#tos: the empath

[anghraine]

It's silly, but one of my favorite Kirk/Spock things is that they are clearly very much more on each other's wavelength intellectually than most others are, but—

There are so many scenes in which everyone else is baffled or missing something important that Spock or Kirk see in the other's behavior. Probably the peak moment for this is Spock, and Spock alone, realizing in "Arena" that Kirk has the raw materials to make gunpowder just as Kirk himself realizes it. So you get Spock murmuring "good, good...yes...yes..." right there on the bridge as his beloved starts reinventing the bazooka (pretty sure this counts as sex for him), but McCoy and the bridge crew are completely confused about what they're seeing. And there are plenty of moments of this kind of half-unspoken mutual brilliance while their co-workers wish they'd just use their words.

However. The important counterpoint to this is that Kirk and Spock each possess the special ability to instantly incinerate entire neuron paths in each other's brains and become 10x stupider around each other, also. Spock barges into Kirk's quarters in "The Enemy Within" without explanation, sees his naked chest, and his higher functions crumble into ash on the spot; when he regains the power of speech, he asks the baffled Kirk what he can do for him as if this somehow explains what he's doing there, and Kirk is just confused but pleased, and smiles enough that Spock's gay awakening visibly burns through even more neural circuits until he runs away.

And Kirk himself doesn't need to see skin to completely lose track of what he was even talking about because Spock did a thing. For instance, the scene when Kirk looks at Spock with flirty adoration at the end of "A Taste of Armageddon" and bats his eyelashes and says, "Why, Mr. Spock, you almost make me believe in miracles"—yes, it's extremely gay, but I feel it's important to understand the immediate context is a general conversation on the bridge about the horrors of war. But then Spock raised his brows and ambiguously complimented him, so Kirk's entire cognitive process melted into Spock Spock Spock Spock. In S3, Spock sits down beside Kirk to tenderly watch him sleep, without appearing to consider that anyone (like say the empath standing right by them) would notice, and then poorly fakes looking at tricorder readings when said empath picks on his emotions. Surely that will fool her psychic powers! (It doesn't.) Kirk, often a master of performance and theatricality, has to be physically held back from trying to singlehandedly maul a Klingon while in disguise and surrounded by an occupying Klingon force because one guy slightly shoved Spock.

They're a brilliant and wildly successful command team together and they are also so incredibly stupid about each other, it's beautiful

[anghraine]

#it got gayer har har har (via @ladytharen)

If TOS has taught us nothing else, it's that it can always get gayer :P

Spock is Gay ➞ A Collection of Evidence

[majormiles]

requested by @muirmarie

[chaos-whatever]

Don't worry about them :)

[possumtion]

I am normal about the empath (lie)

(Prompt fill for the @mcspirkevents bingo card: “Final Moments)

[starberry-cupcake]

they just did all these little things to each other throughout decades and new versions need to get on this level of being weird with each other (affectionately)

[trek-tracks]

Imagine this. You're Spock. You've tried not to get yourself emotionally involved with your crewmates. It's not going very well. Your doctor goes and contracts a terminal illness and doesn't tell you (but luckily your captain can't go three seconds without breaking Space HIPAA or whatever exists in the future) and then tries to run away and die on an asteroid. You take out the Instrument of Obedience, privately thinking that it would be nice to have some control over this maniac you somehow care about's actions. You spend Surak knows how much time downloading and translating an entire civilization's medical library to cure him. No problem. It was just an incurable disease. You didn't need to sleep this month.

Two episodes later, another alien civilization tries to check said doctor out like he's a library book and then writes "withdrawn" on his forehead and pretends they don't have to give him back. He tells you to leave to save yourself; he'll stay. Did you mention you decoded an entire medical archive like two weeks ago for---fine. You go through unspeakable emotional violations to put him back into circulation on the Enterprise. It's cool. You didn't need your dignity anyway.

Two episodes after that, your illogical, self-sacrificial doctor mutinies and sedates you--the ranking officer in charge--undoing the fact that, again, how many hours did you spend? Curing an incurable illness because you couldn't let him die? Singing like an idiot in front of a bunch of snickering Platonians with laurel leaves on your head and no pants to speak of?--so he can get himself tortured to death on your behalf. You convince an empath to save him. He pushes her away because he "can't destroy life." Your captain is crying. The shiny force field shows everyone that you're having very non-shiny emotions. Do Vulcans even believe in hell

You think you've finally reached some sort of sacrificial detente. It's been a while. Neither of you have died on the other's behalf. You've both had to save your captain a few times, but that's normal. All in a day's work. Then said captain wants all three of you to check out a mysteriously abandoned library of time periods. You should have figured you would wind up in some sort of frozen wasteland with your doctor and no perceivable way to return what you'd borrowed. Well. At least there's the two of you so that you can keep an eye on--

He falls down in the snow. His hands are blue. "Go on without me," he says, dramatically. "Alone, you have a chance."

yeah I'd strangle that fucker against a cave wall too

[cakesandsnouts]

"Can't we do something?" "I'm afraid not." STAR TREK 03.12 The Empath

[forecast0ctopus]

noooo they gave him the worst crop top of all time……..sick and twisted

[spockeveryday]

[major-comet]

the biggest problem with tos’ episodic format is that the episode usually ends pretty quickly after the conflict resolves and then they never really talk about it again - no matter how intense or harrowing it was

which means that we don’t get to actually *see* the interpersonal fallout of bones being diagnosed with and cured from a previously-incurable terminal illness (that he didn’t even want to tell jim and spock he had), and then just four episodes later drugging them so that he can go be tortured (and likely die) instead of spock, and so jim doesn’t have to make the choice between them.

did they talk about it? beyond just a standard debrief and a “never fucking do that again bones i swear to god i mean it this time”? did they make it the captains’ quarters for the debrief, only for mccoy to be pulled into a crushing, trembling hug as soon as the door shut while jim tried to assure himself that bones was still here, was still breathing? spock hovering nearby - a hand gently coming to rest on his shoulder?

why didn’t mccoy want to tell them about the xenopolycythemia, anyways? to try and hold onto a few more normal-ish months before every time they looked at him their eyes would be filled with grief - mourning a man they hadn’t yet lost? the same reason he ran away; to spare them what he went through with his father?

only for him to immediately turn around and throw himself back to the wolves to (almost) die right in front of them anyways

i don’t really know how they handled it. whether they talked about it and attempted to soothe the hurt, or just resolutely tried to bottle it up.

but i do know this: spock eventually came back from gol because jim simply (though accidentally) called out for him in a moment of need. bones only came back because jim personally drafted him back into starfleet

[anghraine]

Honestly, the thing about Spock's nervous reaction to being perceived by Gem the mute empath (turning away, pretending to study his tricorder, ignoring her until she walks over and emotes her delight at what he specifically felt for the unconscious Kirk while gentle music plays) that gets me is how much it mirrors the final scene of "Amok Time."

I mean, "The Empath" is no "Amok Time" as an episode (though it's fine). But the transformation of Spock's devastation over Kirk's "death" at his hands into raw joy and delight, the only time in TOS that he shows such a thing without some outside force screwing with him, is such a moment. And the reason it's only a moment is because he hurriedly hides it in the same guilty, nervous way he'll do in "The Empath" later, for the same reason: realizing he's being perceived by a third party. In "Amok Time," of course, that's the smiling Chapel and McCoy; Spock seems to have genuinely forgotten that they were even in the room when he saw Kirk alive, and as soon as he sees them again, he stops short and hides his feelings again, lying that he doesn't care about Kirk in any capacity but professional respect.

Kirk seems to just be affectionately amused by this and shepherds him off, but I think it's interesting that the thing that really alarms Spock is the sudden realization that other people are watching them. He does have to be pretty blatantly reminded that other people exist are present and can see everything, but once Spock sees others observing them, he has this brief moment of panic and then retreats into his usual composure while just lying or pretending he revealed nothing. This isn't set off by Kirk himself at all—his reaction, something he did, something he might have done. Spock's alarm in these scenes is all about being perceived by people other than Kirk.

If they had been alone, well— It does seem like something quite different might have happened in both cases.

[vonnebenan]

“Each of you is willing to give his life for the others. […] Everything that is truest and best in all species of beings has been revealed by you.” TOS: The Empath

[kyanitedragon]

Me: I mean sure Spock and McCoy would be interesting together but idk I don't really ship it ship it

S3 Spock @ McCoy:

Me: Oh. Oh.

[thymelessink]

There are so many episodes of Kirk getting hurt, Spock getting hurt and Kirk getting hurt again...

But actually I need more episodes of this man getting hurt

I need him to look pained and pretty, to strongly endure whatever alien torture one can come up with but I also need him to be rescued like a damsel in distress and to be comforted by his two boyfriends

[possumtion]

Shoots them with the chiikawa beam