twin" resigns Starfleet to join Maquis, leads raid on
Orias III in captured U.S.S. Defiant and is imprisoned by Cardassians
upon capture
2372 – Transferred with remainder of Picard's senior staff to
Sovereign-class U.S.S. Enterprise
2373 – During attempt to repair Borg temporal sabotage with Earth first
contact, acts as replacement flight crew for Zefram Cochran's Phoenix
warp test
Professional Assessment: Report of Starfleet Command Review Board
Enterprise Second Officer Data once estimated that Riker uses
traditional tactics only 21% of the time. After winning admission to the Academy, Riker began acquiring this lifelong reputation for unorthodox
solutions when, during a simulation, he figured out a Tholian ship's
sensor blind spot for use as a hiding place. Riker finished eighth in
his graduating class; one fellow cadet was Paul Rice, who would later
fall victim to the computer weapons systems on planet Minos.
As an ensign on his first assignment, Riker had served with now-Admiral
Pressman on the test ship U.S.S. Pegasus as and proved pivotal in
defending his captain against a rare Starfleet mutiny before they and
only a handful of others escaped, shortly after the ship's destruction
during a test project. Only in 2370 was Pressman's renegade cloaking
experiment unmasked, and Riker was detained briefly for complicity but
cleared.
Later stationed on Betazed, his mission there ended in 2362 with a posting that would launch a rapid rise in his career. Sent to the U.S.S.
Potemkin in 2362 as a lieutenant, he proved unorthodox again in avoiding
a confrontation by hanging over a planet's magnetic pole to confuse an
opposing ship's sensors. Only six weeks after coming aboard, though, he
barely escaped from Nervala IV, where his rescue of crewmates led to a
promotion and a switch from operations to command division, where he
eventually became first officer of the U.S.S. Hood under Captain Robert
DeSoto. During this stay he was offered his first command on the light
cruiser U.S.S. Drake, but turned it down.
From there, he was promoted to commander and picked sight unseen from
among 50 candidates by Jean-Luc Picard as his first officer on the new
Galaxy-class U.S.S. Enterprise; in fact, the two had not met until he
signed aboard at Farpoint Station, after he was dropped off by the
U.S.S. Hood.
Riker grew so satisfied with his assignment under Picard, who quickly
dubbed him "Number One" according to old Terran naval parlance, that he
twice turned down two more commands of his own: once to the frontier
scout ship U.S.S. Aries in 2365, and again to the ill-fated U.S.S.
Melbourne a year later, although he temporarily had a field promotion to
captain during the Borg crisis of 2366-67 during Picard's abduction.
Ironically, he likely would have died on the Melbourne during the Borg
massacre at Wolf 359 and would not have been present to play a major
role during the Enterprise's last-ditch attack.
Knowledgeable on legal issues, he was pressed into presenting
Starfleet's case against Data's independence at Starbase 173 in 2365
and, two years later, defended first Crewman Tarses and then even Picard
before Admiral Satie's inquiry in 2367. He was the first human to serve
aboard a Federation-Klingon exchange program in 2365, where he showed a keen knowledge of their culture and became one of the few to obtain
Picard's "surrender."
He had been given temporary command of the U.S.S. Excalibur in Picard's
blockading fleet against Romulan involvement in the Klingon civil war of
2367-68, but Admiral Nechayev passed over him by placing Captain Jellico
in command during Picard's abduction by the Cardassians in 2369. Their
budding disagreements led to Riker being temporarily relieved of duty
until he was called back by Jellico for Cardassian negotiations.
Riker's latter tour years on the Galaxy-class Enterprise were filled
with more surprises. Aside from being drugged and made nearly insane by
the Tilonians, captured and nearly killed by the xenophobic Malcorians
on a first contact recon gone bad, abducted by solanagen-based aliens,
and revealed for his role in the Pegasus incident, he discovered [*] a duplicate of himself created as a transporter fluke from the Nervala IV
mission.
[*] Ironically, the two clashed in temperament, with the "found" Riker
finding his own restless career on the Gandhi before resigning to join
the Maquis rebels and his subsequent capture by Cardassians in a useless
theft of the U.S.S. Defiant from Deep Space 9.
Riker, meanwhile, again gave no thought to his own command and joined
Picard and the other senior staff aboard the new Sovereign-class
Enterprise namesake. Though the incident has been classified, Riker also
has the satisfaction of having joined Chief Engineer La Forge in the
cockpit of Zefram Cochrane's warp test vehicle Phoenix during efforts to
repair temporal damage caused by Borg invaders in 2373.
Psychological Profile: Report of Ship's Counselor Deanna Troi
Although Riker has displayed a well-rounded personality and temperament
throughout his rising command career, his mother's death when he was
only 2 helped foster an acrimonious 15-year separation from his father
at age 15, when he left home. He had deeply missed his mother, but came
to loathe the distance his father erected between them as his own means
of grief. Their relationship resorted to an ongoing competition in
activities such as fishing trips, and formally manifested itself in the
martial art of anbo-jyutsu as way to work out their problems. The two
began a tentative rapprochement in 2365 during a surprise encounter,
where Riker discovered his father had nearly died in a Tholian attack in
2253. The family history includes a veteran of the Terran American Civil
War, Col. Thaddeus "Iron Boots" Riker, who was wounded as commander of
the 102nd New York at the Battle of Pine Mountain, serving in Gen. W.T. Sherman's march to Atlanta in 1864; he was carried for two miles from
the front lines or would not have survived.
Riker's knack for improvisation runs throughout his hobbies and
interests as well. A master poker player and bluffer, he had learned the
game during his brief stint on the U.S.S. Potemkin; his reputation won
him the role as replacement Federation negotiator during the short-lived
Barzan wormhole talks. He has also visited Quark's bar and casino on
DS9, where in its first year of operation under Starfleet-Bajoran
administration he was the only person to win a triple-down dabo.
He can play keyboards, but his favorite musical instrument is the
trombone. He especially loves jazz and has played for numerous shipboard
functions and concerts; he displays it in his quarters — having loaned
his old boyhood instrument to Thomas Riker — and also displays a Risian horga'hn Picard once brought him, as well as a fishing reel. Under Dr.
Crusher's direction, his acting talents have increased greatly since
"Something for Breakfast" in 2369 until his riveting "Frame of Mind"
performance only weeks later. Cooking is another hobby, thanks to the
necessity of a father who hated to do it, and his language skills
include basic Ferengi as well as Klingon. Generally, he claims to be
inept at organizing his time off and — predictably — prefers to let
events happen unplanned.
Riker has a strong libido and — aside from encounters made in the line
of duty, such as on Angel I and Tilonia IV — has fostered several
romantic relationships, including the enhanced holo-woman Minuet, the
doomed assassin Yuta and colonizer Carmen Davila, and Soren of the
normally androgynous J'naii, for whom he risked court-martial over Prime
Directive charges. His encounters nearly cost him a murder sentence on Tanuga IV and, after a Risian resort visit, the Ktarian takeover of
Starfleet through a mind-control device. Additionally, he and Ensign Ro
engaged in a love/hate working relationship, especially exposed during a
memory blanking incident in 2368, and he offered to speak in her behalf
when she was presumed dead later that year. (See addendum below).
Despite his nominally robust outlook, Riker has been prone to short
bouts of self-doubt regarding his perceived complacency toward ambition
each time he debated and turned down his own ship command. His imposing
physical presence has been an unintended impediment to effective
communication with some in his command, especially junior officers, and
he has taken steps to deal with it.
Medical File: Report by Beverly Crusher, M.D., CMO
Riker generally enjoys good health; an infectious plant on Surata IV
proved nearly fatal but for a precise and direct neural-cortical
therapy. Athletically, he still enjoys Parrises Squares, despite medical
warnings; he also trains for the Klingon bat'leth with sticks and
studies in Worf's mok'bara classes. While he does not care for equine
events he does indulge mountain climbing and fishing holo-programs,
having grown up in the great outdoors of Earth's Alaska.
Psychological Profile Addendum by Beverly Crusher, M.D., CMO
(Due to the conflict of interest, this entry is being entered by the
chief medical officer rather than ship's counselor, who has been
personally involved with the subject of the report.)
Aside from his string of incomplete female relationships, Riker's major
romance last involved Counselor Deanna Troi, who began calling him
"imzadi," the native word for "beloved," after they met during his
Betazed mission. He had last seen her there the day before he shipped
out on the U.S.S. Potemkin in 2362, but it would be two years before
they were reunited again as fellow officers on the U.S.S. Enterprise,
unbeknownst to Picard. They had planned to get together six months after
his departure, but the Nervala IV incident changed that; his early
feelings for her at that time can still be seen in his twin "Thomas."
Riker professed a warm friendship for Troi in later years that
occasionally blossomed into romance, but they generally stayed platonic
— although Worf's surprising courtship of her in 2370 seemed never to
have settled well with him.
Personnel File Addendum: Report of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
CONFIDENTIAL
On a personal level, I was heartened to find Riker commanding the refit
Enterprise as captain in 20 years, but disturbed to discover that he and
my chief security officer Worf had clashed over their affections for
Deanna Troi along the future timeline shown to me by the Q entity in
late 2370. Owing to the tentative nature of this "future," I chose to
share these developments among the officers involved with the conviction
that this future was not immovable, in the hope they can avoid the
problem.
| 
