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stitching-in-time · 3 months

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Voyager rewatch s3 ep9: Future's End pt 2

Another episode where I sit there twirling my hair, kicking my feet, and grinning, having my happy Star Trek fun time. It's truly got it all: epic adventure, silly hijinks, time travel paradoxes, phaser shootouts, a cute romance subplot, heck, even a car chase! You could not ask for more.

It's also the ep that introduces the Doctor's moblie emitter, which is a huge deal for his character, and the show in general, now that he can leave sickbay like everyone else. It was honestly a genius move to have a villain use stolen 29th century holo technology to kidnap the Doctor, because not only do we have a workaround for how it can technically be accomplished, in spite of established limits of holodeck technology, we get to keep the emitter and use it forever without any temporal prime directive red tape. Slow clap for that one!

Also, what is up with Chakotay doing flirty flirt all the time in this story?! First with the Captain in the first part (typical, tbh), but then with B'Elanna in the second part! Was this a direction? Or just Beltran spicing things up for his own amusement? Idk, but it's a lot, and it feels weird with B'Elanna, especially when we straight up know he's down bad for Janeway.

And I gotta say, no alien on Star Trek has ever inspired me with visceral terror the way those flannel wearing white guys with guns in this one do. Even the Borg are pretend at the end of the day, but gun-toting rednecks are very real, and even though I know they're not going to kill off main characters, I still sit there thinking "get them out, get them out now!!" when they capture Chakotay and B'Elanna. Having the Doctor phaser those guys was a huge relief tbh!

This story feels more like a TV movie than a regular episode- being able to go to actual locations makes everything seem so much bigger. I mean, they drive past houses! They never just go down random streets on alien planets, because it's too expensive and time consuming to build just to be in the background, and here, we get all the little details of real places, atmosphere, sunshine! It's so great! All the colors look really saturated too, it's almost cartoonish, but not in a bad way. I honestly wonder if they used some kind of filters to make the trees greener and the sky bluer, or if LA really just looks like that. Star Trek tends to be very grey and beige, and I just love all the colors we see in this one.

There's so much here that's nostalgic- the flip phones! Rain Robinson's entire wardrobe! (Girl looks like she stepped out of the pages of Teen Vogue- every girl wanted to dress like her, she even had a VW van, which was very cool at the time.)

I really do like the little romantic subplot they gave to Tom and Rain. It was sweet that they bonded over being nerdy, and it was so lovely that they let Tom be genuine and not cheesy, finally. I love that they gave Rain a little speech recognizing how selfless and dutiful Tom actually is. (I think this episode is where little 10 year old me started to develop a crush on him- and here we are, 27 years later, and I'll still fight anyone who doesn't respect my cringefail nerd blorbo. I'm fine and normal, I promise!)

One thing I noticed on rewatching this, though, is that after the big car chase, when Tom and Rain have their little goodbye kiss, Tom walks away, and gets beamed back to Voyager, but, um... how is she supposed to get home?! Her van just got crashed into, and they're in the middle of the desert! You couldn't just get an Uber in those days! They left her stranded out on a desert road with no car, no food, no water! She's gonna die y'all! The least they can do after she helped them is beam her the hell back to town!! Lol wtf?!

This is one of those eps that's so much fun that you don't want it to end. But of course, our plucky Voyager crew stops Starling from taking the timeship back to the future, and prevents him from destroying the solar system. It's very satisfying knowing his greed is what gets him killed- if only billionaires always got what they deserved lol. And then they get to go back to their own time, but they have to go back to the Delta Quadrant- that pesky temporal prime directive! But we get treated to a final scene of all of the crew together in the mess hall, for the first time ever! I'm not sure if they're celebrating the Doctor's mobile emitter, or getting back to their own time, or what, but it's cute AF. Tom then calls Tuvok a freakasaurus (affectionate), and I'm just about to keel over from warm fuzzy feelings as the credits roll. I love this one so, so much!!

Tl;dr: A conclusion that lives up to the first part, this is an epic time travel story with all the fun, nostalgia, and excitement you could ask for. One of the series best, a true classic.

#star trek: voyager #voyager rewatch #rewatching star trek #star trek voyager #star trek

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quitereal · 1 year

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thoughts on the Ark season 1, there will be spoilers, it will be long

I’m gonna start by saying I like it. It’s a bit campy, the science is not all there, there’s some stuff that bugs me, but overall, I like the show, I’m gonna watch season 2.

I do hope they get a writer with a basic understanding of science for season 2 though, because even if the sci fi rule is “it only needs to sound legit” I don’t feel like this passed the bar? I’m sorry, treating an FTL drive like a USB you can just plug and play from ship to ship is just... not it. And they did have the temporal problems but even the solution for that was not great, in my opinion. I need the crew to be more competent too, there’s just too many instances where it feels like they got screwed because they didn’t bother to test something before trying to use it in the field. For instance, the FTL bubble shield. They literally pulled a mutiny on the basis that the shield was going to protect them, and they didn’t even turn it on once before they needed to use it? Like you’d test a used car more than that before you’d buy it, and yet we have a ship full of supposed experts who didn’t think to test it ONCE before counting on it to save their lives.

The biggest thing I want, though, is for them to make the villains LESS INSANELY EVIL for no actual reason. Seriously, the human race is dying out and instead of just threatening the other Arks (which are carrying some of humanity’s best and brightest) to get into line and follow her lead, Maddox just destroys two thirds of humanity on the off-chance she might kill Trust along with them? I need a real explanation for why they hate one another so much, because two people who are supposed to be the smartest humans in existence should be able to get past it in order to save humanity. I know the point is like “people like them are the reason we were wiped out” and they want Garnet and the others to show there’s a better way, but I just need their evil to make some small amount of sense.

As for ships... I’m all in for the slow-burn, enemies to lovers with Garnet & Lane. They have chemistry, the actors are both great, I really like that Garnet has a second in command who doesn’t just agree with her or trust her blindly, I love the mutual respect they seem to have established. Looking forward to seeing some consequences of a Captain/Subordinate relationship, really hoping they don’t do a Janeway and make it so Garnet can’t have a relationship with anyone now that she’s the Captain.

I really like Brice & Ava as individual characters, and I do ship it, but I wish it had gone a bit more slowly? All for them jumping into bed right away, it’s in character for Brice and I feel like Ava needed it too, but they went straight in for a committed relationship a lot faster than I would’ve liked. Ava’s boyfriend literally just died what, a few months ago? So while I could see her jumping into bed with Brice, her admitting that she’s fallen for Brice so quickly really struck me as forced. Coupled with the fact that she really betrayed Brice in a very bad way --like, she didn’t JUST drug him, she had sex with him THEN drugged him-- I don’t think he should’ve forgiven her so easily? It really strikes me as a violation of trust, if nothing else, and I wanted them to hash it out more, build the trust back before they admitted their feelings. But seeing the ending, I get that they wanted to finish the season with a very much in-love couple so they could tease Ava’s death as a high stakes cliffhanger, but I feel like this diminished the whole ship. That said, they totally give me B’Ellana & Tom vibes (sorry for all the Voyager references, if you haven’t watched it, you SHOULD) and I love them for that, so I really hope that Ava isn’t dead and that in Season 2 we’ll get to see the consequences of them getting together so quickly, maybe have some trust issues from Brice come up, basically, I want some more angst over here.

Alicia and Angus really don’t do a thing for me. It might just be that they seem so young, or that the idea that the nerds have to fall in love is boring to me, but I don’t see the chemistry. I do like the character development we’ve seen so far; Alicia coming from someone who was smart, but obedient, to someone who will disobey orders she doesn’t believe in and can think outside the box to save the day, I hope to see her become a really strong character. As for Angus, I’m glad at the end that they seemed to hint that he has some lasting trauma from his experience with Kelly; if they just write off his being kidnapped and sexually harassed by her I’ll be pretty disappointed. I’m not mad they didn’t get into it more, there wasn’t time for them to do it justice and I really want this to be well-handled, but we need to see Angus getting to process what happened to him.

I love Felix, but honestly, I cannot understand why they gave a white man a samurai sword. Swords in space are cool, but if you want a samurai in space, they should be Japanese. Like this isn’t hard guys, basic diversity 101. That said, I love that Felix is a gay man who isn’t effete or any other stereotypes, I love that he’s the character that has a child he’s been separated from and feels guilt for it, although it does bother me how abruptly they killed off Robert. I’m really hopeful that they have something more interesting in mind with Katherine, since we don’t know what happened to her yet. I’m hoping they do something with time travel here, because I don’t really want them to bring an eight year old onto the ship, but I definitely want more family-angst for Felix.

Kabir is a fantastic character, in my opinion. I love her relationships with literally everybody, how Felix helped her with her addiction --and how the addiction is being shown as an ongoing thing, not just a one and done issue-- and Cat betrayed her trust later on. I like that she’s a mentor-figure for Alicia, and just a confidante for everyone. She’s the character that’s everybody’s best friend, and honestly I can’t even hate her for it. It would be so easy to have had her be the perfect maternal role, but they threw in the addiction and it really fleshed her out, in my opinion.

I really hope they stay completely away from anything further with Cat & Trust, to be honest. I like Cat, I find her really interesting and compelling and I love that she lets people think she’s just a vapid celebrity when in actuality she has depths that she hides under that blonde wig. I don’t like Trust, but I realize we’re not supposed to like him. I do want them to get more into what exactly the “Juno Project” is all about, it honestly sounds pretty eugenics-y so I’m hoping they’re real careful with this.

Honestly, the show’s got a lot of potential from here. The characters all have room for growth, the ships have room to go places, they set up some hooks for future plots and I’m very hopeful. It really reminds me a lot of other sci fi shows, like Star Trek: Voyager (as evidenced by my references) but also Stargate: Universe and I just love the vibe of it. This got real long, I won’t blame anyone if they don’t want to read all my thoughts, but I don’t have anyone to talk to about this show so I just wanted to get them all out while they were fresh. I’m really looking forward to season 2, and so grateful they already announced it’s renewed.

#this is just a lot of thoughts honestly

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xchronicles · 2 years

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Hey you wanna see me go super analytic into the J/C territory and do a reach so far that it extends beyond the Milky way? Bluckle up!

In the book “Pathways” by our beloved Jeri Taylor, in the very last chapter Chucks remembers Janeway wearing a blue dress and says this https://youtu.be/pllFTqSUuuo?t=2876

Here in the comic she’s wearing a blue dress to impress that sexy entity cause “it’s pheromones” and Chucks is not happy. Basically Blue dress is code for sexy times.

And guess what she’s wearing in Resolutions after his confession and after they totally don’thave sex. Ding ding ding! You guessed it! Come to think of it maybe it’s a code for about to have sexy times, but then something goes to crap.

#janeway #chakotay #star trek voyager #janeway/chakotay #janeway x chakotay #J/C #pathways #jeri taylor #resolutions #blue robe #I hit the slipstream drive and went straight to the two galaxies connected by a bridge of stars

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shesquaredpodcast · 3 years

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As I’m rewatching however, it is even more blatant that Janeway and Seven were supposed to be a couple. In the span of two episodes which I ADORE (4.14 and 4.15) when they receive the transmission from Starfleet after Seven sees she can get a message to the Alpha quadrant using the Dr - all of it is laid out.

When Starfleet sends the message “You’re no longer alone” and the camera focuses in on Janeway - it’s really showing that she is absolutely who is carrying this on her shoulders. All of it. The strain, the worry, the unknown of if she’ll ever get these people home. She’s doing her job and suddenly- they’re not alone anymore. It was a beautiful moment.

But let’s go further. Exploring in the Delta quadrant seemed nonsensical to Seven specifically and she said so to Janeway.

“Keep on course to the Alpha Quadrant and stop being delayed” and you’ll be more likely to be successful and Janeway told her it was their way to explore, but truthfully doing so was the only thing - the only stability they knew.

Basically - If they focus on being lost that’s all they’ll ever be. But if they are exploring and cataloging and making first contact then they still have a semblance of normalcy.

Janeway can’t allow herself to accept that they are doing anything other than that; that they are anything but on a deep space mission because otherwise … she can’t accept the despair.

Janeway NEEDED VOYAGER to be a ship of exploration just as much as the crew did because otherwise it was all about them probably not making it home all the time. How far away they were would be the primary focus not secondary or tertiary. It’d be all they focused on.

Seven’s primary drive and singular goal in 4.14 and 4.15 is getting back to the Alpha quadrant. It’s it. That’s all she’s focused on. B’Elanna calls her a bitch basically, scoffs that she’s now “giving orders” when she excitedly demands Janeway and Chakotay come to Astrometrics, and she’s called blatantly rude and all kinds of things by B’elanna but she refused to leave her post.

She flat out refused to leave her post in Astrometrics. She did it not because she had someone in the Alpha quadrant to get back to - she refused to leave her post (4.14) and missed appts in sickbay because she was clearing up messages from the relay from Starfleet command (15) NOT because she cared about it herself. But because Janeway did. She didn’t sleep in days. 58 hrs. She did that because she cared about someone - someone who needed someone to care about her.

She retrieved 6 words in 58 hrs.

58 hours straight.

And she got excited when she got the 6th word. When the doctor snarkily questioned the logic of that excitement, she angrily replied, “This message is important to the Captain.”

As if that is all the explanation needed. Because it WAS.

And when Janeway comes into Astrometrtics right after and Seven tells her what the messages may be containing, she demonstrates a moment of trust and says, “Well I might just hope that it contains a plan for bringing us back to the Alpha quadrant.”

This kind of hope was the very thing Janeway had just chastised her closest people for daydreaming about and then she proceeded to immediately state what she was holding hope for. She immediately let her guard down and spoken openly about her own desires and hopes.

To Seven.

Seven fought tooth and nail to get 6 words of text in 58 hrs - not sleeping a wink to do so because it was “important to the Captain”. Let that sink in.

Now we know why Seven was so persistent.

LITERALLY in the same episode, when Seven volunteers to go forth and try to retrieve messages from Starfleet and people’s families because they have to get closer to the relay, Janeway sends tuvok with her. This causes Seven to believe that Janeway may be distrustful of her still, and after everything she’s been doing to show she cares, she can’t take it.

She straight up asks Tuvok if Janeway doesn’t trust her once she establishes he won’t lie to her.

His response is the ONLY thing that gives her comfort.

WHY?!

Tuvok wants to know that exact thing and asks her why Janeway’s opinion is so important to her and she gives him a bs reason about the Captain’s opinion being important to everyone, right? He merely looks skeptical.

Remember that TUVOK IS TELEPATHIC. He knows these feelings already. This is now the second time he has commented to Seven that she is expressing affection and trust and distress over the Captain.

And once again they parallel Tom and B’Elanna and Seven and Janeway.

Seven and B’Elanna, who both have NO ONE back home to be working furiously towards getting a letter from, literally work tirelessly to download the messages and Tom and Janeway both get messages they don’t want. It’s blatant.

Want more? Tom and Janeway both confide in B’Elanna and Seven in Astrometrics about their feelings. Now RIGHT after that Janeway tells the truth of her letter to Chakotay - not sharing her hopes, only her truth and disappointment. That’s ALSO exactly what Tom does, too.

And since Janeway and Chakotay were 100% built to be confidants and intimate with each other - what can we infer when the only other person Janeway does that with is Seven?

Finally, Janeway straight up says in ep 15 that she was using Mark as a safety net to avoid becoming involved with someone else. She flat out says that to Chakotay.

Someone who maybe was showing her devotion and concern by pushing her own self to the very limits?

Just like Janeway?

This is when Janeway/Seven began.

#j7 #n lance rewatches voyager #janeway x seven of nine #seven x janeway #janeway x seven #janeway/seven #janeway/seven thoughts

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paris-torres-month · 3 years

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FEVER FEBRUARY DAY 4: Fixit Friday

What is a fixit fic, you wonder? It’s a missing scene, or usually a coda, and sometimes a complete rewrite of an episode that needs…more. More/better. Sometimes just a smidge more, sometimes a lot. Sometimes an episode needs a set up, or an argument needs an explanation, or a justification, or sometimes the episode simply needs a denouement.

A list (pulled from nowhere) of the top five six P/T episodes that need fixing accord to the sheer volume of fanfic codas/etc I’ve seen:

1. ENDGAME

Tom doesn’t get to meet & hold his baby? After B’Elanna being pregnant for most of the season & her pregnancy/the baby being used as a plot point for several episodes? After the writers making her finally go into labour just as they’re about to make their last/best try for home so Tom has to choose: fly Voyager through that Borg transwarp corridor or witness the birth of his daughter? Come on!

2. DRIVE

…no wedding?!?!?! And don’t try to tell me that the wedding in Course:Oblivion counts. I’ve also seen several fics that try to explain WHY B’Elanna is done with Tom & believes that since he forgot their romantic weekend getaway for his bit of macho-adrenaline infused foolishness, it means their relationship is over. Also, how does he manage to propose AND convince her to accept without telling her that he loves her? Give me some wedding vows and an ‘I love you, B’Elanna’ please.

3. FRIENDSHIP ONE

Big song & dance throughout the episode about their marriage/B’Elanna’s pregnancy/Tom’s impending dadhood, with zippo followup at the end. Especially since Tom was held hostage on that toxic planet. Especially since Joe, B’Elanna’s senior engineer & right hand man, was murdered and it could have easily been Tom instead! One little scene of B’Elanna running into sickbay to see him or her being in the friggen transporter room when he beams back.

4. REVULSION

He’s going to check on Harry?! Really?! Really?!?! After that amazing, passionate, all-too-public corridor kiss in the beginning of the episode? After the Doctor interrupts them? After B’Elanna is yanked away on that away mission before they spend some quality time together exploring their budding new relationship. After B’Elanna nearly dies on that away mission and is likely transported straight to the sickbay, arriving at Tom’s feet half dead, Tom is going to check on Harry’s precious feelings instead of escorting B’Elanna back to her quarters. Okay.

5. EXTREME RISK

Tom knows she’s not acting normally. Tom wants to help. Tom even gently confronts her about it and discusses her odd behaviour with Captain Janeway. Tom pilots the new shuttle. B’Elanna kicks Vorik off the shuttle & takes his place on the mission. B’Elanna eats ‘feel better’ pancakes alone in the mess.

6. MUSE

Tom was ready to take out a shuttle & search the system planet by planet until he found her. They even worked Tom & B’Elanna’s relationship into the script when Kelis confronts B’Elanna about her love for him. How about a f’ing Welcome Back sickbay hug when she beams back up to Voyager?

Bonus: NIGHT

That fight in the mess. Why is Tom being so bitchy/cranky/disgruntled toward B’Elanna? Why is intentionally attempting to instigate an argument? We know why - because they’re building up to B’Elanna’s house of cards durato tumbling down In Extreme Risk. Show us this, please!

Bonus #2: GRAVITY

Okay, for B’Elanna it was only two days. No need to panic. But for Tom, before it was two months it was forever! And instead of them actually reuniting we get Tom telling Tuvok and Noss about their reunion and how blasé B’Elanna was about him being back. Fine. At least we got more than nothing.

Bonus #3: MEMORIAL

That wonderful, amazing, gut-wrenching argument in Tom’s quarters leads to… zero resolution for Tom & B’Elanna. “I’m sorry” “You know where to find me.” Does he go find her after he beams back up from that planet? Does she swallow her pride & find him? Does Tom have a hard time moving past his false memories of that battle? Do they pretend it all never happened? We’ll never know.

Dishonourable Mentions:

DAY OF HONOR

Fine. Leaving them hanging (haha!) set up that wonderful opening scene in Revulsion, but would it have killed them to include a quick scene of B’Elanna waking first (she has 3 lungs so maybe had more oxygen in her system) in sickbay, seeing a sleeping Tom, verifying that he’s okay then reevaluating what she’s just done & running like a startled deer? Or conversely, Tom waking and noting that she’s gone, freaking out because he thinks she’s dead, being reassured that she’s been released, realizing that she’s not standing vigil over his sickbead and deciding that her ‘I love you‘ wasn’t actually true & she only said it to make him feel comforted because they were dying. !!

INVESTIGATIONS

She didn't see him off, she can at least welcome him back! Or confront him about his ‘mission’ to rout the Maquis traitor. She cared enough about his behaviour in…Dreadnought? If she’s pissed about the whole thing, let’s see it!

FACES

……..?? Sigh…

THE CHUTE

Maybe she doesn’t care that he was stabbed in that filthy prison and almost died?

YEAR OF HELL

“Hi honey, I’m home.“ A five second scene of a hug would have sufficed.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Just give her the freaking present!! And show them together after B’Elanna is back. Tom was ready to go in, guns blazing, to get her back, remember?

THE KILLING GAME

Let’s talk about that holopregnancy, okay?

DEMON

A short scene with B’Elanna confronting Demon-Tom would have been wonderful because to her, he’s a monster who replaced her boyfriend, and for him, he’s the actual Tom Paris who loves her. Let him talk her into contributing her DNA.

ONCE UPON A TIME

They don’t even have to address his lame ass final message to her. One welcome home, I’m so glad you’re not dead hug would have sufficed. …Sense a pattern here?

NOTHING HUMAN

Ohhh… there’s definitely a missing conversation/argument here!

SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

What did they fight about? When? Why? Contrary to popular belief, barring mind control/alien influence, they rarely argue. (Suck it, Harry & KJ!)

EQUINOX

Her ex appears from nowhere & we get nothing? Not one little scene in pt 1 with Tom prodding and her reassuring him that he has nothing to worry about? Nothing at the end when Max, that rat bastard, turns out to be exactly the man she dumped in SFA? Okay.

BARGE OF THE DEAD

Fine. Hug Janeway when Tom’s right there! How about a little scene of her teaching him Klingon?

REPRESSION

This one’s easy! A little scene, in their quarters, of Tom urging her to wear that Maquis outfit more often…

RENAISSANCE MAN

At some point Tom figures out that it was the Doc, not B’Elanna, he kisses in engineering, right?

Almost perfect but not quite: PROPHECY

I love this episode. I love everything about it. I would have added a kiss. That is all.

So, my darling fic writers, find an episode to fixate on and fix it!

#fever february #catch the fever #tom x b’elanna #paris x torres #tom paris #b’elanna torres #paris-torres-month #fixit friday #all the ways they’ve let me down

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doopcafe · 4 years

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Star Trek Voyager: Year of Hell, Part I (4x08)

Summary: Janeway trespasses (again) on someone else’s property but this time she pays a price for it.

Comments: What is Janeway’s PROBLEM?

Is there a word for someone who chronically trespasses on other people’s property? She’s got absolutely no issue with bullying weaker aliens and cutting through their backyards but all of a sudden when the landowner emerges from their house wielding a shotgun and a pack of very-angry dogs she’s all like, “Red alert, load photon torpedoes. We’re gonna fight our way into their living room!”

Da fuq girl? Just go around. What is your PROBLEM?

Also, didn’t Kes warn them explicitly about this? She literally told them (1) the name of the aliens, (2) all about their chronotron torpedoes, and (3) what they would call this period: The Year of Hell. So when those aliens Kes told them about show up and launch chronotron torpedoes at Voyager, they just... keep trying to push through their space? Did I miss something here?

Anyways, it’s hard to care about any of this because the only obvious resolution in a story about time travel is time travel. None of this matters. Yes, Voyager gets all messed up, Tuvok goes blind, lots of bad things happen, but they actually don’t happen. The story “resolution” is already known before the opening credits roll: the two-parter will end with exactly the same scene that it began.

The dramatic conclusion of this first part is Janeway asking her crew to take the escape pods and try to get to the Alpha Quadrant. Do those things have warp? Wouldn’t her crew just float around until they all ran out of food and/or oxygen and died? She’s like, the worst captain, right?

Also, can’t you find a nice nebula to hide in for a few weeks to repair the damage, get Voyager operating as new, and figure out how to defend against those chronotron torpedoes? Or just park Voyager down on a nice M-class planet for a month? I dunno, just literally anything other than driving straight through hostile territory as every ship you encounter fires torpedoes at you?

In conclusion, no seriously, what is Janeway’s PROBLEM?

My enjoyment: 2/5

#pie211-voy #star trek #star trek voyager

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coffeefairy · 4 years

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Writer’s Month August 2020 - Day 4

Day four of the challenge, no one is more surprised than I am!

Day 4, Long distance relationship

Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager

Ship: Harry Kim/Tom Paris

Rating: Teen and up

Summary: Tom and Harry get put in opposite shifts and find out that three decks sometimes can feel as far as seventy-five thousand lightyears. Set sometime during season 2.

Excerpt: The next thing he’d known was the ensign at the transporter conn clearing her throat. Pulling away he’d found himself and Tom in the same position they’d been in, huddled together, kissing desperately but instead of being surrounded by the disintegrating shuttle, they were sitting on the transporter pad.

The Captain had looked harried, hair not as neat as normal, but she had relaxed and even afforded them an amused eyebrow raise.

“I’d say as you were, gentlemen, but I think we’d all be happy to get out of this nebula.”

Tags: Love confession, established relationship, long distance (sorta, not geographically), terrible title that may change

Scheduling Conflicts

“Hey, Harry.”

Harry’s combadge beeped for a private channel and Tom’s voice spoke at a murmur, only loud enough for him to hear.

Everyone was allowed to use private channel communication on the Bridge, but not loud enough to disturb others. As he was at his Ops conn, it wouldn’t bother anyone so he muttered,

“Hey,” in reply.

“Do you want pizza or steak for dinner? I can’t make up my mind.”

“I don’t trust you to replicate steak so I’m voting pizza.”

“Hey, not fair. Didn’t I replicate a great dinner last time?”

“It was tomato soup. Plain tomato soup.”

“Well, excuse me, Mr Cordon Bleu,” Tom chuckled over the line. “Me and my insulted pride will go and make the pizza now.”

“I’ll see you after gamma shift ends. I’ll cheer you and your insulted pride up.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tom’s voice dropped to a purr. “Will you come back and-”

“Bye,” Harry interrupted and ended the call. However amusing his boyfriend would find it, he wouldn’t want to spend the rest of his shift turned on by whatever suggestion Tom had been about to make.

Smiling at the prospect of heading to Tom’s quarters after his shift, he started another scan of the area.

They’d only been together a few months, everything still sparkling and wondrous. The change from friendship to romantically involved had been easier than Harry had anticipated. They were still great friends, but now he was allowed to act on the impulse when he wanted to reach out for Tom, run his hand through his hair, kiss him. All the things that had been driving him crazy before, the wish to get closer always ringing in his head, had quietened now that he knew he could follow its lead.

It had taken almost dying of exposure in a disintegrating shuttle but the feelings it turned out both of them had held back had risen to the surface, the thought of dying with Tom never knowing how loved he was impossible for Harry to even contemplate. The moment, stark in his memory flashed in his mind. The blood on Tom’s face, so bright in the otherwise monochrome world, his eyes shining with fear, regret, and somehow through it all, determination and hope. His surprise, then wonder and awe as Harry tried to get the last oxygen to last for the words he had to say. In the cold impending vacuum he hadn’t heard the first time Tom said he loved him too, but he’d seen his lips form the words. Their lips had met an instant later, Harry prepared for it to be the last thing he ever knew.

The next thing he’d known was the ensign at the transporter conn clearing her throat. Pulling away he’d found himself and Tom in the same position they’d been in, huddled together, kissing desperately but instead of being surrounded by the disintegrating shuttle, they were sitting on the transporter pad. The Captain had looked harried, hair not as neat as normal, but she had relaxed and even afforded them an amused eyebrow raise.

“I’d say as you were, gentlemen, but I think we’d all be happy to get out of this nebula.”

It had made their relationship public from the moment it had started but any fear Harry may have felt at this prospect had faded quickly. Thomas Eugene Paris, it turned out, was an excellent boyfriend. Attentive, focused, loving, with the edge of fun and the unexpected he had always represented in Harry’s life.

A light flashing on his conn caught his attention.

“Captain, I’m reading a tachyon disturbance seventy-five lightyears away and it’s-”

The impact was sudden, shuddering through the hull. The Captain, eyes steely and voice cool ordered red alert. Harry bid farewell to the pizza with Tom.

o.O.o

Sometimes three decks could feel as far as seventy-five thousand lightyears. Janeway was trying out new shift configurations in an attempt to iron out the last vestiges of the two crews of Voyager feeling like two. Always championing her “one ship, one crew” policy, she was moving everyone around from their usual rotations to promote “increased understanding”. While Tom approved of the idea in theory, he wasn’t happy he and Harry had ended up on opposite shifts. The little time he managed to see his boyfriend he was either falling asleep or getting up. The fact that he often found him in bed surely had its advantages but he missed just being with him. Hell, he even missed working with him. Hearing that deep voice in its professional mode, coolly assessing and analyzing, stating facts and numbers with the ease of a more experienced officer. You had to have got it bad when you found someone’s work voice sexy.

Still, Tom would take any abuse his younger (stupider) self would heap on him for acting like a lovelorn fourteen-year-old if he could see him now. That Tom had never known what was good for him anyway. Older (wiser) Tom did and he knew beyond a doubt he’d never do better than Harry Kim.

It had been surprising to find himself falling so quickly for someone he’d just met, he’d assumed himself too old and cynical for it. But it hadn’t taken Harry more than a few hours to disabuse him of that notion. Harry believed the best of people, and not because he was naive, but because he wanted to. He was handsome, funny and smarter than anyone gave him credit for. So was it any wonder?

Smiling to himself, Tom adjusted the course minutely. He didn’t have to, they’d earn three minutes on their journey time of seventy-five years but it pleased him to fly to the best of his ability. He figured the difference between a pilot who flew and one who cruised on the straight stretches was in the details.

On his conn, the private messaging function beeped. Opening the side panel he saw Harry reminding him they’d agreed to meet in Sandrine’s at eight. Tom knew Harry was going to stay awake for about an hour before his early start would catch up to him. Still, it was an hour he’d get to see him, conscious and talking. Tapping the message to acknowledge the receipt, he heard the Security officer at the conn Tom thought of as Tuvok’s, inform Janeway of some unusual readings. Posed to change course at her order, he waited for it. The Captain didn’t miss opportunities to explore unknown phenomena. Then his conn flashed, crackled and died. An instant later it began spouting numbers and figures at him that made no sense. Behind him he heard from the others all conns on the Bridge had experienced the same malfunction. Grimly, he looked up to the viewscreen to do his best to fly blind with only the unknown stars to guide him.

There was no way he’d ever make it to Sandrine’s by eight.

o.O.o

After three weeks, Tom and Harry asked for a private word with the Captain. It was easily granted and they explained that while they weren’t asking for special treatment, the new schedule was preventing them from seeing each other, in effect putting them in a long distance relationship on a vessel smaller than what could be classified a village. Janeway had narrowed her eyes, explained no one could be seen getting preferential hours. They had both volunteered for the unpopular night cycle shift.

“No, no need. I actually would like to return to some of the old configurations. And,” she consulted her PADD, “you’re both back to Bridge duty as of next week, on the alpha shift. That said,” she interrupted their congratulatory glance. “As Bridge officers we...we have a duty to the rest of the ship. We can never let our personal lives get in the way of our work. When we work, we’re present. I can’t allow any...change in circumstances, or outside influence affect your work, and if I see that it is, then this shift rotation may well change.”

“Yes, Captain,” the chorused.

“Very well, dismissed.”

At the door she stopped them with a raised hand. “Tom...Harry, I...As your Captain I’ve told you the rules for fraternization, as Starfleet insists on calling it. But I want you to know that…” she looked out towards the windows to the right, to the stars sweeping by, discovered for the first time by human eyes, to be left behind the next moment. “That I am very happy for you. Where we are, what we are living through, it’s...it’s good to have someone to share it with. Someone who is going through the same.”

With the Captain’s well wishes they left her to stare at her PADDs, chewing at her bottom lip, a far-seeing look in her eye. One or two of their colleagues afforded them a curious glance as they passed through the Bridge after exiting the Captain’s Ready Room. Most focused on the task they had at hand.

In the elevator Tom’s hand found Harry’s.

“So, now that we have the Captain’s blessing and everything...how about that pizza?”

#star trek: voyager #harry kim x tom paris #kimris #writersmonth2020 #what's the shipname guys I'm not sure #what do the cool kids call it

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summahsunlight · 4 years

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This Way Became My Journey, Ch. 22

"What the hell happened?" Kathryn Janeway demanded when she entered sickbay. After hastily leaving the children in the care of a reluctant B'Elanna Torres on the bridge, Janeway, Sarah Barrett, and Tom Paris had rushed down to sickbay.

The Doctor was buzzing around the surgical biobed and Harry Kim was off to the side looking over a tricorder. Neelix was unconscious on the biobed and Kathryn felt her throat constrict. She knew it had been too soon to allow him on an away mission. She should have insisted that he be more thoroughly trained, but his enthusiasm to help the crew had won out and now he was injured.

Chakotay intercepted the Captain and Barrett as they entered the room, Paris on their heels. The two women stayed with the first officer, while Paris went to help the Doctor.

"He was attacked on the planetoid. Some how someone removed his lungs," Chakotay replied, noticing the looks of shock that came over both women's faces. But it was different forms of shock, he realized. While Janeway looked bewildered, Barrett looked absolutely mortified. "By the time we got to him, he was unconscious."

"Someone removed his lungs?" Janeway asked, trying to get a grasp on the situation.

Chakotay nodded his head. "We were exploring the caves and broke off into three teams. I told Neelix to hold position but you know how he is, eager, he went ahead, reported lifesigns and the next thing I knew he was screaming and gasping for air."

Barrett blinked. "You were in caves?"

The Commander nodded his head. "Yes, we were looking for the dilithium."

"And you said someone removed his lungs?"

"Yes," he replied. Haven't you been listening to anything I've been saying? "We're not sure how, but the Doctor speculates that whoever did this used some type of transporter to beam his lungs directly out of his body."

Barrett's sapphire eyes were studying the floor intensely, nervously moving back and forth. "It wasn't post traumatic stress," she muttered.

"Pardon?" Janeway and Chakotay said at the same time.

The young woman's eyes snapped up to look at her commanding officers, realizing that she had spoken her thoughts out loud. "I….it's nothing really." Across the room she could see the Doctor giving her a seething glare as Tom moved some equipment about. "Really, just thinking out loud." She saw the hologram frown at her, but the arrival of Kes seemed to take the officers minds off of her slip of the tongue.

"What happened?" the young Ocampa asked no one in particular.

Sarah gently placed her hands on Kes' shoulders. "Someone attacked Neelix on the away mission. We're not sure how it happened, but they managed to surgically remove his lungs. The Doctor is doing everything he can, Kes, to help him." The Captain and First Officer could not help but notice the strain in the young woman's voice. However, Kes didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she didn't care.

Kes brushed past Sarah, Chakotay and Kathryn, going straight for the biobed. Sarah glanced at the Captain once who gave her a nod of approval and the young woman went after Kes. Kathryn turned back towards Chakotay.

"Did you find any evidence of the lifesign that Neelix reported?"

"No."

Harry stepped up to join them. "Captain, I've analyzed the sensor logs from Neelix's tricorder. The bio scanner picked up a single class-3 humanoid organism."

Chakotay could see Janeway's eyes flicking about, while she was thinking intensely. In their short time together he had seen that look before. She was devising a plan and he had a sinking feeling he was not going to like it.

"I'm taking an away team back to the surface."

Damn. I knew I wasn't going to like it. "Captain," he said. "Starfleet protocol states that a commanding officer is not to transport to the surface of a planet unless it is secure. That planetoid is nowhere near being secure, we don't know how many of these aliens are done there removing organs, we don't even know what to look for."

"I am aware of Starfleet protocol, Commander," she seethed. "Starfleet protocol also states that if the situation demands it, the commanding officer can beam down to an unsecured site."

"I'm not sure the situation demands for you to be down there, Captain," Chakotay said, his dark eyes pleading with her. He wasn't sure when the intense desire to protect her had started, but it was there and he was going to fight with her as long as it took to get her to stay safely on Voyager. "I don't want to be beaming you back with your lungs removed."

"That is not going to happen…"

"And what do we tell your children when it does?"

The words had the desired effect that Chakotay had prayed for. That had been a slap in her face; she visibly winced at the words. And both of them knew that Chakotay had her right where he wanted her. While she was every bit a Starfleet captain, down to the protocol adherence, she was first, and foremost a mother. He knew as much as she did that the thought of her death thus leaving her children alone on Voyager, so far away from home, terrified her.

This was the payback she had been expecting since the moment he had glared at her when Neelix had been allowed on the mission. She knew it had been coming, she just didn't know how sneaky he could be.

"Very well," Janeway finally relented. "Commander, you lead the away team back down to the surface. Inform Mister Tuvok that I want three armed security details to accompany you. Issue type three phasers and keep me updated."

Chakotay knew that he wouldn't always win this battle, because he was sure that there were going to be many more like this, but today, he was satisfied that he had won out. Nodding his head he looked at Kim and the two men left sickbay.

Janeway moved towards the surgical biobed hoping that the Doctor had some news. Kes was standing next to the bed, her small hands resting on the soft material. Her jaw was clenched and Kathryn was sure that the young Ocampa had never experienced this kind of trauma before in her young life. Sarah Barrett had her work cut out for her and on her first day back on the duty roaster no less.

"The blood gas infuser will keep him alive for another forty-seven minutes," the Doctor informed the Captain. "The only chance I see for survival at this moment is if we get his own lungs back."

"Can't we fit him with a pair of artificial lungs?" Janeway asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

The Doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid not. His respiratory system is directly linked to multiple points along his spinal column. It's too complex to replicate. I may be able to surgically re-attach the organs if we get them back, but in the meantime we'll have to search for other options"

Janeway felt a pit forming in her stomach. Pursuing aliens that harvested organs was not exactly what she had in mind what they would be doing today, and she was having horrible visions of these said aliens harvesting her own organs, along with her crew and children. It was an image that sent shivers repeatedly up and down her spine. She gently laid a hand on Kes' arm briefly. "I'll be on the bridge. We're going to find who did this Kes and get his lungs back."

Turning about on her heel, Janeway walked purposefully out of the room.

"Mister Paris," the Doctor said once she was gone. "Did they teach how to run a respiratory series in your biochemistry class at the Academy?"

"Ah, no I'm afraid they didn't."

The Doctor looked annoyed. "Fine, I'll just do it myself," he grumbled, grabbing a hypospray from a nearby equipment tray. He moved to stand behind Kes. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"I'm not leaving," Kes said heatedly.

The hologram looked to Barrett for help, but she shook her head. "Very well," he said, more annoyed now. "Just…try to stay out of the way." He pressed the hypospray to Neelix's neck and moved about the surgical biobed.

Sarah didn't seem to notice him. She was staring intently at the Talaxian, trying to piece together a logical explanation as to why her dream had resembled the attack on Neelix so much. But she couldn't come up with one and it was scaring her. When she had been on the Explorer she had been able to on a few occasions figure out where the Borg were going by dreams she had or just by what she called a hunch. However, she thought that was because the Borg were easy to predict. Was there something more to her dreams?

"Counselor Barrett?" Her eyes snapped up to see Tom looking at her with a worried expression. "Is everything alright, ma'am?"

"Yes, just…thinking," she responded.

Tom looked at her skeptically but went about his work. "Doc, I think his cellular toxicity level is rising."

The hologram went to stand next to the pilot and looked at the biocomputer. "It's up to thirty two percent. Let's see if we can stabilize those levels. Get me a cytoplasmic stimulator."

Sarah watched from her position opposite from Kes as Tom gave the hologram a little nod of his head, then proceed to toy around in the equipment tray, finally giving up and looking around the room.

"Ah, we don't have one."

"Then replicate one."

"Right," Tom said, still looking lost.

"The design schematics are in the ship's medical data base," the Doctor replied sharply. Tom nodded his head and went to the replicators in the office. "The man drives a 700,000-ton starship so somebody thinks he'd make a good medic."

"He was the only one of us that had any biochemistry at the Academy," Sarah said, garnering for the second time that day, a sharp look from the hologram. "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

"One has to wonder what other good ideas you people have thought up."

Kes ignored the banter; she wasn't in the mood for it. "I can survive with one lung can't I? What if I donated a lung to Neelix?"

"A transplant is not an option," the Doctor said. "No one aboard is a compatible match for a Talaxian."

With those words the Doctor left the vicinity and went to the office, mumbling to himself as he went. Sarah and Kes lost what he was saying as he strode away. "I'm sure the Doctor will think of something Kes. He was after all programmed by some of Starfleet's best." The words were not comforting and Sarah could see it by the look of despair on Kes' face. Damn it, I've been out of the loop too long when it comes to stuff like this. I'm a psychologist not a therapist.

She soon realized how ridiculous that sounded. Psychologists could be therapists, she was just better at the studying and analyzing of cultures and mental states than she was comforting. It was partially the reason why she had leaped through the ranks so quickly when she graduated from the Academy, because of the growing threat of the Borg and Bajoran terrorist cells Starfleet had needed good psychologists to study the mind set of said groups; that and her father's name had helped a little too.

If all had gone according to plan she would have been promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and be infiltrating the Maquis, however, she had learned that things seldom went according to plan and she was on Voyager instead. Everything happens for a reason, my girl, her father had always told her that, since the day she could walk she was sure of it. There were times that she found herself questioning that belief. After all, what reason could possibly be giving for her turning to drugs and ending up on this ship? She wasn't the best counselor out there suited for the job.

Of course they had no way of knowing that a three week mission was going to turn into a life time. Perhaps if Janeway had she would have opted for someone with a bit more emotional stability.

"What are you doing?" she heard Tom ask the Doctor as the two came back into the room.

"I'm using the transporter matrix to get exact specifications for Neelix's lungs," the Doctor replied.

"I thought you just said we can't replicate his lungs," Tom said.

"We can't," the Doctor said, "but if I can reconfigure my emitter array, I might be able to create a pair of holographic lungs."

"Holographic lungs?" Sarah and Tom questioned at the same time.

The Doctor came to join the group at the biobed. "If it's successful, we can precisely control his pulmonary functions to allow normal breathing."

"But a hologram is just a projection of light held together in a magnetic containment field. There's no real matter involved," Tom said.

The Doctor suddenly slapped him. Kes looked stunned, Sarah jumped in surprise, and Tom's mouth hung open. "Now," the hologram said turning about to adjust something on the computer, then turning back to Tom, "you hit me."

Tom wound up and proceeded to do so, as Kes flinched, but his hand passed right through the Doctor. Tom looked at his hand, stunned.

"The magnetic containment field that creates the illusion of my body can be modulated to allow matter to pass through it," the Doctor answered, turning about to tap at the controls again, "or be stopped. I might be able to modulate the holographic lungs in the same way, allowing oxygen and carbon dioxide to pass from the lungs to the blood stream."

Kes grabbed his arm. "I want to know what this means."

"There's no to time explain the exact procedure to you right now."

"Oh, well, make the time, because I'm not going to let you perform any experimental surgery on Neelix until I know exactly what you're doing and what the risks are."

Sarah moved towards her, gently taking her arm in her hand. "Kes, maybe we should go to my office and wait until the Doctor is done."

"No, Lieutenant," Kes snapped. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Very well, the risk is that he'll die," the Doctor said, answering her question. "If he does survive he will have to remain in an isotropic restraint. The lungs need to be perfectly aligned to his internal physiology. The computer won't be able to compensate for any body movement whatsoever."

Kes' voice dropped. "How long will he have to stay like that?"

"The rest of us life, unless we recover his original organs. He will never be able to leave the holographic environment of this room. The holo lungs would disappear the moment he went out the door."

The Doctor turned away and went back to his work leaving Kes standing there, looking horrified. Sarah gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. "Kes, I know it sounds bad right now, but at least he'd still be alive. Maybe the Doctor will find something else later down the raod. What do you think Neelix would want?"

"That's the problem, Counselor, I don't know what Neelix would want," she took a deep breath. "But I do know that I want him to live." And with a simple nod of her head, the Doctor was given the permission to proceed.

"Captain we've discovered a laboratory of some sorts," Chakotay's voice echoed over the comlink. "There are several organs here, from different species that we can't identify. However, there's no sign of Neelix's lungs."

Kathryn felt her throat constrict at hearing this. A whole laboratory filled with organs from other beings? "Any sign of the lifeform that did this?"

"Negative, Captain," Tuvok's voice came next. "This room is, however, the source of the dilithium signatures were detecting earlier. The power system's here are running on an unusual dilithium matrix."

It was just like they had feared since the away team had returned to Voyager. There wasn't any dilithium down there and they were still going to have power struggles until they found a better solution. Raising her hand to her chin, she tried to get a grasp on how this day had gone from hopeful to hopeless. "Is there anything down there that might give us a clue as to where the lifeform has gone?"

"Captain, my readings are telling me that there was lifeform in here less then ten minutes ago," Chakotay said.

"Captain we're picking up one life sign, we're in pursuit," Tuvok's voice said, calmly.

Kathryn spun about to look at tactical. "Prepare a security detail."

"Yes ma'am," Rollins said, moving off of the bridge.

Kathryn turned about nervously pacing the command station. If they didn't catch the aliens what did that mean for Neelix? Well the answer to that was obvious, he would die. She couldn't help but feel guilty. A captain's job was to keep her people safe. Neelix had tried so hard to make a difference for this crew and here she had allowed him on an away mission without fully prepping him in the right protocol. That was foolish Kathryn, simply foolish. She bit her lip for a second, but whose to say that if Neelix didn't go on the away mission that someone else would have suffered his fate.

That line of thinking didn't get her far, because she realized that if it had been Chakotay or Harry that had been attacked the Doctor would have been able to replicate a new set of lungs for them or one of the crew members could have donated a lung. It wasn't her fault that Talaxian physiology was like no one else's on file.

"Mama, why would someone steal Neelix's lungs?"

Damn it, I should have had them move into the ready room. "I'm not sure, honey," Kathryn replied, snaking her hand into her son's dark locks. "But I'm going to find out why."

"Don't they have their own lungs?" Michael inquired, peering up at her with only what could be described as the curiosity of a child. "I mean they would need lungs to breathe wouldn't they?"

One would think so, Kathryn thought. "Honey why don't you back to your lesson?"

"I finished it. Besides this is more exiting."

Kathryn frowned at him as Parsons reported that there was a ship leaving the planetoid. Spinning about on her heel she ordered that the away team be beamed back on board. "Tractor them!"

"It's too late Captain, they've already gone to warp."

Luck just isn't on my side today. "Set a pursuit course once the away team is back on board, maximum warp."

"Aye Captain."

Kathryn rubbed her temples, trying to rub the headache that was forming away. She knew it was going to be no use, she had been plagued with stress headaches ever since she was a teenager.

"Did I lose my job while on that away mission?"

Chakotay's voice cut through the dense fog and she glanced up at him with confused eyes. What the hell is he talking about? Noticing where his grin was pointed at, she turned about to see Michael occupying the Commander's chair. She half expected to see Ava with him, but realized she hadn't heard so much as a peep out of the baby for nearly twenty minutes. Not good.

Her eyes must have widened and panic must have been settling in on her face for Chakotay smiled even more. "Over there," he pointed towards the Engineering station where Michael had been working. Ava was curled up in the chair taking a nap. "I brought you something," Chakotay suddenly said, and Kathryn's head snapped about. "Consider it an early birthday gift."

Lieutenant Torres is right; he does have a twisted sense of humor. He was handing her a tricorder device of some sort, or at least that's what it appeared to be. "Any idea what this thing does?"

"We think it's a weapon of some sort," Chakotay said. "The being pointed it at us and fired when we confronted him."

"Everyone still has their lungs right?" Kathryn drawled; she could have a twisted sense of humor too.

"As far as I know, yes."

With a look, Kathryn went to hand the device to B'Elanna Torres, seated at the science station. "Lieutenant, see if you can figure out what this does, oh and some one get Mister Paris up here, we're going to need his flying abilities."

#star trek voyager #star trek voyager fanfiction #kathryn janeway #chakotay #tom paris #sarah barrett (oc)#harry kim #b'elanna torres #neelix #kes #the doctor (emh)#janeway x chakotay #tom paris x ofc

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intcrwoven-blog · 6 years

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Prax blabbers at his elbow. Encourages him to set course for Devore Prime. They have wasted enough resources on this venture. He knows well there will be hell and more to pay once he speaks to the Circle of Swords--the branch of government devoted to the pursuit of telepaths. Punishment is likely. However, he holds the Emperor’s ear yet. Kashyk is sure he could worm his way out of too harsh of a punishment. Suspension, perhaps, for a month or so. That wouldn’t be terrible. He was due shore leave. He’d been on the hunt for nearly six months straight now. Just barely breaching protocol . . .

Yet Prax blabbers. Kashyk is reclined in his chair behind his very expensive desk in his own version of a Ready Room. It is far more manly than the one belonging to Captain Janeway. Weapons line his wall. Where she boasted cultural objects spanning her Earth’s centuries, his is a museum of war and Devore innovation. From the simple blade to the powerful energy pistol strapped to his leg. The Devore Imperium emblem is etched everywhere. From the large flag that covers most of the third wall to the upholstery in his furniture. ‘Duty Above All,’ was the Empire’s Motto. One that was sewn into the heart of every Devorian.

It was a motto he took great pride in making his cornerstone. Kashyk knew well his set of skills. It was why he was one of the Emeror’s favorites. Few Inspectors could claim to have his record. Well . . . former record, he supposed. Yet, despite Duty guiding his mind and decisions, he found it chafing against something else. A part of him that had no place making its voice known.

And still Prax babbled on.

When the decision came, Kashyk can’t exactly say what had urged it. Or what his exact thoughts had been. In fact, he only knew a decision had been made when he felt the pleasing vibration of his pistol firing in his hand--and the thud of Prax’s body hitting the floor.

Calm, in control of his motions, he takes Prax’s weapon and exits out into the bridge where he fires on the rest of his crew. It is only when he is the only one remaining on the ship that he rips the Imperium symbol from his uniform and uses it to light a fire within the ship. The bag which he had stored his simple clothes remained unpacked.

It’s a small thing to grab it and make his way to a shuttle.

Hours later, he has tracked down the triumphant Voyager. Duty would compel him to drive his shuttle into the engines and kill all of them. That chafing instead steers his shuttle a little ways ahead and parks directly in their path. He kills most of the power save the life support. He doesn’t bother tampering with the deflective shield either--fully allowing Voyager to scan the shuttle and see who was inside--the single life form inside.

Dressed out of his uniform and back into the simple tans and greys of his former set, he sits against the sill of the viewport and waits. The game may have been lost . . . but that didn’t mean a new game couldn’t begin. And he only wanted to play with one person.

#( janeway 'SHE WALKS IN STARLIGHT IN ANOTHER WORLD' )#kashyk tag #igcein #it won't let me tag you #BUT #here you go

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isagrimorie · 5 months

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One of the interesting consequences of the Voyager writers forgetting that they didn't kill Joe Carey in seasons 2 or 3 is that every time B'Elanna's incapacitated, Seven takes over from B'Elanna.

It starts with Extreme Risk in season 5 and continues straight to season 7 until Friendship One when the writers realized, oh wait, the didn't kill Carey yet-- so they did.

Technically, it should have been Carey or Vorik who would be in charge of Engineering while B'Elanna was away. But while B'Elanna might not have been keen on Seven earlier on, she recognized Seven's talent in engineering and might have added Seven into the rotation.

And it tells me so much more about how B'Elanna thought about Carey and Vorik's performance.

On the other hand... for a Doylist reason, it might mean scheduling conflicts with Vorik's actor.

In Nothing Human B'Elanna couldn't communicate that she wanted Seven in charge of Engineering in her absence so Janeway did it but as we saw in Extreme Risk B'Elanna already thought about putting Seven in charge if she's not around. She must have communicated this to Janeway if she cannot do so.

In Course Oblivion the Demon copies might be copies but they are also to quote Farscape equal and original.

B'Elanna getting Seven up to speed and briefing her about Engineering is so good, also how moody the warp core engine could be. (Which explains why after B'Elanna was gone Voyager post Endgame kind of became hard to manage.)

So I guess the reason we don't see much of Seven during the events of Muse was because Seven had her hands full managing Voyager's very moody engine drive.

In Flesh and Blood when the holograms kidnap B'Elanna when the EMH Doctor betrayed the whole crew of Voyager*, Seven was the one leading Engineering. By this point B'Elanna and Seven have mutual respect for each other's strengths and competencies.

I love their hand-off and how smoothly it goes from B'Elanna to Seven in a crisis when B'Elanna's incapacitated.

Sorry Carey, the writers thought you were dead up to this season 7 two-parter. In-universe it just really means... you're a competent Engineer but nothing to write home about and that's more damning.

Once again, while I appreciate that Seven was a warrior badass in Picard, a warrior badass is not all Seven was. (Picard s3 nodded to it a bit with Seven and Shaw double teaming the nacelle engines but I hope a Seven-led show would incorporate all of Seven's parts since there would be more runway to do so).

*am i still angry that the EMH got away with betraying and legit putting the crew in danger with just a light slap on the wrist? YES.

#seven of nine #b'elanna torres #star trek voyager #i wish the show focused on seven and b'elanna forming #a friendship instead of it being background

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stitching-in-time · 23 days

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Voyager rewatch s4 ep26: Hope and Fear

The season 4 finale! It's a bit unusual that they didn't do a big two-part cliffhanger, but I don't really mind. It was torture to wait a whole summer to find out what happened back in the day, and it was nice to have it neatly wrapped up for once.

It opens with Janeway and Seven playing Velocity on the holodeck, and Seven is upset that Janeway is winning. Janeway tries to explain that her experience with the game and ability to anticipate it gives her an edge that even Seven's borg perfection can't match, but Seven is still petulant like a teenager, and grumbles as the Captain walks away. (Side note: why in god's name would they not let Seven wear her Velocity outfit the whole time?? This outfit is so much better! It's black, so you can't see every bit of her anatomy on display, it has blue stripes to add some visual interest, it's got flat shoes that are way more practical, and she still looks thin for the shitty straight guys to ogle, but actually pretty. Why did they insist on sticking her in that godawful brown catsuit, of all things?? They can obviously do better, but apparently they just wanted her to look like she's wearing poop-colored footie pajamas that are several sizes too small.)

Meanwhile, Voyager is working with an alien who just happens to be great at languages, while Janeway continues working on decrypting the message that Starfleet sent them. She asks the alien, Arturis, to help her decode it, and he figures it out in no time.

The message from Starfleet contains the coordinates to an experimental ship equipped with state of the art quantum slipstream drive, which they've sent to bring them home. Most of the crew is thrilled, except Seven, who has no desire to return to Earth, and the Captain, who begins to suspect that everything they ever wanted being suddenly handed to them feels a little too good to be true. She sends away teams to the new ship to check it out before they abandon Voyager and trust what they're being told.

While they're looking over the ship, Seven asks B'Elanna why she wants to go back to Earth when she could face charges for having been Maquis. B'Elanna replies that she'd rather go home and face whatever happens than spend forever in the Delta Quadrant. She reminds Seven that people might not be too happy about having an ex-Borg around either, and that they might end up outcasts together- Seven doesn't realize she's joking in an attempt to commiserate, and Seven is already doubting whether she should go back at all. (There's a nice moment where Harry tells Seven it wouldn't be the same if they went back without her, which elicits a rare smile from Seven- she clearly does care about the crew, even if she's too afraid to admit to it.)

Seven tells the Captain she's not going with them if they go back to the Alpha Quadrant, which Janeway refuses to accept. Seven is now part of their crew, and Janeway won't abandon any of them in the Delta Quadrant alone. Janeway realizes that Seven is just scared, which Seven doesn't even want to admit to herself. Seven gets mean and defiant like a teenager once again, and Janeway has to be the mom and try to reign her in.

It soon becomes a moot point though, as Janeway retrieves and decodes the rest of Starfleet's message, which Arturis had said was lost. Starfleet's real message contained maps and star charts, but lamented the fact that they didn't know how to get Voyager home yet. Meanwhile, the away team finds alien tech on the supposed Starfleet ship, and Janeway recalls the crew to Voyager immediately, now deeply suspicious of Arturis. Arturis feigns ignorance at first, but once it's clear they're on to him, he drops the charade and admits that he was trying to lure the Voyager crew onto his ship to deliver them to the Borg. He blames Janeway and Voyager for showing the Borg how to defeat Species 8472, which freed them up to assimilate his planet, and he wants revenge. Janeway tries to explain that Species 8472 were an even greater threat, and she couldn't have known what the Borg would do to his planet, but he powers up his slipstream drive to try to take Janeway and Seven to the Borg, since the rest of the crew is already back on Voyager. Voyager follows them using their own modified slipstream drive, and they manage to catch up long enough to beam Janeway and Seven to Voyager before they lose the slipstream, leaving Arturis on an unalterable course into Borg space, where they assimilate him instead.

Though the crew is disappointed not to be going back to earth, and to not be able to use the modified slipstream drive again, they soldier on as always, headed toward home. Seven, while grateful not to be going back to Earth yet, also finds herself grateful not to be assimilated back into the Borg collective after all, despite wishing for it since she was freed. It's a turning point for her character, and Janeway seems proud of her as they resume their Velocity game, this time with less complaining from Seven.

Tl;dr: An episode with an exciting premise that did a pretty good job of giving the whole crew at least a little something to do for the season finale.

#star trek: voyager #voyager rewatch #rewatching star trek #star trek voyager #star trek

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klaudiafmp · 5 years

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Star Trek

I have never actually seen Star Trek, I mean I saw some clips here and there, know what it looks like and what some of the main characters are and roughly the plot but I never fully watched it and there is just way too much of it for me to know where to even start. I assume the TV show from the 60′s but Im not sure if most people actually got into it then or through the reboot that happened few years back. Anyway I know that it has some really cool looking aliens in it so intead of writing a review I’ll just have a look at some alien species from within star trek.

Cheron

First appearance Star Trek: The Original Series “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (1969)

“When we first met the Cheron, there was only two members of this species left: Bele (played by the Riddler, the great Frank Gorshin) and Lokai. Bele was hunting Lokai whom Bele deemed a traitor after the planet Cheron was wiped out due to centuries of racial wars.

Apparently, some Cheron were black on the left and white on the right while other members of this advanced species possessed the opposite skin alignment. Due to this difference, the entire population — save Lokai and Bele — were eradicated. Bele hijacked the Enterprise and used his vast array of mental capabilities to hunt for Lokai.

The whole opposite was a thinly veiled, but powerful allusion to the destructive potential and sheer idiocy of racism — a message as powerful today as it was in the ’60s. Of course, you know I’m going to say that Mego made a Cheron doll, a toy I treasured in my childhood and called Oreo Man.”

See I like this species because of how simple it looks, like lets be honest it’s literally two dudes with their faces painted black and white straight through the middle. I like how they also explain that there was a lot of stigma beteen the members of the same species based on which side of their face is white and which is black to the point where the entire race killed each other off because of it, bit over the top but makes the point I guess.

“The inhabitants of Cheron were an extremely long-lived race; one representative of them was reputed to have pursued another such representative, an accused criminal from among his people, across the Milky Way Galaxy for over 50,000 years. Unfortunately, the species destroyed itself in a civil war caused by racism. There were only two known survivors by 2268, who the crew of the USS Enterprise believed would ultimately kill each other due to their hate.”

Species 8472

First Appearance: “Star Trek: Voyager” Part 1 (1997)

“Species 8472 existed in an extra-dimensional bit of hell known as fluidic space. When the Borg discovered the fluidic dimension, the ever deadly race of cybernetic killers busted through the dimensions and attempted to assimilate Species 8472. 8472 was having none of that and fought back, creating weapons that could slay the Borg with ease. In fact, 8472 was able to destroy the Borg Cubes in seconds. (Man, that’s like taking down the Death Star with a single bullet.) Sadly, Species 8472 also took out many innocent Delta Quadrant planets, which forced the crew of Voyager to get involved.

The Borg and Voyager had to form an unlikely alliance to drive Species 8472 back to fluidic space. 8472 was one of the closet things Trek fans ever got to Lovecraft-like cosmic horrors, as even the Borg could not stand up to these waling nightmares. This species appeared a few more times on Voyager until Captain Janeway was able to broker a peace with these terrors that exist behind the fabric of time and space.”

I like this species because although it does have an overall humanoid looking body unlike most Star Trek species it does actually look alien rather than space human. I like how they want to make them creepy and from what I’ve seen they are always kept in shadows, and I also like how much taller they are compared to people just to add to that creepy factor. I want to make the aliens in my story kind of similar to how these guys look. But instead of being kept in shade they will just be a really dark grey or pitch black colour. And I also wanted to make them really tall just like this species but Species 8472 looks really buff and muscly to be honest meanwhile I want my aliens to be tall and slender.

Tholians

First appearance: Star Trek: The Original Series “The Tholian Web” (1968)

“Get a load of these psychedelic xenophobes. Yeah, the Tholians might look like a funky black light album cover come to life, but, really, they are brutal, territorial, hateful, and will do anything to keep other species out of Tholian territory. But, hey, they are known for the punctuality, so take heart in the fact that, when they kill you, it’ll be done in a timely fashion.

The Tholians cruise around their sector of space in geometric rainbow ships, making the aesthetic of the race more Yes album cover and less cool space despots. The Tholians first encountered the crew of the Enterprise when the USS Defiant flew too close to Tholian space.

Always protective of their borders, the Tholians phased the Defiant out of real space and into an interspace dimension. Kirk himself was phased out of time and space (for Shatner, it wouldn’t be the first or last time this happened), but Spock and the Enterprise were able to get their captain back and pimp-slap the Tholians.

The Enterprise under Jonathan Archer also ran afoul of these crystalline killers. The Tholians are a great example that in space, threats can come in any shape and even rainbows can kill you.”

“In 2152, the Tholians made an unusual move; they traveled far beyond their territory and actively sought to possess a 31st century Earth vessel discovered by the United Earth starship Enterprise NX-01, under the command of Jonathan Archer. Four Tholian ships intercepted and disabled the combat cruiser Tal'Kir, while it waited to rendezvous with Enterprise. They, in turn, attacked and defeated a Suliban fleet that was in pursuit of the arriving Earth ship. They then successfully removed the pod from Enterprise's possession, only to have the pod return to its proper time moments later. “

I like how original this species looks. I never seen an alien species in any media before that only communicates through technology with other species because they are too scared to actually go out and talk to them while at the same time be ready to anihilate anyone that crosses into their territory. I think it’s a quite good contrast of fearing something but not hesitating to defend yourself from it, it’s like the entire species represents both sides of the fight or flight concept.

Jem’Hadar

First appearance: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “The Jem’Hadar” (1994)

“One of the greatest and most efficiently deadly militaries the galaxy have ever seen, the foot soldiers of the Dominion — the Jem’Hadar — are also one of the more tragic species that can be found in the Trekverse.

Jem’Hadar reach maturity in the span of about three days. They are genetically programmed to be the perfect galactic foot soldier by their masters, the Vorta. To insure control, the Vorta have withheld an essential enzyme from the Jem’Hadar genetic makeup. This enzyme is supplied to the Jem’Hadar in the form of The White, a liquid that the Jem’Hadar has filtered into their systems through a tube in their necks. Essentially, Jem’Hadar are drug-addicted soldiers unleashed upon the galaxy.

The Jem’Hadar were the main Dominion force that laid siege to Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War and were nearly unstoppable. The need for The White was a religion to the Jem’Hadar, who became one of the most feared species in any quadrant.

Jem’Hadar are incredibly resilient and possess keen minds that help them plan for battles. Despite all this, most Jem’Hadar die very young due to the fact that they are essentially cannon fodder for the Dominion. Yet, the Jem’Hadar value duty and loyalty above all else as they embrace their lot as pawns of the Dominion. All for The White.”

I really like how this species looks beause from what I read they are bred soldiers so just thinking about the amount of masks and make up that got put into I don’t know even a dozen of these guys is quite astonishing. I like how they made them look like lizards as well with horns and scales it immediately tells the viewer through visuals that the Jem’Hadar are probably a fighter type. Also I like the decision to make them blue in colour which I assume was intentional because it serves two roles, first they are lizards s they are coldbooded making sense why blue is the color they go for and second the fact they are coldblooded could be viewed as a metaphor for the fact that they are soldiers that are bred to kill which kind of rounds up this species. I also would like to compare them to the Clone Troopers from star wars because the backstory for the Jem’hadar is literally the same as for the clones, they are both genetically made and bred to be soldiers for a war where thousands of them die but they still remain loyal to the cause. But there is a major difference that I feel star trek didn’t look too far into, as Jem’hadar are said to grow up in 3 days and ready to serve meanwhile the clones do age in double the speed of a normal human but they spend their youth training to be soldiers which makes them more believable in my opinion.

Andorians

First appearance: Star Trek: The Original Series “Journey to Babel” (1968)

“The Andorians are an aggressive yet advanced race that was one of the first alien races that formed the original Federation of Planets with humanity.

The Andorians have distinctive blue skin, white hair, and two protruding antennae. The blue skinned humanoids have an advanced armada and a long history of conflict with the Vulcans. This conflict was put aside as Andorians entered into the Federation and, with it, decades of peace. But peace wasn’t easy, as seen in Star Trek: Enterprise, in which Federation Captain Archer and Andorian Captain Thy’lek Shran developed an adversarial relationship that, thankfully, culminated in a friendship based on mutual respect.

The Andorians are more than a bit xenophobic as they refer to humans and Vulcans as “pink skins” and have a long standing mistrust of everything not Andorian. In fact, the Andorians don’t even trust their offshoot race, the very rarely encountered, white-skinned, psychic Aenar.

Enterprise is a bit unfairly-maligned by some Trekkers, but it will always be the show that took the Andorians from background characters to a narratively-explored race with deep contradictions. Of course, I need to mention that the Andorian was also one of the final Trek dolls Mego produced. It is very sparkly.”

I thought this species was kind of funny in design. They are supposed to be taken really seriously from what I read and the look on that guys face in the picture and are a very agressive and violent species meanwhie their design supports none of that. They have a very cold yet welcoming colour palette and are rocking a white afro with antenas on top of it, like I’m sorry and I know their species is kind of about prejudice but how can they be taken seriously if they dress like knights in space and look like they came back from an 80′s halloween party?

Jaylah

First appearance: Star Treck Beyond (2016)

“Years prior to her encounter with the USS Enterprise crew, Jaylah and her family, like many before them, were attacked by Krall and imprisoned on Altamid. Jaylah and her family quickly realized that people were routinely taken from Krall's holding cells and killed, so they decided to attempt escape. During the attempt, Jaylah and her father were confronted by Krall's subordinate Manas. Jaylah's father stayed behind to hold off Manas, buying Jaylah time to flee at the cost of his own life. Jaylah discovered the derelict hulk of the Freedom-class USS Franklin and made her home in it. She hid it using holographic technology and set up multiple defensive traps in the surrounding area. Inside the vessel, she discovered a music player, from which she particularly liked music featuring "beats and shouting". She also learned how to speak English from the ship's records. In time, Jaylah became a formidable warrior, skilled in martial arts and in wielding a quarterstaff that doubled as a rifle.”

I feel there isn’t much information about her species because the entire species is literally named after this character and it’s a relativly new character as well so I assume no actual canon explenation exists for her species as of yet. But I do really like how she looks. She has an identical colour scheme to the cheron species I looked at but its executed so much better here with very cool looking face tatoos / markings that make her look actually interesting unlike the cherons that are literally dudes with their faces painted different colour on each side. She kind of reminds me of Darth Maul from star wars with the face markings but there they look so interesting like theres just something about that cold white with deep navy blue tinted black on top of it that just catches the eye more. I also like her eye contacts, I don’t know why I just feel the yellow eyes just complete the look nicely.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Jaylah

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cheron_native

https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/star-trek-the-50-best-alien-races/

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anamatics · 7 years

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Queerbaiting and You - An Analysis on an Evolution

Language is ever-changing. The continual development of nuance and specificity of terms is part of the fabric of linguistics. Terms change in meaning and this evolution is challenging. People cling to language; adjustments in terminology are challenging. We like words that are static because it is human nature to dislike uncertainty.

Queerbaiting one such word undergoing evolution. The introduction of layered variance into a once-simply defined practice has brought about confusion and infighting. The repercussions of this debate are felt both internally within the queer community and externally, in the larger narrative on queer representation in popular media. The shift in definition does little to help the cause it was created to serve; instead obscuring the definition to the point where the term is essentially meaningless.

Historically, queerbaiting has carried two meanings: the first is an act of aggressive heterosexuality to shut down queer subtext on screen while still teasing and catering to the queer audience in advertising, public relations, and fan engagement strategies; the second is an existing homoerotic tension between two characters played up on screen while met with derision by the professionals behind the scenes. The most serial offenders of this practice oftentimes included much needed representation. However, it was not the canonly queer characters that prompted the act of queerbaiting, but rather the subtextual relationship between purportedly straight, often more central characters to the narrative.

Before the release of season two of Rizzoli and Isles, Sasha Alexander and Angie Harmon did a photoshoot for the cover of TV Guide was set up to resemble a lesbian couple’s engagement photoshoot. The clear focus on the relationship between Jane and Maura as the core dynamic that made the show work, and the way in which the actresses posed in the photos is in direct opposition to the man-of-the-week C-plot tacked on to every moment of intimacy shared by Harmon and Alexander’s characters on screen. The insertion of compulsory heterosexuality into moments where there is no need to remind the audience that these characters are ostensibly straight is the definition of queerbaiting. It perpetuates the idea that women cannot converse with each other without speaking of a man, and effectively quashes any doubts that the straight audience has about the subtext that existed between the two main characters. This is in direct contradiction to the theme of the promotional materials, which sold an intimate, almost romantic, relationship between two women. These promotional materials were meant to draw the attention of queer women knowing full-well that the romantic intimacy of the photoshoot was just an act to attract queer viewers.

This act of queerbaiting and the innumerable others like it started a conversation; and further acts ignited a discussion that trickled out of Live Journal and other fandom spaces into the public eye. Fandom creativity has always been somewhat of a taboo subject historically, the sort of thing that one did not discuss with members of the professional community. Actors, and then writers and showrunners, started to actively embrace the cultish fan culture that had developed around their shows.

This is not an entirely new phenomena, XenaCon has been around for year; Star Trek and Star Wars have always had a large following and active fanbase embraced by the professionals involved. But these relationships between professionals and fans were always considered somewhat fringe, the exceptions, rather than the rule of fan engagement. Science fiction and fantasy professionals have always embraced fan culture far more than the mainstream. It comes from a shared history and understanding; geeks and nerds have a strong sense of solidary that even professional success does little to change.

Even in these open spaces for dialogue, the queerness of the fandom was considered ineffable. With the exception of Xena, which was always a queer show censored by being ahead of its time, it has always been one of the unspoken rules of fan culture: you don’t talk about the gay. Despite the heavy subtext, the relationship between Seven of Nine and Captain Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager was a non-starter at conventions; Kirk and Spock, the original slash pairing for innumerable fans, was not discussed publically. The self-censorship was a practice to protect the small bones thrown to the community by writers who were undoubtedly aware of their queer fanbase but were uninterested in providing any sort of meaningful representation to them.

And then a watershed moment occurred in the Supernatural fandom: Misha Collins, one half of one of the most notoriously queerbaited dynamics in modern memory, started actively embracing the queer fandom and shipping community. All of sudden, it wasn’t as unacceptable to share fan works with actors and writers. It wasn’t as unacceptable to want to see the ideas of those works – the representation of queer storylines as equal to those of their straight counterparts – realized on screen.

Queer representation in the current age of “peak TV” has diversified exponentially from the humble beginnings of the subtext-laden yet never-canon roots of the pre-aught era. The conversations started on message boards and social media reached the ears of Hollywood executives. Queer characters started to appear more frequently, and with them came queer relationships. The practice of queerbaiting persists on some shows: Supernatural, a show that has come to define the practice, continues on this path with Dean and Castiel’s characters despite the presence of canon queer characters in the story; Rizzoli and Isles ended without ever having realized the potential relationship between Jane and Maura[1]; and Once Upon a Time continues to demonstrate the central, co-parenting relationship of Regina and Emma as strictly platonic through pairing the women off with abusive men. Despite the continued practice of queerbaiting in some established shows, many others embraced queer representation and did it in such a way that the conversation had to shift.

With the canonization of relationships like Kurt and Blaine or Brittany and Santana from Glee, fans and creators alike started to have conversations about what it meant to show queer lives on television. Glee was unique in that it didn’t shy away from the ugliness of what it meant to be queer in high school. It had a large enough cast of queer characters that it could show multiple ways to be queer, and multiple queer experiences. While the practice was met with derision by the queer community at times due to the worry about depicting queer characters as constantly suffering for their queerness, Glee gave some of the best queer youth representation. It allowed young queer folks to see that they, too, could have a happy ending – as Glee remains one of the only shows on major network television to ever depict a lesbian wedding.

Before Glee, one of the best and most iconic early canon depictions of a relationship between two women on television ended in tragedy on Buffy: the Vampire Slayer[2]. Glee continued to fuel the narrative of queerness being equated with suffering despite the good work it did in terms of normalizing the experiences of queer folks. These two shows, along with Degrassi, South of Normal and Modern Family queer characters could be central characters and their relationships and lives could drive a narrative for a straight audience just as easily as a straight character’s could. As Glee ended, fans began to debate if it was enough to simply have the characters be queer, or if their queerness had to be realized through other means to be true “good” representation.

The debate narrowed to relationships; and the question was asked: was simply being there enough, or was there some sort of additional special treatment needed? The majority of fans eschew the debate all together, simply happy to see queer characters and relationships represented on television; however there is a vocal minority that does not think that just being depicted on television is good enough representation to be considered worthy of praise. They are an audience starved for any sort of positive representation, and the burden falls to television writers, often who are not members of the community they are trying to represent, to create narratives that do this ask justice.

Shows popular with large, young audiences seem to garner the most attention in these debates. The high school demographic seems to accurately predict where the discourse will next appear. Shows like The 100, Pretty Little Liars, Orphan Black, Shadowhunters and Supergirl recently have become ground zero for such conversations. Each of these shows depicts an on-screen relationship between two men or women, and each of these shows has been criticized for queerbaiting.

By the definition understood, none of these shows come close to queerbaiting. There are developed queer characters, actively embraced by the network, showrunners, critics and actors; the relationships are realized on screen and depicted with care; and there is narrative focus placed on the queer relationships. Unlike Will and Grace or South of Nowhere where queerness is measured in how little demonstrable queerness these ostensibly queer characters can show on screen while still remaining queer; these relationships are well developed and realized on screen in the only way an audience can be sure to understand them – through kissing and depictions of sex. It is here the debate turns from a discussion of representation to the changing definition of queerbaiting as a practice.

Queerbaiting has come to mean “bad representation” and “teasing existing queer characters” on top of the continued application to the practice of actively attempting to attract a queer audience for the so-called “gay bump” and actively dismissing that same audience’s want for better representation. This is confusing; one practice is far more insidious than the other, yet the term is applied to both practices interchangeably.

There are cases where the on-screen story does not depict the practice of queerbaiting in a way that behind the scenes action certainly does. The best example of this in recent memory is The 100. The showrunners spent two seasons developing the lesbian character Lexa into a fully realized individual and building her relationship with Clarke, the bisexual lead. While the writers played into the bury your gays trope with Lexa’s death, there was nothing inherently queerbaiting about the way Clark and Lexa’s relationship developed on screen. However, the way that the relationship was handed by the showrunners and writers off screen clearly exemplifies the practice.

Prior to the release of the 3rd season of The 100, showrunner Jason Rothenberg gave numerous interviews discussing the possibility of a relationship developing between Clarke and Lexa. The inclusion of a queer storyline and the bisexuality of the lead character won the show and Rothenberg himself a great deal of attention. While shooting the 3rd season, Rothenberg tweeted behind the scenes photographs from the season finale featuring Lexa and Clarke together; as well as open invitations to the fans to come and watch them shoot the finale. Writer Shawna Benson posted as an “insider” on a popular lesbian forum regularly during the build up to the 3rd season to control and monitor rumors. Following Alycia Debnam-Carey thanking Rothenberg for the opportunity and saying goodbye in a signed poster, Benson jumped at the opportunity to reassure the fans that this was nothing but a rumor and that she was there to “help them sleep better at night.”[3] Both Benson and Rothenberg’s actions were a deliberate attempt to misconstrue the fact from The 100’s largely queer fanbase that Lexa dies at the midpoint of the season. While not a traditional understanding of the practice of queerbaiting, their actions clearly were meant to draw the attention of the queer fanbase and ensure that it was held for the entire season.

What happened on screen between Clarke and Lexa was not queerbaiting. A fully realized queer relationship between equals can never be queerbaiting as it is traditionally understood. Lexa’s death started to change the definition. Benson and Rothenberg’s actions compounding the issue as their professional actions were not the typical model of queerbaiting from industry professionals prior to this point. They deliberately sought out a vulnerable sub-group of their audience and through false reassurance, ensured their continued engagement despite Rothenberg’s creative choices regarding the queer representation in The 100. In doing this, they poisoned the well of goodwill they’d generated through a two season long development of a canon queer relationship. In the process, this act redefined the practice queerbaiting.

During the backlash over Lexa’s death, queerbaiting began to be used to describe any representation of queer characters that was not considered by the majority as “good.” Because The 100 (and numerous others[4]) played into the bury your gays[5] trope, it was considered “bad” queer representation. The term queerbaiting was applied to this “bad” representation label because of a clumsy understanding of what the term and practice actually entailed. Lexa was a well-developed queer character. There was nothing “bad” about the queerness she embodied on screen.[6] She represented a lesbian worth aspiring to be, a hero and a warrior, a leader of her people. There was nothing about her character or the development of the romance with Clarke that baited her queerness.

Media does not exist in a vacuum. To discuss queerbaiting, we must discuss the actions behind the scenes. These are as much a part of the practice as on-screen action. If Lexa had not died in the way she had, in a shot-for-shot parallel to fellow lesbian Tara’s death in Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, this analysis would be unnecessary. In playing into the bury your gays trope, while actively embracing the queer fandom, the staff of The 100 changed the definition of queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is now defined as a practice of giving the queer fans the “good” representation they wanted, right up until the point where the representation became “bad.”

This shift in definition is troubling for older fans. The historical definition of queerbaiting describes a practice that harkens a time when there was no queer representation in popular media. To see the term created to describe this practice change in meaning is challenging for many. The the shift in definition ignores the pain of having your identity be the subject of derision and dismissal by critics, show staff, and actors alike. Older fans feel an emotional response to the practice of queerbaiting. The new definition is confusing to them; it doesn’t go far enough to describe how hurtful queerbaiting is to a vulnerable queer community as it is more often applied to established queer characters and relationships than subtextual relationships within the popular narrative.

Applying queerbaiting to existing queer characters implies that there is a standard of representation beyond merely existing on screen. This is a positive development in the term, and in the overall understanding of on screen queer representation. However, the root of the term in a practice that is both dismissive and exploitive of queer existence, cannot be divorced from the evolution. It implies a negativity in all forms of queer on screen representation and does not allow for variance within queer stories told on screen.

With the evolution, it is no longer enough for a character to be a hero, for her story to be told lovingly, and her romance beautiful. There is a thirst for something more, some perfection that cannot be defined as it is not understood by the community. The struggle for identity creeps into the conversation. The power of identity and what it means to be seen, to be acknowledged by the repressive majority, continues to press at the edges of discourse. Is it enough merely to be seen or is it the reflection of ourselves as shown back to us that forces us to bristle? Is our dissatisfaction from not so much being seen, but disliking how we are seen?

To the straight viewer, any representation is good representation. Their opinion is not nuanced by decades of self-censorship and societal representation. Their opinion does not reflect the pain of seeing yourself represented poorly on screen. There aren’t enough queer creatives in Hollywood to change this narrative overnight; and the pressure to do so only furthers to confound the issue. When we see queer characters on screen and we do not like how they are portrayed, it is not queerbaiting. It is something else, a tremor in the collective consciousness of the queer community. A siren: something isn’t right. We don’t like it, we need to find words to call it wrong. Bad. Poor representation of us.

So we call it queerbaiting.

But that isn’t what it is, is it?

The original practice persists and continues to be far more hurtful to the community. We don’t have words to describe what it is that so bothers us about this new practice. It is confusing to those outside of the community and those who do not possess the historical knowledge of the practice. Attempting to parse out the meaning behind the emotion as well as to understand what the practice speaks to in a broader sense is next to impossible as things stand now. Simplicity begets understanding. The changing definition of what queerbaiting truly means becomes hard to pinpoint as it is applied to more and more situations where it does not quite fit. The language around the queer community’s ability to be seen is evolving rapidly, yanking along terms that aren’t quite ready to evolve. Until the original practice of queerbaiting is gone from popular media, the term cannot progress; and we shouldn’t force it to.

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End notes:

[1] However this lack of realization of the relationship can also be attributed to the extremely negative reaction of Angie Harmon, a conservative Christian, upon the discovery of the queer fanbase’s investment in the relationship between Jane and Maura. Sasha Alexander and the show runner (of the first few seasons), Janet Tamaro, both indicated that they would be interested in adding that queer element to Rizzoli and Isles.

[2] I cannot in good conscious reference Xena here. The relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was censored by the network and while it was undoubtedly canon, it persists in the popular narrative as a ‘subtext’ show.

[3] We Deserved Better. (2016, 9 3). We Deserved Better. Retrieved from wedeservedbetter: http://wedeservedbetter.com/post/141388433803/your-friendly-neighborhood-lurker. Accessed 4/25/17

[4] Bernard, Marie Lyn, writing as Riese. (2016, 3 11). All 175 Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Characters on TV, And How They Died. Retrieved from Autostraddle: https://www.autostraddle.com/all-65-dead-lesbian-and-bisexual-characters-on-tv-and-how-they-died-312315/. Accessed 4/25/2017.

[5] Anonymous, Multiple Contributors. (2010, 8 2 – earliest edit documented). Bury Your Gays. Retrieved from TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays. Accessed 4/25/2017.

[6] There are conversations that should be had around the appropriative nature of her character as a played by a white woman in brown face, who wears a bindi, but as I am white, I do not wish to speak over the queer POC who have already spoken out, at length, regarding the treatment of POC on The 100.

#writing #qb the essay

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Star Trek: Prodigy Crew and Characters Have Deep Connections to Trek History

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The next starship crew exploring the Final Frontier of Star Trek has arrived. No, it’s not guest stars for Picard Season 2, or a full break-down of the rest of the Strange New Worlds gang. Instead, after a decent amount of speculation, the full cast and character list for the upcoming animated series Star Trek: Prodigy has been revealed. And, it turns out there are some massive deep cuts to old school Star Trek canon, specifically, The Original Series.

Remember when Spock wore that red visor in the classic Star Trek episode “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” Well, one of the new alien crewmembers on Prodigy is a direct call-back to that alien species. Here’s the details of the new Prodigy crew and how it all connects to the larger Trek universe and timeline.

Mild potential spoilers for Star Trek: Prodigy ahead.

Meet the Star Trek: Prodigy Crew

Paramount+ has given a full breakdown of the cast and characters in Star Trek: Prodigy, the upcoming series from Kevin and Dan Hageman, which is a collaboration between Nickelodeon and Paramount. The story will center around some adolescents who find themselves on board an abandoned starship. The series is set in 2383 (after Voyager and Lower Decks, but two years before the earliest Picard flashbacks). The show is also set in the Delta Quadrant, which means it’s pretty far away from the action of everything happening in the Prime Timeline in the 2380s and 2390s. (I.E. That Romulan Supernova in 2387, is really far away.)

We’ve known for awhile that Star Trek: Voyager‘s Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) will appear via hologram, but up until now, we haven’t known anything official about any of the new young alien crew members. That is, until now. Here’s who they are! Names and descriptions in quotes come straight from the new Paramount+ press release.

Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui) “a Brikar and an unusually bright eight-year-old girl. Rok is a bit shy, but not when it comes to her love for animals.” (Note: this is the Rock-looking character.)

Dal (Brett Gray) “17 years old and an unknown species, he fancies himself a maverick, who even in the toughest times, holds strong onto his unwavering hope.”

Zero (Angus Imrie) “is a Medusan: a noncorporeal, genderless, energy-based lifeform. Since others would go mad at the sight of their true self, Zero wears a containment suit they made themselves to protect others.” (We’ll come back to this in a second!)

Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzouka) “a 16-year-old Tellarite. Tellarites are known to relish an argument, and Jankom is no different. Regardless of opinion, he will always play ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sake of hearing all sides.”

Gwyn (Ella Purnell) “a 17-year-old Vau N’Akat who was raised on her father’s bleak mining planet and grew up dreaming to explore the stars.”

Murf (Dee Bradley Baker) “age and species is unknown but who is an endearing, indestructible blob with curiously good timing and an insatiable appetite for ship parts.”

Star Trek: Prodigy and Its Deep Canon Connections

The species Brikar comes from expanded Trek book canon, specifically a series of Starfleet Academy YA novels published in the ‘90s. The Brikar species first appeared in a book called Worf’s First Adventure. Looks like they’re legit canon now!

Obviously, Tellarites (the pig-like aliens) have been around since the TOS episode “Journey to Babel,” and have more recently appeared fairly prominently in Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 (as well as the Short Treks Harry Mudd episode “The Escape Artist”). So, we have an idea of how Jankom Pog will act. Maybe?

Some fans think the species Vau N’Akat could be connected to the Founders (shapeshifters) from DS9, but we don’t know if that’s true. For now the Vau N’Akat and Gwyn are a mystery.

But the most eyebrow-raising inclusion on this list is the fact that Zero — who looks like a robot — is actually a Medusan. Think of his robot-like appearance like a Vorlon encounter suit from Babylon 5. Which is an upgrade from the box that Medusan had travel inside of in TOS!

In “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” the Medusans were established as fantastic astrogators, despite the fact that they were formless, and the visage of them would drive you utterly nuts. In that episode, the fact that Dr. Miranda Jones (Diana Muldaur) was blind assisted her in dealing with the Medusan ambassador, Kollos. Spock, of course, at one point, did fail to have on his anti-insanity visor (cool red shades) and briefly, went bananas. The Medusans have been sparsely mentioned in Trek canon since, though in the Star Trek: Picard episode “Broken Pieces,” one of the Rios holograms did mention “Medusan Astrogation.”

More broadly, having a young Medusan as part of the crew of Prodigy is not only a cool Easter egg, but also speaks to the meaning of the origins of the alien.

“Is There In Truth No Beauty?” is the first episode in which we learn about the Vulcan concept of IDIC; infinity diversity in infinite combinations. But, since that episode we haven’t “seen” a Medusan since. In many ways, this alien species is the most extreme version of Star Trek’s message of tolerance: a lifeform that humanoids are psychologically unable to handle. Putting this kind of character on a Trek kids’ show is already pretty edgy. And hopefully, this news indicates that Prodigy won’t be a lightened-up version of Trek, but instead, will go boldly into the great cultural and political issues that make the franchise so beloved.

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Star Trek: Prodigy is set to debut sometime in 2021 on Paramount+.

The post Star Trek: Prodigy Crew and Characters Have Deep Connections to Trek History appeared first on Den of Geek.

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