Earlier, I mentioned how I had reached an epiphany with USS Banshee as to what was wrong with it, and how I could make it a far more interesting work. But that would involve completely tearing it down and rebuilding it from the ground up. The story itself, not the worldbuilding work. That’s key.
The main flaw of where I was going with the USS Banshee earlier was this: despite the unique elements of the characters and worldbuilding, the set-up was more or less a Star Trek book. A Star Trek book from the junior officers’ perspective, but still. Which annoyed me, because part of my underlying idea behind the future-worldbuild was that, as opposed to the Trek-verse, humans would be the scrappy newcomers to a relatively well-formed interstellar political scene. They do not forge a bold alliance between themselves and alien races, it’s already there, thank you.
So, thus, the problem of Banshee was staring at me: it’s pretty Trek-like, except the ship is all-human.
And then it hit me: what if the ship wasn’t all-human? What if, as opposed to Trek, the ship we’re on is, in fact, human-minority?
Then the ideas started to get interesting. Starting with scrapping almost the entire character list. Also, I’ll probably have to change the title now.