I have a confession to make. I love watching Star Trek Voyager. It’s this little weird passion of mine that started when I was living with my mom in Saskatchewan and had nothing to do but surf the net and watch television. I got hooked because of the Captain, all sexy husky voice and hands on hips, she could be a dominatrix. Space dominatrix! Then I watched her and Seven fall in love subtextually, and I had this voyeristic need to watch them do it! That lead to a period of voraciously reading J/7 fan slash.
Recently I was watching an episode called The Voyager Conspiracy. The plot goes like this: Seven of Nine has decided to upload information while she regenerates into her cortical processor, in an attempt to perfect herself and make herself more efficent. She uploads too much information into her processor and begins to weave paranoid conspiracies about why they are in the Delta Quadrant, in the end believing that the mission was to capture a borg drone and take her back to the federation to dissect her. So she runs away to destroy a catapult (a space catapult) and Janeway talks her down in what is considered by many in the J/7 shipper community as a romantic moment. (It is.)
What interested me is the approach that Star Trek Voyager takes on issues of mental health. The Voyager Conspiracy is basically about Seven having a manic episode (albeit minus the cute trying to spread love and happiness around). And there are other episodes about characters on Voyager in mental crisis. The Doctor has a guilt loop in his subroutines after he makes a medical decision which saves one patient and loses another, Tuvok, B’Elanna, Vorik’s pon farr incidents, and a lot of Seven’s left over borg processors going hay wire.
The characters are never considered flawed, only that they are currently “malfunctioning” and that it can be fixed, either in sickbay or in a holodeck. They return to their jobs and are welcomed back into the community without reservations. I mean, wow, if only we were as forward thinking. I’m generalizing, I know, people close to me have been steadfast, but in the larger scope, many people who “malfunction” for a period of time do get shunned. Out of fear, out of people not knowing what to say or being under the mistaken belief that their loved one is no longer really there. But when I watch Voyager I can forget all that, oh dear, Seven has Dissociative Identity Disorder today, bring on the Vulkan mind meld!
Well, that wraps up another blog. If you want to read some J/7, here are some recommendations from my months of one handed research. You’ll never hear the Captain say “Do it!” the same way again!
Delta Quadrant of Venus
For funny ha ha sexiness read The Borg With Five Fingers and Bride of Arachnia!
Novel Expectations
Home to Gina Dartt’s infamous Just Between series, an epic series about an ongoing relationship between Seven and the Captain.
Pink Rabbit Consortium
Home to lesbian fan fic on everything from Buffy, Alien Ressurection, Xena, and some hot J/7 slash.
If you’d like to read something more academic about Trek slash, I highly recommend Constance Penley’s NASA/Trek. The focus is more on Kirk/Spock Slash, but it paints an interesting picture of the slash community.
P.S. My current favorite slash pairing is Sara/Catherine from CSI. So if you stumble upon a hot story in this vein along your internet travels, email me a link!