The Captain

The Captain has gone by many names, by many historians. However, most final historical records indicate that the key figure in the defeat of the Hierarchy was a Human named Zelnick.

In the original PC release of Star Control II, there was no default name; the first act in a new game was to name the captain and the flagship. The screenshots in the manual that came with the original PC release named the Captain Peterson, while the later released 3DO version named the Captain Zelnick. The flagship was named Vindicator both in the PC version's manual and the 3DO release. In the Japanese version, the captain was Isamu and the flagship Kamui.

The Captain was born in a cave on the the colony world of Unzervalt in the Vela system, the son of an officer from the Tobermoon and a Research Team engineer. From a very young age he showed an unusual aptitude for communicating with Precursor computer systems, including the mainframe computer operating the factory that produced The Flagship. After Captain I. Burton was killed in a Slylandro Probe attack, he took control of the Unzervalt mission and piloted The Flagship from Unzervalt back to Earth, and is generally agreed to have played a pivotal role in the events of our region of space from 2154-2159.

Full details on The Captain are sketchy. Only one known image, taken during his recovery after escaping the destruction of the Sa-Matra is available of The Captain during these events. From it, and from knowledge of the history of Unzervalt itself, we can conclude that he was Human, male, probably white, and under 20 Earth years of age at the beginning of his mission, making his birthdate circa 2134.

The Captain is believed to have had other adventures besides this one, but is known to have eventually retired peacefully on Unzervalt with the Talana of the Syreen. It is generally believed that The Captain and Talana had an intimate, romantic encounter aboard the Gaia Starbase during the events of Star Control II, but no one is sure because the lights were off.

The Pkunk have predicted that The Captain will have fourteen children, and that he will die at an early age. The degree of accuracy of this prediction is unknown; it is also unknown what the Pkunk mean by "early age" (as it is possible that they are much more long-lived than the Humans).

He is one of the most legendary humans ever to travel the stars.

The default name in the 3DO version of Star Control 2 and in The Ur-Quan Masters, Zelnick, is named after Strauss Zelnick, the president of Crystal Dynamics at the time the 3DO version of Star Control 2 was being finished.¹

Titles

• Captain (of The Flagship and its escorts)
• Great Hero (later replaced by "Great Enemy") of the Umgah
• Great Teacher of the Thraddash Culture Twenty
• Ultron Saint of the Utwig

Notes and references

¹From an August 2010 comment by Fred Ford on the SCDB, in a thread discussing the name of the captain:

At the time we were finishing SC2 for 3DO the president of Crystal Dynamics was Strauss Zelnick.

See Also: Gameplay Challenges