A starship is just a hull with some engines and maybe guns. It’s the crew inside that makes it truly special. Zipping back and forth across the cosmos would be boring (and probably more dangerous) alone. A good captain makes sure to surround themselves with the best crew they can find.

Success and failure rest on the thinnest of edges, and the vastness of space isn’t a forgiving place. The choice of companions for the voyage makes all the difference.

YOU have acquired (either through nefarious means, legitimate commerce, or dumb luck) an old-but-functional starship. It’s neither tiny nor huge. It’ll take a crew to make it work properly. You can decide to use it for any purpose you like.

WHO do you bring with you?

Rules:

• Crew drawn from a single fictional starship
• Cannot recruit that ship’s commanding officer (you are the commanding officer)
• Must be regular crew members of the ship, not guest stars or visitors

My suggestions:

Serenity – If you want to do crime, hire criminals. Malcolm Reynolds’ main job in Firefly was keeping the motley assortment of misfits and outlaws working toward a common goal. You’d be taking on a task just keeping everyone from killing one another, but the potential is obvious.

Enterprise D – The flagship of the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek: The Next Generation boasts of a crew handpicked from the finest Starfleet has to offer. They’d follow you to the end of the galaxy and back… but only if it’s for a good cause. With powerful, moral personalities and loads of command potential lined up behind you, it wouldn’t take too big a stretch to mutiny against a poor or unscrupulous captain.

Millennium Falcon – With Han gone, you’d have to rely on C3P0 to translate Chewbacca. Let’s assume we’re fleeing the Death Star here, so you’ve got Luke, the droids, Leia, and Chewie.

Raza – The least famous ship to make the list, the Raza is the ship from Dark Matter. With a crew of psychotic amnesiacs, you’re in for a guaranteed challenge. Since this crew never quite managed to have a clearly defined captain, you can just add yourself to this bunch. BONUS: You can choose whether or not you’ve lost your memory as well, and whether you share that info with your crewmates.

Moya – The weird exception here is that the ship from Farscape isn’t part of your crew. Moya, while alive, would skew the question way too much to be fair. Let’s just go with the humanoids. Crichton was de facto captain by the end, so let’s leave him out. You’ll be left dealing with Dominar Rygel, Aeryn, Ka D’Argo, and the rest.

Enterprise A – The ship that started the Star Trek franchise. The crew that ought to have been courtmartialed far more often than they were. With Captain James Tiberius Kirk out of the way, you’ll be the one acting illogically and attempting to draw non-medical advice from your doctor on a wide array of topics.

Last, and hopefully not least…

Mobius – Think you could run that crew without Carl to wrangle the personalities? How many of you couldn’t do better than our illustrious Black Ocean: Galaxy Outlaws captain?

As always, feel free to nominate your own (though I’d recommend against the Planet Express crew, since Leela was the only one holding that shit show together). More importantly, once you’ve got your ship and your crew, what’ll you do with them?

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