moby dickgirl
I've been writing a oneshot #StarTrek fic, basically a #StarTrekEnterprise prequel, set in 2117 (34 years before ENTERPRISE kicks off), and here's what I've come up in terms of the relationships between canon characters.
Jul 7, 2023 at 5:32amWeb
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So based on established canon, we know that the United Earth Space Probe Agency (definitely founded by 2067) predates the United Earth Starfleet (founded sometime between 2112 and 2136), which predates United Earth (initial treaty signed 2130, unification not completed until the USA, PRC, and Australia joined up in 2150).

This brings us to our first character, ZEFRAM E. COCHRANE (born 27 January 2030). After #StarTrekFirstContact, Cochrane was faced with a problem. Contrary to his loud protestations in FIRST CONTACT, Cochrane is actually more of a disappointed socialist internationalist. The problem is that he is in Bozeman and the global Internet no longer exists. He has no way to prevent the United States from getting a monopoly on the warp drive if they get their hands on the Phoenix or her blueprints.

So instead he eats the tech. He sets fire to the blueprints (which he and Lily remember fine between them) and enlists a friend, maybe Chris Brynner (beta-canonically also living in Bozeman at this time) to sink the Phoenix to the bottom of the Marianas Trench (which is how she's recovered as a museum piece later when technology is more advanced, but it keeps her out of everyone else's hands).

Cochrane issues an ultimatum: he will allow the construction of warp starships only under his control, under a global agency that he runs, without fear or favour to any state. So he establishes the United Earth Space Probe Agency. And slowly, people come to join him.

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SOLKAR (born 2003) is the captain of the Vulcan starship T'Plana-Hath. He and Zefram Cochrane are also the loves of each other's lives. However, due to the prevailing social attitudes on Vulcan at this time, theirs is a star-crossed love which literally dares not speak its name; Vulcan has not yet adapted to the idea that loving humans is okay.

Per beta canon, Solkar had a son, Skon, in 2058, five years before he met Cochrane; Skon will go on to have a son of his own, Sarek, in 2165. Sarek will eventually marry a human, Amanda Stemple Grayson, and in 2230 they will have a son, Spock.

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V'LAS is Solkar's worst enemy. V'Las, a careerist Associate Administrator of the Vulcan High Command, is an asset of the Romulan Star Empire, and an adherent of the political philosophy that by Sarek's time will come to be known as logic extremism (at this point, the Vulcan right-wing is still established enough that it might be better just to call it logic dominionism).

V'Las despises Solkar. It's mutual. V'Las knows (through means yet to be elaborated upon) that Solkar is a libertine and a humanfucker. Not only that, he is the most successful example of one. V'Las considers Solkar a prancing, race-mixing faggot, but he also knows that Solkar, an upstanding and accomplished starship captain whose crew are unquestionably loyal to him, has the best chance of making prancing, race-mixing faggotry acceptable in Vulcan society. V'Las is striving desperately to prevent that.

V'Las will go on to be defeated by Jonathan Archer and pals in ENTERPRISE.

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In a tradition that will go on to be replicated in Starfleet, High Command ships had a Vulcan Ministry of Security complement (literally security — they are Vulcan redshirts). One of Solkar's redshirts was SOVAL (b. 2032).

For Solkar, Soval was something akin to Kirk's security chief Giotto from TOS. By the time of this fic, Soval has moved into the groundside Security Ministry (it's safer), but he remains unswervingly loyal to Solkar and is his chief shooter in the Vulcan establishment apparatus. V'Las knows Soval knows enough about him to destroy him, so while Soval is in the Ministry, V'Las has to come to uncomfortable compromises with his hated enemy Solkar, rather than squashing him. Soval is, for example, why Solkar still has a ship (the T'Plana-Hath-A; the T'Plana-Hath, no bloody A, B, C, or D, is a museum ship at this point).

In the timeline of this fic — the "Swansong" timeline — V'Las will eventually manoeuvre Soval out of the Ministry and successfully destroy Solkar, but will not be able to utterly destroy Soval. While he isn't (initially) much of a diplomat, Soval will join the Diplomatic Corps and eventually become Ambassador to Earth (per ENTERPRISE), feeling it's his mission to carry on the work his mentor started.

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The instrument of Solkar's destruction, and Soval's discommendation, will be SYRRAN, an equally senior Security MInistry operative. Syrran will be to V'Las what Soval is to Solkar. When he black bags Solkar, however, and threatens him with the Vulcan equivalent of the FBI–King letter, Solkar takes it with dignity and flawlessly logically demonstrates to Syrran that any philosophy which leads to the conduct in which Syrran is engaging must be fundamentally logically erroneous. Solkar is simply spitting back at Syrran at this point, but inadvertently radicalises Syrran in the process.

Per canon, Syrran will forswear V'Las and found the Syrranite collective from ENTERPRISE, desperately trying to discover Surak's true system of logic, motivated by Syrran's need to do penance and make amends for destroying a good man.

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Syrran and V'Las will know how to destroy Solkar because of T'LES. She was the science officer on Solkar's Earth expedition, and easily the most conservative member of his crew. Solkar knew that, but — having a streak of the Elnor in him — he still foolishly trusts her more than he would trust V'Las and Syrran. Since she is feeding information to them, this will lead to his downfall at her hands.

Per canon, T'Les has already had a daughter, who is 29 by this point: a Security Ministry agent named T'Pol (b. 2088).

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Five years after this fic, Solkar will have a second child. While he will not love his wife, will love his daughter deeply. Her name is T'PAU (b. 2122).

T'Pau will eventually join the Syrrannites. She will not know Syrran destroyed her father, but he will know (intensifying his guilt further). V'Las will also know, which is why he will pin the Vulcan High Command bombing on T'Pau, as a tacit challenge to Syrran, to force him to reveal himself — "you destroyed the father, will you destroy the daughter too?". Of course, T'Pau will be exonerated.

T'Pau's blood relation to Spock explains why she mediates his koon-ut kal-if-fee. It also explains her odd, hot-and-cold manner in "Amok Time", where she seems to be aware of Spock's love for Jim, and seems to know the fight is unfair and want it to be resolved some other way, but clamps down on Spock the instant he even mentions pulling out — perhaps because she knows what a disobedience of Vulcan tradition did to her own father, his great-grandfather, and she does not want her great-nephew to suffer the same fate.

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At this point, Operative T'Pol is spoiled and rather conservative, but she bears witness to the battle between Soval and Syrran, which she eventually comes to realise is a battle between Solkar and V'Las, and she can clearly see which of them is in the right.

She struggles to overcome the prejudices imparted to her by her mother, and eventually becomes a Vulcan officer of the United Earth Starfleet.

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Oh shit I never got around to the non-Vulcans. Uh,

MAXWELL ("MAX") FORREST (b. 2090) is the command pilot of Enterprise (XCV 330). He's a former United States Navy naval aviator who quit the service but remains rather fond of its traditions, but is more loyal to Cochrane, his surrogate father (and to Solkar, his surrogate stepfather, of whom he is jokingly jealous). Eventually, Max realises there's more to command than being a shit-hot pilot and grows and matures into the Admiral Forrest we see in ENTERPRISE.

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ALNARI ODAN is the chief medical officer of Enterprise (XCV 330). She's a joined Trill at a time when the Trill *super* have not told the humans about symbionts or joining, and they won't be doing it in Alnari's time, either — which is why the only job she could take was CMO, because it was the only way she could stop another CMO from finding out. Alnari is, of course, joined with ODAN, the symbiont from TNG's "The Host".

Trill main characters in TREK are generally shown as having the quiet nobility that they do partly because their symbionts are joined to good people and are, themselves, fundamentally good people. This is not the case here. Alnari is a good person. The Odan symbiont is not a good person.

Odan is immensely knowledgeable, genius-level intelligent, and has had dozens of past hosts (making Alnari a fantastic CMO), but it is also ruthless, controlling, and amoral (which is why Odan as it appears in "The Host" seems to regard its hosts as basically its puppets). By the time of "The Host", Odan has mellowed to the point that it only gets weird and controlling when it's really scared, a mellowing for which Alnari's willpower and fuck-you attitude is in large part responsible.

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LILY SLOANE is, unfortunately, dead, of natural causes — she has no canonical date of birth, but if she was Alfre Woodard's age in FIRST CONTACT, then, despite appearances*, she was actually 12 years older than Cochrane.

Lily is already rightfully acknowledged as Cochrane's equal among trade professionals; while Cochrane was the first warp field theorist, that only extended to developing the warp engine. Lily, an aeronautical engineer by profession, was the one who actually had to make it work as something other than "spherical warp drive in a vacuum". Cochrane may have invented warp drive, but Lily invented the starship.

Max was halfway raised by his surrogate grandmother Lily, remembers her with great fondness, and has made it very clear that he won't hear a bad word about her from his crew.

(* James Cromwell was 56 in FIRST CONTACT, but literally every single piece of canon and licensed material, for some reason, agrees that Cochrane was 32 or 33, likely because it's based on TOS: "Metamorphosis", in which Cochrane does look roughly that old. The handwave is "radiation poisoning". I think the idea that Cochrane is actually incredibly fucking young and has had to take on the responsibilities of an older man before his time is tremendously intriguing, so I'm taking it and running with it.)

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Canon statement for aspects of canon not clarified here, to give some idea of the provenance and genealogy of those elements. "Alpha canon" is stuff that would appear on Memory Alpha, so basically stuff that is on TV or in the films. "Beta canon" is all other officially licensed material. "Non-canon" is anything not officially licensed.

— "Solkar is Spock's grandfather" is alpha canon. "Solkar is also the unnamed Vulcan captain of the T'Plana-Hath" is beta canon. "Cochrane and Solkar have been intimate" is a popular discourse topic online, but is not canonical. Everything more detailed than that is my invention.

— "Soval worked in the Ministry of Security" is alpha canon. Everything else is my invention.

— Basically everything about Syrran is my invention.

— "T'Les disapproves of Vulcan–human relationships" is alpha canon. Everything else is my invention.

— "T'Pau is Solkar's daughter" is my invention, but I feel like T'Pau must be a relative of Spock's *somehow* if she's mediating his koon-ut kal-if-fee on his estate (and is using familiar thee/thou pronouns with him).

— "T'Pol worked for the Vulcan Security Ministry" and "T'Pol is T'Les' daughter" are alpha canon. Everything else is my invention.

— "Maxwell Forrest considered joining the United States Navy" is beta canon. Everything else is my invention.

— "There was a Trill crewmember aboard Enterprise (XCV 330)" is beta canon. Everything else about Alnari Odan is my invention.

— "Lily Sloane was an aeronautical engineer" is beta canon. Everything else about exactly what that meant, and about her knowing Maxwell Forrest, is my invention.

Show thread🏳️‍⚧️FloofyMaki🏳️‍⚧️Jul 7, 2023
@eigenvectrix is there a Q character?
Show threadmoby dickgirlJul 7, 2023
@FloofyMaki at this point, probably not, but given that the PICARD sequel series won't give us the "John de Lancie" Q being played by Natasha Lyonne like the world needs, that might change
Show threadPamphletJul 7, 2023
@eigenvectrix nice! Add a Noonian-Singh or a Soong and you just might have something!
Show thread🏳️‍⚧️FloofyMaki🏳️‍⚧️Jul 7, 2023
@eigenvectrix based. Star trek is based. TNG/DS9 personally my favorites.