Trip's Parents

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Amberlioness
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby Amberlioness » Wed Jan 17, 2018 2:33 am

Great discussion! A lot of ideas I hadn’t really considered before. (In particular, the idea of Trip having to be more of a parent to his younger sister.)

My concept of Trip’s parents centers on Archer’s description of them as eccentric. As said above, eccentric can mean a lot of things. I tend to think of eccentric academic types (ok stereotype, but I’ve known quite a few like this); intellectual and/or creative, educated, often progressive thinkers, and potentially extremely self-absorbed. This self-absorption could fit with being an absentee or not fully present parent, especially to the youngest child (Lizzie). I thought academics would make sense for two reasons.

First, we know that Trip joined Starfleet at 18, and became a Commander and Chief Engineer by 30. Even with accelerated promotion due to the newness of Starfleet, he has got to have significant professional credentials. I would think he needs to have earned a Ph.D. or equivalent along with the Starfleet training, and actual work on the NX-01program. (The work on the NX-01 could have been accepted as thesis work at a university.) In order to do all of this by 30, I would think that Trip could not have had a typical high school education. He had to have done some advanced placement, independent study, or remote learning at a university. I think that academic parents would have been more likely to make this happen. (This can be consistent with a parent who is not really engaged. My own academic parents were very focused on education, but tended to forget things like laundry, or picking up kids after school.)

Second, if Trip’s parents had wanted their brilliant son to go into academic or private research, but instead he joined the quasi-military Starfleet, that could explain distance or disagreement between them.

Thanks again for getting the gears moving!

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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby CoffeeCat » Thu Jan 18, 2018 3:12 pm

We watched "The Augments" last night where this conversation happened:

How are your parents?

They"re fine.They moved into a new house in Mississippi.
It"s not like the old place in Panama City, but - it"s pretty nice. Why do you ask?

You haven"t spoken of them recently. In fact, you"ve said very little since I returned from Vulcan.

There hasn"t been a lot of time to catch up.

You also haven"t joined us at the Captain"s table since we left Earth.

What are you trying to say?

You"ve been avoiding me.

Well, maybe I have. But you got to admit, it"s a little awkward. I means, you"re married. I know you did it to help your mother, but it"s gonna take me a little time to adjust.

I"m still adjusting to it myself.

This is gonna sound strange. But as tough as it was watching you go through with the ceremony I was proud of you for what you did. Yeah, I guess it"s probably for the best.

What do you mean?

Come on. It"s not like we would have made an ideal couple. A Vulcan and a human? Romeo and Juliet probably stood a better chance.


One could look at this and say, "hmmm Trip's talking about his parents and then mentions "Romeo and Juliet" in the same conversation." and then infer that something isn't right in the state of Mississippi. But then again: Mississippi...
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby panyasan » Wed Jan 24, 2018 7:47 pm

Hurray! Finally some action! Thanks CoffeeCat for bringing up a new topic!

How are you CoffeeCat? I remember you're busy writing a story with a title that had to do with a precious stone (starting with an A).

And that you're a huge fan of Tom Paris and B'lenna.

Anyway, so nice to see familiar names: Asso, Transwarp and Dinah!

Welcome everyone!
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby panyasan » Wed Jan 24, 2018 8:05 pm

But to come back to the topic at hand: I think Trip comes from a warm home, but he has outgrown his family. He is out there in space, being the best engineer of the world, seeing new worlds and his family stays back on Earth. Plus the death of Lizzy has an enormous effect on Trip's family. So it's a complicated relationship.

Maybe that is why he is thinking about Romeo and Julliet when talking about his parents. He want to be with them, but their is a gap between them.

In my MU story MU Trip's father has died a violent death and his mother had to make choices to protect her family, choices that he didn't like at all and has resulted in a deep mistrust.

Don't you love it when you can create your own "parents" to fit your story. :wise:
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The Naked Truth and other necessities of life

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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby CoffeeCat » Thu Jan 25, 2018 2:43 am

panyasan wrote:Hurray! Finally some action! Thanks CoffeeCat for bringing up a new topic!

How are you CoffeeCat? I remember you're busy writing a story with a title that had to do with a precious stone (starting with an A).

And that you're a huge fan of Tom Paris and B'lenna.

Anyway, so nice to see familiar names: Asso, Transwarp and Dinah!

Welcome everyone!


Hi there. How have you been. I've been so busy with rl that all writing has been put on the back burner. Got remarried, had a career change, and just recently had a baby.

Still a fan of p/t but not interested in working on that old story at all. I think I outgrew it. I should've known i wouldn't finish it since crossovers tend to annoy me :roll:

I started watching Enterprise again because our current political climate in the United States made me think of it.

Then the story bug bit me and I'm now thinking of a virtual season v, starting with the aftermath of Terra Prime. I've been reading how other fan fic writers have handled it and i do have some ideas on how to treat his parents: loving yet absent... And absent again to the point where Trip needs to go find them :D. Bigotted? Maybe. Misunderstood? Quite possibly. Eccentric? No doubt about it.
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby panyasan » Fri Jan 26, 2018 11:55 am

CoffeeCat wrote:Hi there. How have you been. I've been so busy with rl that all writing has been put on the back burner. Got remarried, had a career change, and just recently had a baby.


Wow, that are a lot of changes in short period of time. I always find it great when people have the courage to make a career change and hopefully your will bring you more joy and peace in your life. As for you getting remarried, it mostly has to do with the grief of a divorce and the huge challenge of a new marriage. My best wishes for you and your husband. And a baby.. :loveeyes: . Becoming a mother is such a huge change for your life. But it's such a wonderful gift. Congrats with your little one, CoffeeCat. I am sure you are a great mum.

CoffeeCat wrote: I started watching Enterprise again because our current political climate in the United States made me think of it.

LOL, I was thinking the same thing the other day. These are historical times.

CoffeeCat wrote:Then the story bug bit me and I'm now thinking of a virtual season v, starting with the aftermath of Terra Prime. I've been reading how other fan fic writers have handled it and i do have some ideas on how to treat his parents: loving yet absent... And absent again to the point where Trip needs to go find them :D. Bigotted? Maybe. Misunderstood? Quite possibly. Eccentric? No doubt about it.

I am not sure if Trip's parents would be eccentric (depending on your definition of the word). But they seems to me original people. 8) And I really love the character of Trip, because he is such a nice guy, but also real person with flaws, struggling to do the right thing. I really like that. Or maybe I am just biased as TnT-er. :D
Love is a verb.

Chapter 17 of Word of Ice is up!

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8522099/17/World-of-Ice

The Naked Truth and other necessities of life

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12056258/1 ... es-of-life

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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby CoffeeCat » Sun Jan 28, 2018 11:00 pm

panyasan wrote:
CoffeeCat wrote: I started watching Enterprise again because our current political climate in the United States made me think of it.

LOL, I was thinking the same thing the other day. These are historical times.


Well I think watching things unfold has given me a lot of story fodder.
panyasan wrote:
CoffeeCat wrote:Then the story bug bit me and I'm now thinking of a virtual season v, starting with the aftermath of Terra Prime. I've been reading how other fan fic writers have handled it and i do have some ideas on how to treat his parents: loving yet absent... And absent again to the point where Trip needs to go find them :D. Bigotted? Maybe. Misunderstood? Quite possibly. Eccentric? No doubt about it.

I am not sure if Trip's parents would be eccentric (depending on your definition of the word). But they seems to me original people. 8) And I really love the character of Trip, because he is such a nice guy, but also real person with flaws, struggling to do the right thing. I really like that. Or maybe I am just biased as TnT-er. :D


"Eccentric" was actually the word Captain Archer used to describe them. I actually have no idea what he meant by it which is kinda why I started this thread. Any suggestions might be helpful :)
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby TeresaM777 » Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:10 am

So glad to see people talking, here. In which episode is it that Archer says that Trip's parents are eccentric? I missed that comment.

I like to think of Trip's parents are supportive, but unable to handle their own grief as well as his. Or, perhaps he was just saying that his folks were out of town (or even off world, somewhere). Possibly, he was just saying that because he wanted T'Pol to invite him home.

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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby CoffeeCat » Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:59 pm

TeresaM777 wrote:So glad to see people talking, here. In which episode is it that Archer says that Trip's parents are eccentric? I missed that comment.


Not sure. I was watching season 3 at the time, but I was also watching Enterprise clips on YouTube to refresh myself on some things...
I think it might have actually been *the_abomination*.
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby CoffeeCat » Sat Feb 03, 2018 10:01 pm

Omg. I forgot this forum automatically changes the name of that episode...

Bwahahahahaha!!!
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby CoffeeCat » Sun Feb 04, 2018 4:12 pm

I seemed to have missed this post. I do apologise!

Amberlioness wrote:Great discussion! A lot of ideas I hadn’t really considered before. (In particular, the idea of Trip having to be more of a parent to his younger sister.)

My concept of Trip’s parents centers on Archer’s description of them as eccentric. As said above, eccentric can mean a lot of things. I tend to think of eccentric academic types (ok stereotype, but I’ve known quite a few like this); intellectual and/or creative, educated, often progressive thinkers, and potentially extremely self-absorbed. This self-absorption could fit with being an absentee or not fully present parent, especially to the youngest child (Lizzie). I thought academics would make sense for two reasons.

First, we know that Trip joined Starfleet at 18, and became a Commander and Chief Engineer by 30. Even with accelerated promotion due to the newness of Starfleet, he has got to have significant professional credentials. I would think he needs to have earned a Ph.D. or equivalent along with the Starfleet training, and actual work on the NX-01program. (The work on the NX-01 could have been accepted as thesis work at a university.) In order to do all of this by 30, I would think that Trip could not have had a typical high school education. He had to have done some advanced placement, independent study, or remote learning at a university. I think that academic parents would have been more likely to make this happen. (This can be consistent with a parent who is not really engaged. My own academic parents were very focused on education, but tended to forget things like laundry, or picking up kids after school.)

Second, if Trip’s parents had wanted their brilliant son to go into academic or private research, but instead he joined the quasi-military Starfleet, that could explain distance or disagreement between them.

Thanks again for getting the gears moving!


I would agree that his parents were probably academically inclined. What i do find interesting is that Trip had an older brother (as mentioned in season 2) yet he's the one that inherrited the name "Charles". Maybe it's a half brother? Anyhow. I thow the tptb intended his older brother to be gay and have the name "Albert" (all I can think of is The Birdcage, LOL).

So I'm thinking maybe his mother was a somewhat liberal architect and his father was a somewhat conservative southerner who was an architectural engineer. They probably met at a college.
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby panyasan » Fri Feb 09, 2018 11:10 pm

I agree that Trip's parents were very intelligent people, focussed on their workfield, while trying to give their childern a warm home. And that can be hard.

I was just thinkng the other day that maybe Trip felt a bit seperated from his parents (maybe because he choose Starfleet? Too much focus on their workfield) and that he was taking under the wings of Archer's father in an engineer project. Trip learns a lot from Archer's father and meet Jonathan Archer who he sees as sort of missed big brother.

Is that possible or does this not match with the timelive in ENT?

It would explain why Trip is first more or less uncritical of Captain Archer, but later on (as his relationship with others on the ship developes in real friendship), he becomes more his own man.
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Chapter 17 of Word of Ice is up!

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8522099/17/World-of-Ice

The Naked Truth and other necessities of life

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12056258/1 ... es-of-life

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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby CoffeeCat » Sat Feb 10, 2018 1:14 pm

Agreed on everything you guys said about a loving home, very intelligent, maybe even academic.

But I really can't ignore the episode "Strange New World" or even what Trip said about himself in Terra Prime:

"You know, I never used to like Vulcans all that much myself. They always seemed so smug. Making us jump through hoops for every little advance in warp technology, and they knew the answers all along. So what was it with you? The ears? The fact that they're vegetarian?"

That attitude stems from fear whether it's rationalized or not. And parents can be loving and ignorant at the same time. It's not one way or the other. It is something that can add more dimention to these characters, however.

If I were to use these characters (I decided not to, btw), I would make them the way Trip was at the beginning of the series. Afraid, yet open to be enlightened.
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:07 pm

^ I think Trip's prejudices about Vulcans are more a product of hanging around Archer than anything he might have got from his parents.
Last edited by Kevin Thomas Riley on Sat Feb 10, 2018 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Trip's Parents

Postby Asso » Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:15 pm

I think instead that Trip has no prejudices about Vulcans. I believe that he thinks very simply that they are really an obstacle to the star dreams of the Terrans (and, frankly, how not to agree with him?). After all, he is a romantic dreamer. I do not think he likes who, wrongly or rightly, seems to want to make his dreams remain merely dreams. Certainly, destiny is really strange, with a bizarre sense of humour: at some point in his life, the most wonderful of dreams goes embodied in the beautiful shapes of a Vulcan female.
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