Lieutenant Commander Rikka Takanashi

Name Rikka Takanashi M.D.

Position Chief Medical Officer

Rank Lieutenant Commander


Stats

  • 17 Mission Posts

Last Post

Tue Feb 6th, 2024 @ 6:40am

Character Information

Gender Female
Species Human
Age 31

Physical Appearance

Height 5'5
Weight 128lbs
Hair Color Purple
Eye Color Blue
Physical Description Rikka is of Japanese descendant. She has Dark Purple hair due to a genetic fault which occured when she was in her mother's womb, instead of her hair being black it naturally became a dark shade of purple. It is believed to be because of a random rogue chromosome from eight generations back. This chromosome also doesn't just mess with her hair, but is also believed to be the blame for Rikka looking younger than she should be. She is 30, but looks like she is in her mid twenties.

Rikka has a very slim figure, and she is naturally short for her age. She doesn't have much muscle, but she isn't a security officer so she doesn't need much muscle. Her hair is always kept tied up away from her eyes in a ponytail which is tied up usually with a ribbon, a different colour for her mood in the morning.

Rikka also likes to keep her uniform very neat and tidy. She sometimes wears her light blue medical gown over her Starfleet Uniform and when she is performing surgery she usually takes off her Grey and Black jacket and rolls up the sleeves on the teal undershirt, mainly to be able to move freely.

Off duty however and when she is out of uniform Rikka usually lets her hair hang down feely which then touches her shoulders. She also doesn't wear dresses, but prefers collared shirts and jeans and trainers.

(It should be noted that at the moment, Rikka is expecting her first child so looks a bit different due to her pregnancy).

Family

Spouse Yuuta Togashi (Boyfriend)
Children Currently pregnant with 1st child
Father Tadase Takanshi
Mother Katara Takanashi

Personality & Traits

General Overview Rikka is a rather unusual character. Whilst she is on duty she is dedicated to her job and believes that she can make a difference. As a doctor all she wants to do is save lives and do what she can to stop suffering in her patients. Also when on duty she is not afraid to get her hands dirty and perform old style medical treatments, for example she isn't afraid of performing delicate surgery with her hands on the spot without the assitance of the computer or medical equipment.

Although she does use medical technology she has decided that to be a good doctor she needs to be able to perform without technology incase of an emergency. That is why in her sickbay she still has traditional medical instruments such as stethoscopes and blood pressure monitors. Also when on duty she is very focused on what she needs to do, she doesn't idle chat during situations but she has been told she has a good bedside manner.

With her patients she likes to get to know them. Although she tried not to get personally involved with them too much incase something goes wrong, she tries to make them feel comfortable whilst in her care. She has been known to work beyond her shift times just to ensure someone is comfortable and happy in her care, even if she had somewhere to go. Her patients come first for Rikka, everything else is second.

Off duty she can sometimes be described as shy and distant. She has always been a smart person and her intelligence is described as "above average". It is one of the reasons why she was able to get a doctorate and go into the medical field. However sometimes she can be a little socially awkward, especially around men she likes as she has never had a boyfriend so doesn't really know what to do in that situation.

Also off duty she can sometimes slip into her medical knowledge. It wouldn't be the first time she has accidently ended up talking about removing an appendix over a dinner get together with friends. This is one reason why most people don't keep her too close because her medical knowledge can freak some people out and make them feel uncomfortable.

However overall Rikka is a kind and caring person. She is a little hard to understand at first but once you get past her exterior she is soft and fluffy on the inside. It just takes a while to get to know her properly.
Strengths & Weaknesses Strengths include::
1. Rikka's main strength is her vast medical knowledge. This is mainly due to her continous studies into the field, both as a doctor and as a natural curiosity and her ability to memorise vast amounts of information.
2. Rikka's bedside manner is one that can rival some of the best doctors. Her patients come first and when anyone is in her care she goes above and beyond to help them in every way she can that is within her power.
3. Rikka has a very high level of intelligence. She has a natural ability to remember large quantities of relevant information and even though they think she had photographic memory, even Rikka isn't sure why she can remember most things she reads or sees. This can also be a weakness, especially when Rikka sees thing she isn't meant to or doesn't want to remember.
4. Rikka's ability to calm anyone is another of her stregths. Her way of speaking and her ability to calm someone down and relax them is just what a doctor needs. She is especially good at calming crying children and soothing them to sleep. She has no idea where that ability came from, although she reckon's its just maternal instincts.
5. Rikka works well under stress. Mainly because she ignores the situtation around her and simply gets on with her job. Such examples are during vital surgery she used her instincts not the computer monitor to tell how something is going.

Weaknesses Include:
1. Rikka's main weakness is that she is quite socially awkward. She doesn't deal well with large crowds, she finds them a little claustrophobic. Because sometimes her medical experiences slip out she can sometimes be seen as a little strange.
2. The Borg. The only species that scare the daylights out of Rikka. She hates the idea of being assimilated and hates the idea of technology being inserted into her body. If the Borg come around, she would find the nearest corner and cry in it.
3. Rikka just isn't good with any men. Although she one day wants to have her own family, she just doesn't seem to score points with anyone. She isn't very good when men flirt with her and she usually ends up blowing it, usually on epic proportions. It takes a special person (Yuuta) to be able to help Rikka in a relationship, something she is working on.
4. Another weakness is that Rikka's hidden temper. Deep down she does have a temper which raises its ugly head every now and again, although this is quite rare and only happens when someone has wound her up so much she snaps, it can be very nasty with what she comes out with. Although she would never hurt someone, the last person to anger her very nearly ended up with a scapel between his eyes. (He picked on her for months, FYO).
5. Another weakness of Rikka is that she isn't very athletic. She has a very thin figure for her size, yet she doesn't have much stamina when it comes to running or jogging. She has ran to an emergency medical situation before, but often after running to the rescue she peforms her job whilst panting. She has been working on this, but she just doesn't have the time to work on her stamina. However when needed she can pull off very fast short bursts of speed, which has always gotten her away from trouble in the past.
Ambitions Rikka has several ambitions. Her main ambition is to gain as much knowledge about the medical world as she can. She looks upto famous Starfleet Doctors such as Dr McCoy, Dr Crusher, Dr Bashir and the EMH Doctor from the USS Voyager. She wants to be just as good as them and become a famous Starfleet Doctor herself. This ambition sparked inside her when she met Dr Julian Bashir in the first year of her medical degree and she started to read his papers, especially his work with the Jem'Hadar and throughout the Dominion War.

Rikka also wants to one day have a family of her own. The only thing holding her back is the small problem of finding a man she can love and accepts her for who she is. Although she can be described as a little strange, Rikka has a strange fascination with pregnancy and has looked into it a lot through lots of different species. This emerged from one of her medical degree modules which covered midwifery and paediatrics. She wants to one day have her own children and experience having a child of her own, although this sounds creepy it actually excited Rikka to be one day making a new life inside of her. Something she values more than anything. This is currently happening to Rikka being pregnant with her first child, and she's loving every minute of it, minus the morning sickness part.

Rikka doesn't have any ambition to command a starship or venture into deep space. The reason she is part of Starfleet is so that she can feed her curious mind with as much medical knowledge as it will fit, and to see other worlds and species. She looks forward to working with other species and cultures and hopefully she will get a posting aboard a medical ship that helps unfortunate people throughout the Federation and once again, expand her knowledge so she can help them all.
Hobbies & Interests Rikka has some strange hobbies and interests. Her main Hobbies are fairly obvious, she has a strange hobby of collecting old medical mission files. In her quarters she has several hundred record files dating back from the times of the Enterprise NX-01 to the yesterday. She prints these out on paper, binds them in a leather cover and organises them in her own personal library. She also has her own medical mission records printed out in a different library so that she can reflect on her own practice and look at others when she fancies a read. The only Medical Mission Files that Rikka doesn't look at often are the ones by Beverly Crusher and The Doctor on The Borg, mainly because she is afraid of The Borg. Although she has read them and knows what happened, she doesn't re-read them unless absolutely necessary.

Her medical mission files aren't the only strange hobbies Rikka has. She also does magic tricks in her own time. She often practises this alone and has never really shown anyone apart from her mother and father. Without the use of technology Rikka often pulls things out of hats, gets things from her sleeve and performs card tricks with a flick of her hand. She has learnt that this has come in very handy when she has had children in her sickbay, because when your doctor pulls a rabbit from a hat what child isn't going to smile even when hurt?

Rikka is also fascinated with new life, especially pregnancy. She will jump at any chance to study pregnancy and child development up close. She wants to one day have her own children and study the way her body adapts itself, she can't wait to have her first child. Although she is looking forward to being a mother.

Another interest of Rikka is that she is actually interested in space. She does likes to stare out at the stars when the ship is at Warp and she does like to ask questions that seem a bit stupid sometimes, like the time she asked the science offcer what a black hole was and then listened for three hours while the science officer gave her an advanced Starfleet Science Definition, which to Rikka's surprise she actually understood!

Overall Rikka's hobbies and interst are rather strange, but she doesn't often socialise and keeps to herself, so she is bound to have some strange habits and guilty pleasures.

Personal History Born in Japan on Earth the circumstances of Rikka's birth were very unusual. Especially since her mother had no idea she was indeed pregnant. Rikka was actually born six weeks pre-mature, but the doctors at the hospital managed to stabalise her and keep her alive. However they were puzzled why a human baby had natural dark purple hair. After some investigating it was determined that a Bolian who had married into the fmily had provided the chromosome that made Rikka's hair blue, but had taken eight generations of conflict with human Chromosones to comes through.

As a child Rikka wasn't know for being a loud and exciting child. She would often be caught with picture books from an early age. Throughout her pre-school years she didn't play with other children, instead she sat by herself doing her own activities. When she reached Elementary School Rikka started to expand her knowledge and throughout school didn't show much emotion. She only had a few friends, if she could call them friends to her they wre more like acquaitances. However in second grade her parents bought Rikka her first Encyclopedia, which she never left home without.

By high school and the age that Rikka was sixteen she had decided what she wanted to be. She had always been fascinated with anything to do with medical and often watched medical surgical broadcasts on the screen at home. Her parents didn't know why Rikka was so interested in medical, but then it came down to the fact that Rikka wanted to know why children like her were born premature; and why her hair was purple.

At the age of eighteen she graduated from High School with a very good score that allowed her to attend Tokyo University. She chose to go onto a five year medical degree with honours in Xenobiology. That is when Rikka started her medical career. During her first year she learnt a lot of theory behind the medical field. Although she had to move out and live in student dormitories, she didn't mind.

However throughout her first year she didn't socialise much. She was a medical student who wasn't interested in anything to do with drinking or having a social life. This version of Rikka was dedicated to her studies. She would spend all of her free time in her room reading through journals and medical textbooks. This was the year she discovered she could remember large amounts of information easily.

Throughout her second and third years of her medical degree she was introduced to several medical theories and practises. Including surgery which she discovered she liked and was able to do easily. At one point she wanted to become a surgeon, but turned that away after she was scrutinised for not using the surgical monitor enough on a holographic recreation, even though she got perfect marks for the test.

Rikka's fourth year at Tokyo University was her best. She did twelve weeks of field training in a hospital in Kyoto and loved every moment of it. She especially enjoyed working with the children in the children's ward and started to learn how to do magic to keep them calm and entertained. Although she was still only training, the hospital in Kyoto very nearly sponsored her so she could become permament staff there. However because of a mix up, she didn't get the sponsorship and had to continue into her fifth year.

Her fifth year was hard for Rikka. She studied hard to get through her exams and even with her memory she found this hard. The fifth year was when she worked with babies in her midwifery and paediatric module and this started her fascination with pregnancy and birth. However it is also where she very nearly got expelled from the university after she snapped at another student who had been bullying her for the last five years. She had seen red after he made a mistake on purpose in their surgery exam to sabotage her, and she had pinned him to the wall and threatned to cut out his brains and see if it was working properly. Luckily the scapel was taken from her before she could peform that surgery...

Rikka graduated with top honours from the University of Tokyo at the age of Twenty Three and started to look for somewhere to do her mandatory 2 foundation years to earn her medical doctorate and full license to practice. She found it at the most unusual place, Starfleet.

Starfleet Medical was putting out a campaign for new doctors and medical personnel to train and join Starfleet. Rikka saw the opportunity to expand her knowledge and decided it was the best way to get a vast amount of medical knowledge and help as many people as she could. So she signed on.

With a five year medical degree, Rikka was told she automatically qualified to be a officer in the medical department of Starfleet. Starfleet Medical offered her the rank of Ensign upon joining, and told her that she would spend a year at the Starfleet Medical Training Complex in San Francisco for the first year of her foundation and her second year would be aboard a starship. Then after that she could choose whether to be ground based or assigned to a starship as part of a crew.

Rikka accepted this and her first year at Starfleet Medical went well. She met lots of interesting people and was trained to use specialised Starfleet Medical Technology. She was also praised by the other staff for knowing how to use old and less advanced medical techniques which she had read up on. The way that Rikka performed surgery also fascinated many of the personnel at Starfleet Medical. The EMH from the USS Voyager visited after hearing about how she peformed surgery and stated that he could never trust his instincts when it came down to surgery and she is lucky to be able to do such a thing.

After her year at Starfleet Medical she was assigned to the USS Paladin with the role of Junior Medical Officer. The Paladin was a Galaxy Class Starship and she enjoyed her job aboard ship. She enjoyed working with the crew and people aboard the ship. After a year aboard the Palading and finishing her two years foundation, she was qualified as a general doctor MD.

She was then told that a position of Assistant Chief Medical Officer aboard the USS Sentinel. Wanting to become more responsible and help others she transfered as Assistant Chief Medical Officer aboard the Sentinel to run their medical department and to practice medicine in space.

After a year of working on the Sentinel Rikka was suggested to transfer to a Chief Spot as she was a more than capable doctor and officer. She put in for a transfer and was soon snapped up by the USS Highlander as their new Chief Medical Officer.

Once the Highlander returned to Earth. Rikka transferred to the USS Mercury a larger ship with more extensive medical facilities as Chief Medical Officer. The Mercury was a nice ship to work on being a Galaxy Class and Rikka enjoyed working as the ships Chief Medical Officer.

During her first few months there she became close friends with Yuuta Togashi, one of the officers whom worked in the ships Engineering Department. He would often be the officer assigned to help with sickbays systems, so they became close. It was soon apparant that they were bound for something more. After nearly a year they were 'hooked' up by a team effort of both Medical and Engineering staff.

It wasn't something that either of them regretted or didn't want. Eventually they started seeing each other and after a little while both officially announced that they were a couple. The only problem was that Rikka sucked at Relationships. However, Yuuta understood that and since he had fallen for Rikka helped her through the bad times. After just under two years Rikka made a strange discovery.

Rikka called Yuuta and told him the news. She was pregnant with his child. Both of them were concerned about raising a child on a starship, especially one on the front lines. Both Rikka and Yuuta put in for transfers to a larger safer assignment, ideally a ship that catered more for civilians. This would allow both of them a safer environment to raise the baby, as well as remaining in service to Starfleet. Luckily the Chief Medical Officer position on USS Columbia was open and Rikka managed to grab that position.
Service Record 2383 - 2388 Tokyo University Medical School - 5 Year Medical Degree
2388 - 2389 Starfleet Medical - Junior Doctor [1st year of Medical Foundation]
2389 - 2390 USS Paladin - Medical Officer [2nd Year of Medical Foundation]
2390 - 2391 USS Sentinel - Assistant Chief Medical Officer
2391 - 2393 USS Highlander - Chief Medical Officer
2393 - 2396 USS Mercury - Chief Medical Officer
2396 - ???? USS Columbia - Chief Medical Officer