Hoshi Sato
Context
Star Trek: Enterprise is a 2001-2005 TV series. While written 30+ years after the original TV series, it takes place over 100 years prior to the adventures of Captain James Kirk, the Vulcan Spock, et al. At this point, space travel and alien contacts are a brand new and world-shaking experience for humanity.
Enterprise preserved many of the archetypes of the original series, such as the overly-adventurous star ship Captain and the stranger-in-a-strange-land First Officer. It marked many technical firsts for the Star Trek franchise. ST:ENT was the last production before Paramount decided to go in a new direction.
The main characters were Captain Jonathan Archer (son of the designer of Earth’s first Warp 5-capable drive), the Vulcan T’Pol, the Denobulan Dr. Phlox, communications officer Hashi Soto, and engineer “Trip” Tucker.
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Background
- Real Name: Ensign Hoshi Sato.
- Marital Status: Single.
- Known Relatives: None.
- Group Affiliation: Starfleet.
- Base Of Operations: Currently U.S.S. Enterprise NX-01.
- Height: 5’5” Weight: 118 lbs.
- Eyes: Brown Hair: Black
Powers and Abilities
Hoshi is a linguistic genius knowing over 40 languages. She is capable of learning a new language in a single day of study (and she’s a very fast reader). Her amazing memory and ability with pictorial information also makes her an excellent cryptographer.
Also, being a communications officer, she has adequate knowledge in Trek technology and specific knowledge in various communication systems, both Federation-based and alien.
Hoshi has taken a crash course in phasers operation, and holds a black belt in aikido. Her combat performance is sometimes relatively poor and something quite excellent in the series. So it’s unclear whether she has the Techniques subskill in DC Heroes terms.
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Description
Hoshi Sato is a fit, young and cute woman of, apparently, Asian origin (the actress was born in Korea). She is often seen in her tight-fitting blue ensign uniform, with back-combed, long, black hair, brown eyes and a focused, concentrated look on her face.
Personality
Linguistic genius
Hoshi is a prodigy at understanding and translating languages. Still, she doesn’t have the confidence in her skills that one with her abilities should be expected to have. When she first started working on the Enterprise she didn’t have much faith in her own encryption skills.
Whereas other crew members are chomping at the bit for alien contact and to explore strange new worlds, Hoshi is gradually becoming accustomed to the challenges, unusual experiences and potential dangers of space exploration.
Still, her courage and confidence have grown over the first two years of Enterprise’s voyage, and she’s ready for the new challenges presented by the crew’s dangerous mission to the Delphic Expanse.
Hoshi truly loves everything related to languages. She will learn any new, alien language that she gets the opportunity to study. This is what she does on her vacation; studies new languages. Such studies gives her joy, some understanding of that culture, as well as makes her happy.
Aliens, ship life and adventure !
She will try out her newfound skills at the first opportunity given. It is particularly interesting to converse with exotic alien males. Other interests include physical training, and she has a regular training program she seems to enjoy.
Taking her job seriously, she is quite devastated and stressed if she fails to translate a new language in her duties. Sato then tends to become a bit rude in her speech. This partially may be due to the fact that she has always felt somewhat apart from the rest of humanity due to her unusual abilities.
Hoshi often has a quite demeanor and is seen as a low-profile crewman. She doesn’t attract much attention and keeps most of her opinions to herself. Although she easily makes friends she has some troubles getting really close to anyone. Apparently, she studies alien cultures and languages to find somewhere to fit in.
Though she has an undeniable facility with languages, that’s not all there is to Hoshi. She has demonstrated a willingness to pitch in wherever needed time and time again. She filled in for an ailing Chef once, preparing her grandmother’s family recipe of oden from scratch.
She also confronted her fear of the transporter firsthand when Reed had trouble re-integrating her matter stream. During the few seconds that it took for Hoshi to re-materialize, she had a vision in which she saved the ship from invading aliens by overcoming her transporter phobia.
Quotes
“It took a while, but I think I finally got my space legs.”
[Setting ‘Sluggo the alien worm’ free on a planet] “This isn’t exactly like the place you came from; but it’s close enough. It’s not that hard to adapt. You’re gonna do just fine.”
“I’m a comm officer. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s disseminate information.”
“Math is just another language.”
Captain Archer: “How is your insectoid these days ?”
Ensign Sato: “It depends on which dialect. There are 67.”
Ensign Hoshi Sato: “What do you think of our doctor, Sergeant ? I imagine you don’t run into many Denobulans in Duluth, Minnesota ?”
Sergeant Kemper: “[… ] You must’ve gotten pretty deep into our records. I haven’t lived in Duluth since junior high school.”
Ensign Hoshi Sato: “You may have left Duluth, but you’ve still got plenty of Duluth left in your inflections.”
Sergeant Kemper: “Excuse me ?”
Major Hayes: “Ensign Sato’s a linguist, Kemper. You give her enough time, she could probably tell you what street you grew up on.”
Other Universes History
As was mentioned in the Captain Picard write-up, that era’s Enterprise ship has encountered Marvel’s X-Men on two occasions. The current Enterprise ship and her crew could likewise easily meet characters from the Marvel Universe or DCU under similar circumstances. In the DC Universe, the events of ST:E are more likely to occur in the present time of the DCU.
Hoshi probably worked for STAR Labs, who would also be funding the operation. Before the launch of the Enterprise, Hoshi presumably consulted with the JLA at some point during the “Babel” case. Other DCU-related ideas can be found in the “Trek to Legion” essay by Power and Coogan .
Game Stats — DC Heroes RPG
Tell me more about the game stats
Ensign Sato
| Dex: 03 | Str: 02 | Bod: 03 | Motivation: Responsibility of Power |
| Int: 06 | Wil: 05 | Min: 05 | Occupation: Communications Officer |
| Inf: 04 | Aur: 04 | Spi: 04 | Resources {or Wealth}: N/A |
| Init: 14 | HP: 20 |
Powers:
Comprehend Languages: 10, Recall: 07, Superspeed: 01
Bonuses and Limitations:
- All Powers are Skilled Powers.
- Superspeed is Only for Mental Tasks, Only When Processing Written Material.
- See “Learning a new language” below.
Skills:
Artist (Cooking): 01, Detective (Starfleet Law): 04, Gadgetry (Identify Gadget): 06, Military Science (Cartography): 06, Martial Artist (AV, OV): 04, Military Science (Cryptography): 08, Scientist (Analysis): 06, Thief (Security Systems): 03, Vehicles (Space): 01, Weaponry (Phasers): 03
Advantages:
Languages (Japanese, French, Klingon, Risan, Swahili, Vulcan, some unidentified alien languages and supposedly also Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Arabic, Afrikaans, Persian, Russian, Hindi, Thai, Chinese and Korean), Misc. Advantage (Perfect Pitch, 1pt), Military Credentials (Low, Rank: Ensign), Scholar (Communications systems, Linguistics).
Drawbacks:
Uncertainty.
Connections:
Starfleet Command (Low), The Enterprise (Low).
Equipment:
Universal Translator [BODY 01, Comprehend Languages: 12, R#4], See the Star Trek Personal Equipment write-up for more.
Learning a New Language
Hoshi is a linguistic genius (Both Comprehend Languages and Recall are Skilled Powers (+5 BC)). She has perfect audial memory (+1 to Recall) and automatically concludes the grammar and meaning of words by just listening to a new language or just reading its pictorial form.
In fact, after one day (15 APs of time) of studying a language or living in an environment where the language is spoken, Hoshi might have learned to speak it fluently, with no accent (Time Delay /w Comprehend Languages; -2).
Treat this as a Comprehend Languages Check made using her APs of Power. The OV/RV is determined as for the Comprehend Languages power, RAPs indicating knowledge points. Certain languages are extra hard to learn, such as Klingon, and have very high OV/RVs.
Fast learner
Hoshi might attempt to understand a new language in shorter time, but has the OV/RV increased by the time difference in APs between studied time and the required time of 15 APs. Likewise, studying a language for an extended period, over 15 APs of time, will decrease the OV/RV by the same difference.
She will permanently remember all languages that she has learnt in this way, adding them to her list of Languages, by paying a fee of 10 HPs.
The advantage of this is, of course, that she can freely use any such languages in the future with no time delay or success rolls needed. If this fee was not paid, but Hoshi succeeded in her Comprehend Languages roll, she can still attempt to Recall a language she used a long time ago (roll Recall against Language OV/RV; RAPs indicate immediate free use of the language).
Linguistic intelligence
Hoshi can, of course, also recognize language accents/dialects, and thus place a speaker as to his/her place of origin if she knows the planet’s language patterns well enough. Accent/dialect recognition is an Easy Comprehend Languages Check using her APs of Power, and a further -2 CS OV/RV for being an Easy task, while the OV/RV is determined as for the Comprehend Languages Power.
For well-known locations, such as Earth, she can place a speaker’s place of origin as to the closest major city. And in some cases (such as for Americans) even to smaller cities (such as, for example, Duluth).
When Hoshi wishes to decode alien codes, she uses her APs of Military Science (Cryptography) instead of her Comprehend Languages Power. Studying advanced language trees and connections between groups of languages is best done using the Scientist (Analysis) skill.
Source of Character: Enterprise (TV series), character played by Linda Park.
Helper(s): John Colagioia, Sébastien Andrivet, Danielle Mendus, Ethan Roe, www.stenterprise.com , www.imdb.com , www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/ENT/character/1122654.html and other links.