Like a lot of folks who saw the latest Star Trek movie, I found myself won over by the all-too-briefly-seen charms of a certain green-skinned, red-haired Orion Starfleet Academy cadet, because in spite of being presented almost exclusively in terms of being Kirk's hookup and Uhura's roommate, there was so much potential inherent in her character.

I love Gaila, with her cheerfully casual attitude and her background that's rich with possibilities just waiting to be explored, and while I'm enough of a realist to acknowledge that we might not ever see her again onscreen, I'd love it if the NuTrek crew could bring her back, but if they do, then the question becomes, what do they do with her, to give her an essential function on board the Enterprise?

Kirk is the commanding officer, Spock is the science officer, McCoy is the chief medical officer, Uhura is the communications officer, Sulu is the helmsman, Chekov is the navigator and Scotty is the chief engineer, and the fact that each of these characters is guaranteed to have at least some role to play in each Enterprise mission is at least part of the reason why they're regarded as the "magnificent seven."

I've seen a lot of female fans casting Gaila as an engineer in fanfic, not only because it makes sense that Uhura would be rooming with a fellow Operations cadet at Starfleet Academy, but also because science fiction has done, and continues to do, a relatively poor job of representing female characters in its ranks of technology specialists.

I'm not out to dissuade anyone from this preference - after all, if the prevailing societal stereotype was that men's brains can't handle math or science, as is still the stereotype to which women as a whole are unfairly subjected, then I'd probably find it empowering to see a member of my gender portrayed as a competent techie too - but as a guy whose own math skills are so weak that I could actually identify with the talking Barbie doll who infamously sent the sexist message to little girls that "math is hard," I'm still going to make a case for my own preference.

Because from my own direct personal experiences as a former U.S. Navy sailor who's served on board an aircraft carrier during two of its wartime deployments (USS Theodore Roosevelt, in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom), I'm going to be biased and suggest an alternate department for Gaila, based on my own career as an enlisted Navy Journalist (or JO, a rate that's since been replaced by Mass Communications Specialist, or MC):

PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER.

On board the TR, I worked in the Public Affairs Office for Lt. John "Spin" Oliveira, the ship's PAO, while we were accommodating the near-constant company of embedded civilian journalists, and ever since then, I've wondered why military sci-fi has almost never considered the exciting and fascinating stories that could be told about the duties of a starship's PAO (even the recent remake of Battlestar Galactica missed this opportunity, in my opinion, by jettisoning public relations specialist Aaron Doral and revealing him to be a Cylon in the pilot miniseries).

Assuming that a free press still exists in the 23rd century (and in the virtually Utopian United Federation of Planets that appears in Star Trek, there's no reason to think that it shouldn't), Gaila would have a very important job as the public affairs officer for the Enterprise, especially if the ship had an embedded media presence.

Not only would she be instrumental in maintaining relatively open and positive channels of communication between the ship's crew and their loved ones and respective hometown communities, but she'd also be responsible for selling the missions of Starfleet and the Enterprise to the civilian public, without being dishonest and without breaking operational security.

If you think that sounds like a simple or trivial job, then I would suggest that you're forgetting who Gaila's captain is:



Yeah. THAT guy. Mister Slouch of Authority himself, the console cowboy who treats Starfleet regulations, and even the Prime Directive, as though they're as optional as ordering croutons on a salad.

Go ahead and think up how you could spin his response to the Kobayashi Maru test, in a way that would be both truthful and flattering, to the target audiences of the 23rd century equivalents of Daily Kos, MoveOn.org or Salon.com, without inviting unfortunate comparisons to the pre-POW Navy career of John McCain. And then imagine how much Pepto-Bismol and Mad Dog 20/20 you'd start chugging if you had to come up with similarly media-friendly explanations for every impulsive command decision that Kirk makes.

You'd have to have some serious social skills and an indefatigably upbeat attitude to cope with that job, much less to succeed at it, but for a gal who's gone from Orion slave girl to Starfleet officer, anything less challenging should be cake.



Plus, serving as ship's PAO would probably keep Gaila in Operations (which includes not only engineering and communications, but also security and tactical, administrative posts such as yeomen and personnel officers, and service specializations, the latter of which would likely include public affairs officers), and if there's one thing that we all should be able to agree on, it's that she looks great in red.