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I was a little bit worried about this year's story, for reasons some of my readers will probably understand momentarily, but my recipient appears to have liked it well enough.
Star Trek: Lower Decks • Star Trek: The Next Generation
Things Half in Shadow and Halfway in Light
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Words: ~2500
Characters: Brad Boimler, Beckett Mariner, Sam Rutherford, D'Vana Tendi
Mariner thinks courier missions are boring. Boimler isn't so sure. And Rutherford thinks he's seen one of their passengers before.
Two of them are right.
The matched fandom was Star Trek: Lower Decks - which I've been generally enjoying but also having some issues with - not unusual for the first season of any new Trek series. It took me awhile to find a plot for a Lower Decks story - the prompts I had were very general, and I wasn't really inspired to jump off from any particular point in the aired episodes. But then, very late, a light-bulb went off in my head - and I knew I couldn't resist the opportunity.
So: this series takes place after the TNG movies but before the new Picard series, which spoils nothing for anyone. And I almost certainly won't spoil anything by mentioning that the courier mission in question amounts to ferrying a scientist and his assistant from the Phlox Institute (a medical research think tank, which I've placed in the Coridan system) to the Vulcan Science Academy.
However, if I mention that the scientist in question is traveling as "Dr. J. M. Kurland", and that his contact at the Phlox Institute is a certain Dr. Katherine Pulaski, a few of you may figure out what I dropped into the laps of the U.S.S. Cerritos crew. (The Yuletide assignment is free-standing, but can be assumed to follow on from the two relevant works you're thinking about.)
I will note here that the references to Dr. Pulaski and the Phlox Institute are consistent with what's known about her later career from the tie-in fiction; I did a good deal of noodling through the Memory Alpha and Memory Beta Trek wikis in order to make sure the timeline would fit.
And that's a wrap for Yuletide 2020. Onward!
