Graduation by bat400 (PG-13)
Title: Graduation (aka “Final Graduation”).
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise.
Pairing: Implied one-sided Malcolm Reed/Charles “Trip” Tucker III.
Categories: Adventure, Angst, Drama, Future, Post-Series, Pre-Slash.
Length: Epic.
Warnings: Major character deaths, alludes to canon-torture, Archer-bashing. I wouldn’t call the end unhappy, but it’s certainly bittersweet.
Author on LJ: n/a
Author Website: n/a
Review:
Shortly after the events of “Harbinger”, Trip is killed, irrevocably changing the way the Xindi mission unfolds, though it still “succeeds”. Consumed by grief and resentment towards what he considers an avoidable tragedy, Malcolm spends the rest of his life devoted to changing the system inside Starfleet, so that the mistakes that led to Trip’s death will not be repeated.
TV shows love to make their characters go through intensely traumatic situations, but rarely do they devote time and space for those characters to fully work through the repercussions of what happened. “Graduation” shows us Malcolm Reed dealing (or better yet, not really managing to deal) with terrible things: the death of his best friend, his torture at the hands of the Insectoid Xindi, his estrangement from his family, the restrictions placed upon his career, the resentment he feels towards Jonathan Archer. This moving fic is not the story of a man trying to find happiness once more, but of a man struggling to find a measurement of peace.
Graduation (Link to table of contents)
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise.
Pairing: Implied one-sided Malcolm Reed/Charles “Trip” Tucker III.
Categories: Adventure, Angst, Drama, Future, Post-Series, Pre-Slash.
Length: Epic.
Warnings: Major character deaths, alludes to canon-torture, Archer-bashing. I wouldn’t call the end unhappy, but it’s certainly bittersweet.
Author on LJ: n/a
Author Website: n/a
Review:
Shortly after the events of “Harbinger”, Trip is killed, irrevocably changing the way the Xindi mission unfolds, though it still “succeeds”. Consumed by grief and resentment towards what he considers an avoidable tragedy, Malcolm spends the rest of his life devoted to changing the system inside Starfleet, so that the mistakes that led to Trip’s death will not be repeated.
TV shows love to make their characters go through intensely traumatic situations, but rarely do they devote time and space for those characters to fully work through the repercussions of what happened. “Graduation” shows us Malcolm Reed dealing (or better yet, not really managing to deal) with terrible things: the death of his best friend, his torture at the hands of the Insectoid Xindi, his estrangement from his family, the restrictions placed upon his career, the resentment he feels towards Jonathan Archer. This moving fic is not the story of a man trying to find happiness once more, but of a man struggling to find a measurement of peace.
Graduation (Link to table of contents)