allow to me to ramble abt one of many many IT starred trek AU possibilities hh. if u don't know what i'm talking abt just assume it's really smart and in character ok thanks. imagining this whole shebang is set in like the later seasons of TNG era

eddie & richie grew up together on a human colony that suffered some Great Disaster (tarsus iv-esque) & while they were very close as kids they drifted, and running into each other again on the same ship brings up a lot of tension and is quite fraught, tho they still get on well

they both went into starfleet with goals to understand what happened to them/fix things(...fix themselves?) their pasts are their obsessions but their newly rebuilt relationship allows them to move forward!!!

bev is bajoran, ex-bajoran resistance. not fleet but becomes entangled with a fleet situation through ben, a betazoid ambassador who works with refugee populations. (look i really really want a bajoran/betazoid pairing i feel like we as a society are sleeping on this concept)

mike is an old-fashioned earth-grown fleet type (think james t). great family, good childhood, recent super traumatizing starship experience he's still trying to work through. communications expert, used to research but just got promoted by his captain, audra phillips

bill is like, a space anthropologist or smth along those lines? mostly academic; not fleet; human but from some esoteric space colony somewhere. he and mike are familiar with each other's work () but not each other

patty is a human fleet ambassador who works w ben. stan, a ecologist on some tiny distant colony, isn't sure he's worldly enough for such a well-traveled woman, but they meet and instantly connect...and oh, what's that? the captain needs his expertise for this mission? well....