Character Insight No. 220: Best of Charles "Trip" Tucker

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue the "Best Of" series for Enterprise with a profile of Charles Tucker III, AKA "Trip", the chief engineer.  He's definitely someone who had[FAITH] in the Enterprise.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp220

In the season 1 episode Shuttlepod One, Trip and Malcolm Reed are stranded together in a shuttlecraft adrift. Like Reed, this is a great character building episode for Trip thanks to dialogue like this:

Lt. Reed: We have less than nine days of oxygen left. It seems a waste to use it up sleeping.
Commander Tucker: If I don't waste some oxygen sleeping, I'm gonna start gettin' real cranky. And you don't wanna spend your last nine days cooped up with me when I'm cranky!

In the season 2 episode First Flight, we find out the origin of Trip's nickname while also establishing how Captain Archer and Tucker forged a working relationship long before Enterprise:

Commander Jonathan Archer: What's your name, Lieutenant?
Lieutenant Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: Charles Tucker, sir. But... everybody calls me Trip.
Commander Jonathan Archer: 'Trip'?
Lieutenant Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: My dad's Charles Tucker, and so is his dad; that makes me the third, so... triple - 'Trip'.

As covered in T'Pol's segment, the Vulcan subcommander and Trip become romantically involved in this show after a slow burn. In the season 4 episode Home, T'Pol's mother sees right through Trip in a humorous exchange:

T'Les: I know that you're romantically involved with my daughter. There's no logic in denying it. How long have you been attracted to her?
Cmdr. Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: [sighs] I knew we had... some kind of chemistry the first time we got into an argument. I never had fun arguing with anyone before. I got the impression T'Pol wasn't gonna say anything to you.
T'Les: She didn't. I'm her mother.

Like any good chief engineer, Trip has his moments of frustration with the command crew when forcing the ship to its limits, as shown in this clip from Season 2's Cease Fire:

Cmdr. Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: I don't like pushing the engines this hard. The injectors are running 110 percent.
Sub-Commander T'Pol: They're rated for 120.
Cmdr. Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: Yeah, and my underwear is flame-retardant. That doesn't mean I'm gonna light myself on fire to prove it.
Trip quickly becomes one of the more memorable characters on Enterprise, and the high amount of dialogue and dinners between him, T'Pol and Archer make him a great foil to the command officers. Definitely a strong point for this version of Trek.