Portrait of a Character – Jay Douglas Hayes
Many – although not all – roads lead to Jay Douglas Hayes.
Origins
Jay Hayes’s Service Record | Steven Culp
This character is, of course, Star Trek: Enterprise canon. He is a Major in the MACOs and loses his life during the ENT Countdown episode.
In canon, he only has a first initial, and not even a middle initial. I have gone with Jay (a suggestion by the actor who played him) and Douglas in order to dovetail with Doug Beckett. Hence, Jay Douglas Hayes.
The main origination point for me was that I enjoyed the character very much, and wish he had been shown more. A rather earthy dream about him was the basis and initial kernel of an idea for Reversal, a story where he is referred to, and is seen in this photograph. However, by the time of Reversal (2157), Jay is already long dead.
Portrayal
Steven Culp as Major Hayes
As in canon, Jay is portrayed by veteran actor Steven Culp. Culp has said about the character that he is essentially a David Mamet character, in that he is more action than talk much of the time. In canon, he rarely smiles. In fact, I think one of the few times he even comes close to smiling is in this image.
Personality
Steven Culp as Major Hayes with Dominic Keating as Malcolm Reed
All business, Jay is surprised and genuinely hurt that Malcolm Reed would think that he was attempting to undermine the Tactical Officer’s authority. For Jay, it’s about getting the job done. However, he does so with few niceties. For Malcolm, this is unacceptable, and there is a need for communications and for protocols to be followed. In canon, Jay eventually admits that blindly following the chain of command isn’t as easy as it may seem, nor is it always the right thing to do. For him, the excuse of “I was only following orders” could have rung true, until that moment.
E2
In the E2 stories I am currently writing, Jay is in a state of melancholy, but so are many of the other people, as clinical depression runs rampant, at least at the beginning of those stories. For Jay, it takes the form of regrets about an old relationship with a woman he identifies as his most important ex-girlfriend, Susan Cheshire, and he even writes her a letter that he knows she will never read. But Jay is also unexpectedly kind, such as when he carves a walking stick for an injured crewman but doesn’t make it public knowledge.
His conflict with Malcolm is shown in any number of stories. In Harvest and in Protocols, which both take place during the Xindi war, he and Malcolm bicker a bit. It’s pretty much just about their ideas about dealing with the Xindi threat. It isn’t until the E2 stories that their arguments become about something else entirely, their rivalry over a woman.
Relationships
In canon, he has no known relationships. I follow on that and, in Together, when Lili and Doug meet with his sister, the attorney Laura Hayes, she confides that he had no one, not even a girlfriend and was “not the marrying kind”.
In my fanfiction, he has three important earlier relationships which eventually lead up to his great love, in the E2 stories. The first of these is with Darareaksmey Preap, a Cambodian bar girl that he knew when he was young and in Basic Training, near Phnom Penh. Much like Doug, he lies to Darareaksmey and tells her he loves her, and buys her gifts, in order to be able to lose his virginity to her.
The second is Christine Chalmers, possibly known during an assignment. He considers telling her that he loves her until he learns that she’s been cheating on him. The third is the aforementioned Susan Cheshire, who tells him she loves him nearly constantly. But he can’t bring himself to say it in return, and he doesn’t quite understand why until later.
In the E2 stories, he learns to let go of Susan’s memory and embrace the woman who will be his great love, the woman he calls Sparrow. This is evoked in Equinox as well when, even after his death, he communicates with her and accidentally calls her Sparrow.
Theme Music
Jay Douglas Hayes doesn’t have official theme music, but the Beatles’ Blue Jay Way works rather nicely.
Mirror Universe
Jay’s Mirror Universe counterpart is Doug Beckett. Any discussion of Jay/Doug in the Mirror can be found in that post.
Quote
“I was a big kid. {and} I was probably gonna be fat if I didn’t do something. I was an ox, a lummox, my dad would call me. My father, he ordered me to ride my bike every day…. He was military, too. And, well, so I did it. ‘Cause you didn’t argue with Jeremiah Hayes. So I used to ride around the reservoir area. It was nice, and there were birds. They would all chatter away, like they were having arguments or telling each other the news or something like that…. Anyway, it was a good place to go, and it was a bit cooler than most places, so I went every day. And then one day, I saw the Ganymede Police there. They had a skiff boat and there were divers. And they were, well … they were dredging for a body.”
Upshot
Beyond being, perhaps, a bit of a jarhead, Jay Douglas Hayes has a heart and a soul. You just need to be quiet and listen for them.
[…] in the blanks. I hear his voice better than any of the other canon characters, except perhaps for Jay Hayes. A thousand stories can be told about Malcolm. I feel I have merely scratched the surface. This […]
[…] only. She was mentioned in the canon E2 episode as having become Travis Mayweather’s wife. Major Jay Hayes also mentioned her on his deathbed, and asked that she be placed in charge of the MACOs. She held a […]
[…] a prequel, dovetails with the canon Hatchery episode. I also wanted to address how thoughts that Jay Hayes might be gay would affect him and could be spun out as a part of my fanon. Plus I wanted Dan to be […]
[…] giving them dates (e. g. Hoshi had to happen fairly late during the In Between Days period as Jay Hayes‘s replacement, Bud Dawson, is mentioned. Heat had to happen early as it references Naomi […]
[…] A pair of MACOs accompany Hoshi, and it becomes clear that they are a gay couple. Friends of hers, they compliment her on her choice of attire for the evening. It’s confirmed that Frank Todd will be one of the MACOs going to the surface (Frank also shows up in Shell Shock and in the E2 stories), as will his boss, Major Dawson (Dawson is also a part of Shell Shock and is the replacement for Jay Hayes). […]
[…] and I wanted one for whom love wasn’t easy. After all, Lili and Malcolm and Doug (and even Jay and José) all wait a long time before taking the plunge but, once they do, it’s easy. For […]
[…] have been so many slash stories written about Major Hayes, it’s not funny. But I have never seen him as gay, so I wanted to riff on that a bit, and […]
[…] explained, and the cake made at the end has a blueberry filling – a shout-out to my portrayal of Jay Hayes as loving […]
[…] characters would behave in a manner that would prefigure the future. Furthermore, I wanted to give Jay Hayes a bit more personality. I actually had a bit of a cold and so I seized upon that idea, and wrote […]
[…] two wounded men. Because the Concord story begins right before Voracious, the names O’Day and Hayes are not yet known to the characters. Furthermore, the name Warren also figures in my stories. In […]
[…] dedicated to his job, Frank is just the kind of guy you want defending the Enterprise and her crew. Jay and Julie trust him, and he has more than earned their trust. Eventually, he rises to the rank of […]
[…] When it’s determined that they are no smarter than maybe an herbivorous fish, one is shot by Jay Hayes and brought back to the ship for study. Once the study is complete, he brings some pieces to the […]
[…] is of course present, as is Jay Hayes, who is not mentioned in the episode but naturally had to have been there. One group of secondary […]
[…] The Delphic Expanse, their drabble game was revived and so I wrote an E2 tidbit about Lili, Jay and Joss, called Marbles, an E2 story about Jay and Lili (a drabble version of Penicillin, […]
[…] also added Protocols, which is another Lili-centric prequel and The Mess, which also features Jay. I also added the extreme prequel story, A Single […]
[…] late April of 2133, Jay is a sergeant and is under a Major Ian Landry (savvy readers will recognize Landry as being one of […]
[…] Reed – Malcolm talks about Jay‘s […]
[…] Jay Hayes and Dave Constantine in particular are blueberry fans. […]
[…] And so we’re off to the races, for the next two scenes shift from her and her roommate in our universe to her fellow and his roommate – a woman – in the mirror. We know Lili’s name, but not the guy’s. He’s just referred to – and rather pejoratively at that – as the old man. His name is kept out of the first few chapters as he is a counterpart to a canon character. […]
[…] ← Previous Next → […]
[…] school teacher, Susan is playful and even rather sexually liberated, according to Jay in the E2 stories and Doug in Together. But all is not right, for in both universes she depends […]
[…] (eek, spoilers!) Doug is Major Jay Hayes‘s Mirror Universe counterpart, he is of course portrayed by Steven Culp. Culp is a consummate […]
[…] presides over Malcolm‘s and Jay‘s funerals in The Three of Us and both of theirs, Tripp‘s and Lili‘s in Everybody […]
[…] Jay is only a factor in the E2 stories, but the events of Harvest, Penicillin and Demotion foreshadow some of that. […]
[…] In Together, Lili first reveals that, during the canon E2 episode, they wed and had a daughter, Maria Elena, named after Lili’s mother, Marie Helêne Ducasse O’Day. The savvy reader should wonder – why wasn’t Lili with Malcolm or Jay? […]
[…] do not live with men. The other is Lili, but by that time she’s committed to both Malcolm and Jay. Preece Ti thereby deduces that Diana is a lesbian. They take up together and have a loving, […]
[…] has a midday encounter, but rejects the fellow when she sees and hears him being dressed down by Jay, his superior […]
[…] very brief glimpse of Susan Cheshire, and Penicillin, which is an interplay between canon character Jay Hayes and Lili O’Day. For all of those stories, they are short and the OC (except for in Atlas) […]
[…] Canon characters abound, as the story is also one big shout-out to the canon Star Trek: Enterprise First Flight episode. Jonathan Archer, Liz Cutler, AG Robinson, Soval, and Admiral Forrest all show up. There are even very brief cameos by T’Pol and Jay Hayes. […]
[…] or less equivalent. In The Three of Us, the Ikaarans Jeris and Jobiram are able to heal Lili and Jay, but Jay has internal injuries that they cannot do anything about. In Everybody Knows This is […]
[…] Will during the events of Voracious and for Jonathan, Hoshi, T’Pol, Travis, Malcolm, Tripp, Jay, and Dr. Phlox in […]
[…] Jay asks Shelby if the wood is strong and can support a lot of weight. She suggests an Osage orange tree instead, as the fruit doesn’t taste very good and it was just a fallback, which is no longer needed, as regular oranges are growing just fine. Plus the Osage orange wood is a lot stronger than regular orange wood. He accepts her recommendation, and makes a cane for the permanently injured Ethan Shapiro. […]
[…] compare her Prime and Mirror Universe counterparts. I wanted her to be that way, whereas Doug and Jay are, for example, a lot closer. Leah represents just how different the two sides of the coin truly […]
[…] the end of Reversal, Doug tells Lili that Jay had a sister. In order to keep that sister, Laura, from just stumbling across a news story about […]
[…] ways. T’Pol’s canon relationship is well-known. She ends up breaking down in front of Jay Hayes‘s replacement, Major Strong Bear Dawson, who everybody calls Bud. Bud is the sole eyewitness […]
[…] before he sees some fellow crew members, plus an unfamiliar military fellow (this turns out to be Jay Hayes‘s replacement, Bud Dawson) and some protesters from […]
[…] the meal coincide with Major Jay Hayes‘s first day as well. That way, there could be the canon tension between him and Reed as an […]
[…] parties on the ship. What is on the floor, and on the wall, are the remains of something sentient. Hayes and Slocum come in. And Lili is still, barely, […]
[…] I needed a bad guy character for the Times of the HG Wells series who would not be found out immediately. Enter Von, who is named for retired Phillies outfielder Von Hayes (yet another backhanded reference to Jay Hayes). […]
[…] decided the judges would be Jonathan, Malcolm and Jay, thereby prefiguring Lili’s relationship with Malcolm and her connection to Jay, plus her […]
[…] and maybe a little shy, Oscar is even more of a strong, silent type than Jay Hayes, his commanding officer. He is also a semi-lapsed Catholic, insisting on a full Catholic mass for […]
[…] McKenzie, Phlox married Amanda Cole, Tripp Tucker married T’Pol, and Malcolm Reed never wed. Major Jay Hayes‘s love life is never mentioned in the […]
[…] Jay and Doug Hayes both needed a father. […]
[…] together, as Laura is more than just the officiant at Malcolm and Lili’s wedding, or Jay‘s elder sister. I particularly liked giving one final bit of information, that the Romulans […]
[…] and for the new series. I asked for the following characters to be added to Ad Astra – J. Hayes, Daniels, Erika Hernandez, Lili O’Day and Doug Hayes Beckett. All were added quickly. […]
[…] a bit of background for Jay Hayes and Empress Hoshi, Sun-Tzu’s classic text proved to be the perfect manual for Star Trek fan […]
[…] Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, it is Charlotte, a descendant of Jonathan, Lili, Ebrona, Jay, Malcolm, and others, who sends the first kick-back’s full database to Hoshi. This changes […]
[…] Three of Us, Jay Hayes reveals that 42753 is his serial […]
[…] As in canon, Madden is played by actor Steven Culp. I like this actor a great deal. He was also exceptionally gracious when I wrote to him, asking for an autographed photograph and the answer to a few questions as I was writing The Three of Us and looking to add some verisimilitude to my details about Jay Hayes. […]
[…] a public and dangerous manner. The only other couple I have had, so far, to do such a thing, are Jay Hayes and Susan Cheshire. However, they are never seen in the act; the reference is just one of […]
[…] he should get an encore), I like the idea of him. In particular, his existence means the Reed-Hayes–O’Day-Beckett-Madden–Digiorno family lasts into the deep future in more than one […]
[…] was an idea about a love triangle/threesome among Lili, Jay, and Malcolm. Of all four stories set during that time period, this one was the most fully […]
[…] and Ramih Azar. Lili O’Day does her best to keep it together, but also believes rumors about Jay Hayes and Malcolm […]