ALPHA LEADER BEATS TOP GUN

Capt.Sam Murphy, alpha team leader

A recent blog post  here at Spacefreighters Lounge addressed something called “top gun SFR”. Author Pauline Baird Jones and my blog partner Laurie A. Green, both of whom write SFR focused on military-type space adventures, discussed the term, which they use to refer to not just pilots, “but also ship’s captains, fleet admirals, rogue privateers, crack navigators, or anyone who knows their way around a space vessel and how to use their skills and their ship to the fullest potential.” They named the obvious folks—Jim Kirk, Han Solo, Mal Reynolds or Starbuck—as examples.

The template for this “top gun” hero (or heroine) in their argument was, of course, a guy we’ve seen make a recent comeback on the big screen: Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise), the hot-shot Navy pilot first seen in 1986’s TOP GUN and now making a re-appearance in the hit sequel TOP GUN: MAVERICK. Of course, Maverick outflies and outguns any other pilot in the Navy’s elite Miramar Fighter School. And he has the attitude to match, going his own way in everything.

The Top Gun SFR theory says that folks like Kirk, Solo and Reynolds—and their counterparts in space opera novels written by us lesser folk (“pew-pew” SFR, as Pauline lovingly calls it) follow in Maverick’s brash footsteps, whether the foe is an alien warship or an ion storm. They find their own solutions, Starfleet, the Empire, the Alliance (or whoever) be damned.

To a certain extent that’s true. The Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon and Serenity are a long way from anywhere, and their captains can’t wait for someone to tell them what to do (not that Han Solo would listen, anyway!). But there is something else at work on at least two of those ships that the Top Gun SFR theory doesn’t take into account, something, indeed, that was at the heart of the original TOP GUN story.

The military, in fact, hates a genuine maverick. In the original movie, Pete Mitchell nearly screws the pooch several times by showing off and does get his partner “Goose” (Anthony Edwards) killed in an unnecessary hot-dogging maneuver during training. The point of the film is that Maverick must learn the hard way to work as a member of a team. Real fighter pilots have scads of group rituals—from barroom songs to games where everyone is forced to their backs on the floor whenever someone calls out “dead bug”—meant specifically to build team spirit. The military is all about teamwork, not individual performance. It values leadership within a structure, not independence.

We’ll leave out Han Solo, because he seldom worked within such a structure. But even Mal Reynolds was former military, and he insisted on a strict hierarchy on his ship. He was captain, his word was law, and he relied on his team to follow him. His team members had defined roles to play within that structure, and woe betide anyone who stepped outside the lines he’d drawn. (He almost sent Jayne out an airlock for betraying another member of the crew.)

Somehow, too, James T. Kirk has gotten a reputation as a maverick, but this, I think, is due more to J.J. Abrams’s reinterpretation of the character than Roddenberry’s original World War II-based concept. As William Shatner played the character, Kirk was a brilliant strategist, an intuitive tactician, capable of seeing options no one else could see in both diplomatic and battle situations. But he relied on his crew, and particularly on his senior officers McCoy and Spock, to give him the information he needed to make those decisions. The Enterprise operated like a well-oiled machine. Like a team, directed by a man who knew how to lead. Yes, there were instances where he ignored or defied Starfleet orders (mostly in the movies, when he was an admiral, or when a Starfleet bureaucrat was trying to insert himself where he didn’t belong onboard ship). But that was rare and justified.

In my own space opera novel, Fools Rush In: Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3, Captain Sam Murphy runs his own ship with military discipline, though he’s a pirate, with a reputation in the spacer bars for loving only profit, adventure and women. Like Kirk, he relies on his crew and his first officer for the data he needs to make his decisions. Also like Kirk, he’s a quick thinker, able to synthesize information from many sources to get his ship out of tight spots by either talking or fighting. That’s a good thing, because like Mal Reynolds, he doesn’t associate with the, uh, best elements in the galaxy. The authorities of the Consolidated Systems aren’t the only ones who’d like to get their hands on Murphy.

Still, he’s a man of principle and, like both Reynolds and Kirk, his crew will follow him anywhere. It’s no wonder Interstellar Rescue Agent Rayna Carver figures he’s the man to help her infiltrate an enemy arms factory to turn the tide in an alien civil war. And, of course, to be her own personal hero.

So, top gun? Maybe, but I prefer the alpha team leader, the one who has learned to rely on and command others with confidence.

Cheers, Donna