November 2017

Yes, I have seen some t’pura art here and there! This is a modern pairing; or at least, if anyone shipped them in the 70s, I was not aware of it.

T’Pring, when we saw her at all, was vilified in those days for having dumped Spock and named Kirk rather than Stonn as her champion. No one thought about her possibly limited choices for escape from the marriage, or explored her character except as a stock villain. I’m delighted to see her getting some love these days – both from the fans and from Uhura ;-)

Yes, I met all the original cast except Bill.

Oh goodness, I have so many stories it’s hard to know what to say here. But I get this question a lot, so I need to just start writing down memories as they come to me or I will never get a post out about this.

Jimmy Doohan (Scotty) gave the best bear hugs in the world. He was not just a cast member but a real Star Trek fan himself.  He loved the show, he loved Scotty, he loved the fans. He was a regular con fixture in the ‘70s, and you must remember that back then there were lots of conventions that had maybe 70 or 80 people in attendance. He didn’t care about audience size ; if you invited him, and he was able to come, he came.

Back then everything happened in one hotel. The con would take over the ballroom and a couple of side rooms, and there was always a welcome suite that acted as organization central. The actors stayed in the same hotel as the guests. It was mostly very amateurish, just a handful of dedicated fans getting a smallish group of people together.  Jimmy, George Takei (Sulu), De Kelley (Bones), and Walter Koenig (Chekov), could all be counted on to stick around and be pretty accessible all weekend.

George would always make an announcement that if anyone wanted to go running with him, to meet him in the hotel lobby (or wherever) at a set time.  Then a group would get together early in the morning and go for a run. He was a pretty hardcore runner, though, so I think most people who went couldn’t keep up with him. 

De always brought his wife Carolyn (I can only think of one time I saw him without her, and he apologized all weekend that she couldn’t make it). They were the sweetest couple, really warm to the fans and, what was especially nice, warm to each other. It was obvious they were best friends. And they’d been married close to 30 years by the time they were coming to those early cons.

De took a warm interest in fan work and read a lot of fanzines.  He sought out authors and artists and would give in-person feedback on your work, always very encouraging, but also quite thoughtful. You could tell he’d read your work and thought about it.  He had an ever-increasing set of humorous poems that he wrote for the fans, and he would read these at conventions. Reading his poetry to us was such a set feature that regular con-goers would recite some of his older work in chorus with him.  It was very interactive and fun, and he would get so tickled that people liked his poems. It was the most charming thing you can imagine to see him get so pleased at the audience’s response to his writing that he would do that bouncy thing on his toes.

Walter always seemed kind of serious to me, but he was a great conversationalist. He was extremely well-read and could be counted on as a great person talk books with.

Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) was the goddess she was then, is now and always shall be. She didn’t hang around the way most of the guys from the cast did, and anyway I was a little in awe of and shy with her, so I never took much opportunity to talk to her.

I did see Leonard at numerous conventions over the years, but he was a special case, because by the time cons really got going, he had become so popular that it was just not possible for him to hang out the way the others did.  In earlier days I’d had a chance to interact with him through his fan club, but I’ll write another post about that.

Mark Leonard, the original Sarek, was an occasional guest. He seemed very laid-back and approachable. Soft-spoken. It was wonderful to see him laugh.

JImmy was the one cast member I spent considerable time with, though only ever in the context of a Star Trek gathering. We first met at the beginning of the 70s when I was on a committee trying to get Star Trek back on the air, and were just very friendly after that.  My oldest child has very fond memories of him.

The last time I saw him was perhaps a week after The Search for Spock had hit the theaters, in the summer of ‘84. He and his wife Wende were in St. Louis for a convention, and a small group of us went to dinner and then for drinks until some small hour of the morning. He was extremely warm, exceedingly funny, a great raconteur, and some of my fondest memories of those convention days are of drinking with Jimmy (and usually Wende) and a small group of friends in the after hours.

He always claimed that the character Scotty was 99% Jimmy and 1% accent (or something along those lines). I can attest he had Scotty’s love of a good drink, but he was both funnier and more irascible than Scotty ever was, in my opinion.

burning–amber:

spockslash:

I went through a serious grieving period, like losing a very close friend with whom my life had been entwined for 15 years. It was rough!

This is one time I am glad I wasn’t born then. I don’t know how I would have coped.

Word got out well in advance that Spock was going to die in the film. There was a sizable organized movement in fandom to boycott the movie as a result.

Paramount backpedaled then, and dropped hints that all was not as it seemed and maybe he wouldn’t “really” die.

That is why the line was placed at the beginning of the film, when Jim sees Spock immediately after the Kobiashi Maru: “Aren’t you dead?”

That line was written straight to the fans. So we didn’t know if that was it – if that was what was meant by maybe he wouldn’t really die.

The emotional memory is burnt like a scar, and I can remember like it was yesterday the feeling in the pit of my stomach – dared I to hope? – when Jim spoke those words. I spent the rest of the movie leaning forward in my seat, praying to the universe “Please let that be it. Please let that be Spock’s ‘death.’ Please, please, please.”

But the moment Spock got that look on the bridge, then stood up and walked down to engineering, I knew. Everyone knew. I remember people starting to cry in the theater as soon as he went into the reactor chamber.

As for me, I spent the rest of the weekend lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. I can so clearly remember how worried my husband was, and him sitting beside me asking, “Are you going to be ok?” And me: “Of course I’m not going to be ok! SPOCK IS DEAD!!” And then crying. It was just awful.

Yes, I met all the original cast except Bill.

Oh goodness, I have so many stories it’s hard to know what to say here. But I get this question a lot, so I need to just start writing down memories as they come to me or I will never get a post out about this.

Jimmy Doohan (Scotty) gave the best bear hugs in the world. He was not just a cast member but a real Star Trek fan himself.  He loved the show, he loved Scotty, he loved the fans. He was a regular con fixture in the ‘70s, and you must remember that back then there were lots of conventions that had maybe 70 or 80 people in attendance. He didn’t care about audience size ; if you invited him, and he was able to come, he came.

Back then everything happened in one hotel. The con would take over the ballroom and a couple of side rooms, and there was always a welcome suite that acted as organization central. The actors stayed in the same hotel as the guests. It was mostly very amateurish, just a handful of dedicated fans getting a smallish group of people together.  Jimmy, George Takei (Sulu), De Kelley (Bones), and Walter Koenig (Chekov), could all be counted on to stick around and be pretty accessible all weekend.

George would always make an announcement that if anyone wanted to go running with him, to meet him in the hotel lobby (or wherever) at a set time.  Then a group would get together early in the morning and go for a run. He was a pretty hardcore runner, though, so I think most people who went couldn’t keep up with him. 

De always brought his wife Carolyn (I can only think of one time I saw him without her, and he apologized all weekend that she couldn’t make it). They were the sweetest couple, really warm to the fans and, what was especially nice, warm to each other. It was obvious they were best friends. And they’d been married close to 30 years by the time they were coming to those early cons.

De took a warm interest in fan work and read a lot of fanzines.  He sought out authors and artists and would give in-person feedback on your work, always very encouraging, but also quite thoughtful. You could tell he’d read your work and thought about it.  He had an ever-increasing set of humorous poems that he wrote for the fans, and he would read these at conventions. Reading his poetry to us was such a set feature that regular con-goers would recite some of his older work in chorus with him.  It was very interactive and fun, and he would get so tickled that people liked his poems. It was the most charming thing you can imagine to see him get so pleased at the audience’s response to his writing that he would do that bouncy thing on his toes.

Walter always seemed kind of serious to me, but he was a great conversationalist. He was extremely well-read and could be counted on as a great person talk books with.

Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) was the goddess she was then, is now and always shall be. She didn’t hang around the way most of the guys from the cast did, and anyway I was a little in awe of and shy with her, so I never took much opportunity to talk to her.

I did see Leonard at numerous conventions over the years, but he was a special case, because by the time cons really got going, he had become so popular that it was just not possible for him to hang out the way the others did.  In earlier days I’d had a chance to interact with him through his fan club, but I’ll write another post about that.

Mark Leonard, the original Sarek, was an occasional guest. He seemed very laid-back and approachable. Soft-spoken. It was wonderful to see him laugh.

JImmy was the one cast member I spent considerable time with, though only ever in the context of a Star Trek gathering. We first met at the beginning of the 70s when I was on a committee trying to get Star Trek back on the air, and were just very friendly after that.  My oldest child has very fond memories of him.

The last time I saw him was perhaps a week after The Search for Spock had hit the theaters, in the summer of ‘84. He and his wife Wende were in St. Louis for a convention, and a small group of us went to dinner and then for drinks until some small hour of the morning. He was extremely warm, exceedingly funny, a great raconteur, and some of my fondest memories of those convention days are of drinking with Jimmy (and usually Wende) and a small group of friends in the after hours.

He always claimed that the character Scotty was 99% Jimmy and 1% accent (or something along those lines). I can attest he had Scotty’s love of a good drink, but he was both funnier and more irascible than Scotty ever was, in my opinion.

I started thinking about it before Amok Time aired.

In the summer of ‘67, watching the reruns of the first season, I very clearly remember a growing sense of, “They really love each other.” I did not jump to “they are in a romantic/sexual relationship,” but I was increasingly aware that there was love and devotion between them. I wrote a speculative essay about their platonic love in our summer fan club newsletter, which I remember being well-received.

With the start of Season 2, our whole fan club (and often others) watched the show together, at the house of the one person we knew with a color TV. The show was on Friday nights, so we would start the weekends by piling into her living room and watching “in living color” for the first time. Afterwords we would stay and discuss.

When Amok Time aired, we definitely had a lot to talk about. I am pretty sure no one suggested that they were gay – that would have been quite a scandalous suggestion at that time; and I don’t think I thought it myself.  But we did have quite a discussion about how much Jim was willing to sacrifice for Spock, Spock’s reaction to seeing Jim alive, and what did Spock mean by “having not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting…?”

Did Spock … want Jim?

Two camps formed: one believing that Spock was in love with Jim and was pining for him, the other believing no way! that’s ridiculous!

Single copies of “Spock pines for Jim” stories started appearing and being circulated hand-to-hand. Two other women and I were doing most of the writing in my circle of fan friends, and because distribution was so difficult, we started having Thursday night gatherings. Anyone could come and we would read the latest installments in our Spock-loves-Jim stories out loud to the group.

Sometime between the second and third season, my primary writing mentor – an established, published sci-fi writer who was much older than me – told me in private conversation that she thought their love was mutual, quite possibly physical, and that she thought their relationship was worth exploring in writing.

She and I each started working on long pieces exploring the Kirk/Spock relationship, and it was the first time I had seriously entertained the idea that their love was also physical. That was a very secret project. We only ever shared our work with each other for comment / revision, and never mentioned it to anyone else at the time.

The first time I realized that the K/S relationship – which was called “The Premise” in those days – was being explored by other writers and even artists was in the summer of ‘69. Star Trek had been cancelled and I went to another state to meet with a handful of people who were forming a fan network to try to get Star Trek back on air. While there, a fellow fan showed me a set of drawings, all very tame by today’s standards, that depicted a physical relationship between Jim and Spock.  I remember how shocked I was — not by the subject matter, but by the fact that someone had dared depict it.

Slash stayed very much underground until late 1974, when the first published K/S story used very coded language to suggest a love relationship between them.

Before we can talk about the first printed K/S fiction, we need to talk about the first “adult” Star Trek fanzine to appear.

Prior to 1972, all printed fan material was for a general all-ages readership. Then “Grup” came on the scene in 1972 (you will recall that “grup” was the word for “grownups” in the episode Miri), specifically to publish adult stories and art. It was considered pornographic at the time, though the stories were not very explicit by today’s standards. 

The first nsfw art was published in Grup: the first edition had a nude centerfold of Spock!  

In the first instance of a practice that would become standard for writers and publishers of adult — and especially slash — publications, one of the two editors of Grup was known only by a (male) pseudonym. (With a few exceptions, none of us ever published under our real names.)

Grup was hugely popular, as you might imagine, but the editors did very small print runs, not even trying to meet demand.  Everyone was scared in those days of exposure and of being prosecuted for producing pornography.  Just mailing Grup through the US mail was breaking the law!

In 1974, in the 3rd edition of Grup, Diane Marchant published a story called “A Fragment Out of Time.” It was very short and very, very vague, describing two unnamed people making love.  Although the characters weren’t identified, the story was accompanied by a drawing showing Spock saying to Jim,

“Impossible?… No, Jim.  I warned you about messing with aliens … especially Vulcans.”

Whoa, Nelly!

Fandom would never be the same.

Back then we had something called letterzines, which were named and numbered just like regular zines, but existed as a way for fans to discuss things about Star Trek and fandom.  They typically came out every month or two. They were like pre-internet discussion boards, and of course, were a much slower means of communicating. But the system worked! And they were very popular.

Letters poured into the letterzine The Halkan Council, questioning if the two characters depicted in the story were, in fact, Kirk and Spock.  The author wrote an essay in Grup 4 confirming that yes, “Fragments” was about Kirk and Spock, and exploring (again in very subtle and somewhat coded language) the nature of the relationship between the characters.  

And a huge, raging debate started in the letterzines all over fandom about The Premise that Marchant had proposed: that Kirk and Spock were in a romantic, sexual relationship with each other.  (This was when that term came into general use. Before that, there was no public discussion of the K/S relationship, and so no general name for it.)

Two authors, Gerry Downes (whom I wrote a post about) and Leslie Fish, wrote into (I think it was) The Halkan Council, asking Marchant if they could borrow The Premise to develop in fanzines they were inspired to publish, thanks to Marchant breaking this new ground.

Gerry Downes then broke new ground herself by publishing the first K/S zine, Alternative: The Epilog to Orion, in 1976.  She printed only a very few copies (there was a HUGE risk to circulating porn with gay characters), and distributed them mostly to trusted fan friends in other states. She encouraged the recipients to copy the zine, using Xerox machines which were just becoming fairly widely available in print shops, and to circulate and distribute those copies locally.

spockslash:

Oh my gracious, sit your partner down to watch the scene between the Romulan Commander and Spock in The Enterprise Incident. And tell them to be prepared to lose that pinkie bet!  :-)

Here’s some background on what has come (in fandom) to be called the ozh’esta (the finger kiss):

The first time we see the “Vulcan kiss” gesture it is in Journey to Babel (the episode you reference in your question), where it wasn’t actually written in the script.  The actors playing Sarek and Amanda asked Leonard Nimoy about the body language and gestures used by Vulcans, in order to give their performance continuity with what had been developed in Star Trek so far.  It was Leonard’s idea that hands and hand gestures are deeply significant to Vulcans, and between the three of them the actors worked out the now-familiar two-finger touch as the way a Vulcan would interact with his bond-mate.  

Then fan writers – rabid as ever to develop the full backstory (and bedroom story) behind every thing given us on screen – took over.  Essays and fanfiction quickly developed the fannon (fan-made cannon) that we are familiar with today: the gesture is the Vulcan equivalent of a human kiss; it’s a touch through which the telepathic bond crackles like lightening between a bonded pair; Vulcan hands are erogenous zones that one only fondles in private.

Gene Roddenberry was extremely aware of and respectful towards the development of fannon in the early years of Star Trek. He bought the fan zines that were in circulation at that time, he kept them in the production offices, and he insisted that the show writers read them and keep them in mind when writing new episodes.  (These were golden years for being a fanfiction writer, needless to say. GOLDEN.)

As a result of Gene’s requirement to read fan fiction, show writer Dorothy Fontana was fully aware of the fannon about Vulcan sexuality when, during the 3rd season, she wrote The Enterprise Incident. During pre-production, the new producer on the show (the unfortunate Fred Freiberger) went and added a rather torrid love scene between the commander and Spock, very much against Dorothy’s wishes.  Infamously, the scene called for (and this line is burned forever in my memory) Spock taking her in his arms and “raining kisses on every square inch above her shoulder.”  (!!!!)

Well, Dorothy, god bless her, pitched a fit and refused to back down. Pointing out that the fans “know exactly how a Vulcan makes love,” she insisted that Spock and the Romulan commander be seen fondling each other’s hands rather than raining human kisses on faces and necks.  Leonard found out about it and balked at playing the scene, and wrote his objections in a now-famous letter to the production heads. Dorothy and Leonard prevailed on this one, and if you go watch The Enterprise Incident you will see quite a racy (for Vulcans) scene play out between Spock and the Romulan commander – all expressed via the touching of hands.

I hope that helps. I’m trying to think where to point you for source material, since I’m writing this from memory. (For ten years we only had 79 episodes to obsess over. It shows.)

You could check These Are the Voyages by Marc Cushman and Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance (but be aware that there are some errors in it); most or all of these details are probably referenced in those books.

re blogging because I wrote this in the middle of the night

captainsbabysitter-blog:

spockslash:

It is one of my favorite movies. It’s absolutely part of Star Trek cannon!

I once read something somewhere that said: “Intelligence is knowing that Galaxy Quest isn’t a Star Trek movie. Wisdom is know it’s the best Star Trek movie”

I laugh every time I find it again.

Thank you for that, @captainsbabysitter-blog –  what a great quote!