Eleven / Kathryn Janeway: Why? She's his type. Unlike many another version of the Doctor, he's good at endearing himself to competent authoritative women. Depending on when in their respective timelines this meeting occurs, he might also impress her by bringing his very own nurse (Rory) along, which given that Voyager is desperate enough for nurses to let their own Doctor draft Tom Paris will definitely be a plus.


Five / Benjamin Sisko: Why? Mutual bonding over argumentative companions and cricket vs baseball. Five would be charmed by the Ben and Jake father/son relationship (and depending on whether this is before or after Adric dies also melancholic), and wouldn't ruffle Sisko's feathers the way some other Doctors might.


Nine / Jean-Luc Picard: Why? Picard would respect Nine's chip on the shoulder and not wanting to talk about any personal issues (and vice versa). (Though Deanna Troi, sensing Nine's emotional state, wilil try to corner him, but that's another issue.) Depending on the situation they're in when they meet, there might be some prickliness at first, but I think generally they'd find it easy to ally against the menace of the day and maybe share clipped yet meaningful conversation over some tea and/or bond over Dickens once that's done before Nine takes off again.


Fifteen/ Michael Burnham : Why? Much of her personal arc is going from repressing it all stoicism to openly emotional behavior, accepting your past grief and guilt and continuing to do better (and helping others) in the present - that's what he's practically the embodiment of for the Doctor! They would work well as allies, and there would definitely be dancing at some point. Also, she'd make him promise to visit Zora now and then as he travels through time.


Three / Saru (who was a Starfleet Captain, too): Why? Three can come across as incredibly high handed on first impressions, but Saru is a masterful diplomat, would spot Three is actually knowledgable and competent beneath the bluster and would lintrigue him as a Kelpian so any initial problems would be quickly moved aside in favour of teaming up. 'They would also bond over Buddhism.


Thirteen/ James T. Kirk: Why? No, not because he'd hit on her. (TOS Kirk, not AOS Kirk, i.e. he's not his pop cultural stereotype.) She'd consider him fun to have an adventure with, he'd be curious and charmed and very amused once she inadvertendly outs Scotty's inflated time estimations, whereas with male versions of the Doctor he might feel initially one-upped.


Twelve/ Christopher Pike: Why? Even if it's early Twelve at his prickliest, Pike's general relaxedness and experienced diplomacy would help smoothing things over. Conversely, Twelve could empathize with the whole "knowing your eventual awful fate" part without insisting on talking about it the way some other Doctors might. I predict at least one meal cooked by Pike while Twelve plays guitar before the Doctor leaves again.


Unfortunately, I can't think of any version of the Doctor who'd get along really well with Captain Archer because Archer would, depending on the point of his timeline, suspect the Doctor of being a tool of the Vulcan High Command, the Admiralty or the Xindi, while the Doctor, any of them, might like Porthos but would find Archer incredibly annoying, and that's before they find out about certain episodes involving slavery or torture.


Therefore, you get a bonus pairing:

Seven/ Gabriel Lorca (no, not the one we never met, I do mean the season 1 of Discovery guy) : Why? Mutual mindgames! Who manipulates whom best? Who sets a trap for whom while pretending to be their harmless facade? Who figures out the truth about the the other guy first? Might there be conversations with increasingly disturbing subtext about mentoring young women with a chip on their shoulder and tremendous guilt and anger issues? One thing is sure: it would be incredibly entertaining.


The other days

In which the fun show rudely dumped by Paramount + and rescued by Netflix ceates a very enjoyable second season. And manages to do a fixit or two for Star Trek: Picard.

( Time, Space, Thought and Gadgets )

Given real life is a horror show on several continents right now, some reminders of the good sides of life can be useful to draw energy from. As, for example, the ongoing rediscovery of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Here's a beautiful song of hers, presented by two sopranos, celebrating the month of May:



And here's a fanfiction link, a Seven of Nine portrait covering both Voyager and Star Trek: Picard (so far):

Slow Fade: Five times Seven gets drunk, and one time she doesn't.

The ficathon for Star Trek Fans: Star Trek Holidays is live!

Check out the 25 tales (and works of art) from various incarnations of Star Trek, two of which were written for me. I'm pleased as punch. Years and years without treats, and then, in this extremely dark year, an embarassment of riches in various ficathons. It really makes my life more joyful, and I'm glad to share the two latest presents I received:



what he started (1992 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Picard
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Hugh | Third of Five & Seven of Nine
Characters: Seven of Nine, Hugh | Third of Five, Elnor (Star Trek)
Additional Tags: Angst, Friendship, Canonical Character Death
Summary:

Seven of Nine had known the director of the Borg Reclamation Project. There had been things they could tell each other that they couldn't tell anyone else.

Not everything, though.

(Spoilers for the entire first season of Star Trek: Picard in this one, if someone hasn't watched it yet.)


To Breathe (1465 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Gabriel Lorca | Mirror Gabriel Lorca/Ash Tyler | Voq
Characters: Michael Burnham, Gabriel Lorca | Mirror Gabriel Lorca, Ash Tyler | Voq
Additional Tags: Season/Series 01, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Mirror Universe, Getting Together
Summary:

Playing pretend aboard the ISS Shenzhou is mentally exhausting. Michael isn't sure how she can keep going.

Day 21 - Least Favorite Character

Now here's a position that hasn't changed due to all the new canon Star Trek canon I've consumed since last doing a Star Trek meme: it's still an entire race of people, who, however, are presented without individual differences and uniform in mind, and no, I'm not talking about the Borg. My least favourite characters in all of Star Trek are still the Prophets from DS9, who win over characters actually designed as villains as well as other not-called-villain irritants by virtue of my loathing the s7 Sarah Sisko reveal and (Ben) Sisko subsequently dealing with it with basically a shrug and "oh well, that explains why she wasn't around". ( More spoilery remarks follow. ) I mean, I wasn't that keen on the Prophets before s7, either. As long as the show played them as truly non-linear aliens who were simply having a different frame of reference, I was Prophet-neutral. Then during the last two or three seasons the Pah-Wraiths showed up, supposedly the Prophets' opposite number, in a good/bad, light/dark fashion. Which meant we were supposed to accept the Prophets as good without them actually having done anything to deserve that label. Plus Babylon 5 had just wrapped up, and B5's reveal that the Vorlons were just as bad as athe Shadows had effectively undercut this entire pseudo Christian angels versus demons set up. Episodes like The Reckoning deepened my Prophet dislike. And then came s7 which promoted them to the least favourite spot which they've remained on ever since.

If it can't be the Prophets because it has to be a distinct individual, I'm going with Voyager's Chakotay. Who isn't guilty of anything like this, mind. I just find him bland and boring, and it baffles me to this day on a Watsonian level that Seska, Be'lanna, Janeway and - pause for a special boo, hiss - Seven were all at different points shown to be into him. Archer at least had his devotion to Porthos and s1-s2 occasional sincere geeking out about space as saving graces; Chuckles hasn't anything like this. Get thee gone from my Star Trek, Chakotay.

( The Other Days )

One look at the news and a mighty "gah!" on my part tells me the need for Christmas cheer is ongoing. And thus I offer a selection of hilarious music and, occasionally, dance scenes in fannish media across the multiverse. (Though not from musicals, with one exception.) Because few things are more guaranteed to lift up one's spirits, trust me on this.

( Spoilers feature sci fi, contemporary and historical singing and dancing )

Leafing through other people’s Star Trek reviews and –thoughts reminds me of something which is by no means an original observation of mine: one key difference between Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: DS9 on the one hand and every iteration of Star Trek thereafter until Discovery on the other – and even Disco is an arguable case due to its setting – is that the former two are neither built on nostalgia for the franchise nor succcumbing to it as the story goes on. On the contrary, both are at pains to carve out their own identity and keeping a distance from their immediate predecessor. (This despite the fact that a lot of writers who cut their writerly teeth on TNG went on to write for DS9, and of course anyone who did start at TNG was a TOS fan first.)

Given the big success that TNG eventually became, it’s easy to forget, but not only was at first a very vocal part of fandom beating the „nothing not featuring Kirk-Spock-McCoy can be Star Trek, forever and ever“ drum when it started, but there people involved in the production, from Gene Roddenberry downwards, consciously tried to make the new Trek show as different as possible while still staying within the same universe. There was a „no Vulcans!“ mandate at first (and as late as the season 3 episode Sarek, there was an endless to and thro as to whether or not Spock should be mentioned by name in said episode where his father is a main character), which given the importance of Vulcans in TOS was really pointed. (Instead, there was a Klingon on the bridge, and developing the Klingons from one dimensional bad guys into allies with their own culture and politics was going to become one of TNG’s signature elements.) There was, of course, the 24th century setting which meant that other than Vulcans, TOS characters would be either really ancient (see: McCoy cameo in the pilot) or dead, and the main characters and their dynamics could not be paralleled to the TOS crew. It’s noticable that the one time TNG did try to downright copy a TOS dynamic, it turned out to be a very misjudged decision hastily abandoned after one season. (Making season 2’s Doctor Pulaski and Data into bickering partners a la Bones and Spock. The big difference here was of course that Spock always gave as good as he got, whereas Data, especially early in the show, had a naive, almost childlike nature, so Pulaski taking verbal shots at him didn’t come across as sparring, but as bullying.) Now, later on, once TNG had become a critical and commercial success in its own right, you did get TOS homages and mini crossovers (other than the earlier mentioned Sarek and Sarak, Scotty in Relics, and less successfully Spock in Unification I & II). But these happened on TNG terms, and you never had the impression the show wanted to be TOS. It didn’t have to be.

Meanwhile, DS9, between its stationary setting, letting Sisko punch Q with the words „I’m not Picard!“ in season 1, blowing up Galaxy class starships in effigy and letting O’Brien (who’d served on the Enterprise from season 1 – 5) declare Sisko the „best Captain“ he’d served under, had „We’re not TNG, we don’t want to BE TNG, we want to be something different!“ all but tattoed on ist collective forehead. (Mind you, drafting successful TNG character Worf in s4 to boost the ratings, which necessitated keeping the Dominion storyline on hold for an entire season in favour of a Klingon war storyline to justify Worf’s presence was not quite in that spirit, but to the show’s credit, Worf’s addition to the ensemble was done in a way that was quite exemplary: none of the other characters were suddenly lacking screen time or character developement because of him.) By and large, the kind of stories that DS9 told were ones that were depending on its specific DS9-ness and could not have been done on the Enterprise-D. The writer used the differences between the shows very creatively. There were TOS homages (far more than nods to TNG), not just the big anniversary episode Trials and Tribble-Ations, but never to the point where you had the impression the show wanted to be TOS, either.

And then we get to Voyager. At which point there were external factors interfering, true, from the ratings (ever since the end of TNG, there had been a steadfast drop) to some of the writers now being employed to write Star Trek for almost a decade, and it showed, to difficulties between producrs, writers and actors. Crucially, Voyager wasn’t the only game in town the way TNG had been; there were now several popular new non-Trek sci fi shows on tv, and they felt fresh. Now the difference having not two but three female regulars all the time, one of them the captain with whom everyone interacts made was new. But still: I’d say Voyager was when nostalgia for its own past became more and more of a factor for the Star Trek franchise. Indications: the very point of the Delta Quadrant setting of the show was supposed to be the chance to explore new aliens, to put the Voyager crew in utterly unfamiliar surroundings. While we did get new aliens, we also got Ferengi and Romulans. We got the Borg, aka TNG’s most iconic villains, not just via Seven of Nine but as an ongoing feature. We got a series of stealth TNG crossovers featuring Reginald Barclay and Deanna Troi. (Both of whom I’m very fond of, and I liked the episodes in question. But in retrospect, they also paved the way for the decision to make Star Trek: Enterprise‘s finale into a TNG episode reducing the actual Enterprise characters to holodock figures.) It’s not that Voyager didn’t try to come up with its own thing but that it lost confidence when its own thing wasn’t rewarded by big ratings, and then it tried the nostalgia appeal to make up for this. Which didn’t work. See also above: competing new shows.

Voyager was to be the last Star Trek set in the 24th century until now (if the Picard-featuring show actually happens). That’s how obsessed the franchise became with looking back and believing nostalgia to be its tool for survival. Just think about that. Post Voyager, we got Enterprise which is set pre-TOS. And then, years later, the reboot movies went in nostalgia overdrive by going for a TOS retelling. (And one that relied on general osmosis and pop culture image more than on the actual show; as has been pointed out by many a Trekker, Reboot Kirk’s characterisation in his first movie as a young rebel hitting on every female with a pulse corresponds to the idea of Kirk in pop culture, and not so much to the character who in Where No One Has Gone Before is described by old class mate Gary Mitchell as someone up to his ears in books at the academy and in need of a wing man in order to get a date at all.) Again, there was the sense that the production team didn’t trust the audience to love a version of Star Trek if it wasn’t nostalgic, and primarily referring back to what had been loved before. (See also Spock Prime dumping all his Kirk memories into Reboot Kirk in order to enforce a Kirk/Spock friendship in the new ‚verse, to say nothing of Cumberbatch!Khan who could have worked as a new villain Harrison if the producers hadn’t been obsessed with going back to the Wrath of Khan well.)

Purely in terms of the story it tells in its first season, there is actually no reason why Star Trek: Discovery needs to take place in the 23rd instead of the 24th century. In fact, some of its key element like the spore drive might have worked better in a 24th century setting where the audience would not know whether this wasn’t going to be the new propulsion system of the future. Michael’s atoner arc needed her to make a fatal decision in the pilot which would contribute to a war situation, but there was no need to make this a war with the Klingons. If you want to avoid introducing a new alien opponent in the first season: there’s still the untold story oft he Federation/Cardassian war whose existence was declared in TNG’s fifth season. Not to mention that the godawful Nemesis and the first Reboot movie backstory between them left the Romulans in a dreadful state, and empires in dissarray could lead to war situations as well. Making Michael Sarek’s and Amanda’s ward ties her to some of the franchise’s most iconic characters, but, having watched our leading actress in the first season: the actress and the writing are good enough that this wasn’t necessary. Michael could have been raised by two completely new characters from different people, and she’d have been just as compelling. Again: setting Discovery about ten years pre TOS is yet another expression of the fear a not nostalgic Star Trek tale will not be loved by its audience. And that’s a pity, because in most other regards, Discovery truly is innovative, and the most original Trek since DS9.

What about The Inner Light was a multi-voiced cry after not finding it on my list of favourite Picard-centric episodes. Not surprisingly, given it frequently ends up on a lot of people’s Best Of Trek episodes, and Patrick Stewart is indeed excellent in it.

Now, I like The Inner Light. I’m a sucker for quiet character episodes, and I do like the basic concept ( which is spoilery. Discusions of this and what does stop me going from like to love, along with ethical problems and less serious speculation on what other space captains would have done ensue, containing spoilers for Discovery )

First, I must specify that „Top Ten“ means „my favourite top ten“, not „the objectively top ten most important/best written/acted friendships“. For example, as I recall Ira Behr in one of the specials for the s7 of DS9 dvds declares the friendship between O’Brien and Bashir to be the best in Star Trek, and this, he adds defiantly, includes Kirk/Spock. Leaving writerly pride (since he took part in developing said relationship) aside, he’s got a point in as much as it’s one of the best and most consistently developed friendships, from the moment O’Brien is appalled by eager young puppy Bashir when they meet to the mutual love declaration near the end of s7. However, as this particular relationship never meant much to me, personally, you won’t find it on this list.

So: my entirely subjective top ten, in no particular order, excluding Star Trek: Discovery, since half a season of material isn’t enough to make such a judgment, and Star Trek: Enterprise because I only saw part of canon and don’t remember enough of what I saw.

TOS: Kirk-Spock-McCoy. Yes, I could list „Kirk and Spock“, „Kirk and McCoy“, and „McCoy and Spock“ all individually, but one of the things which made the original triad so compelling was that really each member cared about each of the others, had a strong relationship with each of the others, and no one was an also ran. And I resent fanfic which doesn’t consider that.

Reboot movies: Pike & Kirk. It pushed each of my fatherly mentor buttons, and I will forever regret Abrams & Co didn’t have the courage to end the first movie with Pike in command of the Enterprise and Kirk and Spock both serving as his officers, which would have made so much more sense. Anyway, Pike & Kirk: loved each of their scenes.

(I wanted to list Spock & Saavik here as well, but I’m a „only the movies and tv shows are canon“ person, and me falling for the Saavik and Spock relationship was mostly due to the combination of Vonda McIntyre’s ST II novelization and Carolyn Cowles‘ novel „The Pandora Principle“, which gave us the background of Saavik being half Romulan and raised by Spock. Now I adored their relationship in those novels, but on screen they only have a few lines of dialogue in STII and some scenes where Spock is literally out of his mind in ST III, which would not have done the trick on their own. Moreover, subsequent novels made the appalling decision of letting Saavik and Spock become a couple, which I hated.)

TNG: Guinan & Picard: It was mysterious and ambiguous and we only ever got hints how their deep mutual trust was established, but it made for powerful scenes. (I mean, Picard risked the lives of his entire crew simply on Guinan’s feeling they were in the wrong time line!)

Riker & Troi: the first exes in ST who successfully managed both a good professional relationship and a strong friendship post romance, being there for each other in a crisis (as when Troi temporarilly lost her powers in „Loss“), and not interfering with each other’s love lives. Yes, they got together again romantically post show, but that doesn’t exclude the relationship from the „friendship“ category for the entire TNG run. Look, I’m fond of my share of dysfunctional can’t live with, can’t live without relationships, I’ll not deny it, but every now and then I’m truly grateful fiction offers me adult exes as friends as well.

Data & Geordi: just had each other’s backs, and possibly the most uncomplicated relationship in their lives. (Except when Geordi had to look after Data’s cat.) Can’t imagine TNG without them.

(Couldn’t list: Sarek & Picard, because intense mind sharing in two episodes does not a friendship make, but despite the lack of screentime, their scenes are a big reason why I started to love TNG.)

DS9: Quark & Jadzia Dax, to no one’s surprise who has read my DS9 stuff. This started in s2 with Jadzia beginning to hang out with Quark and continued to Quark joining an insane quest for her sake after she’d died. Yes, it became love on his side, but it was friendship first, and arguably the strongest relationship he had with a non-Ferengi in his life. As for Dax, I believe her when she tells Pel she (Jadzia) loves Quark.

Dax (any of them) & Benjamin Sisko: through three incarnations (and a half, if you count the symbiont thief from early s2 who got distracted by the symbiont not coping with rejection by Sisko), this was a delightful friendship, with both oft hem at different times playing the role of advisor and advised. I have some other problems with the storyline in question, but Sisko getting into his existential crisis by mainly by losing one Dax and being pulled out of it mainly by another always struck me as entirely plausible.

Jake & Nog: Talk about friendship with Ferengi. The kids literally grew up on the show, and if their early scenes were both comic relief and a chance to confront Sisko with his own bias, they later had plausible teenage fallouts and reconciliations, partly due to choosing different paths (and I’ll always love that it’s Nog who starts a Starfleet career, while Jake remains a civilian and sticks to his writing, heartrendering AU episode aside), yet the affection remained. I think poor old Wesley got too harsh a deal in terms of fan hatred on TNG, but it’s undeniable that by the time DS9 came along, the writing for teenagers and the awareness of how to integrate them in the overall story had impoved.

Garak & Bashir: I feel a bit like cheating when listing them because they were my earliest slash ship and I ship them still. But then again, I listed Riker & Troi. So. From their first encounter in early s1 till the s4 episode „Our Man Bashir“ (after which the show infamously got gunshy and hardly gave them any scenes anymore for the remainder of the show, with a very few exceptions), this was and remains one of my favourite ST relationships, full stop. On one level, it was the cynicism/idealism combination, but it was also that they were learning from each other; I think Garak needed Julian Bashir not to give up on his ideals as much as Bashir needed to figure out where his own lines were.

Voyager: Janeway & Seven of Nine. I was starting to go off ST during the early Voy seasons (though now in retrospect I see the show and what it did especially with the female roles somewhat differently), but s4 made me for a while a dedicated viewer, and the Janeway-Seven relationship was a big reason why. It was hard to categorize, and I like that the show never tried to make it just one thing or the other, that it remained prickly and intense, supportive and argumentative, throughout the time I was watching.

The other days

Day 28 - Your favourite friendship in Star Trek?

I have to separate this into incarnations again.

TOS: the trio, inevitably. And I do mean all three, not Kirk/Spock plus McCoy, but Kirk-McCoy-Spock, with Kirk's friendship with McCoy and McCoy's bickering friendship with Spock as important as the one between Kirk and Spock. Together with the good ship Kirk/Enterprise, this three way friendship is the emotional heart of the show, and the reason it survived that long.

TNG: I was certainly most intrigued by Picard & Guinan. We never got an episode that was all about them, but there were enough scenes to show the depth of the relationship - Picard's complete trust in Guinan's judgment in Yesterday's Enterprise, the way he confides in her in Measure of a Man, while there were also lighthearted scenes (Guinan's wry reaction to Picard's archaelogical geeking out at the start of Rascals). And of course there was the mysterious origin of that relationship. (Shame Time's Arrow, which showed how it started from Guinan's pov, wasn't a good two parter, but they never showed Picard's first encounter with Guinan from his timeline, so that's left free for the imagination.)

DS9: Quark & Dax, and I've written the fanfiction to prove it. Jadzia was the first among the regulars to hang out with Quark socially, not because she was a customer at his bar, and to unabashedly enjoy his company. (This, btw, was when her character clicked for me. The first season had played Dax serene and wise, while the second introduced the Dax who had a flippant sense of humor, loved playing Tongo with Ferengi and flirted with aliens that had open skulls. Not surprisingly, the later version was the one who stuck around.) But it wasn't all having good times together, there was a line to be crossed, which came when he did the weapons of mass destruction dealings with Cousin Gaila, and her reaction was key to giving Quark the courage to go up against Gaila and his psycho client.

Voyager: Janeway & Seven of Nine. This made me from a lukewarm Voyager watcher into, for a while, an avidly interested one. It was a prickly relationship with a great paradox at its start - Janeway forcing individualism on Seven who didn't want it (but whether or not Seven was in a state to make such a decision immediately after being cut off from the Collective was an unanswerable question) -, and their frequent clashes kept me as hooked as their moments of understanding.

Reboot: Kirk & Pike. Reboot!Pike pushed just about every fatherly mentor button I have, and whether he was supportive or chewing Kirk out, he just knew how to handle Jim K., and became apparantly the first person whose opinion really mattered to young Kirk; his inspiration, too. (I'll never fail to regret the reboot wasn't radical and had Christopher Pike remain Captain, with Kirk and Spock serving as his officers.


( The other days )