[normal SSE blog is on holiday to return in August; in the meantime, a short series from deep space…]

CAPTAIN’S BLOG, STARDATE July 5th 2010

Since losing contact with the Federation on take-off, Uhura has been working hard on patching up communications. I’ve been concentrating on working out what our mission is, in conversation with Spock and Bones. Spock was keen to move straight to detailed planning and strategy (he does love a spreadsheet), while Bones was keen to just get doing stuff, but I insisted that we had to be clear about the mission first: how else could we make decisions, or work out whether we had succeeded, or inspire the rest of the crew on this journey we are on?

Spock finally agreed that this was pretty logical, and so we held some meetings with the crew and some in-depth conversations about the subject. Ultimately I wanted some sort of one-sentence version that encapsulated the mission neatly. A variety of phrases and words came up: ‘kill Klingons’, ‘warp speed at all costs’, ‘investigate space’, but we settled with “To boldly go where no-one has gone before, using travel, scientific and military activities to better map and protect a diverse universe”. Catchy, I think. Our vision is of “a universe in which all residents feel safe, included and understood”. Values were a bit tougher to get consensus on: Spock was all for logical, analytical, evidence-based, hard-headed, pragmatic blah blah blah, while Bones and Scotty kept shouting about passionate, entrepreneurial, action-oriented, driven, instinctive and that sort of thing. I left Sulu to sort it out, as he’s typing this all up afterwards. He asked why him and I said that he was good at plotting a course between two very distant positions…

So, feet up for the day now; feeling happy about where we are at, and that everyone’s on board, in every sense. So now enjoying a cold beer in this great new chair I’ve got on the bridge. Ciao for now.