How Would You Write Characters Who Don't Get Along With TnT?

[Ulva]

As always in life, there are just certain people you don't get along with. T'Pol is blunt and though she's nothing like in season 1, she is still a Vulcan and isn't going to sugar coat things the way humans could have done in the same situation. People's egos are rather frail and too much honestly without reassurance will cause hard feelings. Anyone who has an issue with self-esteem could end up really disliking her if they feel she has stepped on their toes. I can see new crewmen as well as seasoned admirals not liking her for that reason alone. Then, if you're a xenophobic, well, T'Pol being a Vulcan will always be a reason to dislike her. If someone has the hots for our favourite chief engineer, she'd be on the shit-list too for being a rival. When it comes to Vulcans, it's quite complicated. Before the Kir'Shara it was pretty simple; anyone who cared for politics would not be too friendly with her because of P'Jem. Others might react on her lack of control and if they found out about the Pa'nar... well, there were certainly reasons to not want to mix with her. After the awakening it's more complicated. What has been is not necessarily now, and people who previously would have avoided her could very well accept her now when the Vulcan leaders have changed, and with that the attitudes towards a lot of things.

Trip is more difficult because he is charming, and charming people tend to get along with most people they interact with. At least humans. However, it's not showing much in the series, but I bet he's not always charming. He's not just any engineer, but the chief engineer on Enterprise and you don't get to that position by being just good at what you do, you also have to want it enough. I can imagine that he has an enemy of 3 within Starfleet, competitors and/or superiors who were supporting other candidates or were proven wrong about something or what ever.

Then there are always people who just dislikes someone for being "perfect". I have seen people sputter dislike over individuals for being educated, friendly, fun and having a pretty girlfriend (and eventually having cute kids). It's a complicated mix of envy and personal clash that brings something like that out, but it happens. People being like that can be individuals who grew up with Trip and watched him at a distance, and also people who are friends of friends.

The problem with characters that don't like your main characters is that it's inevitable that people want them to change their mind. It gets tiresome if someone just sticks to their (wrong) opinion, and it's the same way IRL. You really don't want to hear for the 52nd time someone spewing dislike over another person. My reacting tend to be "shut up and move on" when I've heard it one time too many, and it's the same way with fictional characters. Either they turn out really evil or they change their opinion, at least if they are to have some sort of a future in a story.

[WarpGirl]

Oooh wonderful post! Yeah I think that Trip does have some personality traits that are not all "sunshine and roses" but who doesn't?

[panyasan]

WG, if you have the Episode Night in Sickbay look up that scene. You will hear T'Pol say "I can't keep up with you" after she steps off her machine.

SB

Silverbullet, that was irony. Pure and simple Vulcan irony.

[WarpGirl]

Oh but isn't that the best kind!

[putaro]

Who wouldn't get along with TnT?

Well, slackers for one. Those characters aren't going to be part of the Enterprise crew (or at least not for long) but they might run into them somewhere. I can see both Trip and T'Pol not having a lot of patience for people who aren't willing to put in 100%.

People who don't "get" T'Pol might not like her. She appears humorless much of the time. If you don't know her well you might not like that.

People who love protocol would probably not get along well with Trip.

TnT both tend to be know-it-alls. A lot of people either don't like that or are threatened by that.

Also, people don't have to mesh on all levels. For example, I used to work with a guy who was a total slacker and I couldn't stand working with him. He's a nice guy though, and really funny and fun to talk with. I'm happy to go have a beer with him but there's no way I would ever work with him again.

[Distracted]

Nice first post, Putaro. Welcome to the discussion. I would agree that neither Trip nor T'Pol would be likely to have patience with someone who didn't live up to their potential. But I believe that Trip would likely try to motivate that person with a pep talk, while T'Pol would take him aside and tell him that he obviously preferred to be doing something else, and recommend that he seek career counseling since she was recommending him for transfer. In that instance I think T'Pol's approach might be less popular. Might make an interesting story to contrast the two approaches, though.

[WarpGirl]

Welcome Putaro thank you for that wonderful post. Slackers never really occured to me because I never imagined a slacker could make it into Starfleet. But that is an intriguing concept.

[Cogito]

I expect that a tour of duty on a starship would be seen as hugely prestigious and much sought after by people intent on fast-tracking their career - perhaps with an eye on politics, or the upper echelons of the military. And people like that may have sponsors or family connections that give them an advantage in the competition for these positions. So not everybody on board would be there because they're good at the job, or because the job is something they want to do for its own sake.

I can see TnT having trouble with anyone who got where he is due to nepotism rather than ability, and anyone viewing starship duty as a means to an end rather than the end itself.

Fortunately there's no reason to suppose that anybody in the senior staff got where they are by nepotism.


[cough]Archer[/cough]

[Asso]

Fortunately there's no reason to suppose that anybody in the senior staff got where they are by nepotism.


[cough]Archer[/cough]

[Rigil Kent]

I can see TnT having trouble with anyone who got where he is due to nepotism rather than ability, and anyone viewing starship duty as a means to an end rather than the end itself.

Taking that a step further, I can see them having trouble with anyone who is a "by-the-book" bureaucrat type for numerous reasons, not the least of which being they're violating regs by being together (she's his direct superior, no matter the ridiculousness of the chain-of-command) as well as T'Pol being granted special dispensation when they brought her into Starfleet (how many Lieutenant Commanders in SF are pissed off because the slot they were gunning for was given to a Vulcan who didn't go through Starfleet Training?) Tucker would likely have similar problems, especially by flag officers who are probably at least a little annoyed that he completely ignored Starfleet Command during the Vulcan arc (sure, they'll publicly celebrate that he picked the right thing to do, but secretly, they'll be annoyed that he ignored them.) I toyed with this sort of thing in my Endeavour series in the form (initially) of LCDR Eisler and then later, ADM Black who was openly disgusted with Tucker being frocked after the Vulcan arc and with having T'Pol aboard as his XO.

[WarpGirl]

Call me crazy but I find it rather incredible that Trip was a full Commander, and slated to be First Officer at age 30. That's pretty young given that he has only been in Starfleet 12 years. In TNG people start at the Academy at 16. Trip joined at about 18. He advanced pretty fast considering there was no extraordinary circmustances. Riker advanced because of some sort of heroism I can't remember right now.

I could see how some people might look at such rapid advancement with a critical eye.

[Brandyjane]

I agree that people who resent Trip's rapid advancement would be at the top of the list of his detractors. I think they could have used Kelby more effectively if they played up something like that during his time as chief engineer. They could have cast someone a little older in the role who really didn't like living in Trip's shadow.

As for people who don't like T'Pol, Alelou wrote a missing scene from season one (sorry, I can't remember which) that had a member of T'Pol's department complaining to Trip about her because she's not fun, she gives him lower performance reviews that he thinks he deserves, she double checks his work, etc. I liked that story quite a bit because it really seemed like something that would happen to T'Pol, particularly in her early days aboard Enterprise.

Cutler could have disliked her after the way T'Pol rebuffed her friendly overtures, but I got more of the impression that she understood that T'Pol was just being T'Pol.

[WarpGirl]

Oh poor Kelby I wonder how much of the "animosity" between him and Trip, was career jealousy or just messed up hormones from the Orian harlots. I mean the poor guy gets cast as a Trip "hater" all the time, and I can't help but wonder, is it really his fault? I mean he was still on the ship in Terra Prime if he actually hated Trip so much why didn't he ask to go somewhere else? Columbia needed a ChEng.

[putaro]

I would say that Starfleet will have its fair share of incompetents. I'd don't think you'll find any on Enterprise, but Enterprise is the "best of the best" - it's only 83 people after all.

I've worked with NASA, I've worked with Lawrence Livermore National Labs, I've worked at Apple. They all have incompetents running around.

There may also be cases where it's not a case of disliking the person, but maybe not being able to work with their style. For example, there was a nuclear physicist who had written part of the software for a project I worked on. The man was brilliant. The story was that he had learned C by taking a C book (K&R for those who know C) home for the weekend and when he came back to work on Monday he knew the language cold. He did tricks with C that the rest of us mere mortals couldn't follow. His code broke reverse engineering tools. But it always worked and it worked on every machine we ever ported it to. It was just completely unmaintainable by anyone except him. We had a project underway at one point to strip all of his code out and rewrite it from scratch because no one could add any features to it.

I've been thinking that that would be how a Vulcan would write software, especially one not trained in software engineering. Utterly brilliant but completely unmaintainable by anyone else. That would be a fun story line, with who ever writes software in Enterprise/Starfleet always rejecting T'Pol's code and the tension just rising and rising.

[Transwarp]

I've been thinking that that would be how a Vulcan would write software

I think it would be the other way around. I see Vulcans as being more ordered and deliberate in everything they do. I think a Vulcan would be more likely to carefully test and document all his code than a human. Even an untrained Vulcan would see the wisdom of standards and documentation. After all, it's logical.