
2358 -- As ensign, first assigned to U.S.S. Pegasus test project under Capt. Erik Pressman
2361 -- As lieutenant, stationed with Starfleet detachment on Betazed
2362 -- Assigned to U.S.S. Potemkin; decorated
for rescue of ship's away team on Nervalla IV six weeks later and promoted
to lieutenant commander, transferring from
operations to command division. Named first officer of U.S.S. Hood under
Capt.
Robert DeSoto
2364 -- Promoted to commander, named first officer of U.S.S. Enterprise by Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
2366 -- Temporary field promotion to captain by Adm. Hanson during Borg crisis
2369 -- (*) Accidental double, retaining
rank of lieutenant from Nervala IV crisis, assigned to U.S.S. Gandhi and
uses middle
name "Thomas"2370 -- Temporarily detained
due to earlier involvement with Pegasus project; charges dropped
2371 -- (*) Riker "twin" resigns Starfleet
to join Maquis, leads raid on Orias III in captured U.S.S. Defiant and
is imprisoned
by Cardassians upon capture
2372 -- Transferred with remainder of Picard's senior staff to Sovereign-class U.S.S. Enterprise
2373 -- During attempt to repair Borg temporal
sabotage with Earth first contact, acts as replacement flight crew for
Zefram
Cochran's Phoenix warp test
Professional Assessment: Report of Starfleet Command Review Board
Enterprise Second Officer Data once estimated
that Riker uses traditional tactics only 21% of the time. After winning
admission to the Academy, Riker began acquiring
this lifelong reputation for unorthodox solutions when, during a simulation,
he figured out a Tholian ship's sensor
blind spot for use as a hiding place. Riker finished eighth in his graduating
class; one
fellow cadet was Paul Rice, who would later
fall victim to the computer weapons systems on planet Minos.
As an ensign on his first assignment, Riker
had served with now-Admiral Pressman on the test ship U.S.S. Pegasus as
and
proved pivotal in defending his captain
against a rare Starfleet mutiny before they and only a handful of others
escaped,
shortly after the ship's destruction during
a test project. Only in 2370 was Pressman's renegade cloaking experiment
unmasked, and Riker was detained briefly
for complicity but cleared.
Later stationed on Betazed, his mission
there ended in 2362 with a posting that would launch a rapid rise in his
career. Sent
to the U.S.S. Potemkin in 2362 as a lieutenant,
he proved unorthodox again in avoiding a confrontation by hanging over
a
planet's magnetic pole to confuse an opposing
ship's sensors. Only six weeks after coming aboard, though, he barely
escaped from Nervala IV, where his rescue
of crewmates led to a promotion and a switch from operations to command
division, where he eventually became first
officer of the U.S.S. Hood under Captain Robert DeSoto. During this stay
he was
offered his first command on the light
cruiser U.S.S. Drake, but turned it down.
From there, he was promoted to commander
and picked sight unseen from among 50 candidates by Jean-Luc Picard as
his
first officer on the new Galaxy-class U.S.S.
Enterprise; in fact, the two had not met until he signed aboard at Farpoint
Station, after he was dropped off by the
U.S.S. Hood.
Riker grew so satisfied with his assignment
under Picard, who quickly dubbed him "Number One" according to old Terran
naval parlance, that he twice turned down
two more commands of his own: once to the frontier scout ship U.S.S. Aries
in
2365, and again to the ill-fated U.S.S.
Melbourne a year later, although he temporarily had a field promotion to
captain during
the Borg crisis of 2366-67 during Picard's
abduction. Ironically, he likely would have died on the Melbourne during
the Borg
massacre at Wolf 359 and would not have
been present to play a major role during the Enterprise's last-ditch attack.
Knowledgeable on legal issues, he was pressed
into presenting Starfleet's case against Data's independence at Starbase
173 in 2365 and, two years later, defended
first Crewman Tarses and then even Picard before Admiral Satie's inquiry
in 2367.
He was the first human to serve aboard
a Federation-Klingon exchange program in 2365, where he showed a keen
knowledge of their culture and became one
of the few to obtain Picard's "surrender."
He had been given temporary command of the
U.S.S. Excalibur in Picard's blockading fleet against Romulan involvement
in
the Klingon civil war of 2367-68, but Admiral
Nechayev passed over him by placing Captain Jellico in command during
Picard's abduction by the Cardassians in
2369. Their budding disagreements led to Riker being temporarily relieved
of duty
until he was called back by Jellico for
Cardassian negotiations.
Riker's latter tour years on the Galaxy-class
Enterprise were filled with more surprises. Aside from being drugged and
made
nearly insane by the Tilonians, captured
and nearly killed by the xenophobic Malcorians on a first contact recon
gone bad,
abducted by solanagen-based aliens, and
revealed for his role in the Pegasus incident, he discovered [*] a duplicate
of
himself created as a transporter fluke
from the Nervala IV mission.
[*] Ironically, the two clashed in temperament,
with the "found" Riker finding his own restless career on the Gandhi before
resigning to join the Maquis rebels and
his subsequent capture by Cardassians in a useless theft of the U.S.S.
Defiant from
DS-9.
Riker, meanwhile, again gave no thought
to his own command and joined Picard and the other senior staff aboard
the new
Sovereign-class Enterprise namesake. Though
the incident has been classified, Riker also has the satisfaction of having
joined Chief Engineer LaForge in the cockpit
of Zefram Cochrane's warp test vehicle Phoenix during efforts to repair
temporal
damage caused by Borg invaders in 2373.
Psychological Profile: Report of Ship's Counselor Deanna Troi
Although Riker has displayed a well-rounded
personality and temperament throughout his rising command career, his
mother's death when he was only 2 helped
foster an acrimonious 15-year separation from his father at age 15, when
he left
home. He had deeply missed his mother,
but came to loathe the distance his father erected between them as his
own
means of grief. Their relationship resorted
to an ongoing competition in activities such as fishing trips, and formally
manifested itself in the martial art of
anbo-jyutsu as way to work out their problems. The two began a tentative
rapprochement in 2365 during a surprise
encounter, where Riker discovered his father had nearly died in a Tholian
attack in
2253. The family history includes a veteran
of the Terran American Civil War, Col. Thaddeus "Iron Boots" Riker, who
was
wounded as commander of the 102nd New York
at the Battle of Pine Mountain, serving in Gen. W.T. Sherman's march to
Atlanta in 1864; he was carried for two
miles from the front lines or would not have survived.
Riker's knack for improvisation runs throughout
his hobbies and interests as well. A master poker player and bluffer, he
had
learned the game during his brief stint
on the U.S.S. Potemkin; his reputation won him the role as replacement
Federation
negotiator during the short-lived Barzan
wormhole talks. He has also visited Quark's bar and casino on DS9, where
in its first
year of operation under Starfleet-Bajoran
administration he was the only person to win a triple-down dabo.
He can play keyboards, but his favorite
musical instrument is the trombone. He especially loves jazz and has played
for
numerous shipboard functions and concerts;
he displays it in his quarters - having loaned his old boyhood instrument
to
Thomas Riker - and also displays a Risian
horga'hn Picard once brought him, as well as a fishing reel. Under Dr.
Crusher's
direction, his acting talents have increased
greatly since "Something for Breakfast" in 2369 until his riveting "Frame
of Mind"
performance only weeks later. Cooking is
another hobby, thanks to the necessity of a father who hated to do it,
and his
language skills include basic Ferengi as
well as Klingon. Generally, he claims to be inept at organizing his time
off and -
predictably - prefers to let events happen
unplanned.
Riker has a strong libido and - aside from
encounters made in the line of duty, such as on Angel I and Tilonia IV
- has
fostered several romantic relationships,
including the enhanced holo-woman Minuet, the doomed assassin Yuta and
colonizer Carmen Davila, and Soren of the
normally androgynous J'naii, for whom he risked court-martial over Prime
Directive
charges. His encounters nearly cost him
a murder sentence on Tanuga IV and, after a Risian resort visit, the Ktarian
takeover of Starfleet through a mind-control
device. Additionally, he and Ensign Ro engaged in a love/hate working
relationship, especially exposed during
a memory blanking incident in 2368, and he offered to speak in her behalf
when she
was presumed dead later that year. (See
addendum below).
Despite his nominally robust outlook, Riker
has been prone to short bouts of self-doubt regarding his perceived complacency
toward ambition each time he debated and
turned down his own ship command. His imposing physical presence has been
an unintended impediment to effective communication
with some in his command, especially junior officers, and he has
taken steps to deal with it.
Medical File: Report by Beverly Crusher, M.D., CMO
Riker generally enjoys good health; an infectious
plant on Surata IV proved nearly fatal but for a precise and direct
neural-cortical therapy. Athletically,
he still enjoys Parrises Squares, despite medical warnings; he also trains
for the
Klingon bat'tleh with sticks and studies
in Worf's mok'bara classes. While he does not care for equine events he
does
indulge mountain climbing and fishing holo-programs,
having grown up in the great outdoors of Earth's Alaska.
Psychological Profile Addendum by Beverly Crusher, M.D., CMO
(Due to the conflict of interest, this entry
is being entered by the chief medical officer rather than ship's counselor,
who has
been personally involved with the subject
of the report.)
Aside from his string of incomplete female
relationships, Riker's major romance last involved Counselor Deanna Troi,
who
began calling him "imzadi," the native
word for "beloved," after they met during his Betazed mission. He had last
seen her
there the day before he shipped out on
the U.S.S. Potemkin in 2362, but it would be two years before they were
reunited
again as fellow officers on the U.S.S.
Enterprise, unbeknownst to Picard. They had planned to get together six
months after
his departure, but the Nervala IV incident
changed that; his early feelings for her at that time can still be seen
in his twin
"Thomas." Riker professed a warm friendship
for Troi in later years that occasionally blossomed into romance, but they
generally stayed platonic - although Worf's
surprising courtship of her in 2370 seemed never to have settled well with
him.
Personnel File Addendum: Report of Capt.
Jean-Luc Picard
CONFIDENTIAL
On a personal level, I was heartened to
find Riker commanding the refit Enterprise as captain in 20 years, but
disturbed to
discover that he and my chief security
officer Worf had clashed over their affections for Deanna Troi along the
future timeline
shown to me by the Q entity in late 2370.
Owing to the tentative nature of this "future," I chose to share these
developments
among the officers involved with the conviction
that this future was not immovable, in the hope they can avoid the problem.

