#Spock loves both of them that he lets both of them meet T’pol

[anotherstartrekblog]

Hey you're so right about Star Trek and mcspirk and I love you

REALLY?!? Ahhhhh! You have no idea how happy this comment has made me 💙💛💙

[qwertyfingers]

we know that bobby only watched ds9 and dean watched the tos movies for sure which implies he's seen tos as well (plus he calls jack spock). so what do you think everyone's favorite trek is? sam is without a doubt a tng fan first and foremost. i think out of all tos movies cas prefers the wrath of khan because he Feels Things when kirk and spock do the ta'al through the glass. charlie has definitely seen some trek (we've seen her llap), do you think she's into tos first and foremost? anyway let's talk about star trek nights in the bunker.

OKAY SO I HAVE. MANY MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS. SORRY THIS IS SO LONG.

like. like of COURSE bobby only likes ds9 of course he does i could have told you this without the show becuase like. bobby is That Bitch. i think rufus will have watched TOS at least because leonard nimoy worked hard on linking jewish faith and practices into the vulcan lore and i think that would mean something to him. bobby will catch rufus smiling at him sometimes while they’re watching ds9 and ask him what all gruffly and rufus will smirk at him and say something about sisko with jake and bobby with dean and bobby will just cough and take a swig of whiskey and rufus will raise his eyebrows but let it slide. rufus definitely makes a comment once about dean&cas being like jake&nog that totally flies over dean’s head but bobby is all knowing eyebrow raise about.

i think cas and jack would really like discovery. while it has some issues with inconsistency, pacing, being a little dark, it also does better than the other TV treks at utilising the nature of film as a medium to instill a sense of wonder, at space and the world, and that’s something they’d really appreciate. i have my own issues with disco, but an obol for charon is as close to the central core of trek that disco ever gets. cas and jack also like that one in particular because they like listening to all the different languages being spoken. they all love michael (everyone loves michael). cas’ faves are stamets and reno because they’re mean and gay, jack’s fave is tilly because she’s excitable and bright and he latches onto that. dean likes reno because she’s got spunk. sam’s fave is airiam and he will never forgive them for killing her off. sam, cas and dean all feel an uncomfortable kinship with both ash and culber - they’ve both been the one with monster teeming under the surface, controleld by something not themself, but they’ve also all spent that time in hell/purgatory, separated from everyone they love.

thinking about episodes that would really get to them all, darmok is. THE ONE. i have a whole unfinished essay about darmok as the platonic ideal of star trek; the perfect distillation of everything trek is SUPPOSED to be about. it doens’t always get there but by god it tries! that speech michael gives in the disco s2 finale - “There's a whole galaxy of people out there who will reach for you. You have to let them. Find that person who seems farthest from you and reach for them.” - that’s what darmok is about!!! it’s all about a situation where real communication seems impossible, where everything we know about talking and learning has broken down. and picard says, okay, i will find another way. i can’t relate to you, you can’t relate to me, but by god i’m going to try. we all meet people we have trouble communicating with in our lives, and often, those people will not care about changing their own ways to accommodate us. for people with autism, adhd, psychosis, the list goes on, this is a very common occurrence. it’s exhausting and frustrating and alienating. darmok is all about crossing that barrier. about reaching for someone through a world of difficulty and learning how to talk. learning how to share something with someone who seems out of our reach. it’s beautiful, it’s heartwrenching, it means more to me than i can easily put into words! 

anyway i think the bunker fam would experience a lot of emotions watching it together. there’s defintiely a lot of hugging eachother, sam cries a lot and won’t look at anyone until after the episode ends. jack just asks a lot of questions and talks about his progress learning sign language with cas. dean snakes his hand into cas’ halfway through and doesn’t let go. doesn’t show the emotion on his face, but he clutches harder at the emotional beats. cas runs his fingers through jack’s hair and thinks a lot, and decides not to say anything unless dean talks first. its just a Lot for everyone. 

dean def makes them marathon all the TOS and TNG movies. it’s an experience everyone needs at least once. i think you’re right about cas and TWOK with the ta’al through the glass, but also ‘this simple feeling’ and the hand hold would make him feel crazy. bones being the one that spock entrusts with his katra DEF makes dean feel some type of way because as much as destiel is kirkspock-coded, dean IS bones, and seeing spock trust bones so completely despite how at odds they were when they first knew eachother would dig deep into dean’s psyche and make him more than a little bit nutso. the movies are way too long for jack so he mostly sits and plays animal crossing while they watch and looks at the screen when everyone else gasps or when something exciting is happening that holds his attention for a while. sam’s fave is nemesis precisely because it’s terrible and he loves how camp it is.

dean has definitely seen all of trek. i refuse to believe someone who watches as much tv and films as dean wouldn’t sit and watch the whole shebang. i think he’s probably seen TOS and the TOS movies more than the others because its easier than sitting through 7 seasons, but i think rather than that being his favourite he’d just have really strong opinions about the best episodes of each one? like if you asked him what his favourite is he’d say you can’t answer that because they’re all so different from eachother

VOY - bride of chaotica, non seqitur, macrocosm for the favourite episodes. seven, janeway and tuvok would be his favourite characters. he think toms a bit of a knob but also feels a kinship with him for the similar brand of bab dad-ism but he wouldn’t be able to put that into words. he’s also a fierce defender of threshold being a good episode (he’s right for that)

DS9 - our man bashir it’s our man bashir. he doesn’t dislike ds9 but its very plot heavy and he didn’t care for it when he was younger. rewatching it after living through multiple supernatural wars he’d probably appreciate it more. i know for a fact he cries every time there’s an episode about sisko being a good dad. jadzia and garak are his faves

TNG - he LOVES q. he also absolutely will not be caught dead referencing how much loves q after cas comes into his life because sam will do the little brotherly knowing eyebrow raise at him and he will die of embarrassment. he regularly references ‘there are four lights’ because he’s a fucking nerd. he has made cas watch elementary my dear data and fistful of datas a half dozen times each at LEAST. cas KNEW how dean was going to be about the cowboy hat he’s defintiely got into full cowboy getup at home just for watching movies and in cas’ head star trek is fully to blame.

TOS - oh there are so many good TOS eps to choose from. obv he loves most of the series becuase TOS has MANY banger eps, his favourites are probably like. mirror mirror, amok time (baby dean defintiely had some kind of crisis watching it for the first time; i know the rituals are intricate). i know deep in my bones that dean watched the conscience of the king (introduction of the tarsus iv massacre) once and then spent his entire teenage years writing fic about that in his head, whether he posted it or not. dean related too much to those experiences of shared hunger. city on the edge of forever is one of everyone’s faves for a reason (and i’m STILL mad we never got a closer take on that episode in spn it could have been so fun). 

ENT - he definitely thinks enterprise is stupid and he’s not wrong but he has also definitely watched it and been very repressed about the whole thing. mans was like oh i feel a kinship with malcolm reed the obviously repressed queer man. i will never examine this feeling ever again thank you <3 he also makes fun of archer for being obsessed with, of all sports, water polo. shran is his favourite character because he’s a little shit and makes him laugh, and t’pol, because t’pol is a badass and he’d appreciate that. i can’t remember the title of a single episode off the top of my head though lol.

i can see what you’re saying about sam being a TNG stan. i’m conflicted though, I feel like TNG’s generally the favourite of 1) obnoxious nerds who think knowing trivia facts makes them smart, 2) men desperately trying to seem masculine and 3) people who’ve watched it three times and have extremely complex thoughts on the personhood and rights of robots. i could see sam fitting into the third group, but people who are in it for the robot feelings are a coin flip between voyager and tng being the fave, and i just have a feeling that voyager would be his favourite. i know kid sam is getting gender envy watching voyager in shitty motels while dad and dean are out, trying to find the words for it. his first semester at stanford he talks a friend into giving him the janeway haircut and rides that high for months. sam’s favourite characters are seven and EMH. 

sam and dean have definitely had dozens of long drawn out debates about philosophical topics in star trek. do the holograms deserve rights and if so which ones. are the romulans and vulcans still meaningfully the same people. was spock right for trying to foment reunification by going undercover on romulus. can the borg be redeemed. etc etc.

i haven’t seen any of picard at all so i can’t comment. i also think sam and dean probably read a lot of the trek books? they’re pretty common to find in secondhand bookstores and cheap, would have been even cheaper back in the day. sam probably doesn’t care for them much, dean has a few solid faves though. i’ve only read the disco books so i can’t comment anything specifically (besides the fact that i think dean read dead endless and cried like a baby), but some of the TOS and DS9 books are gay as hell and i know dean was eyes emoji-ing that shit. 

[starfleetimagines]

Upcoming Imagines (Feb. 2/20)

These are all of the requests I have received and have decided to write. I can’t promise when any of these will be written and I don’t have an order that I’ll be writing them in - I just write whatever one I have inspiration for at a given time.

Currently, I’m very busy with my university classes as well as volunteering at my old elementary school one day a week. So, I don’t have much time to write. I have a break week in two weeks so hopefully I’ll have some time then to write some stuff. But yeah, here are the requests that I’ll try to write in the next few months:

Quark – Marital Advice (aw--heck on tumblr) [Any chance I could get a DS9 request where the reader goes to their best friend Quark to talk about marriage troubles with their husband Worf? A bit of comforting banter at the bar type thing?]

Garak – Flirtatious Surprises (anon on tumblr) [I wonder if I could please request a DS9 Garak x reader imagine where the normally quiet plus-size reader flirts with Garak in front of everyone and leaves him flustered but in the end he just kisses her and everyone cheers?]

Data – Panic Attack (Area_C-137 on wattpad) [Maybe you could write one we’re the reader is in a relationship with data and he see the reader having a panic attack and then they cuddle to make the reader feel happy]

Data – First Date Part 2 of First Meetings (ElfWarriorQueen on wattpad) [Maybe them going on their date and there could be some kind of unfortunate accident that draws them closer together; like drinks get spilled over the reader, or maybe there’s a malfunction in the elevator and they’re stuck for a while.]

Trip Tucker – Tension (adela-topaz-caelon on tumblr) [Can I request a vaguley smutty Trip Tucker x Reader, where they're on a mission together in a shuttle, there's some repartee between the two, who aren't yet dating - and comments start leading to others and so on and forth and such, and then there's a time skip to them going back to the station, and whilst they did get the work done, other's can tell by marks on the Reader's neck that something has happened.]

Christopher Pike – Parents (anon on tumblr) [I had a realization thats night if you can do Disco Pike becoming for dad I'll love you forever]

Wesley Crusher – Comfort (anon on tumblr) [could I request something fluffy where Wesley does his best to comfort the reader after her now ex-boyfriend break ups with her b/c of lack of sexual intimacy and the reader avoids Wesley cause she feels she's not smart enough or pretty enough for him]

Leonard “Bones” McCoy – Dance Practice (jesterofsorts on wattpad) [I was wondering if you could do a Star Trek imagine about AOS Bones? Maybe if he teaches the reader to dance because they don't know how and they fall in love with each other?]

Garak – Rescue Party (kate_the_dork on wattpad) [I was wondering if you could do a Garak x reader where the reader is taken by the Dominion and is interrogated for info about ds9 but she won't give it up cuz she's too cool for that lmao. And then, cuz I'm a cliche and fluffy gal, Garak comes to save her?]

Garak – “Sew, you like me?” (Indirect_Detective on wattpad) [Could you do a Garak x reader? Him coming to terms with loving the reader and finally trying to admit is but doctor Bashir keeps cutting in and ruining the moment. Garak finally gets the reader alone and compliments the reader(looks and personality) as he's hemming readers uniform before opening up to the reader?]

Malcolm Reed – “Talk to me, please.” (chevyp15 on wattpad) [Malcolm Reed x reader where reader seems off and when Mal confronts them they break down and confess all their worries about the relationship?]

Deanna x Will - Pregnant (anon on tumblr) [Can I ask you for something fluffy between Deanna Troi x William Riker where set during an official Starfleet ball and they announced that Deanna is expecting a baby again, but Deanna feels uncertain after the death of their son Ian Troi and Riker comforts her, which leads to a bit of passionate kisses please.]

Garak - Presents (anon on tumblr) [Ah I request an imagine for garak. Like he’s at his shop and his so comes in with something from cardassia for him and he has no idea how his so got it for him and she refuses to say. But he’s super happy about it because it’s something he’s missed for so long. And just fluff ensues?]

Pavel Chekov – Set Up (anon on tumblr) [Can I get an imagine with Chekov please? Fem!Reader works in engineering and is like a daughter figure to Scotty. When Chekov starts shadowing Scotty, he meets the reader and a friendship quickly forms because they are both adorable dorks. Scotty notices that their friendship could become something more with a nudge in the right direction. Soon the Scotsman has get both the reader and Chekov together. Just something super silly and fluffy!!] 

Kathryn Janeway – Protection (anon on tumblr) [Hiiiiiiii could I have a Janeway x reader fic where she steps in front of you to protect you and uses her arm to shield you and is super gentle with you and everything? Can be romantic or platonic whatever works best for this!]

Spock x Uhura – Wedding Bells (anon on tumblr) [Can I ask you for something fluffy between Spock and Uhura where they get married on planet Vulcan with all their friends and family around them?]

Being Pavel Chekov’s Betazoid Wife Would Include… (dancingwith-thesunflowers on tumblr) [Could you write some headcanons about Chekov and female betazoid-human hybrid!reader getting married and having children please?]

Dating T’Pol Would Include… (anon on tumblr)

Will Riker – Pregnant (borzanimariana on wattpad) [Write with command riker and reader are married and she's pregnant, please]

Having Worf as a Father Figure Would Include… (anon on tumblr) [Being a security office and having Worf as a father figure (cause y/n is one of the youngest in the crew)]

Being Married To Jean-Luc Picard Would Include… (spaceyslytherin on tumblr) [Request: Being married to Jean-Luc Picard would include.]

Malcolm Reed – Nightmares (wraith-queen-todd on tumblr) [Heyyyyy ep so can I request a Malcolm reed imagine where he comforts his so after thy have a nightmare about him dying-? If that’s ok. I never really request before haha sorry I’m so awkward]

Scotty x Jayla – Graduation (anon on tumblr) [Can you please write an oneshot with Scotty + Jaylah where Scotty is at Jaylah’s graduation from Star Fleet Academy and Jaylah admits to Scotty that she is proud that Scotty is the first person she considers “a friend”?]

Data x Geordi – Domestic Life (anon on tumblr) [Hey! If you could. Would you be able to write an one shot please with some Data + Geordi fluff where in an AU, Lal (Data’s daughter) is a small child and both Data + Geordi married and are looking after her and they’re playing and having fun with Spot the cat, as he causes mischief.]

Trip Tucker – “You’re hot when you’re jealous.” (anon on tumblr) [Hello I’m the smut asked about trip. As for the thing I was wondering if it could be like trip for jealous of someone flirting with his so and she reassured him that she only has eyes for him? If that’s ok?]

B’Elanna x Tom – PDA (anon on tumblr) [If it’s okay. Would you write an oneshot between Br’Elanna & Tom Paris where they are arguing about things, but in the end, they have a romantic moment, which is seen by the rest of the crew, without them realising. Please? Thank you in advance!]

Michael x Ash – Nightmares (anon on tumblr) [Hello, I love your writing!! 🥰 Could I request an oneshot with Michael comforting Ash after having a panic attack during his PTSD please? ✨ Thanks!]

Leonard “Bones” McCoy – Study Date (SloveniaReader95 on wattpad) [I was thinking... maybe with Bones where he is a year or two ahead at the Academy and for the first exam, the reader is already giving up, but Bones is there not letting her do it or something:)]

Malcolm Reed – Destressing (anon on tumblr) [Can you do a Malcolm reed smut if that is alright? Maybe Malcolm comes back to their room after a shift stressed and his so tries to calm him down a bit and it turns into smut?]

Kathryn Janeway Being Your Mother Would Include… (anon on tumblr) [Could you write some headcanons about Janeway being the reader’s mother, please? Thanks so much! I love your beautiful writing!!]

Julian Bashir – “Surprise!” (anon on tumblr) [DS9 request: The reader's belly has popped. So have her buttons. It's time to tell Julian the two of them are going to have a baby.]

Will Riker – “I love you.” (catherinedm on tumblr) [Hi(: I love your blog your writings are amazing. Could you maybe please do something about Will Riker telling you(the reader insert) his fellow enterprise officer he’s been datuing for a while that he loves you for the first time? Thank you so much!! Keep up the great work]

Sylvia Tilly x Michael Burnham – More Than Friends (anon on tumblr) [Can you please write an oneshot where Sylvia Tilly helps Michael, when she finds out that she has never been on a proper human date, she decides to play matchmaker for Michael, not realising that her friendship with her new roommate could lead to more..]

Trip Tucker x T’Pol – Family (anon on tumblr) [Would you be okay to write an oneshot based on Trip and T'Pol, where they have been living on Vulcan with their daughter Elizabeth for a few months, and they're hoping that sooner rather then later that they’ll have another baby? Thank you so much! I love your beautiful writing for the Star Trek fandom!!]

Ezri Dax x Julian Bashir – Moving In (anon on tumblr) [If it is okay with you please?. Can you write an oneshot where Ezri and Julian attempt to build a life together, no matter what odds they may face. Thank you so much!]

Kira Nerys – Socially Awkward (anon on tumblr) [Can I request something for Kira Nerys with a female reader who's very opinionated/clever but socially awkward/a little overly cautious? Maybe a civilian of some kind, but that's not 100% necessary.]

Worf x Jazdia Dax – “Marry me.” (anon on tumblr) [I know requests are closed, but I am sorry and I do apologise for not being more specific about the Worf and Jadzia oneshot request. Would it be okay if it was something like it was last night for the Defiant, maybe set on Gaia ("Children of Time") and Worf surprises Jadzia by asking her to marry him. Hope that makes more sense! I’d be willing to send it again, if it doesn’t. Thank you very much!! I love your writing by the way!]

Will Riker – Home Safe (tngbabe on tumblr) [I'd like a will riker and reader. I'd love to have him take me home from a party because I'm drunk and wants me to get to my quarters safely and then stays.]

Comforting Kathryn Janeway Would Include… (geekyamorel on wattpad) [I was wondering if you wouldn't mind doing a KathrynXReader. Maybe something like Janeway is having a bad day and the reader tries their best to help calm her and maybe ends up making a fool of themselves just to make her smile and laugh]

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure

https://ift.tt/3C98oDS

Before Discovery or Strange New Worlds, the early days of the future as postulated by Star Trek were explored in the television series Star Trek: Enterprise. Celebrating its 20th anniversary at the end of the month, it was set roughly 75 years prior to The Original Series, during the fledgling days of Starfleet, when humanity was first venturing out into the cosmos. 

Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer captained the first starship given the name Enterprise, leading a team consisting of humans, a Vulcan, and a Denobulan. The voyage wasn’t always a smooth one, but certainly an important part of the canon. What follows, presented in oral history format, is a look back at the show’s formative days.  

BRANNON BRAGA (executive producer/co-creator): Star Trek always needs fresh blood. I left the franchise before Enterprise; I just said, “I can’t do this anymore.” I remember where I was and what I was working on and where I was standing and at what point in time when I officially burnt out on Star Trek. I decided not to do the seventh season of Voyager and then I was asked to create Enterprise. Rick Berman had a really cool idea for it and I said, “You know what? I’m going to do this one more time.” One could argue maybe I shouldn’t have. Rick was a really good overlord, but even he needed fresh writers. One could argue maybe we both should have left earlier. 

RICK BERMAN (executive producer/co-creator): As Voyager was ending, the studio came and said, “Let’s get another one up and going.” I begged them to let the franchise have a few years’ rest. In fact, they wanted it to start before Voyager ended and I managed to get them to at least wait until Voyager went off the air. The question was, what could we do that was different? I’d been working a great deal with Brannon, and so I asked him to work with me on creating a new series. Our decision, and I still think it was a good one, was to change the time period. We had done three shows that took place in the 24th century, and I thought it was time to go to another century. To go forward meant spacesuits that were a little sleeker and ships that were a little shinier, but it wasn’t that much to invent what had come before. 

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BRANNON BRAGA: Rick called me and said, “What do you think about setting it between the film First Contact and Kirk’s time?” And I said I thought that was a great idea. We started talking about it and considered what it would give us, and it evolved from there. We never considered another concept. We thought that First Contact seemed to be more of a relatable film somehow, because it had characters from the near future versus the distant future, and it allowed a more non–Star Trek audience to embrace Star Trek. You didn’t really have to know much to enjoy that movie. 

RICK BERMAN: There was no Star Trek canon to respond to how Earth got from being in this post-apocalyptic nightmare to being in the world of Kirk and Spock with Starfleet Academy. So our feeling was to pick a time somewhere within that, when the first humans are going into space on warp-capable vessels, and they’re not as sure of themselves as Kirk or Picard were. They’re taking baby steps. We knew, with Enterprise, that we wanted to turn the ship [the franchise] around. We were dealing with the time when the first warp-drive ship was being developed for a crew of humans. There were no holodecks and people didn’t beam themselves anywhere, they just beamed cargo. It just seemed to be the right idea, so it’s the one we pursued. 

BRANNON BRAGA: The biggest challenge was that the studio wanted something, but they were dubious about the prequel idea when we went in to pitch it. I don’t think they liked it very much. They thought Star Trek should be about moving forward and not moving backward. We were asking questions like, “How did we end up building the first warp ship? What was it like to meet a Klingon for the first time?” People had ball caps and walked dogs and wore tennis shoes and are more identifiable as people than, say, a Captain Picard, who is more of an idyllic man of the future that you probably wouldn’t recognize as a person that you could ever meet today. 

RICK BERMAN: From the point of view of some fans, there’s the great sense of continuity that the shows have had, and they’re very, very particular about that. A lot of them were not happy about things that they felt were outside the canon of Star Trek. A lot of them felt that Brannon and I ignored that, which we absolutely didn’t. We tried to pay great attention to it and we had people who knew Star Trek backward and forward that helped us, but obviously there were things that had to be dealt with and adjusted.

SCOTT BAKULA (actor, “Captain Jonathan Archer”): Enterprise is The Right Stuff. That kind of energy of being the first ones out there and being a little scared sometimes and being a little overwhelmed by the experience, which I think is a great emotion to have to play with. Americans have explored our planet in a variety of different ways. Some successfully, some not. We have a wide history of exploration in this country. Certainly different experiences in Vietnam and places like that where we tried to impose our ideas or philosophies on different cultures, and still are in many places around this planet. Making it more about the experience and less about planting the flag. In other words, enjoying the experience and learning from it, rather than saying, “Now we’re here and we’re going to tell you how to do it. We’ve got good ideas and can do things better than you.” So if you’re someone out there looking to do good, and looking to explore in a healthy way, there’s a great responsibility to that. As well as a great temptation to change and alter and fix. Which became this very wonderful kind of play within the show, which is, how are we all going to deal with not only being out there, but the choices we make? 

BRANNON BRAGA: Archer is something between Chuck Yeager and Kirk. He’s anything but the fully enlightened man that Picard is.

RICK BERMAN: It was very important for us to have a captain who was not necessarily that sure of himself, because we wanted him to be different from all the other captains. The other captains got on a spaceship at warp five or warp seven, they never thought twice about it. They ran into aliens every week and they never thought twice about it. We wanted a captain who was taking those first steps out into the galaxy; we wanted him to be a little green, a leader of men and at the same time, somebody who was in awe of everything he saw. With Scott, it just seemed like the perfect fit. 

JAMES L. CONWAY (director, Enterprise pilot): Scott Bakula was the only actor ever discussed for Archer. Problem was, his deal wasn’t closed until the table read of the script three days before production began. In fact, there were rumors he was going to a CBS comedy pilot and we got very worried. We had never met him, talked to him, or heard him do the material. All during the casting process the casting director was the only one to read Archer’s dialogue. So it was a relief and pleasure to hear Scott brilliantly bring Archer to life at the table read. 

SCOTT BAKULA: I responded to the idea of it and this character, and then I got the script for the pilot and everything just fell into place. I liked the character and it was really a return, in many ways, to what the original Star Trek was all about.

JAMES L. CONWAY: Scott brought a humanity to Archer that’s hard to put on the printed page. Also, as an actor and star of the show, Scott brought a top-notch work ethic and professionalism to the production. As star of the show, he set a great example for everyone. 

BRANNON BRAGA: The funny thing about Scott’s take on the character was he spoke in kind of an unusual cadence when he was Archer and I could never figure it out. Someone told me he was a huge John Wayne fan. I’ve never talked to Scott about it, but I think he may have been doing a little bit of a John Wayne thing. He was our only choice. 

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SCOTT BAKULA: We had a different dynamic on our show, and I’ve thought about it since then, because basically I was the older captain compared to the younger guys on the crew. John Billingsley’s in the middle there somewhere. That’s why I think the stuff between him and me was always special, even though he was nonhuman. There was a different kind of distance between characters created by the casting. We were building those relationships, but it was still from a different place. 

RICK BERMAN: John Billingsley is a character actor and somebody else who’s in tremendous demand. He’s just a wonderful guy. We wanted sort of a wise, quirky alien to play that role of Phlox. Somebody who would be our doctor, and he did a marvelous job. He’s another actor I would do anything to work with again. 

JAMES L. CONWAY: We were having trouble finding an actress for T’Pol. We read a lot of actresses, looked at a lot of names on a wish list, but couldn’t find anyone we liked. The role was critical, because she was a Vulcan and had to be able to “be” a Vulcan, yet still have sex appeal. Thankfully we saw a demo of Jolene’s work, loved it, and then met and read and loved her. 

JOLENE BLALOCK (actress, “T’Pol”): I grew up on Star Trek. My favorite was Spock. I would sit there with my dad and my brother just watching the show, watching the relationship between Captain Kirk, Bones, and Spock. My favorite relationship was between Bones and Spock, because it was just this animosity and this love-hate relationship. But overall there was such utter loyalty between all three of them. I love the way they worked together, just the way Bones would be, like, “You green-blooded fool.” Somewhere in The Next Generation, I got lost. 

BRANNON BRAGA: We wanted a Vulcan babe like Saavik, and wanted a Vulcan on board because the Vulcans were very antagonistic toward humans and she was essentially a chaperone, which really rankled Archer. Their relationship worked kind of nicely, and we saw T’Pol, Archer, and Trip as our triumvirate of characters. 

JOLENE BLALOCK: I personally believed that T’Pol should have more of her Vulcan culture. I didn’t believe she should be so desperate to be like everyone else, because the original Star Trek, which I grew up with, had a very simple message that I took from it, and that is that not everyone is like me, and I’m not perfect, and nobody’s perfect, and that’s okay. That really helped me.

RICK BERMAN: Connor was the only actor in four television series that I had to fight for. I just love this guy. I think he’s a remarkable actor, and I saw four pieces of tape on various things that he had done, and there was just something about him; that this character, Trip, that we had written, he was just made for. 

CONNOR TRINNEER (actor, “Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker III”): I wanted this job a lot. It was a good, time-tested franchise with a good audience. It had so many different things happening in it and it gave me the opportunity to play kind of a space cowboy—it was a dream job. Plus, you got to use your imagination as you’re meeting new species and races. Since this was our first time out, everything was new and we weren’t used to anything. You, as the actor, got to take in something as the audience did for the very first time, which was my experience as both an actor and a character. 

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: It was incredible. There was an electricity that just ran to my core, and it was because I was sitting at the helm of a show, being a part of a franchise that I grew up with and knew about. I’m not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination, but I still understand enough about the franchise that it made me say, “Wow, this is real!” That was even more exciting and intense than when I got the call saying I got the part. 

RICK BERMAN: We were looking for an African American actor. We wanted someone young—we wanted this whole cast to be a lot more approachable, in a way; we wanted the audience to be able to relate to them more than they could other shows. Anthony was gorgeous, a terrific actor, and pretty much talked himself into the role the first day we saw him. We also wanted an Asian actor to play the role of communications officer and go back to a little listening device like Uhura had had in The Original Series. We also wanted her to be a translator of almost magical abilities. And Linda nailed it. We wanted somebody very vulnerable and someone who was not into flying on spaceships. In the first audition she completely got it and did very well. 

LINDA PARK (actor, “Hoshi Sato”): There’s a lot of growth that happened for me, not only as an actor in front of the camera, but as a businesswoman. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that part of being an actor is that you are your own business, especially when you become successful at any level; you see how you work as a business and you can’t say, “I’m just an artist, and I don’t need to concern myself with the practical,” because it’s just as important to keep your artistic tools as sharp as your business tool. That’s the biggest thing I learned. In the end, it is my career and my life that these decisions are being made about. 

RICK BERMAN: I had met Dominic on the first day of the last season of Voyager. He had the role of an English character. We were still a year away from going into production on the new series, but we were already starting to write it. He came in and I said to him, “We’ve got a role for you in a series that we’re creating that’s not going to be going on the air for eight or nine months, whatever it is, but I don’t want to use you up here.” This guy looked at me and said, “You’re right.” 

DOMINIC KEATING: I had a chat with Brannon and Rick where I said, “I’m quite excited, and honestly, I’ll say whatever you put in front of me, but I would like it that he isn’t just the talking head Brit on an American spaceship.” Brannon said, “You won’t be saying lines like ‘My dear old mum.’” When I read the breakdown, he’s described as “buttoned-down, by the book, wry, dry, shy around women.” I’m like, “Oh, crap, I’ve got to act this.” 

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JAMES L. CONWAY: The pilot of Enterprise was terrific. But then the first season was very repetitive and it felt like it was written by people who were burned out. And Brannon copped to this, saying he had made some bad choices in hiring staff and he was burned out from finishing up on Voyager. So I think that first season suffered and it took him awhile to re-steer that ship.

BRANNON BRAGA: When we were shooting the pilot and it was time for me to start writing episodes, I had a lot of things that I wanted to do. But once the ship officially set sail, I felt constrained. I felt, “Here we go again,” and I felt very challenged. Also, it was the first time I wasn’t working with people I’d worked with before. It was a large staff of ten people, and Star Trek was notoriously difficult to find writers for, because it was a hard show to write. I don’t even want to say hard; it’s unique. It just had a specific voice, and I had this writing staff that was new to the genre. Out of ten people, I think just a couple survived that first year. 

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The post Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[tomfooleryprime]

Was Spock the first human/Vulcan hybrid?

First contact between humans and Vulcans occurred in 2063. Spock was born in 2230. If you listen to some Star Trek fans, that means 167 years passed before both our species decided to bear some sex fruit. Let’s be real though, 167 years is a long time for two civilizations to interact with each other without at least someone from one group deciding to bone someone from the other group, particularly when you consider the populations of both civilizations numbers in the billions.

We might say, “Maybe interspecies sex was just too big of a taboo! Maybe it took that long for barriers to finally start coming down.” Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it’s like Hagrid once said of Dobby the house elf: “Yeh get weirdos in every breed.” Even if 9,999,999,999 humans thought the idea of having sex with an alien was weird or unnatural, there would always be at least one exceptionally progressive person who could see beyond everyone else’s prejudices and pre-conceived notions, and I’m certain the same is true for Vulcans. I would almost be willing to bet that at least one of the first Vulcans who rolled off the T’Plana-Hath on that April morning in 2063 in Bozeman, Montana saw one of the locals and thought, “That human is aesthetically pleasing.” And all it takes is a spark, right? Besides, who wouldn’t want to hear a Vulcan pickup line?

And all the panties fell off as if by magic.

Moreover, in 1957, 106 years before official First Contact between humans and Vulcans, a small Vulcan survey ship crash-landed near Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania. There were only three survivors, and of those three, one of them just couldn’t stop himself from falling for the single mom who ran the local bar. Granted, Maggie didn’t know Mestral was Vulcan, but he definitely knew she was human, and a trivial thing like species didn’t seem to matter to him.

Smitten personified.

But wait, just because a few amorous, adventurous, or convention-hating humans and Vulcans might be willing to stand up and proudly (or maybe more discreetly) proclaim, “Love is love, fuck the haters” and get naked with each other, that doesn’t mean they were making babies because after all, humans and Vulcans are genetically incompatible and it would take a feat of medical engineering to swap gametes, right?

Argue if you want, but human/Vulcan sexy time dates back to at least 2153.

People who believe Spock must have been the first hybrid usually stake this claim on one or more of four arguments:

1.     Humans and Vulcans didn’t shack up routinely enough 2.     The science of making a hybrid baby didn’t exist until Spock came along 3.     Gene Roddenberry said so 4.     Spock clearly felt isolated as a child, but he wouldn’t have if there were more hybrids like him

I’ve already poked enough holes in the first claim. Maybe there weren’t a ton of interspecies couples, but I feel confident in saying there were at least some and some is all we need. And once people decide they like each other enough to form relationships, it’s usually not long before at least some of them start thinking, “You know what would make this better? A smaller version of us!”

As for the science behind making a hybrid baby, it existed in the mid 22nd century. Spock wasn’t the first. That’s a fact. Elizabeth, the hybrid child of Charles “Trip” Tucker and T’Pol, existed in 2154.

Pointy ears and pinchable cheeks.  

Elizabeth sadly died as a result of the improper cloning techniques used to conceive her, so there are many who would take the statement of “Spock was the first human/Vulcan hybrid” and simply add the caveat of “to survive.” Perhaps. But in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Terra Prime,” Trip says:

I spoke with Phlox. It turns out there was a flaw in the technique that Paxton’s doctors used in the cloning process. Human DNA and Vulcan DNA, Phlox says there’s no medical reason why they can’t combine. So if a Vulcan and a human ever decided to have a child, it’s probably be ok. And that’s sort of comforting.

So a Denobulan doctor knew a way to make hybrids a full 75 years before Spock was conceived. Maybe the technology was untested and required some refining, but by even a modern a technological timeline, 75 years is an eternity.  

There’s an interview between Gene Roddenberry and Mark Lenard which claims Spock was the first, and so a lot of people might be happy to believe whatever Roddenberry said was the gospel. In the interview, Roddenberry is interviewing Mark Lenard as Ambassador Sarek, asking him questions about humanity and his life when the subject of Spock comes up.

Mark Lenard: Spock’s mother Amanda is an extraordinary woman. Gene Roddenberry: And Spock was the result? The first human/Vulcan mixture? Mark Lenard: No, not the first, but the first to survive. As you must know, an Earth/Vulcan conception will abort during the end of the first month; the fetus is unable to continue life once it begins to develop its primary organs. The fetus Spock was removed from Amanda’s body at this time: the first such experiment ever attempted. His tiny form resided in a test tube for the following two Earth months while our physicians performed delicate chemical engineering, introducing over a 100 subtle changes we hoped would sustain life. At the end of this time, the fetus was returned to Amanda’s womb. At the ninth Earth month, the tiny form was again removed from Amanda, prematurely by Vulcan standards, and spent the following four months of Vulcan term pregnancy in a specially designed incubator. The infant Spock proved surprisingly resilient. There seemed to be something about the Earth/Vulcan mixture which created in that tiny body the fierce determination to survive.

So for some fans, maybe that counts as proof. But Gene Roddenberry had a lot of conceptual ideas about his beloved Star Trek that conflict with actual canon and modern science. For a prime example, just look at the treatment of star dates. So maybe it’s me, but I don’t think something is canon just because Roddenberry said it in an interview once. Furthermore, if we take that interview as canon, how do we explain this scene from The Final Frontier where Spock is delivered from Amanda (not a “specially designed incubator”) and presented to Sarek?

Then Sarek went and uttered one of the most dick lines in Trek history.

Lastly, there’s the isolation that Spock feels. How can we explain how lonely he is if it’s not because he’s the only hybrid? Quite easily, actually. Every single person in existence has felt misunderstood and alone at times. As children, our worlds are very small and our social circles consist of our immediate families, school mates, and our parents’ associates. That’s pretty much it. When we aren’t exposed to people like us, it’s very easy to imagine Rocket Raccoon might have been onto something when he said, “Ain’t no thing like me, except me!”

But that’s very rarely literally true, as every kid who’s ever been the only minority at their school or any teen who’s ever been the only gay person in their tiny conservative town will tell you. As we get older and achieve the freedom to strike out and meet people on our own terms, we often learn we weren’t quite as unique as we thought and there are whole groups of people out there who are black or gay or disabled or whatever it was that left us feeling so alone in our formative years. I think that’s why Spock’s character resonated so much with viewers – he was a symbol for all the misfits out there who knew just how much it sucks trying to fit into the fabric of a society that seems so different than they are.

 Proof that regardless of species, kids can be fucking awful. 

Vulcan was a big planet. By the time Nero destroyed it in Star Trek: 2009, it had more than 6 billion inhabitants. Even if there were only 100 human/Vulcan hybrids by that point in time, the odds of an average Vulcan encountering one would still be incredibly small. It’s entirely possible Spock may have felt like he was the only hybrid because he might have been the only one in his community, but the universe is a big place with plenty of room for other human/Vulcan hybrids he and those vicious bullies never met. 

Spock was clearly pretty special. Even people who hate Star Trek and know almost nothing about it know who Spock was and recognize the Vulcan salute Leonard Nimoy made famous in his portrayal of the character. But just because Spock’s human ancestry made him unusual doesn’t necessarily mean his conception was some completely novel, groundbreaking, pioneering leap for interspecies relationships either. 

I can’t say I know many Vulcans, but I think I have a pretty firm grasp on humanity. Despite homosexual, interracial, and interfaith relationships being taboo and even illegal in many countries until relatively recently (and sadly still are in some places) there have always been people who decided they didn’t care and took a chance on love. So I don’t buy the idea that humans and Vulcans could live and work together even in a limited capacity for more than a century and a half before making the jump into starting families.