Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Raffi Musiker
From down-and-out and struggling to the bridge of the Enterprise-G, who is Raffaela Musiker?
Star Trek: Picard was a tight, three-season story that didn't offer much chance for character exploration. At least, not to the same degree that its inspiration - The Next Generation - managed to get away with. How, then, to discuss Raffaela Musiker?
She was brought to vivid life by Michelle Hurd, playing the antithesis of the type of officer an audience had come to expect. She bristled, she struggled, and she called Jean-Luc 'JL'. Surely not!
Over three years, Hurd and indeed Raffi, solidified their positions as critical members of Starfleet, and the Star Trek family. Raffi was not an officer at the top of their game when we were introduced to her. What does a Starfleet officer look like when they're not neat and polished, with shining shoes and starched uniforms?
For Raffi, there was humanity, there was pain, and there was a fierce determination to vindicate herself, protect those around her, and remind us all that this discharged intelligence officer could so clearly become the greatest First Officer of them all.
10. Humble Beginnings
When the audience is first introduced to Raffi, she lives isolated in a small house beside the Vasquez Rocks. This was the first time the rocks appeared as themselves in Star Trek, though for Raffi, it was the second appearance.
The prequel comic series Countdown is set in the 2380s, though it was released in 2019 before the streaming series debuted. It focused on the Romulan evacuation effort. Raffi served as Admiral Picard's first officer aboard the USS Verity.
This, along with Dr Una McCormack's novel The Last Best Hope establishes Raffi as a highly skilled, but challenged, officer. Her home life is crumbling as both her husband and son feel neglected by her. Raffi is presented as an officer who will sacrifice all personal comforts in the name of the mission, and especially in the name of truth.
When the Synths attack Mars, and Picard resigns following Starfleet's refusal to commit more resources to help the Romulans, she quickly finds herself alone in the service, reassigned and ignored, sinking into addiction and paranoia. The Raffi that the audience meets at those rocks is one still burning with the shame of a dishonourable discharge from Starfleet, estranged from her family, and abandoned by her former commanding officer.