Victoria Nuzé was a Human who worked as a reporter for the Federation News Network in the late 24th century. Her family hailed from Flagstaff, Arizona on Earth.
Visit to the Cerritos[]
In 2381, Nuzé traveled to the USS Cerritos at the behest of Admiral Les Buenamigo to cover the inaugural mission of Project Swing By, an initiative of Captain Carol Freeman's. Nuzé's first impression of Freeman was not positive; Buenamigo had deliberately given the Cerritos very little notice of her arrival, resulting in Freeman panicking and behaving in a harsh and authoritarian manner. During her stay, Nuzé interviewed crew members about shipboard life, including Ensign Beckett Mariner despite Freeman's attempts to prevent it. Based on offhanded mentions of various incidents from the ship's past from everyone except Mariner, Nuzé gained the impression that the Cerritos was "chaotic", "irresponsible", and "silly". Upon being confronted over these incidents, Freeman jumped to the conclusion that Mariner had been responsible for disclosing them and, in response, ordered the crew to shun her and had her transferred to the infamous Starbase 80, further souring Nuzé's opinion of the Cerritos.
Nuzé accompanied the away team to the target of the first Swing By mission, Ornara, but was underwhelmed when the Ornarans did not require any assistance from Starfleet. She also joined the subsequent away mission to the neighboring planet Brekka, where they came under fire by the Breen. Nuzé was evacuated safely back to the Cerritos, where she witnessed the ship being rescued from three Breen interceptors by an unknown Federation vessel. Buenamigo then contacted the Cerritos and offered to tell an impressed Nuzé "anything and everything" about their savior: the new Texas-class automated starship.
After leaving the Cerritos, Nuzé produced Starfleet's Shame, an exposé in which she cast its crew in a negative light and criticized Freeman as a "cruel taskmaster" who had transferred her own daughter, who had only praise for her, off the ship simply for being interviewed. (LD: "Trusted Sources")
Fallout[]
Not only did Freeman's abysmal handling of Nuzé's presence on the Cerritos drive Mariner out of Starfleet, with her resigning not long after she reached Starbase 80, it endangered the California-class as a whole. Starfleet admiralty chose to decommission the California-class in favor of the Texas-class at Buenamigo's suggestion, and Freeman's protests fell on deaf ears due to the exposé costing her credibility. The only reason the decommissioning ultimately did not happen was because the Texas-class' artificial intelligence turned out to be too inflexible to adjust to unexpected situations, including those where continuing previous orders would violate the Prime Directive, and dangerously emotionally unstable. (LD: "Trusted Sources", "The Stars At Night")