Who are our 3 favorite best friends in all of Star Trek?
By Chad Porto
Star Trek is known for many things, and its ability to create captivating relationships is chief among them.
Star Trek is many things to many people. To some, it’s a bible for equality, to others it’s a how-to guide to the future. For others, it’s a hilarious depiction of what happens if you don’t properly tend to your aliens correctly. For others still, it’s a showcase of how to develop and cultivate a lifelong friendship.
From James T. Kirk and Spock to T’Pol and Jonathan Archer, the Star Trek franchise has depicted all sorts of friendships. ScreenRant noticed this as well and posted their Top 10 Best Friendships in Star Trek recently and it’s a heck of a read.
Though that doesn’t mean we completely agree with the order or even some of the pairings. So instead of just disagreeing, we’re going to offer up our own selections that we think are the three most well-done best-friendship pairings in Star Trek.
Ours won’t be in any particular order.
Three best-best friends pairing in Star Trek
Kathryne Janeway and Chakotay
While most of us, myself included, wanted these two to get married and live happily ever after, that was not in the cards for them. Instead, the bond that Chakotay and Janeway had was so profound, that Chakotay developed a report with Janeway that no one else really had on the ship. He had the leeway to disagree with her, and she respected him enough to listen. Chakotay served under her loyally and would often be a source of comfort for the Captain when she struggled with the outcomes of her decisions.
Tom Paris and Harry Kim
Harry Kim is Star Trek’s resident sad sack, and maybe rightfully so. The man did die, get replaced by a copy of himself, and no one even took time to mourn the dead version of him. Harsh. That’s why when you think of these best friend coupling, it’s mostly reliant on how Tom Paris constantly looked out for Kim. Kim was one of the few people to really give Paris a chance after the latter joined up with Voyager, and due to that Paris looked out for the younger Kim. Plus, their jaunts in the holodeck are among the best scenes in Voyager.
Elim Garak and Julian Bashir
While Julian Bashir and Miles O’Brien were very close, it feels like it was a situation for Bashir where he’d tell people, “Well, I’m his best friend…”. After all, while he enjoyed hanging with O’Brien, he shared far more in common with the former Cardassian spy, Elim Garak. Garak and Bashir were both agents of secrets, Garak a fountain of them, Bashir mostly just for his status as an augment. Yet, their shared bond over the concept of spying and the spy games that come within rose the level of discourse on Deep Space Nine to a new level.