Samantha Wildman is honestly sooo funny as a background character because she’s like...such a normie against the rest of the Voyager crew, who just pops up occasionally to have normal conversations and experience horrors.
Janeway has a martyr complex and is constantly battling the narrative for dominance
Harry Kim has his whole complex where he’s trapped as both the golden boy and the ensign while also dying and being killed and being brought back just a little different every episode
Seven of Nine has her everything going on
Kes and Neelix are weirdos with species-wide trauma and Neelix died
B’Elanna also died and went to hell
Lon Suder
And Samantha is just like, working in the science lab while untold horrors stalk the halls of the Voyager, looking forward to whatever Neelix has whipped up in the kitchen
The few appearances/mentions she has that aren’t Life Threatening Crisis are
really sweet if it wasn’t in the context of a horrifying episode reveal that Samantha devotedly watches Neelix’s little news show every day (neelix superfan). Average woman turning on France 24/BBC every morning and the forecast is never not unspeakable monsters
bumbles into stopping a guy’s suicide attempt by requesting a bedtime story for her child
stereotypical conversation about having to provide new clothes for fast growing child (derailed)
one person on the ship enthusiastic about Neelix’s cooking (#1 Neelix fan)
xenobiologist inexplicably sent on a ship whose mission is to go hunt down terrorists, as if she’s going to get a spare moment to study the effects of long-term space habitation on hagfish or whatever
Like if Voyager had the tone of Lower Decks (animated), the recurring gag would be Samantha just doing her little nematode observations in the background while there’s a five-way borg/hirogen/alien anomaly/kazon/Q incursion going on, and talking to her coworkers about how Naomi’s drawings are like, really really good. Have you seen how good she’s gotten at shading? She’s just an average woman trapped on the most ridiculous and protagonist-laden ship in the known universe. The inherent humor and horror of being a background character in the genre of Epics
There's something decidedly offensive, as a Hylotl, about poisoned ocean planets. And doubly offensive are the birds that populate it. They're mostly just an annoyance, but once in a while one will have a good go at one's little green boat.
And this is how Cass found me, adrift with a broken mast, trying to stubbornly paddle along with a rapidly corroding sword.
Fortunately she was happy to pull me aboard and drop me off at port. Along the way she told me she and her pipkin, Pickle, are junk trawlers. They're part of an initiative to pull all the scrap metal from the ocean which is then sold off-world to smelters. The funds from this will go towards purchasing a terraformer to turn the world back into a lush ocean planet once more.
I was understandably a bit nervous about her pet, but she assured me that Pickle was completely harmless, and in fact helps power the ship with it's steam, generated from small items of junk such as nuts and bolts.
They have such a noble goal and I wish them well on their travels.
Built for the Autumn prompts "Rusty" and "Pipkin".
Mods used: WW Furnishing, Prop Pack, Foodie's Furniture, Pixel/ Fixel Goods Store, Lepidia: Gloamfall, NpcSpawner+, and admin commands to make a perfectly docile pipkin <3
Spaceshiptember 2023, Day 27: Shipyards/Construction- "Starfleet's Core"
Utopia Planitia was destroyed. The builder of a thousand starships broken by hubris. The exploited exploited, brought on by the dying days of the Star Empire. But it will rise again from the ashes; there will always be new worlds to explore, new conquests to defend from.