Tucker was born in 2121. His nickname "Trip" is short for "Triple", as he is the third generation of his family to be named Charles Tucker. He joined the United Earth
Starfleet in 2139 and first met
Jonathan Archer around 2143, a decade prior to the launch of
Enterprise, when the two worked together on an early
warp 2 prototype vessel using the warp engine designed by Archer's father, Henry Archer. While a knowledgeable engineer, Tucker can be rash and "illogical", an opinion that early on causes friction between him and
Enterprise's
Vulcan science officer,
T'Pol. During the first year of
Enterprise's mission, he finds himself coping with situations with which no
Starfleet engineer has ever coped, and is a key player in the vessel finally achieving maximum speed at warp 5. Tucker also enjoys occasional romantic relationships, including one with an exotic alien engineer in the episode "
Unexpected". When challenged about these relationships, his stock phrase is, "I was a perfect gentleman". He is statistically the greatest charmer aboard the
Enterprise, and he has gone down in
Star Trek history as the first human male ever to be pregnant and the first human male ever to be in a relationship with a member of another species. In the last episode of the second season, Earth was attacked by an alien race called the
Xindi. The attack was made by a prototype weapon that struck from
Florida crossing into
Venezuela, over the Caribbean Sea, and caused the deaths of 7 million people, including Tucker's sister. This left Tucker emotionally scarred and unable to sleep without experiencing vivid
nightmares. At the request of Dr.
Phlox, Tucker agreed to undergo Vulcan neuropressure treatments with T'Pol. Although the treatments required very intimate contact between the two, no signs were seen at first of anything beyond a professional relationship developing between the officers. At a crucial point during the Xindi mission, Tucker suffered a potentially fatal injury, and the only way to save his life was to create a
clone to harvest needed brain cells. The clone, named "
Sim", grew to adulthood over only a few days, and many of the crew became fond of him, in particular T'Pol, who actually kissed Sim after he confessed to being attracted to T'Pol — but adding that he was uncertain whether those feelings were his own or Tucker's. Against Sim's objections, Archer ordered him to undergo the medical procedure to extract the needed cells to save Tucker's life, though this proved fatal to Sim. As the Xindi mission progressed, Tucker found himself growing closer to T'Pol, and
the two briefly became lovers, an event T'Pol later dismissed as an experiment, although the real cause was a side effect of her addiction to the substance Trellium D, which affected her emotional judgment. Tucker admitted to T'Pol's mother he was in love with her daughter during
a trip to Vulcan with her after the Xindi mission, during which she decided to marry her fiancé Koss in an arranged marriage. Although T'Pol's mother encouraged Tucker to express his feelings to her daughter, he chose not to do so. Later, following the dissolution of T'Pol's marriage, Tucker considered becoming involved with her again. In the episode "
Observer Effect", T'Pol expressed great concern for Tucker, suggesting her feelings for him remained strong despite her claims to the contrary. In 2154, during
a mission to prevent a
Romulan automated marauder from starting a war, Tucker determined that his attraction to T'Pol was negatively affecting his ability to do his job. After the mission, he requested, and received, a transfer to the new NX Class starship,
Columbia. During this period, Tucker began experiencing vivid
daydreams involving T'Pol, without understanding that she was actually unintentionally communicating with him via mental telepathy when she attempted to meditate. In the episode "
Bound", it was revealed that Tucker and T'Pol had become psychically bonded when they had made love a year earlier, although this link apparently did not manifest itself right away. During the events of the episode "
Divergence", Tucker was temporarily reassigned to
Enterprise to facilitate repairs following a run-in with the
Klingons. He subsequently submitted a request to Archer return to
Enterprise full-time. Tucker served as
Enterprise's chief engineer for a full decade, and prepared to transfer to one of the newly built warp 7-capable starships following the decommissioning of
Enterprise in 2161, which was to coincide with the signing of the
Federation Charter. The series finale "
These Are the Voyages..." revealed that Tucker and T'Pol ended their romantic relationship at some point after the events of "
Terra Prime", for reasons as yet unrevealed. Despite this, the two remained close, and Tucker had to reassure T'Pol that the decommissioning of
Enterprise and their reassignment to different vessels would not have any bearing on their friendship. In the last episode, when Shran's former associates track down
Enterprise and board the ship, they demand that Archer take them to Shran, but the captain refuses. The aliens are about to kill Archer, so Trip, thinking fast, tells them that he will take them to Shran. When Archer protests, the aliens knock him out. Trip leads the aliens into what appears to be a harmless utility closet — he tells them it is simply a com station and he is going to get Shran to come to them. Trip tells them he just needs to connect a couple of things, but when he brings a pair of conduits together, a massive explosion erupts, taking out both Trip and the aliens. Trip dies after being fatally wounded. However, what is seen is a holodeck simulation being run by Will Riker. Whether his death is an actual event is not definitively established. Also, in the
Star Trek Enterprise relaunch novels set after "
These Are the Voyages...", it was revealed that Trip's death from the explosion was faked so he could join
Section 31 to spy on the
Romulans, however this has never been solidified as being canon. ==Personal life==