Polyakova, Marina
NPC 
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STAR FLEET PERSONNEL COMMAND FILE |
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| RETIRED[2] | |||
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| Marina Polyakova | |||
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| Career Occupation | |||
| Position: | Communications Officer, Junior Science Officer | ||
| Assignment: | Unassigned | ||
| Rank: | Ensign | 
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| Biographical Attributes | |||
| Played By: | Knight, Hailey | ||
| Species: | Human | ||
| Gender: | Female | ||
| Height: | 178 cm (5 ft. 10 in.) | Weight: | 58 kg (128 lb.) |
| Eye Color: | Light blue. | ||
| Hair Color: | Blonde with dark roots. | ||
| Hairstyle: | Long, reaching down to her shoulder blades, with a slight wave to it. She typically wears a ponytail while on duty. | ||
| Physique: | Slender, athletic. A relatively tall woman with a naturally skinny build, Marina has added a little muscle to her frame in the course of her Starfleet training. | ||
| Complexion: | Creamy, pale. Marina likes to get a tan, but spending the better part of the last year in training vessels hasn't helped. | ||
| Voice: | Understandably, she has a very clear speaking voice, soft and with an indistinct accent that is hard to place. | ||
| Affiliation: | United Earth | ||
| Birthplace: | Nova Ares, Mars Colony | ||
| Born: | May 27, Template:YearConvert | Age: | N/A |
| Familial Relationships | |||
| Father: | Alexander Zhuev | ||
| Mother: | Natalia Polyakova | ||
| Status of Parents: | Her parents are no longer together. Her mother returned to Russia, while her father still lives on Mars, working on a terra-forming project. | ||
| Siblings: | Maya (21) | ||
| Marital Status: | Single | ||
| Children: | None | ||
Personal History
Marina Polyakova was born in 2333 to a Martian colonist couple, terraforming scientist Alexander Zhuev and medical technician Natalia Polyakova. She grew up in Nova Ares, a city in Utopia Planitia, with her sister Maya, at a time when the colonies had started to become fairly well established: although restricted to the biodomes, large scale terraforming not yet having been achieved, Martian life was no longer the rough frontier existence it had once been. Her life in Nova Ares also served to dilute her Russian identity, and she made friends of all nationalities at John Kelly Memorial School, including a Vulcan girl called T'Prix. The two taught themselves to speak each other's languages, sparking an affinity for languages and interest in foreign cultures that would come to play an important role in defining Marina's life.
Nonetheless, while Mars had become more cosmopolitan by the 2150s, university study required Marina to return to Earth. She began to realize that a civilian education would only take her so far, with only a few universities offering anything more than very basic alien languages courses, and so against the wishes of her pacifist parents and in defiance of the mild space sickness she had experienced every time she travelled, she enlisted in Starfleet.
Starfleet Academy not being so formally constituted at that time, they decided to send her to Moscow State Linguistic University to study the specialist Vulcan course taught there; on her return to San Francisco, she continued studies in linguistics and anthropology while training as a Starfleet officer. In all that training she never quite managed to get over her space sickness or her concerns about the military direction of Starfleet, but the exciting developments in exolinguistics were enough to encourage her to keep up.
After her graduation she was temporarily assigned to translation duty at a Starfleet listening post on Luna, before receiving her first ship based assignment. Add a sentence more here once the ship details are finalised.
Personality Profile
Academy Major(s): Vulcan & Linguistics
Academy Minor(s): Xenoanthropology
Hobbies and Pastimes: Running, cycling, swimming. Alien languages and cultures. As a teenager she went through a phase of wearing Vulcan “ears” and trying to act logically; though she now looks back on this as a silly fad, she does still have a deep fascination with Vulcan culture.
Short-Term Goals: She wants to survive her first space mission, away mission, and alien encounter, without dying, vomiting everywhere, or messing up a translation that accidentally leads to galactic catastrophe. She is also working at mastering the tricky intricacies of the Andorian accent that non-antennaed speakers face.
Long-Term Goals: Like many Earth linguists, Marina does not believe a “universal translator” will ever truly be possible, and she is more interested in learning about particulars than trying to theorise and generalise. She wants to encounter and learn an entirely new alien language from scratch. She also has vague ambitions to develop her all round skills more, as she feels she might be a liability in space.
Personality: She's regarded as a bit of a “hippie-dippie” by more militaristic Starfleet officers, and as forward thinking and progressive by those not bound to United Earth. She's fairly easy to get along with, however.
Sense of Humor: Quirky. She has a spacey, ethereal quality that perhaps comes from her immersion in numerous different alien cultures, and she often makes idiomatic comments that completely escape those not versed in the relevant language.
Phobias: Space accidents, away team accidents, orbital facility accidents. Basically anything involving space travel. Oh dear.
Likes: Learning and exploring, folklore and customs, Vulcans, white wine, vegetarian cooking.
Dislikes: Xenophobia and nationalism, excessive militarism, separation from loved ones, prolonged down time. Mildly technophobic.
Pet Peeves or Gripes: She has a social side but also values her privacy, meaning she doesn't always get on well with the cramped conditions of a starship. Obsession with technological innovation for its own sake irritates her.
Bad Habits or Vices: She smokes and does a terrible job of concealing it. She's also extremely fussy to a fault about her own personal space.
Achievements: One of the more proficient human speakers of alien languages. Overcame physical and technical shortcomings to graduate Starfleet Academy with a demanding academic regime. Starred in the Academy cadet opera, singing all her lines in flawless Klingonese.
Disappointments: Losing her friend T'Prix, who returned to Vulcan and isolated her in study. Forcing herself to compromise on some of her pacifistic ideals during her training as an officer. Not being able to attend university on Mars.
Illnesses: Growing up on Mars, she didn't have quite the usual strains of childhood illnesses, meaning she had to be heavily inoculated before coming to Earth. During her Academy training she got terrible food poisoning and has since exercised more caution about sampling alien cuisine.
Strengths: Bright, eager, enthusiastic and friendly, Marina is proficient in numerous languages, with communications technology, and at alien contact protocols. She's willing to push herself even if it means stepping out of her comfort zone.
Weaknesses: She has a limited skill set aboard the ship and won't be of much assistance should she find herself translating declarations of hostile intent. Her considerable apprehensions about space travel sometimes lead to panic attacks, or at least significant nerves.
Fears: That she's chosen the wrong career path. That her skills will be found wanting and doom the ship. That she'll never see T'Prix again.
Prejudices: To a certain extent, she believes that language reflects culture and even biology, and can tend to classify aliens on such a basis without a sound anthropological study. As a young woman who works hard on her appearance she has little sympathy for the overweight. She regards all MACOs, without exception, as mindless jocks.
Off Duty Clothing Tastes: She tends to opt for comfort over style now she's in Starfleet. She likes reds, purples, and pinks for colours; for also enjoys mixing Earth cultures, although she's yet to introduce alien fashion into her wardrobe.
Distinguishing Features: She has a silver piercing in her navel.
Pets: Her sister looks after her two dogs, Phoebe and Damien.
Friends: Her interest in cultures beyond her own started from an early age, with childhood friends of such diverse nationalities as Australian, Chinese, Danish, Egyptian, Mexican – and Vulcan. Her close, albeit sometimes difficult, friendship with T'Prix, daughter of a scientist stationed to a joint human-Vulcan scientific outpost on Mars, fuelled her early aptitude to languages, and before they were teenagers both were able to communicate fluently in each others' languages. Since T'Prix returned to Vulcan for study, Marina has tended to be more guarded about befriending aliens. She happened to be assigned a Russian roommate through the Academy, a navigator-trainee called Alicia Yuryeva, and the two became very close, hoping they would be assigned to the same mission after graduation.
Personal Paradigm Shifts
Most Painful Experience: Saying goodbye at T'Prix at the Utopia spacedock. Worse than knowing she was losing her friend, possibly forever, was the contrast between her emotional trauma, and the reservation showed by the logical Vulcan.
Best Time: Three weeks in Indonesia during her second year of study, observing and cataloguing language variety by day, and dipping in the still warm sea by night.
Most Crucial Experience: Her seventeenth space flight. This was the first one where she didn't get violently ill, and that experience helped her believe that she was capable of a Starfleet career.
Role Model: Noam Chomsky.
