Layers of friendship: Trip and Archer

[Dinah]

They established the Trip/Archer friendship in Broken Bow. I wonder if at some point someone thought, "Whoa, male friendship. We better not let these guys get too close. It could be taken the wrong way." Too often is two people of the same sex are close friends or roommates, the immediate assumption in our society today is that they're gay. The writers made sure that we knew that both Archer and Trip were heterosexual males, but there's still plenty of slash fanfic out there.

Cogenitor gave them a perfect reason to back away from the close friendship, and I'm not sure they ever saw a good reason to go back to it. After all, by this time TPTB had already established that Archer was the driving force in the Federation. In season 4 he would become the savior of the Vulcans. I almost think they wanted to create a lone wolf, a towering historical figure who would be worthy to be the idol of James Kirk. Towering figures don't need anybody, including sociable engineers. Unfortuantely, the Archer we saw on screen desperately needed Trip, or someone like him, to keep him connected to the world around him.

I think the way the show was set up was a perfect example of faulty thinking. You create a ship full of the best of the best -- Hoshi, Trip, Malcolm, T'Pol are all trailblazers in their given areas -- but then to decide that only one person, Archer, is ever going to amount to anything. If all you want is Archer the Great, why not put him on a ship with a bunch of mediocre gofers and be done with it. What a monumental waste.

[justTripn]

Ha, ha! Suddenly I recall that the "brothers" and the hero worship go hand in hand. My oldest J. treats his younger brother P. in ways that are shocking, basically bossing him around and appropriating things (J. has an incredible sense of entitlement), yet the younger inexplicably continues to think J. is the most amazing brother in the world.

When I tell my family some shocking thing that J. has done to P. and P. has ALLOWED him to do, I learn that I did exactly the same things to my younger sister (though I have no recollection of this). Apparently, once I walked into my sister's dorm room at college and TOOK her glasses because I couldn't find mine. That type of thing. And apparently I had all this power I didn't know I had. Apparently she would buy a new outfit and come show it to me and I would say, "Oh that looks stupid," and totally crush her because I was the authority on all that was cool, a "fact" to which I was totally oblivious.

Hmmm . . . and now I see Dinah's post. Well, they were consistent in making Archer a loner, in general. It's lonely at the top.

[justTripn]

Ha, ha! Suddenly I recall that the "brothers" and the hero worship go hand in hand. My oldest J. treats his younger brother P. in ways that are shocking, basically bossing him around and appropriating things (J. has an incredible sense of entitlement), yet the younger inexplicably continues to think J. is the most amazing brother in the world.

When I tell my family some shocking thing that J. has done to P. and P. has ALLOWED him to do, I learn that I did exactly the same things to my younger sister (though I have no recollection of this). Apparently, once I walked into my sister's dorm room at college and TOOK her glasses because I couldn't find mine. That type of thing. And apparently I had all this power I didn't know I had. Apparently she would buy a new outfit and come show it to me and I would say, "Oh that looks stupid," and totally crush her because I was the authority on all that was cool, a "fact" to which I was totally oblivious.

Hmmm . . . and now I see Dinah's post. Well, they were consistent in making Archer a loner, in general. It's lonely at the top.

Edit: I am referring to my next youngest sister and not the one who lurks at Triaxian Silk.

[WarpGirl]

Dinah's beautiful post sums up all my feelings about Archer and the majority of the ENT dynamic that I despise. It's why I read the fanfic only and only watched when I started writing myself.

[Asso]

Dinah's analysis is perfect.

[Aquarius]

I have to say that, in determining whether or not two men have a fraternal-type relationship, it's their own perceptions and expectations of that relationship that are going to define that, not necessarily outsider observations or comparisons to how one's own brothers behave. Also, all relationships are fluid and dynamic; one's life stage is going to affect the intensity of feelings and how they're expressed.

[WarpGirl]

Well that's obvious. However since we never heard either one of them even hint that they felt the relationship was fraternal all we have is our own perceptions of whether the relationship was in any way fraternal.

[Pegmumm]

As far as the relationship between Trip and Archer... what you see is what you get. Each of us has endowed the characters we write about with the facets necessary for story development. What we see into the characters on the screen has alot to do with the relationships we maintain in real life.

So... what is it that you want to see between the two characters?
Personally in each of my storylines, the relationship is different. One is a father son type nurturing, the other a rivalry by 2 men in love with the same woman on the order of a dance.

Having had more male friends than female ones who were friends themselves, each one defined their relationship differently. Most men see their relationships as situational, ie. bowling drinking buddies, guys you do stuff with. For the heavy emotional stuff, societal norms incline men towards emotional intimacy with women. You do stuff with guys, you feel stuff with women.

Warren Farrell wrote some excellent books if you're interested.
Also Lionel Tiger... he wrote that men are inclusionary, always looking at male friends in terms of working as teams. He noted that women are exclusionary. I would guess that Archer would look at Trip as part of the team... but not alot more, ie watching water polo... or drinking at Rosie's. I think Trip was much closer to Malcolm due to shared adversity.

Archer tended to have his team seek him out... not vice versa.

peg

[Alelou]

I think that early on, when we see Archer and Trip discuss Natalie from Pensacola, we can assume they were pretty close friends. Over time, distance arises. Some of that is necessary because of rank, and some of it was also inevitable in that Trip fell in love with someone he wasn't supposed to fall in love with -- especially since he might have some reason to think that Archer himself was interested. CT is right ... a conversation between those two about it would have been good to see. I sometimes wonder why, when they had Trip ask to leave, they didn't let that conversation happen in that scene. However, there's really no way a captain ought to want to have a relationship like that on board his ship, and obviously they wanted Trip to be able to come back.

[Asso]

It's hard for me to understand the story of the rank.
I can speak for personal experience: if you take only the rank, you lose friendship. But you do this only if you don't want friendship, or if you are blinded.
And these two things are not incompatible.

[Silverbullet]

I always thought that Archer was flawed. He was inconsistent, seemed to need constat reassuring. Then he would disregard advice. He certainly didn't act like a Captain. In Azati Prime, no commander would take that suicide mission. (Unfortunately, the show was written as a one Hero show so they had to let him take it) Commanders delegate they don't risk themselves as they are too important to the Ship and the Mission.

It is a pity that Archer ws not written better as there was a very good Character in Archer. In the other series the Captains wre also flawed but they were drawn better and were allowed to act as Captains would.

As for siblings, much depends on the Parents. They have to make sure that Siblings know that they have a blood tie. If one is obviously treaeted much beter than the others and is shown to be more liked that can affect the relationship between the siblings. I and my older Brother Hate one another and always will. Simply because my mother thought the Sun rose and Set on him and excluded me and my other broter completely. Rankles.

[WarpGirl]

I'm a woman and I don't think I'm exclusionary. In any case it seemed that Archer is the type of man that all of his relationships, personal, and professional must be on his terms nobody else's. It's part of the reason I don't think of him as a great leader or Captain. I just think that Trip was developing into someone who couldn't meet Archer's terms anymore and Archer was oblivious. And yes I could see a rivalry develop on Archer's side about T'Pol I intend to explore that soon.