Chef's true ID

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

https://screenrant.com/enterprises-mystery-chef-should-have-been-1-of-3-star-trek-characters/

The three alternate IDs they suggest for Chef are:

1) Kirk's ancestor (and Kirk himself) - Via time travel, impersonating his own relative
I've heard this before. Heck, they could have had Shatner be the real chef and Riker be the holodeck player - so Riker cosplaying a Kirk relative. For interest's sake, have it be a relative on Kirk's mom's side.

2) Sisko's ancestor
Establishing a long family history of cooking and space exploration. Hmm, for added mystery, have it be a Russell ancestor.

3) Pike's ancestor
Well, we didn't know Pike liked to cook until DIS/SNW, so...

 

[SCE2Aux]

I dunno. For me personally, I kinda prefer not knowing who Chef is, his name etc. Knowing who he is would ruin the joke, rather like seeing Maris in Frasier would have if they showed her. Besides, whilst I have a large tolerance for callbacks and references, I think it would be too much 'small universe syndrome' to have him as a relative of one of the future Trek captains.

 

[Michael]

I’ll have to agree with @SCE2Aux, not ever seeing chef was the more interesting thing to do and I would prefer to never know. Heck, I kinda wish they would have played it up even more that we never get to see him. When they let Riker take his place in that episode that came up after the actual finale it almost seemed like an afterthought that it was even a thing that we never saw chef.

 

[1001001]

 

[somebuddyX]

Yous guys have been getting his name wrong. His name's JEFF.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't want to know who Chef is. I'm satisfied with him being just a regular dude, doing his job, not attracting attention in any way. Just sort of fading into the background. Hell, I'd even prefer it if he was a civilian.

 

[HotRod]

You could picture him getting so angry when a Xindi boarding party ruined a meal he was preparing that he pulls out a couple kitchen knives and goes all Casey Ryback on their asses.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Chief Petty Officer Thomas W. Riker from Alaska.

 

[Dukhat]

None of those three ideas are particularly appealing. He probably would have just been some guy from a cooking show that UPN would be trying to promote.

 

[Finn]

An distant descendant of Gordon Ramsay.

 

[Farscape One]

I'm also kind of relieved we never learned Chef's identity. It gives ENT their own running gag, like Morn never uttering a single word on DS9 but being very well known as a Chatty Cathy.

 

[valkyrie013]

Uh.. nobody in particular.. like how absolutely nobody in the cast was related to anybody in tos or beyond. They were there own people.

Need to get rid of that crutch of relelying on past characters or relations. I'm all for a callback but enough with the memeberrys

 

[Finn]

Don't jinx it, or they'd make it that Kirk was Picard's grandfather....

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Next generation literalist? Oh, no.

 

[Finn]

Next generation literalist? Oh, no.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Literally Kirk's next generation.

 

[Finn]

Um.....okay if you say so.

 

[Nerys Myk]

This guy

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think the Dave episode concept where Shatner as Chef had to be trained by Daniels to pretend to be Kirk at a key moment in history could have been great fun.

 

[Macintosh]

In my head, Chef was always Riker reviewing historical NX-01 mission logs on the holodeck. This is probably a terrible idea.