Why Are They Always Alone? The Inexplicable and awful lonely existence of Nearly ALL of "Star Trek" Characters.

[The following article was sent to a publication at a Science-Fiction & Fantasy website exactly one week ago; as they apparently were not interested in publishing it, their loss is your gain]

The Time Has Come to Have a (Happily) Married Starship Captain (for More than 3 Episodes and 5 Minutes, That Is)

The characters in "Star Trek" are almost always single, nearly always lonely.

With the happy exceptions of Miles&Keiko, Tom&B'Elana, and Rom&Leeta, practically ALL of the main "Star Trek" characters are either single, and painfully lonely, or, at Best(?), are "jumping" between brief, non-committing and unserious hook-up-style flings of "relationships": Scotty was lonely for the majority of TOS, and his affair with Mira clearly did not last very long, as, at the time of the films, he was not married or anything. Spock, clearly, ever since the break up with T'Pring, had never had anyone (discounting that very brief affair with that charming Romulan Commander lady - was I the only one sad that they did not find way to see this through? Just imagine...), and his earlier affairs with Nurse Chappell and La`an had also failed to produce anything. Christine herself, having tragically lost her fiancé to that robots-planet, had never allowed herself, it seems, to fall in Love again. Captain Kirk, having clearly broke up with Carol some time prior to becoming a Captain, had countless brief, one-episode affairs, with countless different human and alien women (even if they were 300-going-on-13...), later apparently got married, however that marriage obviously did not survive his choice to go back out to Space. McCoy was always single, Sulu did not even appear to be interested in any kind of Romance, Chekov just had a few passing affairs (the most serious with a Fantasy girl, at an imaginary roofless bar under orange sky) and Uhura, apparently, had never dated ANYBODY.

Geordi was almost always terribly lonely, and Commander Riker, ever since breaking up with Troi, had, apparently, countless brief, unserious and passing flings, but his only marriage had taken place in a brief alien-manufactured Fantasy. Deanna herself, while often being courted (always by extremely toxic, obviously unworthy dudes - the Best chap to ever court her was Broccoli; which says something). Beverley was a widow, who (while having a few affairs with various misterious alien life-forms, one of them a Family heirloom) for the most part had remained single all throughout TNG (did she and Picard ever even do as much as seriously explore the possibility? The answer to that question remains unclear). Picard (while being secretly in Love with Beverley, of course, without ever gathering up the courage to even asking her on a real date! But only having non-committal Breakfasts), while having SOME (very unclear) sort of connection with Guinan, had largely remained a loner, with only two known exceptions - one that crushed by the reality of him and his Love interest being much too wildly different (she REALLY had a lot more in common with that Ferengi guy), the other by him AND the lady in question each choosing their own Star Fleet careers over True Love (don't you just HATE it when the writers do that to their characters?).

Sisko was a widower, took practically forever to (clearly very grudgingly! Whyever did she accept that treatment from him for all those years, instead of looking for some more interested, Loving and worthy dude?) FINALLY becoming intimate with someone else, and, right after marrying her at last (again: why did she bother to wait so long?), being whisked away by those non-corporial beings to that wormhole of theirs, obviously to his great relief (really, Cassidy: You could, AND SHOULD have done better, girl!). Kira, after tragically losing Bareil, practically took forever to notice the Love of Odo (who was then called by his duty to both physically, AND Morally fix and heal his people). Worf had tragically lost both Great Loves of his Life to heartless killers (which makes me suspect the hearts of the writers!). Quark, while becoming serious with several women over the years, did only ever get married once, and THAT had dissolved faster than you could say Q'apla. Now, Bashir and Garak MIGHT have been together, however Canon doesn't really say anything about such a possibility...

Captain Janeway, having been separated forever from her fiancé, had since tended to (almost exclusively) give her heart to holodeck imaginary dudes, preferrably those with knowledge levels not exceeding that of the 19th century, all the while ignoring what's right in front of her eyes (girl! Can't you see he's in Love with you? And you're both captains, anyway, so captain the ship together - and BE together!), even when he was building her a bath-tub. Chakotay, having eventually coming to terms with the fact that, for his one Truest Love, he is FOREVER in the friendzone (the eternal roaming realm of many nice guys...), did, at last, come to be Romantically involved with a girl who Loves him back, however that only happened two seconds before the show had come to an end, so we never truly learned what has become of them. Neelix, after years of some unclear affair with Kes (were they a couple? They appeared to be, however, in a version of the future experienced only by Kes, they did not stay together), had been single and terribly lonely for almost the entire rest of the Series, finding Love again only half a minute before the very end. Tuvok's wife and children, unfortunately, were not with him. Harry kept falling, rather exclusively, for the unattainable girls (a ghost, a borg, a hologram... kinda reminding of Piper's brief relationships before she became seriously involved with Leo; at least there was no banker), Sanantha, having been separated from her husband, stayed a lonely single Mom to Naomi (hey, how about a version of "Voyager" where Harry and Samantha fall in Love with each other, and Harry is Naomi's step-Dad?), and the Doctor had only known Love much too briefly, one of them at an episode so sad that I, for one, can never watch it again...

While later in his Life, Captain Archer might have found Love (WE WANT "STAR TREK: UNITED" NOW!!), nevertheless during the entire Series he had only had Porthos to keep him company. Flox WAS married, three times no less (I Love this aspect of their society. Why would not humans learn from them, to become cool PolyAmourous, too?), none of his wives and kids never traveled the Galaxy with him!! Which is no less than a production crime. Actually, only ONE of his wives had EVER visited him, for all of two-and-a-half milliseconds. Trip and T'Pol, in spite of practically having the entire Universe screaming at them that they are meant to be together, and are each other's Destiny (or Density? I had to, I just had to), had never, to my knowledge, chose to simply act upon their feelings, for a reason known only to Braga and Berman, and, well, I, for one, cannot recall ANY character on THAT entire ship EVER being Romantically involved with any other, for more than a second and a half, at best.

Captains Pike and Bat-`Él just kept on dancing around the subject of finally being seriously together, then moving away again, all throughout the entire length of what we have thus far seen of that Series (half the third season of which had practically been unwatchable violent crap, anyway, so I just might have missed something?), Numero Una and La`an surely did not have any, aside from La`an's brief alternate timeline and time travel escapade, plus her probably-hopeless thing (is there even a thing?) with Spock, and no one in his right mind would EVER get anywhere near that unbearable ortegas person.

Personally, I do NOT recognise "disastrovery", "shmicard", "no-fleet shmacademy", "pection shmenty-one" and that jj-kelvin unwatchable FIASCO as anything like "canon", so I elegantly simply ignore them here.

So, the questions stand:

DOES "PARAMOUNT" HATE LOVING HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS?

ARE THEY MORALLY OPPOSE TO STABLE FAMILIES AND MARRIAGE?

I, for one, cannot comprehend that.

Why not show us a "Star Trek" Series where all lead characters are happily married, and have their kids living on the ship with them? There ARE children on (for example) the Enterprise-D; but whose kids ARE they is, in most cases, an unanswered mystery... UNLESS said children do only have ONE SINGLE Parent!!

Why IS it?

I wish to see a "Star Trek" Series where mr. Captain's wife is, for example, the ship's Chief Engineer (hi Tom and B'Elana!), mrs. First Officer's husband is, say, the ship's Doctor, mr. Science Officer's wife is, for example, the ship's Bartender (at their "10 Forward"), and so on...