Trip Tucker

Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Species Human
Affiliation Starfleet
Posting Chief engineer, Enterprise,
briefly Columbia
Rank Commander
Portrayed by Connor Trinneer

Charles "Trip" Tucker III (short for “Triple”, since he is the third generation of his family to be named Charles Tucker), portrayed by Connor Trinneer, is a fictional character in the television series Star Trek: Enterprise, which is the last generation of the Star Trek series.

Tucker was the chief engineer on the Enterprise, and also briefly served as chief engineer aboard Enterprise's sister ship Columbia.

Biography

Tucker, born in 2121, first met Jonathan Archer about a decade prior to the launch of Enterprise when the two worked together on an early warp 2 prototype vessel using the warp engine designed by Archer's father, Henry Archer.

While a knowledgeable engineer, Tucker can be rash and “illogical”, a fact that early on causes friction between him and Enterprise’s Vulcan science officer, T'Pol. During the first year of Enterprise's mission, he finds himself coping with situations no Starfleet engineer has ever coped with, and is a key player in the vessel finally achieving its then-record breaking speed of warp 5. Tucker also has to contend with a more dubious honor when he becomes the first human male to become pregnant.

Tucker also enjoys occasional romantic relationships, including one with an exotic alien princess in the episode "Precious Cargo." When challenged about these relationships, his stock phrase is, "I was a perfect gentleman." He is statistically the greatest charmer aboard the Enterprise and he has gone down in Star Trek history as the first human male ever to be pregnant and the first human male ever to be in a relationship with a member of another species. Before Trip, there was a woman who fell in love with a Vulcan in disguise when he, along with one of T'Pol's ancestors, crashed on planet Earth while studying the first man-made satellite.

On the first episode of the third season Earth was attacked by an alien race called the Xindi. The attack was made by a prototype WMD that struck Florida and caused the deaths of 7 million people, including Tucker's sister. This left Tucker emotionally scarred and unable to sleep without experiencing vivid nightmares. At the request of Dr. Phlox, Tucker agreed to undergo Vulcan neuro-pressure treatments with T'Pol. Although the treatments required very intimate contact between the two, there were no signs at first of anything beyond a professional relationship developing between the officers. Fellow officers (especially Travis) were suspicious but Trip denied all their conclusions.

At a crucial point during the Xindi mission, Tucker suffered a potentially fatal injury, and the only way to save his life was to create a clone in order to harvest needed brain cells. The clone, named "Sim", grew to adulthood over only a few days, and many of the crew became fond of him, in particular T'Pol, who actually kissed Sim after he confessed to being attracted to T'Pol — but adding that he was uncertain whether those feelings were his own or Tucker's. Against Sim's objections, Archer ordered him to undergo the medical procedure to extract the needed cells in order to save Tucker's life, even though this proved fatal to Sim.

As the Xindi mission progressed, Tucker found himself growing closer to T'Pol, and the two briefly became lovers, an event T'Pol later dismissed as an experiment, though the real cause was a side-effect of her addiction to the substance Trellium D, which affected her emotional judgment. Later, however, the two found themselves continuing a somewhat clandestine relationship.

Tucker realized he was in love with T'Pol during a trip to Vulcan with her after the Xindi mission, during which she decided to marry a Vulcan named Koss in an arranged marriage. Although T'Pol's mother encouraged Tucker to express his feelings to her daughter, he chose not to do so. Later, following T'Pol's annulment of her marriage, Tucker considered becoming involved with her again; however, T'Pol told him that she was not interested in reviving their relationship. In the episode "Observer Effect", T'Pol expressed great concern for Tucker, suggesting her feelings for him remained strong, despite her claims to the contrary.

In 2154, during a mission to prevent a Romulan automated marauder from starting a war, Tucker determined that his attraction to T'Pol was negatively affecting his ability to do his job. After the mission, he requested, and received, a transfer to the new warp 5 starship, Columbia, under the command of Captain Erika Hernandez. Within two days of Tucker's assignment to the vessel, several of Columbia's engineering crew request transfers. During this period, Tucker began experiencing vivid daydreams involving T'Pol, not realizing that she was actually unintentionally communicating with him via a newly discovered mental ability that was unlocked when she began performing mind melds. In the episode "Bound", it was revealed that Tucker and T'Pol had somehow psychically bonded when they had made love a year earlier, although this link apparently didn't manifest itself right away.

During the events of the episode "Divergence", Tucker was temporarily reassigned to Enterprise in order to facilitate repairs following a run-in with the Klingons. He subsequently submitted a request to return to Enterprise full-time, a request that was presumably granted. Not long after, Tucker and T'Pol reestablished their relationship.

Tucker served as Enterprise's chief engineer for a full decade, and prepared to transfer to one of the newly built warp 7-capable starships following the decommissioning of Enterprise in 2161, which was to coincide with the signing of the Federation Charter. The series finale "These Are the Voyages..." revealed that Tucker and T'Pol ended their romantic relationship at some point after the events of "Terra Prime", for reasons as yet unrevealed. Despite this, the two remained close, and Tucker had to reassure T'Pol that the decommissioning of Enterprise and their reassignment to different vessels would not have any bearing on their friendship.

In the last episode, when Shran's former associates track down Enterprise and board the ship, they demand that Archer take them to Shran, but the captain refuses. The aliens are about to kill Archer, so Trip, thinking fast, tells them that he will take them to Shran. When Archer protests, the aliens knock him out. Trip leads the aliens into what appears to be a harmless utility closet — he tells them it's simply a com station and he's going to get Shran to come to them. Trip tells them he just needs to connect a couple of things, but when he brings a pair of conduits together, a massive explosion erupts, taking out both Trip and the aliens. Trip is critically wounded. In a July 2005 interview, Berman revealed that had the series been renewed, Trip would have survived; and he and T'Pol would be back together.[1]

Personal life

In 2153, Tucker lost his sister, Elizabeth, in the Xindi attack on Earth which destroyed her hometown in southern Florida. In a first season episode, "Fusion", he revealed he had a brother whom he practiced "dancing with", although we never saw him. His parents survived the attack and later relocated to Mississippi; they were invited to attend the signing of the UFP treaty in 2161, and kept their promise to attend even after Tucker's death. T'Pol requested the opportunity to meet them at this occasion, but it's not known if she did. Little is known of Trip's parents except that Archer described them as being "eccentric."

At least three offspring have — directly or indirectly — been linked to Tucker:

Trip is knowledgeable about the ancient board game Go, and actually has a Go board in his cabin (he is seen playing the game with the title character of the episode "Cogenitor")

Alternate timelines

In the alternate timeline seen in the episode "Twilight", Tucker becomes captain of Enterprise following the incapacitation of Jonathan Archer and T'Pol's resignation from Starfleet. He is killed when Enterprise's bridge is destroyed shortly before Archer resets the timeline.

As stated above, the episode "E²" takes place in an altered timeline. Except that Lorian is the son of T'Pol and Tucker, little else is revealed of the alternate Trip. He is long deceased (the cause apparently tragic, but not specified in the episode) by the time Lorian's version of Enterprise makes rendezvous with its namesake.

Mirror Universe

In the Mirror Universe, Tucker is the chief engineer of the ISS Enterprise, but is badly disfigured due to exposure from heavy delta ray radiation emanating from his Enterprise's engines. This version of Tucker also had a sexual relationship with the Mirror T'Pol, who once exploited this relationship in her attempt to sabotage Enterprise; she used a mind meld to implant a post-hypnotic suggestion in Tucker's mind. It is implied this isn't the first time she has used him in this way. Tucker is subsequently tortured in the agony booth, but vehemently denies any wrongdoing, insisting that he has always been loyal to the Empire and Archer. In the end Archer tells Reed to break Tucker before releasing him from the booth, much to Tucker's horror. He later confronts T'Pol in main engineering and tells her he spent four hours in the booth. This version of Tucker, along with much of the ISS Enterprise crew, travels to the USS Defiant - which had been discovered in the Mirror Universe - and tries to get the ship working to further the Mirror Jonathan Archer's attempt to take over the Terran Empire. Tucker successfully foils a plot by the mirror Phlox to sabotage key systems aboard Defiant.

Novels

In the framing story of the Enterprise novel, Last Full Measure (May 2006), it is revealed that Tucker did not actually die in "These Are the Voyages...", but survived and lived to be over 120 years of age (Tucker meets the young James T. Kirk and his family). The details of this plot point were revealed in the novel The Good That Men Do (written, as was Last Full Measure, by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin).

In The Good That Men Do, Tucker becomes impatient to do something about the coming Romulan threat to Earth, even though Starfleet has ordered Enterprise to return home to bolster the upcoming formation of the Coalition of Planets (a precursor to the United Federation of Planets).

Tucker's crewmate, Malcolm Reed, puts him in touch with Harris, Reed's contact within Section 31. Tucker agrees to an undercover mission into Romulan territory to find and neutralize the Romulans' new warp 7 engine program, which will be faster than almost all other warp drives in existence (at this time the Vulcans had warp 7 capability) and would undoubtedly endanger the Coalition. He is successful, but in the process he learns that Vulcans and Romulans were once one species. Tucker reluctantly agrees to remain officially "dead", lest this secret become public and thereby endanger the newly formed Coalition. Also, the novel suggests that Tucker's extended lifespan is partly due to the genetic engineering he receives in order to pass as a Romulan.

In the novel The Romulan War: To Brave The Storm. It's hinted that although Commander Trip Tucker III is officially classified as dead, that there was a small chance that he made it out of the escape pod. Resuming his life under an assumed name, he has two children with T'Pol, one female and one male.

See also

References

  1. ↑ TrekToday - Berman Bothered By 'These Are the Voyages...' Criticism
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