Our next possible victim is Trisha Reynolds, the Challenger ops officer and best friend to Doctor Felicia Sarzan.
Who Is She?
Trisha is a character that I feel channels a lot of ops officers. She’s a jack of all trades, master of none (much like many ops officers) and sees ops as a dead-end to her career. Ops is where officers go to get stuck for years on end as their peers pass them by in rank.
Trisha is a single child, hyper-competitive and focused on her goal of getting to admiral. She has career aspirations and tends to put those far ahead of any personal life. She wants more out of her career, wants more responsibility and more duties, but is assigned to ops as she is.
She’s best friends with Felicia, whom she has known since the Academy, and is one of the only people she can have fun with. Felicia and Trisha have a complicated relationship (more than friends/sometimes lovers/like sisters) that goes all the way back to the Academy.
Trisha is career minded but not without a conscience: she feels guilty about decisions and tends to carry that guilt for a long period of time; it has been known to influence her decisions.
What She’s Done So Far
1. She questioned a Cardassian prisoner and found out why he, and his crew, were attempting to close the Bajoran wormhole.
2. She helped Taurik in implementing the methodology in order to allow the ship to travel through a transwarp conduit.
3. She had a fun movie night with Felicia (including a girl-to-girl talk and a shower with her).
3. She took over for Taurik after he reported to sickbay to have his injuries treated.
4. She allowed the Cardassian crew to help out in engineering after the ship traversed the transwarp conduit.
5. She left engineering as it was being overrun by Borg and escaped the onslaught.
6. She aided an injured Cardassian (whom was infected with Borg nanoprobes) and got him to sickbay.
7. She helped Taurik engineer the biological weapon to help save the ship (despite objections).
If She Lives …
Trisha will have a lot of guilt over her actions in engineering. She feels as if she abandoned those people, whom were her responsibility, and left them to die. Jorac (the Cardassian in question in the above part) and she have formed an unlikely trust/friendship, but one that she feels he does out of some form of owing her more than anything.
Her relationship with Felicia has a good shot of growing stronger as she deals with all the loss and the guilt and the fact that her performance during the crisis will likely harm her career goals. She may even try to rekindle the brief romance she and Felica had at the Academy, but if that happens expect both parties to regret it at some point shortly after.
She will likely remain at ops or, if Taurik dies, take over for him in engineering.
From a story standpoint, she’s a bit of a difficult character to get a hold of. She has her playful side with shows itself a lot with Felicia but very little elsewhere and her thoughts are often slanted towards how she feels about what’s going on around her and her part in it. She likes to concentrate on work but doesn’t have a great dynamic with the rest of the senior staff (minus Felicia and Rajik). Her continuing life will allow her a chance to grow her relationships with others and possibly find a bobby that’s not career planning.
If She Dies …
Expect Felicia to be heartbroken and borderline wrecked. The two are very close and have been for years. Trisha’s death will leave Felicia feeling as though she can’t have close friends in life and will likely have her withdraw.
Rajik, for his part, will feel guilty he didn’t treat Trisha’s friendship (and by extension Felicia’s) as the valuable thing it was. He will likely try to reach out to Felicia and will be rebuffed. Felicia’s withdrawing will have effects on Jenna Phillips as well, who’ll want to comfort the Betazoid and nurture their developing friendship, but will also likely be rebuffed.
Trisha’s death will leave a hole at ops, likely filled by Ronnie Jellico (Admiral Edward Jellico’s son and our next potential victim).
From a story standpoint it’s pretty tantalizing to off Trisha and see the wreckage that comes from that decision. Felicia will be dramatically effected and Rajik will suffer to an extent as well. Trisha’s death, out of all the potential ones, will have the largest ramification from a personal relation standpoint between characters. It really alters the character dynamics for the whole ship.
