Lower Decks Interview: Ensign Beelam Grog, USS Montreal

StarBase 118 Staff · April 9, 2019

We’re here with another interview with a newer member of our community. The title of this column is “Lower Decks,” hearkening back to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode titled “Lower Decks,” in which junior officers aboard the Enterprise-D speculate on the reasons for recent unusual actions taken by the command crew near the Cardassian border.

This month’s interview is with the writer behind Ensign Beelam Grog playing a Trill female medical officer assigned to the USS Montreal.

GALVEN: I appreciate you for accepting my Interview! Could you tell us a little bit about yourself for our readers out there?

GROG: Sure thing. I live and go to college in Colorado where I am studying to become a special education teacher. In my free time I do role play for systems like Star Trek adventures, write and watch British history programs.

How did you find out about Starbase 118 and what made you ultimately choose our community and stay with us?

I find it to be a funny story. I found your group when I was searching google for Information about Starfleet academy. I found the wiki and upon seeing that this group was still active decided to join. I mostly stayed because I liked the people and how they valued the players as real people first.

There’s a lot of species to choose from. Why did you choose Trill?

I wanted to play a medical officer so the obvious choice was to use a character I had somewhat already created as part of my Deep Space Nine original character Abby’s bridge crew. She was already a Trill, had a name and set up to be a medical officer so being able to create her personality through this role play was a no brainer.

Your character plays a nurse. Are you in the medical field and is there a TV show, movie, or book you take inspiration from when writing your character?

I am not in the medical field but my future job as a special education teacher deals with kids who have disabilities; I guess you could say it does indirectly. It’s from these types disabilities that I might see in kids whom I will work with that I take inspiration, along with disabled youtubers that I watch. Though I would have to say that my favorite source of information is the BBC historical medical drama Call The Midwife. Such a great show, makes me cry every time I watch a new episode.

Now Beelam is a interesting character. She has a form of autism that also goes into effect with her hosts. How are you going to expand that for character development?

Thank you. I’m not sure, I never even planned for her to have Autism but being me it just had to happen. You see every character I create, and I have created a lot, have to have a disability, not sure why. If I had to give some insight I would say that I’m going to try and reveal more about her childhood and past hosts, as well as how these affect her and her Autism. I’m going to bring as much awareness to Autism as possible while writing this character.

And lastly, do you personally have aspirations in the fleet? Are there any OOC activities you’re associated with, or any you’d like to join?

Aspirations, hmm. Not sure, it might be nice for Beelam to make a head nurse position someday but for now I’m mostly going where the wind takes me. As for OOC activities I would love to join the FNS. Outside of SB118 I would love to get more into painting mini figures for role play.

Thanks for your time, Ensign Beelam Grog!

You can read more about Ensign Beelam Grog on the wiki.

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