5 characters: Michael Burnham, Joann Owosekun, Jett Reno, Tracy Pollard, Katrina Cornwell
(Put 5 characters in my ask and I’ll put them in my preference order)
Going for blogger-specific custom challenge mode, I see. :>)
1) …Tracy Pollard. Leaving aside all headcanons, ships, and other fandom accoutrements, she’s just…she’s fantastic. If we didn’t tend, in Star Trek background characters, to see competence and compassion as lack of characterization rather than characterization in its own right, I maintain that Pollard would have the same kind of (admittedly tiny) loyal fandom following that, say, Landry does.
In addition to her competence and compassion, she’s able and willing to push back against condescending advice from a captain (it’s played for laughs, but Saru’s ‘do your best!’ is such a useless ‘order’ in a situation where sickbay is filling up with injured crew), and against unproven assumptions by a commanding officer (her iconic “You’re attaching a known medical diagnosis to an unknown entity” scene with Burnham). And, of course, there are all the complex layers of her response to that situation.
In other words, Tracy is urging caution, and potentially an adversarial viewpoint, towards the current threat to the lives of her crew—but doing so through a framework that suggests an underlying openness to observation, discovery, and resisting easy assumptions about the universe around her.
2) Michael Burnham. Oh captain, my captain. Commander of my HEART. Cares so deeply for the people and the universe around her no matter how many times her ostensible family and friends hurt her, manipulate her, kill her, or otherwise put her in terrible situations (if she isn’t selfless enough, she’s a terrible person; if she is, she has a ~ridiculous martyr complex~ not that that might have anything to do with anyone else around here…) Mutinied an admiral to prevent a space genocide. Loving co-pet-parent to a giant cat. Thankfully not a real person in my life because her penchant for test-piloting fast space things is terrifying. ;_;
3) Jett Reno. Kept her crewmates alive on a crashed starship for a year. Grease monkey, duct tape enthusiast, and beloved nemesis to Paul Stamets who, let’s be honest, needs one. Tig Notaro might have been battling with the technobabble behind the scenes but her delivery of the technobabble lines she does have is never less than flawless. Wrangled a time crystal to help save all life in the universe. Named “Jett Reno.” What even is a zipper? Star Trek’s most quotable lesbian. It’s not food, it’s candy, it’s practically an accessory.
4) Joann Owosekun. Cool, calm and collected ops officer of a ship careening around the mushroom multiverse across multiple millennia. Friend to robots. Likes tomatoes. Is in fourth place not really for any compelling reason other than it not really being in the spirit of the ask game to let her tie with the above three, though if I had to pick the reason that I personally would want to go get space coffee with her only slightly less than the others it would probably be onscreen canon Owosekun’s lack of scenes pushing back against Starfleet, commanding officer fuckery, or both—not so much re: Lorca, I wrote a whole Jola fic about not blaming oneself or others for not countering a manipulative, abusive authority figure in an isolated environment, but unlike Pollard-Burnham-Reno she hasn’t gotten a scene pushing back against Pike, Saru, Burnham, Vance, etc’s questionable or annoying moments. Yet. Not counting the “Take the tomato” deleted scene with Burnham, anyway.
SIKE I was writing some rambling tags about Owosekun and remembered that she went against her own upbringing to become a technology expert (even if she did so by joining Starfleet, booo to 23rd-century Starfleet) (we don’t really know how judgemental her family was or wasn’t about her technology interest, and frankly I hope not at all, but even if they supported her, that decision is still A Lot). Post amended accordingly.
(Honestly, the “Take the tomato” scene totally counts as well. Look, I was really grasping at straws here.)
5) Katrina Cornwell. The only easy choice (sorry, Admiral). If she wants to get away with attempted space genocide and still have a place in the Star Trek Characters section of my heart, she needs to at the very least be someone I’d enjoy a) smooching or b) going to a bowling alley with, and instead she mostly just reminds me of my least-favorite authority figures from high school.
