User Name/Nick: Ryann
User DW: cornichaun
AIM/IM: cornichaun
E-mail: cornichaun
Other Characters: none at the moment!
Character Name: Hugh Cambridge
Series: Star Trek: Voyager (novel canon)
Age: late 40s
From When?: prior to Acts of Contrition
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Though Cambridge is deeply annoying and rude, he is a Starfleet officer and a psychologist, devoted to the idea of peace and exploration, with a fierce passion for healing the inside of the psyche. His brilliant insightfulness probably outweighs his egotistical asshattery.
Item: Starfleet communicator.
Abilities/Powers: Human normal in terms of powers. But Cambridge has an eidetic memory and a very keen understanding of body language and the layers of the mind. He also is a Starfleet officer with basic training in all areas (engineering, navigation, sciences) and advanced training in a few (anthropology, languages, first contact). He has degrees in psychology and is a fully trained and qualified doctor.
Personality: Cambridge is an extremely difficult person to get to know. This is because of his general attitude, which is terrible; he is rude, he states exactly what he is thinking, and he doesn't bother to hide boredom and irritation. In fact, for quite some time after meeting him, most people get the impression that he's an entitled asshat who's totally unsuited for his job. (His first day counseling on Voyager, he served one duty shift, and 60% of the patients he saw filed formal complaints against him.)
This is mostly a shell. A very prickly outer layer. Underneath, Cambridge is fiercely loyal to his friends, uncompromisingly moral in his decision-making, and keenly eager to explore and learn. His passion is in the minds that he meets, the psychology and culture of different races. Oh, yes, neutron stars and the like are very interesting, but the way people
look at neutron stars is an order of magnitude more fascinating. There are reaches of space to explore outside the mind, but there are infinities inside every person, and this is what keeps Cambridge coming back.
Cambridge is a genius, and he's rarely been in situations where his intellect is matched or challenged; when he's served on most starships before, he feels the problems he copes with are mundane or easily avoidable, the result of poor decision-making. He's stated outright that he always learned the locations of the escape pods as soon as making the acquaintance of the captain, because literally every captain he ever met (until Chakotay on Voyager) made him absolutely certain he'd need to use them. This was to his benefit at the battle of Wolf 359, where he survived the destruction of his assigned starship and promptly went to Starfleet Medical and did eleven years of research and study in lieu of active duty.
Once Cambridge has decided that someone is worthy of his respect, it's almost impossible to shake. He's a wonderful judge of character. That doesn't mean he goes easy on you, though; after a disastrous first meeting, Chakotay spent three years hating Cambridge's guts deeply and profoundly, while Cambridge completely failed to take any of that personally or even really acknowledge it at all. Cambridge kept not giving Chakotay a valid reason to transfer him off the ship.
Even when Chakotay spun off into trauma after the death of Kathryn Janeway, Cambridge's respect didn't go away. Because, on top of the hard-earned respect, Cambridge has a limitless store of empathy. He doesn't use it most of the time. He saves it for when it's something
important, something necessary, something worthy of his interference and his qualifications. (It's important to note: this qualification of "important" includes everything from knock-down drag-out marital arguments to literally saving the multiverse from imminent destruction. It's about people who need him and who deserve him, not people who whine and waste his time.)
Cambridge isn't much of a liar. He has the ability to put his personal emotions aside and go on professional judgment, which is practiced and comes fairly easily to him now. But when it comes to outright hiding his own emotions, he's not good at it. He feels strongly. He deals with his emotions like an adult (most of the time), but they are strong, and what he chooses to care about, he
cares about.
Cambridge can also be the exact kind of idiot he abhors. He sometimes can convince himself so much that he knows what to do and no one else does that he fails to rely on anyone else, thus leading to idiotic outcomes, like when he takes down a Klingon traitor without calling for any security teams. In cases like that, he's able to acknowledge how dumb he's just been when called out on it. In addition, when his emotions get deeply personal, they can blind his judgment. He falls for Seven of Nine, and falls
hard, and when she begins experiencing connections to a former lover, he gets himself all up in a knot of jealousy and starts convincing himself that she's going to leave him.
Which gets us to what's underneath, with Cambridge. He's not just picky and egocentric because he's never been challenged properly. He doesn't wait to make friends until he knows they're worth it because the universe is overflowing with friends and he gets to take the cream of the crop. It's because he quietly doesn't believe that he's worth being friends with. Or worth loving. His solution is to do amazing things and surround himself with amazing people, who must be a
little bit right if they all like him, right?
Barge Reactions: THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST THING OF ALL TIME.
More seriously, Cambridge would find the Barge fascinating. As a Starfleet officer, he's encountered lots of different levels of technology and culture; none of that is going to deeply surprise him. He's even run into "magic" that's actually advanced technology. He will probably approach things from an exclusively scientific standpoint, at least at first, before accepting the existence of ~magic~, but in general he's just going to be open to learn, interested, and accepting of the impossibility in other universes.
Path to Redemption:Deal: Frankly, Cambridge would do this shit for free. The Barge in and of itself is fascinating, new, and ridiculous, three things that Cambridge prizes highly. But, if he
has to have a magic wish on top of the amazing brain candy store that is the Barge, he would like to temper the effects of the Borg invasion on Federation space and stimulate fast recovery within the Federation.
History: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Hugh_CambridgeSample Journal Entry: http://tlvgreatesthitsdw.dreamwidth.org/62752.html?thread=9766176#cmt9766176Sample RP: The infirmary is full of absolute horrors. There are heart monitors with actual
wires. Injection needles by the tens and hundreds. Dreadful, stiff sheets that smell vaguely of chemical compounds like bleach. Things are on
wheels. Monitors are simplistic and vague.
The more he sees, the more appalled he becomes.
"But where do they keep the
leeches?" he mutters to himself, sarcastically. Not a dermal regenerator or surgical arch in sight. No replicators. The whole place is three centuries behind, at least.
Rubber gloves. Oh, dear. It's a good thing he's well-versed in historical artifacts and mythology. He's probably going to need it.
The kitchen at least made some sense, while providing old-timey fascination. Everyone knows there's something more to food cooked without a replicator; the saturation of flavors, the processing of fats and textures. On the other hand, there is absolutely
no reason to use a needle instead of a bloody hypospray.
Or, actually, a
not-bloody hypospray, as the case happened to be.
With relief, he notes that the rooms for personal therapy contain no straightjackets or heavy restraints or medieval dunking wheels. Things are looking up. Here's hoping they'll have a decent lab for him to take over.
Special Notes: Cambridge will remember his previous time on the Barge; to him, a very short time will have passed on Voyager compared to the duration on the Barge.
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