Ash Tyler is a rare Federation command officer in the Star Trek Discovery Crew. One of the more disturbing characters in the history of the franchise, in STFC he’s an officer who you can use on your bridge while defending a capture node.
The scenes of Voq being physically transformed into Ash Tyler are some of the most gruesome in the history of the franchise. It’s just painful to watch. It blows the ear worm scenes from The Wrath of Khan out of the water.
The idea that Klingons would disguise themselves as humans to act as sleeper agents goes back in Trek all the way to Arne Darvin in The Trouble with Tribbles.
Captain’s Maneuver
When defending on a Capture Node, Ash Tyler gives all Officers on the ship a bonus of 60% on their Attack.
So with Territory Capture, you’ll get three points per minute for being on a node. I can anticipate the strategy will be using these discovery officers as your 3rd or 4th crew, defending capture nodes, while your bigger ships roam free and try to fight off attackers with your regular PvP crews.
And doing as much damage as possible to attackers while freeing up your other officers will be quite useful.
Officer Ability
At the start of each round, if the opponent is Burning, Ash Tyler increases the damage of the ship by 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 100% of the total Attack of all officers on the ship (cumulative.)
This one will pair will with Airiam‘s Burning ability, or with Phillipa Georgiou.
Shazad Latif Trivia
British Actor Shazad Latif portrays Ash Tyler on Star Trek: Discovery. He’s also played the Klingon Voq, mirror universe Voq and the combined Ash Tyler/Voq personality.
Latif was born in London on July 9th, 1988. (In case you’re curious, that was the day that Ernest Riles hit the 10,000 home run in the history of the San Francisco Giants. This might be the most random trivia I’ll ever get to use on this site.)
He’s the son of Javid Iqbal, who’s name Latif used as his credit when playing Voq in the early episodes.
Latif’s first acting work was playing Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol. He left school a year early to take his first television role, in the British spy drama Spooks.
He later was cast as Henry Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the horror show, Penny Dreadful. This set him up well to play the dual roles of Voq and Ash Tyler on Discovery.
Penny Dreadful, by the way, also starred Billie Piper, whom sci-fi fans will remember as Rose Tyler on Doctor Who.