Headcanon - Non-canon!AOS characters: Nurse Chapel
Series of headcanons about characters from the classic timeline that were never introduced in the Kelvin Timeline movies, characters just mentioned that are a blank state, or created after the movies release. And one OC.
Post-Into Darkness canon complaint.
1. Philippa Georgiou | 2. Number One | 3. Michael Burnham |
4. Crew members (Chapel, M’Benga, Mitchell, Rand) | 5. human!Enterprise
Posted also at Dreamwidth, Tumblr, AO3, Ad Astra and SquidgeWorld.
Christine Chapel, the woman with the Kirk Disease immunity
Rank: Ensign
Occupation: Head nurse
Ship: USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Christine Chapel studies medicine and biochemistry. One of the classes she follows is held by renowned professor Dr. Roger Korby, who picks her to be part of some of his scientific expeditions.
It’s her travels in space with the professor that eventually make Chapel consider to give up her career as researcher to work in Starfleet instead. At the Academy she specializes in psychotherapy and finds her true call when she starts to work closely with traumatized patients.
During her tenure as cadet she meets a fellow scientist, Carol Wallace. Despite their opposite study fields (Carol learns what it’s needed to invent new weapons to more efficiently maim and kill people that Chapel will try to heal) they become close friends.
By 2258 she’s waiting for the launch of the brand-new flagship, the Enterprise, where she’s been assigned as nurse.
She’s part of the crew for the ship’s impromptu maiden voyage that follows Nero’s attack and, during the medical emergency, she’s one of the nurses who distinguishes herself by going above her duty to help the overwhelmed doctors holding together a chaotic sickbay.
Once back on Earth, she and Kirk have a brief fling that doesn’t end anywhere but leaves a sour taste in Christine’s mouth. Her opinion on Kirk further worsen when the details about Kirk’s illegal boarding and dubious course of action on the Enterprise start to circulate within the campus despite Starfleet’s attempts to keep everything under wraps.
The choice of awarding Kirk the captainship of the Enterprise despite his conduct is the last straw for Chapel: she cannot see herself serving under a man she doesn’t feel personal nor professional respect for and puts in a request to transfer elsewhere.
She moves to the outer frontier, where she keeps working as nurse.
An year later, in 2259, after the details of the battle of San Francisco reach her, Christine returns to Earth to help Carol work through the tragedy occurred in her life, putting her own career on a break just to stay close to a friend who hadn’t just lost a father but discovered that the father they loved was a traitor who conspired to provoke an intergalactic war.
Christine gets accommodations at the compound but, on her invitation, she moves into Carol’s apartment.
Christine gets temporarily reassigned to the Starfleet Teaching Hospital, where she plans to stay until Carol is ready to move on - where, they both don’t know. Their friendship rekindled by living together, they reach an agreement that they will try to stay together in their next assignment. But Carol is somehow hoping to get another chance on the Enterprise, even if she’s mildly pessimistic about it, since she first joined the ship under a false premise, and she’s sure first officer Spock hates her guts.
Half a year later Carol’s request to be permanently assigned to the Enterprise is accepted by none other than Kirk, who has just been deemed fit for duty, and Christine finds herself in the awkward position of choosing between following her friend out in space and return on the flagship or steer away from serving under a man she feels no respect for.
Despite working under him for few days, Carol speaks highly of Kirk and Christine can’t understand how an intelligent and independent woman like Carol can fall for the cheap charm of the same guy Christine resents. She’s unable to connect the cheating cadet she’s known to the brave captain that sacrificed himself for the well-being of others.
Carol keeps insisting, every day she’s trying to talk Christine into applying for the Enterprise, claiming that she just wishes the best for her best friend and nothing is better than serving on the flagship, but Christine is adamant that she doesn’t want to serve under Kirk. Carol knows it’s mostly her selfishness speaking, but she really does want her friend at her side and, since she can’t convince Christine, she employs plan B.
“If mountain will not go to Mohammed, Mohammed must come to the mountain” after all, and she just knows where to knock to move Mohammed, so to speak.
Carol, who had the chance to spend some time with the Enterprise’s senior crew since that awful day, calls in a favor with Uhura, who bullies Kirk into a blind date, while Carol does the same with her friend. And so Christine and Kirk find themselves together, sitting around a table, and it’s Kirk - undoubtedly under threat by Uhura - who breaks the metaphorical (and almost physical) ice. Carol told him that she doesn’t want to apply for the Enterprise and he’s sorry that she doesn’t only because of him: he won’t apologize, because he didn’t do something he should apologize for, but he’s sorry if what happened between them has caused her distress, and she doesn’t really have to miss a career chance just because of him. It turns out their fling had that disastrous outcome because of a big misunderstanding - Kirk not being clear enough about what he (not) wanted from them and Christine expecting too much. After a genuine promise that their past relationship will not interfere nor taint their professional relationship, Kirk - who doesn’t really hide that he’s been threatened into saying it - tells Christine that she’s free to send in an application if he wishes to, their past won’t be held against her and she’ll be evaluated like any other applicant. But the request won’t land on his desk, everything pertaining sickbay goes in the hands of his CMO: he’s a mean employer, he personally wouldn’t suggest anyone to serve under Bones but, meh... she’s welcome to try her luck with Leonard McCoy, if she really feels like applying for a job under Darth Vader.
Few days later Christine gets a call from McCoy, who wants to meet her. It’s uncommon - usually the service record is enough to get picked, or to earn a rejection. Christine had met the CMO, although briefly, during the emergency launch of the Enterprise in 2258, when she assisted the senior medical officer - and, ironically, Kirk - but knows little of him. Carols speaks positively of him, but Carol holds also Kirk in great esteem so she might just have dubious standards with male senior officers. Christine is also mostly puzzled by Kirk’s warning, and walks to the meeting with a sense of dread, almost expecting the man to appear with the Imperial March playing in the background and a hand already in position to choke her with a brutal use of the Force.
The first thing McCoy does is complaining about the idiotic urge everyone feels to head out in space. Chapel can’t keep her mouth shut and really needs to point out he should consider another career if he hates space so much; she bites her lips after that, fearing she just ruined her chance with the Enterprise (or given the man a reason to choke her like a random Imperial officer), but McCoy just makes an annoyed hmpf, grumbles something about his personal bane and his need to make sure “that idiot doesn’t get himself killed”, and then moves on.
McCoy is brusque but far from the evil figure Kirk painted: he’s firing question after question and he even has her shadow him for a couple of hours during his shift at Starfleet Hospital to see how she does in action. The next day the assignment request, countersigned by Captain Kirk, is waiting in her inbox and she’s officially part of the crew. Despite her initial reluctance, she has to admit that Carol was right, and reading on her profile “Current assignment: U.S.S. Enterprise” has a nice ring.
Her competence and matter-of-fact attitude earns her the respect from CMO McCoy and, barely a month into her new position, she's surprised with a promotion to head nurse.
While gentle and friendly in nature, she’s capable of turning into a very strict officer if necessity requires it and more than often McCoy entrust her the sickbay, knowing that it’ll be in hands as good as his.
Despite his manners and his complains, McCoy is clearly very fond of Kirk and, when Kirk’s health is concerned, he never delegates: Christine knows she’s got McCoy’s full trust when the doctor allows himself some rest and entrusts an injured Kirk to her cares instead of pulling an all-nighter to stay at his friend’s bedside.
As Carol starts to be drawn by Kirk’s gravitational pull - they have much in common and they click almost immediately - Christine, whose opinion of the man behind the tunic is still soured by her previous experience with him, finds herself hanging out with Uhura, the third part of the oddly-mixed friend triangle formed by Carol and Kirk. Uhura is clearly fond of the captain, Christine cannot mistake those sighs and jabs for else, but she also doesn’t hide the exasperation she feels every time Kirk says or does something dumb - which, unsurprisingly, happens often - and they start on the common ground of sharing a rare and precious immunity over Kirk’s charm. On a starship where most of the crew look up at Kirk as if he were a god walking among mortals, or as if it was just his sheer will that fueled the warp core that made everything run, they are the only two who don’t drool on his boots, worship the floors where he walks on or want to get into his pants.
Yes, there’s McCoy and Spock, but the doctor is weak to Kirk’s puppy eyes, while everyone - including admirals at HQ - know Uhura’s man experiences the closest to a platonic crush that a straight, engaged Vulcan could ever feel, so they don’t count. Christine and Uhura bond on being the only two sane officers on the whole ship.
Even though Christine has to grudgingly admit that some myths about Kirk’s sexual prowess are indeed true. That makes only Uhura completely immune, but Chapel can pride herself of having got his immunity after coming down with a disease anyone else can’t seem to beat.
As months turn into a year, Chapel develops a crush for Mr. Spock, an infatuation that - as days go by - she finds harder to quell down. It wouldn’t be an issue if she hadn’t stricken a friendship with Uhura, Spock’s fiancee. She feels guilty for having feelings toward the man of a friend and for keeping them a secret, but she fears she could loose Uhura if she revealed her the truth.
When the Psi 2000 intoxication is brought on the ship and she falls under its effect, Christine reveals her feelings to a shocked Spock and then attempts to kiss him; after the intoxication is cured from the crew, Spock - for the sake of honesty (and against Kirk’s suggestion that female friendships are tricky and some things like kissing your friend’s boyfriend are better left untold, especially on light of having happened under an external influence) - speaks to Uhura about what happened. (He might also want reassurance that he hadn’t inadvertently done something to encourage those feelings - he’s still unsure about human courtship and its chaotic rules).
All in all Uhura keeps her head cool and, instead of lashing out at someone she's learned to considered friend, she faces a mortified Christine. Uhura knows Christine had always acted as respectfully as she could toward both she and Spock, and she knows she cannot fault the nurse for acting out when she wasn’t in her full mind. Both of them know that Spock loves Uhura and Christine is just experiencing an unrequited crush; Uhura just hopes that it will soon fade - not because she’s bothered by it, but because she doesn’t want to think about poor Christine suffering for a one-sided crush.
Notes: Technically speaking, Chapel is a canon character, but we know so little about her that we can as well put her in a "non!canon" list.
Anyway. I tried to give some sense to what we're told about her by Carol. It's unclear if Jim has been a dick to her or if the scene was just meant to show he doesn't remember the girls she has a relationship with - as the authors suggested. We don't even know if Chapel transferred to the outer frontier on her own choice or because of a fallout with Jim - Into Darkness is vague on that, and it's all up to the viewer. Soooo, I tried to be vagueish about what happened between him and Christine as well, but I did choose that it was because of Jim that she decided to leave the Enterprise while, at the same time, I made sure to not put the blame on Jim for this, making it instead one case of "they didn't communicate". It's my own interpretation of the canon, you're free to dismiss it.
Fancasting: Rachael Taylor.
Post-Into Darkness canon complaint.
1. Philippa Georgiou | 2. Number One | 3. Michael Burnham |
4. Crew members (Chapel, M’Benga, Mitchell, Rand) | 5. human!Enterprise
Posted also at Dreamwidth, Tumblr, AO3, Ad Astra and SquidgeWorld.
Christine Chapel, the woman with the Kirk Disease immunity
Rank: Ensign
Occupation: Head nurse
Ship: USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Christine Chapel studies medicine and biochemistry. One of the classes she follows is held by renowned professor Dr. Roger Korby, who picks her to be part of some of his scientific expeditions.
It’s her travels in space with the professor that eventually make Chapel consider to give up her career as researcher to work in Starfleet instead. At the Academy she specializes in psychotherapy and finds her true call when she starts to work closely with traumatized patients.
During her tenure as cadet she meets a fellow scientist, Carol Wallace. Despite their opposite study fields (Carol learns what it’s needed to invent new weapons to more efficiently maim and kill people that Chapel will try to heal) they become close friends.
By 2258 she’s waiting for the launch of the brand-new flagship, the Enterprise, where she’s been assigned as nurse.
She’s part of the crew for the ship’s impromptu maiden voyage that follows Nero’s attack and, during the medical emergency, she’s one of the nurses who distinguishes herself by going above her duty to help the overwhelmed doctors holding together a chaotic sickbay.
Once back on Earth, she and Kirk have a brief fling that doesn’t end anywhere but leaves a sour taste in Christine’s mouth. Her opinion on Kirk further worsen when the details about Kirk’s illegal boarding and dubious course of action on the Enterprise start to circulate within the campus despite Starfleet’s attempts to keep everything under wraps.
The choice of awarding Kirk the captainship of the Enterprise despite his conduct is the last straw for Chapel: she cannot see herself serving under a man she doesn’t feel personal nor professional respect for and puts in a request to transfer elsewhere.
She moves to the outer frontier, where she keeps working as nurse.
An year later, in 2259, after the details of the battle of San Francisco reach her, Christine returns to Earth to help Carol work through the tragedy occurred in her life, putting her own career on a break just to stay close to a friend who hadn’t just lost a father but discovered that the father they loved was a traitor who conspired to provoke an intergalactic war.
Christine gets accommodations at the compound but, on her invitation, she moves into Carol’s apartment.
Christine gets temporarily reassigned to the Starfleet Teaching Hospital, where she plans to stay until Carol is ready to move on - where, they both don’t know. Their friendship rekindled by living together, they reach an agreement that they will try to stay together in their next assignment. But Carol is somehow hoping to get another chance on the Enterprise, even if she’s mildly pessimistic about it, since she first joined the ship under a false premise, and she’s sure first officer Spock hates her guts.
Half a year later Carol’s request to be permanently assigned to the Enterprise is accepted by none other than Kirk, who has just been deemed fit for duty, and Christine finds herself in the awkward position of choosing between following her friend out in space and return on the flagship or steer away from serving under a man she feels no respect for.
Despite working under him for few days, Carol speaks highly of Kirk and Christine can’t understand how an intelligent and independent woman like Carol can fall for the cheap charm of the same guy Christine resents. She’s unable to connect the cheating cadet she’s known to the brave captain that sacrificed himself for the well-being of others.
Carol keeps insisting, every day she’s trying to talk Christine into applying for the Enterprise, claiming that she just wishes the best for her best friend and nothing is better than serving on the flagship, but Christine is adamant that she doesn’t want to serve under Kirk. Carol knows it’s mostly her selfishness speaking, but she really does want her friend at her side and, since she can’t convince Christine, she employs plan B.
“If mountain will not go to Mohammed, Mohammed must come to the mountain” after all, and she just knows where to knock to move Mohammed, so to speak.
Carol, who had the chance to spend some time with the Enterprise’s senior crew since that awful day, calls in a favor with Uhura, who bullies Kirk into a blind date, while Carol does the same with her friend. And so Christine and Kirk find themselves together, sitting around a table, and it’s Kirk - undoubtedly under threat by Uhura - who breaks the metaphorical (and almost physical) ice. Carol told him that she doesn’t want to apply for the Enterprise and he’s sorry that she doesn’t only because of him: he won’t apologize, because he didn’t do something he should apologize for, but he’s sorry if what happened between them has caused her distress, and she doesn’t really have to miss a career chance just because of him. It turns out their fling had that disastrous outcome because of a big misunderstanding - Kirk not being clear enough about what he (not) wanted from them and Christine expecting too much. After a genuine promise that their past relationship will not interfere nor taint their professional relationship, Kirk - who doesn’t really hide that he’s been threatened into saying it - tells Christine that she’s free to send in an application if he wishes to, their past won’t be held against her and she’ll be evaluated like any other applicant. But the request won’t land on his desk, everything pertaining sickbay goes in the hands of his CMO: he’s a mean employer, he personally wouldn’t suggest anyone to serve under Bones but, meh... she’s welcome to try her luck with Leonard McCoy, if she really feels like applying for a job under Darth Vader.
Few days later Christine gets a call from McCoy, who wants to meet her. It’s uncommon - usually the service record is enough to get picked, or to earn a rejection. Christine had met the CMO, although briefly, during the emergency launch of the Enterprise in 2258, when she assisted the senior medical officer - and, ironically, Kirk - but knows little of him. Carols speaks positively of him, but Carol holds also Kirk in great esteem so she might just have dubious standards with male senior officers. Christine is also mostly puzzled by Kirk’s warning, and walks to the meeting with a sense of dread, almost expecting the man to appear with the Imperial March playing in the background and a hand already in position to choke her with a brutal use of the Force.
The first thing McCoy does is complaining about the idiotic urge everyone feels to head out in space. Chapel can’t keep her mouth shut and really needs to point out he should consider another career if he hates space so much; she bites her lips after that, fearing she just ruined her chance with the Enterprise (or given the man a reason to choke her like a random Imperial officer), but McCoy just makes an annoyed hmpf, grumbles something about his personal bane and his need to make sure “that idiot doesn’t get himself killed”, and then moves on.
McCoy is brusque but far from the evil figure Kirk painted: he’s firing question after question and he even has her shadow him for a couple of hours during his shift at Starfleet Hospital to see how she does in action. The next day the assignment request, countersigned by Captain Kirk, is waiting in her inbox and she’s officially part of the crew. Despite her initial reluctance, she has to admit that Carol was right, and reading on her profile “Current assignment: U.S.S. Enterprise” has a nice ring.
Her competence and matter-of-fact attitude earns her the respect from CMO McCoy and, barely a month into her new position, she's surprised with a promotion to head nurse.
While gentle and friendly in nature, she’s capable of turning into a very strict officer if necessity requires it and more than often McCoy entrust her the sickbay, knowing that it’ll be in hands as good as his.
Despite his manners and his complains, McCoy is clearly very fond of Kirk and, when Kirk’s health is concerned, he never delegates: Christine knows she’s got McCoy’s full trust when the doctor allows himself some rest and entrusts an injured Kirk to her cares instead of pulling an all-nighter to stay at his friend’s bedside.
As Carol starts to be drawn by Kirk’s gravitational pull - they have much in common and they click almost immediately - Christine, whose opinion of the man behind the tunic is still soured by her previous experience with him, finds herself hanging out with Uhura, the third part of the oddly-mixed friend triangle formed by Carol and Kirk. Uhura is clearly fond of the captain, Christine cannot mistake those sighs and jabs for else, but she also doesn’t hide the exasperation she feels every time Kirk says or does something dumb - which, unsurprisingly, happens often - and they start on the common ground of sharing a rare and precious immunity over Kirk’s charm. On a starship where most of the crew look up at Kirk as if he were a god walking among mortals, or as if it was just his sheer will that fueled the warp core that made everything run, they are the only two who don’t drool on his boots, worship the floors where he walks on or want to get into his pants.
Yes, there’s McCoy and Spock, but the doctor is weak to Kirk’s puppy eyes, while everyone - including admirals at HQ - know Uhura’s man experiences the closest to a platonic crush that a straight, engaged Vulcan could ever feel, so they don’t count. Christine and Uhura bond on being the only two sane officers on the whole ship.
Even though Christine has to grudgingly admit that some myths about Kirk’s sexual prowess are indeed true. That makes only Uhura completely immune, but Chapel can pride herself of having got his immunity after coming down with a disease anyone else can’t seem to beat.
As months turn into a year, Chapel develops a crush for Mr. Spock, an infatuation that - as days go by - she finds harder to quell down. It wouldn’t be an issue if she hadn’t stricken a friendship with Uhura, Spock’s fiancee. She feels guilty for having feelings toward the man of a friend and for keeping them a secret, but she fears she could loose Uhura if she revealed her the truth.
When the Psi 2000 intoxication is brought on the ship and she falls under its effect, Christine reveals her feelings to a shocked Spock and then attempts to kiss him; after the intoxication is cured from the crew, Spock - for the sake of honesty (and against Kirk’s suggestion that female friendships are tricky and some things like kissing your friend’s boyfriend are better left untold, especially on light of having happened under an external influence) - speaks to Uhura about what happened. (He might also want reassurance that he hadn’t inadvertently done something to encourage those feelings - he’s still unsure about human courtship and its chaotic rules).
All in all Uhura keeps her head cool and, instead of lashing out at someone she's learned to considered friend, she faces a mortified Christine. Uhura knows Christine had always acted as respectfully as she could toward both she and Spock, and she knows she cannot fault the nurse for acting out when she wasn’t in her full mind. Both of them know that Spock loves Uhura and Christine is just experiencing an unrequited crush; Uhura just hopes that it will soon fade - not because she’s bothered by it, but because she doesn’t want to think about poor Christine suffering for a one-sided crush.
Notes: Technically speaking, Chapel is a canon character, but we know so little about her that we can as well put her in a "non!canon" list.
Anyway. I tried to give some sense to what we're told about her by Carol. It's unclear if Jim has been a dick to her or if the scene was just meant to show he doesn't remember the girls she has a relationship with - as the authors suggested. We don't even know if Chapel transferred to the outer frontier on her own choice or because of a fallout with Jim - Into Darkness is vague on that, and it's all up to the viewer. Soooo, I tried to be vagueish about what happened between him and Christine as well, but I did choose that it was because of Jim that she decided to leave the Enterprise while, at the same time, I made sure to not put the blame on Jim for this, making it instead one case of "they didn't communicate". It's my own interpretation of the canon, you're free to dismiss it.
Fancasting: Rachael Taylor.