Skip to main content

Who or what is that robot-headed crew member on the bridge of Star Trek Discovery's Shenzhou?


Among the bridge crew seen aboard Star Trek Discovery's Shenzhou is this: Star Trek Discovery robot


Does it have a name? Will it develop as a character? Is there an associated cast member giving it a voice and/or movement? Or is it just "background color"?



Answer



Lieutenant Jira Narwani


We don't know a great deal about her, but she's definitely an organic. She appears to have been named by David Mack, author of the prequel novel Desperate Hours; according to an interview he gave to TrekCore, Mack was given the leeway to craft backstories for many of the background characters seen on the Shenzhou, some of which made it back into the show:



I was allowed to compile information about the minor characters, new aliens, and the principal starships into a pseudo-bible for the series. Where there were gaps, I was given latitude to fill them in. Consequently, I got to name half the bridge crew of the Shenzhou, including Keyla Detmer, Troy Jannuzzi, and Kamran Gant.


Some of the characters never named in the pilot include Ensign Proat (the bald blue guy with plugs in his head) and Lieutenant Jira Narwani (the girl in the Daft Punk video helmet). I wrote full bios and profiles for all of these characters



[...]


Fun detail: some of those bios ended up being shared by the show's producers with the actors playing those supporting roles, to provide them with a foundation for their performances.



Then-Ensign Narwani plays a minor role in Mack's novel1, where we learn that she's a junior tactical officer, and that the thing on her head is basically a futuristic Occulus Rift, creating a virtual environment that allows her (through the magic of science fiction) to more effectively perform her duties:



Responsibility for monitoring the wider theater of operations was actually the duty of Narwani, the junior tactical officer, whose head was encased in a gleaming metallic VR helmet designed for that task.


Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours Chapter 8




"I've interlinked our targeting computer with the one on the Enterprise," said junior tactical officer Ensign Jira Narwani. She adjusted her holographic targeting helmet. "Now get ready to see some serious shit." Her hands seemed to dance in midair as she used the virtual-reality environment created by her helmet to choose targets at the speed of thought and make them the loci of the combined firepower of the Enterprise and the Shenzhou.



Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours Chapter 17




[Georgiou] tried not to show her unease at addressing Narwani, whose VR helmet made her look to Georgiou like a human with a snail for a head.


Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours Chapter 22



I doubt she'll end up being a significant character on the show; she's neither named nor credited, and there's virtually no information on her in any of the casting calls or publicity I've been able to find. She doesn't even get an entry in the StarTrek.com database.




1 Although Star Trek novels as a rule aren't canon, and I've seen no indication that Desperate Hours is an exception, I feel justified in citing it here; partly because, as mentioned in that interview, some of Mack's invented backstory was fed back into the production, and partly because it's likely all we're going to get on the character


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...