Like a tale as old as time, fans will always find romantic relationships to root for in nearly every piece of media that they consume. If there are two characters with good chemistry and an engaging relationship, we’re bound to get invested in their connection and every form that their relationship may take on. Arguably, no franchise is more familiar with the subject than the originator of some of our favorite tropes —Star Trek. With nearly six decades of content, numerous spin-off shows, and movies, theStar Trekfranchise has no shortage of iconic relationships for fans to fall in love with.
One relationship dynamic thatStar Trekfans just can’t get enough of is the one between the captain and first officer of a starship.SinceThe Original Seriesfirst aired in 1966, relationships between captains and first officers have often been front and center in the franchise, with the narrative investing in how they care for each other and in turn lead their crews on numerous adventures through the stars. When a show puts so much into building a connection between these two characters and there’s a chemistry between them on screen, shippers are bound to follow — and shippers are not to be underestimated,they’re a big part of why we still have such a flourishingStar Trekuniverseover fifty years afterThe Original Seriesended.
From Kirk and Spock to Seven and Raffi, the relationship between a captain and their first officer is one that we keep coming back to from series to series and movie to movie. While not every pair in this dynamic is super shippable — though if you’re still out there rooting for Picard/Riker, then more power to you, my friends — but when a captain/first officer duo pops up with unparalleled chemistry, a significant portion of the audience will inevitably root for them to be together romantically. So why is this particular dynamic one that we just can’t get enough of?
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Kirk and Spock Were Two Halves of a Whole on ‘The Original Series’
Star Trek’s first major captain/first officer pairing — and certainly still its most iconic even decades later — was Kirk and Spock. While Kirk was initially intended to be the hero and sole main character of the franchise, fans immediately fell in love withLeonard Nimoy’s Spock. To create a balance between the two, their relationship became a central component of the series. Legendary sci-fi authorIsaac Asimovhimself wrote a letter to Roddenberry explaining that the best way to get fans to fall in love with both characters would be to write them as a team. “It might be well to unify the team of Kirk and Spock a bit, by having them actively meet various menaces together with one saving the life of the other on occasion. The idea of this would be to get people to think of Kirk when they think of Spock,” wrote Asimov.
A significant portion of the fans who fell in love withStar Trekwhen it was first on were women.Devra Langsham,co-creator of Spockanalia, noted that despite the network’s insistence that most fans were 16-year-old boys, theStar Trekfandom has had “a very large female component” since the beginning. In fact, in 2010, before the latestStar Trekrenaissance was even a glimmer on the horizon,a survey of the fandomnoted that 57% of the over 5,000 people that participated in the questionnaire identified as female. And on top of being brilliant, thought-provoking sci-fi fans, women are often well-versed in the romance genre too.
InEdward Gross&Mark Altman’sThe Fifty-Year Mission Volume 1, fan-turned-professional writerJacquelineLichtenbergexplained that becauseStar TrekcreatorGene Roddenberrywrote Kirk and Spock as two parts of his own mind, the audience saw them as a unit. Lichtenberg said:
So when Trekkers studied the TV series, they saw Kirk and Spock as a unit. As one entity, as needing to “get together,” as two poles of a magnet, because GR created them to be two halves of a whole…. Human nature being what it is, sexuality is the expression of that “get together” and “irresistible attraction.” The soul mate hypothesis runs deep in romance literature.
As writerJessie Earlpoints out in her video abouthow “slash fiction” savedStar Trek, fans were already writing devoted, erotic fiction about Spock when the show turned Kirk into a character for whom he regularly showed affection and came to care for deeply, despite his repressed Vulcan sensibilities. Love and hate are two sides of the same passionate coin, so with this new angle in mind for the writing, Nimoy andWilliam Shatner’s off-screen beef (which Earl also explains) translated easily to electric chemistry between Kirk and Spock. Beyond the sexual tension though, fans were drawn to the incredibly emotional relationship between these two characters, as Kirk, a known hothead was tempered by Spock’s cool rationale, and Spock learned to embrace the depth of feeling rooted in his half-human nature because of Kirk’s willingness to wear his heart on his sleeve. Queer fans were also drawn to the pairing because they were able to see themselves reflected in the way that Kirk and Spock cared for each other.
Janeway and Chakotay Are ‘Star Trek’s Original Captain/First Officer Pairing to Subvert Traditional Power Dynamics
Star Trek: Voyagerwas the first series to follow a crew with a female captain, and while that certainly led to complications with how the powers that be decided to portray her love life, it still didn’t stop fans from shipping her with her first officer. Much like with Kirk and Spock, Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and Chakotay (Robert Beltran) grew closer due to their positions on the ship and their responsibilities to the crew making them each other’s confidant. Playing into the enemies to friends to lovers trope, Janeway and Chakotay started out as adversaries, with her leading Voyager’s crew and him having secretly been a part of the rebel group known as the Maquis. When they end up stranded together in the Delta Quadrant, they have to work together to chart a long and dangerous course for home.
Fairly early on in the series, towards the end of the show’s second season,Voyageracknowledges the obvious chemistry between Janeway and Chakotay in the episode “Resolutions,” stranding them alone together on a planet after they contract a deadly virus. Janeway and Chakotay prepare to spend the rest of their lives together, and after a few months on the planet, Chakotay confesses his feelings for his former captain, telling her metaphor-laden story as a guise to reveal to her how much she changed his life. The two settle into comfortable domesticity, with Chakotay even building her a tub by hand so she can bathe beneath the stars. However, before Janeway is comfortable admitting that she feels the same, the crew comes to their rescue with a cure, leaving them to return to their duties over their emotions.
Over the remainder ofVoyager’s seven seasons, Janeway and Chakotay stayed close as she fought through thick and thin to bring their crew home — and he stood valiantly at her side ready to follow her into every questionable battle and dangerous mission. Despite the two never getting together officially on screen, fans never forgot those moonlit confessions, and it remains one of, if not the most popular relationship from the series.
Decades later,Star Trekhas even set the connection between Janeway and Chakotay as a cornerstone of the new animated seriesProdigy. In the series, Admiral Janeway is searching high and low for Chakotay, who went missing along with the USS Protostar in some kind of temporal accident in the Delta Quadrant. Though the current parameters of their relationship haven’t been explicitly defined yet, fans are certainly hoping to see these two finally get together whenever they’re reunited. Janeway was even willing to cross the neutral zone, forgoing protocol, and risking confrontation with the Romulans in the search for her long-lost friend and first officer. ThoughProdigywas recently cancelled at Paramount+,fans are still hoping to save the seriesand see a resolution between Janeway and Chakotay.
The Captain/First Officer Ship Delivers Some of Our Favorite Tropes
As fans, we keep coming back to this relationship dynamic for a number of reasons. Two characters having chemistry is merely a jumping-off point for shippers, and nothing sets off the fervor around a ship like meaningful looks and life-threatening situations. The working relationship between the captain of a starship and their first officer is set to offer up some of our favorite romance tropes even if the writers behind the series aren’t intentionally adding that romantic aspect.
First and foremost, there are few things more irresistible than a forbidden romance. While it’s not exactly banned by Starfleet regulations, as confirmed by conversations inThe Original SeriesandTheNext Generation—Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Troi (Marina Sirtis) even kept serving on the same ship after getting married—having a romantic relationship with your first officer isn’t exactly highly recommended in a high-stress, life-or-death work environment. There are certain duties required of captains and first officers that could easily come into conflict with a romantic relationship. Starfleet officers’ first duty is to the ship, to keep their crew safe and prioritize the needs of the many over the needs of the few. When a captain or first officer must make a decision between saving each other or saving the crew, romantic love makes that decision infinitely more difficult.
In a Reddit AMA following thePicardseries finale, Season 3 showrunnerTerry Matalasspoke excitedly about the possibility of getting to write something like this for Seven (Jeri Ryan) and Raffi (Michelle Hurd) if aStar Trek: Legacyseries were to be greenlit:
“Will this ABSOLUTELY be a story you want to tell in the future? A story about a Captain who loves her First Officer and vice versa? Absolutely. Imagine a story in which Seven has to make a call that could cost Raffi her life on a planet below… but it’s a call that would save the lives of countless others. Does Seven make the call? Does she step down and go try to save Raffi and transfer command to Jack in the meantime? The whole episode becomes a countdown. I kinda want to write that one right now.”
Adding a layer of romance to situations like this only serves to enhance the drama and the high stakes of an already intense environment like serving on a starship. With tensions raised, this dynamic plays right into another fan-favorite trope: the forced love confession. In a professional environment, it’d make sense for characters to deny their romantic feelings for each other for as long as possible. Before they realize it, a hostage situation, a heated argument, or a life-threatening injury could have the captain confessing their love for their first officer. One of my favorite examples of this trope happens in Season 4 ofStargate SG-1when Jack (Richard Dean Anderson) must reveal that he broke protocol during a mission because he “cares about” Samantha (Amanda Tapping) “a lot more than he’s supposed to.”
Captain/first officer pairings can also lean into a few softer tropes — as the two highest-ranked officers aboard any ship, these duos will often end up co-parenting the rest of the crew. This trope is often born of various instances that come standard for captains and first officers, like confiding in each other, sharing responsibilities, and jointly looking out for the rest of the crew. With shows that are lucky enough to get multiple seasons, it’s also incredibly easy to fall into the friends-to-lovers trope, or even enemies-to-lovers depending on how the series begins. Captains and first officers who begin as friends like Seven and Raffi, or Una and Pike, can find the kind of love that sneaks up on you with friends-to-lovers — or in Saffi’s case, lovers-to-friends-to-lovers. Meanwhile, Janeway and Chakotay, and Kirk and Spock begin their journeys as two people from very different worlds and their forced proximity can shift feelings of animosity into trust and yearning.
‘Star Trek’ Shows Could Follow Through on Captain/First Officer Romances
As wildly popular as these pairings are, noStar Trekshow has committed to exploring a romantic relationship between a captain and their first officer. But withStrange New Worldscurrently airing and already renewed for Season 3, and fan interest at an all-time high for aPicardspin-off series, the franchise could very easily explore romantic relationships.
Seven and Raffi arenot only the first openly queer captainand first officer of the Enterprise — or any Starfleet ship, for that matter — but they’re also the first pair to have canonically been in a relationship with each other prior to filling those roles. Season 2 of Picard saw Seven and Raffi work through some of their own personal trauma and left them ready to explore a more lasting romantic connection. However, in Season 3, the two were broken up for the sake of the plot. If Paramount were to greenlight a Star Trek: Legacy series, there are plenty of unanswered questions — and lots of unresolved romantic tension — to explore in future episodes. In addition to the type of drama that Matalas mentioned, it would be delightful to see Seven and Raffi exploring all the different forms their relationship might take on in the future. With a captain and first officer that have a shared romantic history already, there are many ways in which that part of their dynamic can play into the various adventures they share among the stars.
Meanwhile, Pike (Anson Mount) and Una (Rebecca Romijn) have one of the strongest friendships of any captain and first officer pairing across all of Starfleet. And while their dynamic hasn’t been explored through a romantic lens yet onStrange New Worlds, there’s a canon foundation that could easily lead to more. In “The Cage,“the unairedStar Trek TOSpilot from whichStrange New Worldshas already pulled many plot points, an alien race with mind-reading capabilities reveals that Una is attracted to Pike. While that moment could have stayed buried in the 1960s, her feelings for him resurfaced decades later in theShort Trek"Q&A,” which was recently referenced in Season 2 ofSNW. In “Q&A,“Spock (Ethan Peck) and Una are stuck in a turbo lift for hoursand, as it is Spock’s first day aboard the Enterprise, he asks Una about the captain. After she’s shared “the three most salient facts” about Pike, Spock notes that she’s made “a most careful study of the captain,” prompting Una to wonder if she’s revealed too much to the young ensign.
While exploring a romantic relationship between a captain and their first officer might introduce complicated questions for the overall plot of aStar Trekseries, the writers behind this franchise have always been problem solvers. Romance doesn’t negate drama, plot, or action — in fact, in all three circumstances, it only serves to enhance the story and the stakes within as love (romantic and otherwise) adds more layers of high stakes, motivations, and emotion to any narrative.Star Trekshould boldly go where none of its series have gone before and explore a romance between its captains and their first officers, finally delivering on one of the major aspects that have kept the series going for decades.
