The crew on a ship is an age old trope, but it never really seems to get old.
After sitting on this thought for a while, I have come to the conclusion that the crew will continue to fit because it reflects life. Most of us are put into situations in life where having a crew or team working together is much more beneficial than trying to go it solo.
I’ve seen it in my life. Whether I’m on a sports team or at work, having a group attack a problem makes everything work more efficiently …
As long as you have the right crew.
Disfunction can kill everything, and in Atom’s case, that is truer than anything I have faced. However, I have played on teams where a single player is a cancer that can negate everything the team is trying to accomplish.
Factions among a crew cause division. Division means separate goals. Separate goals mean the crew is not working as a cohesive unit and can often lead to failure.
That said, a good coach, team leader, or boss needs to be able to cull the herd. They need to be able to remove the cancer before it can affect the whole group. Sometimes this can be done early and sometimes the need only becomes evident after the leader is able to assess the group in action.
Atom faced this in Genesis when he put his crew together. He looked at strengths and weaknesses to make sure his crew would work together.
I have faced that in coaching where I have had to carefully select teams. Sometimes it is better to choose cohesiveness and heart over pure skill. I have had to talk to players and give them the choice to choose the team or self.
Most of the time they are able to step back and realize that the team will help their goals more than choosing self, but that isn’t always the case.
I know we all love the John Wick’s, the Rambo’s, and the Dirty Harry’s, but at the end of the day most of us realize that having the right team makes the stories just a little more believable and engaging. It is easier as a viewer to watch Firefly and relate to a single member of the crew. It allows is to fit in and know that we might just have a place in the group.
To sum, most of us want to be a part of that small family-group. We want to know that our input is important to the success of the whole, but realize that we are a vital part of the story.
What are some of your favorite crew based stories, movies, or shows? Let me know in the comments.
In the meantime, keep on reading, keep looking for that perfect sunset, and keep on flying the Black.
The Literary Busker 
It’s also cool to see that same principle of synergy at work in nature (safety for prey, effectiveness for predators, symbiotic relationships like certain fish clinging to and cleaning the much larger whale).
Also how Paul talks to the Corinthians in his first letter to them:
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
It’s a work of art when each person brings their piece to the table to make something bigger than they could ever do on their own.
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I think you are comparing two different tools for two different (related) jobs. Stories with a single protagonist are useful in that you don’t have to find a voice for each of your characters internally, nor do you need as much backstory or context for who your main character meets and deals with. They also work better with the sort of action-adventure/power fantasy genre that you reference (John Wick, etc) since you’re always ‘in the thick of it’ with the character and don’t have time to ponder the story or the world that character is living in, if we were taking time out to switch perspectives it would be harder to maintain the fantasy of the world.
Stories with a team or a crew are helpful especially if you’re trying to believably portray multiple points of view, since you have insert characters who the audience has experience with that can help you understand different cultures/governments/religions/aliens etc which makes your discussions easier for the reader to get into vs just having some new characters info-dump on you.
The Expanse uses this beautifully, each member of the crew is extremely useful to help the reader understand the perspective of the different factions in the universe. The authors gave themselves the tools to handle situations on the ship without needing to bring in different characters to explain each side – broken down in terms of how they can keep the narrative flowing:
Alex – explains the Martian perspective
Naomi – explains the Belter perspective
Amos – lower-class Earth perspective, also pragmatic to provide a foil to Holden’s optimism/idealism
Holden – middle/upper class Earth perspective, also from a military background
Helping all the factions get along is shown by having the crew get along and work past their differences. Think of how many ‘hey Cap’ scenes there are where a character explains why the faction that they’re currently dealing with might need a different approach – exposition and character building – very efficient!
We can see this in another famous ‘team’ series – The Lord of the Rings. We have Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit and one idealistic human and a human who falls from grace.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk.
As an aside, if you’ve never read the novel First Blood that the movie Rambo is based on, I highly recommend it. It is a deeply anti-war novel that has a completely different tone and theme from the movie.
Also I recommend the Murderbot sci-fi series from Martha Wells, such a delight!
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