#tos: turnabout intruder

[anghraine]

I was thinking again about the divide between the tactical seduction Kirk romances and the genuinely romantic unforced ones, and something that's been percolating through my head for awhile is the question of power.

So, the tactical Kirkmances are all responses, at some level, to power being taken from him or someone else or both, and are part of attempts to gather information, escape, and/or protect other people, whatever. But "no" is not realistically an option, whether because he's trapped or imprisoned or desperately needs some information or is under duress in some other form (sometimes the woman in question is also under duress, like Shahna or Drusilla, though most often not).

Because of that, and because of multiple cases where it's made explicit that he doesn't feel any interest in the woman in question and is willing to just lie/deceive to succeed and smooth things over afterwards, we often have no way to know what he really feels in these varyingly coercive circumstances. In most cases, whether he's actually into the woman or not is so irrelevant to him as far as his outwards behavior goes that we have a much clearer idea of the desperation of the situation, his primary agenda, and what other people would be most comfortable with him feeling than what he himself does.

So, for instance, Deela in "Wink of an Eye" enjoys seeing him struggle against her, whether it's through seduction, trickery, physically pushing her away etc, but also wants him to be actually attracted to her and ultimately willing to live out his entire life in the next few months as her, uh, sex toy/breeding stock before dying. Kirk's feelings about all this end up being messy and complicated in a believable way, but essentially culminate in "anyway fuck off forever and die."

There are multiple scenes in "The Conscience of the King" in which we see McCoy desperately wanting to believe that Kirk isn't just using Lenore Karidian, but actually likes her and has real romantic interest in her. McCoy prefers to filter his understanding of Kirk's behavior in the episode through that lens, rather than contending with the horror and injustice that drives Kirk's actions. Spock, whose judgment is continually validated throughout the episode, had already considered the idea of Lenore being a motive and found it unlikely in this case; he guesses that Kirk's real focus is on Anton Karidian and he's just using Lenore to get at him, an assumption that leads to Spock's discovery of the Tarsus IV genocide and murders of the eyewitnesses. In the final scene, McCoy returns to his insistence that Kirk must have had genuine feelings for Lenore; Kirk ignores him and McCoy takes this as proof that he's right, while Spock stands quietly by.

Even in much worse episodes, it's like ... Shahna in "The Gamesters of Triskelion" wants Kirk's sudden flirtation with her to be real, and is too sheltered and vacuous (/sigh) to connect it to his screaming panic over Uhura that immediately preceded it, or the fact that Shahna is his prison guard. Shahna is made so utterly clueless that she can't be held responsible, while Kirk transparently uses her for information to deal with the oppressive overlords of the episode that have placed Chekov, Uhura, and Kirk in thralldom. In the end, Shahna just blandly accepts his refusal to take her with him, and his hope that someday she'll understand why he had to do what he did.

But in these story lines, whether it seems like he's actually into the woman at some level, or very much not, or (as is overwhelmingly most common) it's ambiguous, Kirk takes the initiative to pursue or flirt with someone because of some loss of power. He's not exactly aggressive in the usual masculine sense (the narrative framing is more dramatically-lit morally-ambiguous noir lady), but he is highly proactive and assertive in these cases, and essentially sets out to initiate and control a romance for a distinctly unromantic agenda of his own.

There is a kind of stage management quality to it, and the cases where he seems most visibly troubled or angry about the whole thing tend to be the ones where he's least able to steer the "relationship" or where someone who puts him in some awful situation to begin with acts like they're the injured party (obvious examples: Deela, Helen Noel, Lenore, Sylvia). But he seems to have a definite preference in these "romances" for asserting some kind of power: being the flirty one, the one doing the pursuing, the one who understands what's happening more clearly, the one ultimately in control of how this is going to go, and the terms on which it will end.

But this is conspicuously different when it's an actual romance that isn't forced by the circumstances. Apart from his demeanor being radically different, something that's struck me about the genuine, unforced Kirk romances is how much this insistent assertion of power, authority, and/or control vanishes when there's no threat.

The first person we know he fell in love with was his girlfriend as a teenager, Ruth. He hasn't seen her since he was 18, when he was a somber first-year cadet at the Academy. Even accounting for 60s casting, his memory of Ruth is pretty evidently that of someone who was older than him, more sophisticated and assured, and further along professionally, in no way under any authority from him. Even his interactions with a replica of her lack that stage management quality of the tactical Kirkmances, and his instinct on seeing her is to just go along with this bizarre situation.

The timeline isn't exactly clear, but some time later, he had a disastrous year-long relationship with Janice Lester. And it is clear that something fundamental to that relationship falling apart was the fact that he had avenues of authority open to him that Janice didn't. Kirk actually agrees with Janice that the glass ceiling is wrong and unfair, he just thinks that Janice taking her frustrations out on him as her partner, and tormenting him while indulging her internalized misogyny, was intolerable. One of Janice's many grievances is that they could have stayed together as his career progressed, and she could have gone to space with him, presumably as a member of his crew, while he was and remains very much "absolutely the fuck not" about that possibility. That decision is reinforced by his very consistent, non-negotiable red line around relationships with any crew members, but seems pretty clearly even more objectionable to him than usual in this case.

Even within "Turnabout Intruder," it seems that Kirk doesn't like having to bring power to bear on Janice, although she has thoroughly violated his agency at that point and it has become very necessary. She's the only ex he's known to have unilaterally broken up with, and he would have preferred to part ways cordially, but that was never going to happen; Janice is strongly implied to be an abuser-turned-stalker who resents him getting away, and filters every violation she commits against him through her sense of eternally persecuted (white) feminine fragility.

She insists a man like Kirk could never be physically assaulted and overpowered by a weak and feeble woman like herself, despite knowing perfectly well it's exactly what happened. She isolates him through medical abuse as well as lying about why he left her to his friends and co-workers. She relentlessly targets anyone who tries to help him—the one mainly punished for Kirk's escape attempt is Spock, after all, not Kirk himself ("Turnabout Intruder" is misogynistic in many ways, but a lot of the discussion of that seems to ignore that it's also pretty obviously dealing with an abuse/stalking situation that, apart from the sci-fi conceits, includes some extremely common traits of female domestic abusers IRL).

Janet Wallace, who parted ways with Kirk some six and a half years before S2, is a very successful scientist, and was already building a career in her field when they were together. Both of them are authority figures in their own careers, but their professional paths had so little to do with each other that it was essentially the reason they broke up. Their lives were too separate, despite what seems to have been a pretty mutually rewarding relationship when both were ambitious 20-somethings, and they mutually agreed to separate rather than one of them dictating terms to the other. Jan does seem to have some kind of kink for older male authorities, though; in "The Deadly Years," her sudden uptick of interest in 34-year-old Kirk as he starts prematurely aging is directly associated with her marriage to a very much older authority in her own field, and Kirk is viscerally uncomfortable with it.

His later girlfriend, Areel Shaw, is a healthier figure, though their relationship and break-up seem roughly similar. Both are highly successful career professionals, they're still very fond of each other and obviously still attracted to each other, and there's no indication of any attempts on either side to assert power or control over the relationship in the past or present. Areel makes a joke about him outranking her, but they're in completely different parts of Starfleet, and throughout the episode, he's obviously much more professionally vulnerable to her than the other way around. She's the one to suggest their goodbye kiss by the turbolift, and she takes the initiative to blow another kiss at him as she leaves, leaving him cheerfully poleaxed for a moment before he returns to his job.

The only other ex we know about it in TOS, as I recall, is the unnamed lab technician mentioned in the pilot, whom Kirk seems to have been oblivious to until Gary Mitchell helped her out. Kirk was an instructor at the Academy at the time (implicitly teaching philosophy to cadets for several years), likely in his mid-twenties from contextual information, and she was the one who pursued him. Kirk did have a serious relationship with her, but he didn't know about Mitchell helping her with the "campaign" to catch his attention in the first place, even though he and the lab technician nearly ended up getting married.

In terms of the unforced romances we actually see in the timeline of the show, there are only a few. The earliest is the sort of mutual courtly pining between him and Janice Rand. In "The Naked Time," Kirk's fantasy of a romance with (the superior) Janice is a fantasy scenario where they're on a beach away from any kind of professional context, and specifically, where he has no captain's insignia. We find out in "Miri" (though it was already obvious) that Janice fully reciprocates his interest and wanted to attract him, though she's very professional and competent in general. It's very obviously doomed as a romance. They might hang on to each other in a crisis, but will never do more or cross that line, though it's allowed by regulation—it's doomed wholly because Kirk's position as captain gets in the way for Kirk. Kirk even vents to Bones about being frustrated at Janice's assignment to him as his personal yeoman because he specifically doesn't want pretty women filling that kind of role around him.

It obviously bothers him especially when the yeoman is Janice because he's infatuated with her, but we also see that discomfort in the notorious backrub scene, when Janice's equally photogenic successor as yeoman dutifully starts trying to help with the strain in his back. Kirk thinks it's Spock massaging his back and that's fine (more than fine lmao), but when Spock makes a point of stepping forwards and Kirk realizes the person touching him must be his pretty yeoman, he's intensely uncomfortable and immediately orders her to stop as he gives Spock a long-suffering look.

In Kirk's grand m/f romance, the one with Edith Keeler, she's very much a socially established figure with a secure, stable position, the one who provides Kirk with a job and a roof over his and Spock's heads. She evidently thinks they're eccentric homeless guys when she finds them and takes them under her wing, and later suspects they're WWI vets, but it is very clear that the security of their situation remains entirely dependent on Edith's good will towards Kirk.

Of course, there are ways in which he knows more than Edith and has an advantage in that respect, but Edith is absolutely calling the shots in general. This is the context in which their romantic walks and hand-holding and dates and stolen kisses in the stairwell etc are happening. One of their big romantic scenes occurs because she finds out about Spock stealing materials and Kirk has to sweet-talk her, and she's like ... well, I guess I could overlook it... if you took me on a date. ;) And he's delighted to be pursued by his landlady that way, let's be real.

Edith running the show at least as much as Kirk is, I think, forms part of the idyllic quality of this romance for him. He's not there when Edith casually refers to him as "my young man," but I suspect he would very much like it, yet he's extremely unlikely to think of her as his girl/young lady/whatever. But overall, it just seems very, very clear that this whole dynamic is vastly more to his tastes than one where he's primarily in control and managing things and making all the major decisions.

That's reinforced over a season later, when we find the increasingly strained, tired Kirk of S3 wistfully longing for some arena of his life in which he's not making all the decisions all the goddamn time. Then he gets amnesia, remembering almost nothing about his previous life except that he had never felt happy or at peace, and he's pretty much informed that he's going to marry a hot priestess. Without the baggage of his actual life/memories/responsibilities, he is entirely content to go along with this and seems happy with her.

I mean, "The Paradise Syndrome" is a bad episode, especially the A-plot, but that aspect of it absolutely does track with the rest of what we see of him.

In the superior S3 episode "The Mark of Gideon," the more ephemeral romance with Odona occurs in a context where he thinks they are completely isolated from all other people and institutions, and neither of them has any particular power over the other. In reality, Odona knows a lot more than he does about what's going on, including that they aren't remotely alone. She's there to steal a blood sample from him and, ideally, to make the idea of remaining on Gideon as a disease blood bag more appealing.

After Kirk and Odona are back on the real Enterprise and she's saved, and both are able to exert the autonomy to decide their futures (Odona set on returning to Gideon, which Kirk doesn't want her to do, and Kirk on returning to commanding the Enterprise and its mission, which Odona doesn't want him to do), he has no particular power over Odona specifically but is very much back in authority. They're still flirty, but it's clearly dialed down to a more courtly, going-nowhere level:

ODONA: How can you bear to look at me after the way I deceived you? KIRK: At least, you owe me the privilege of letting me look at you. ODONA: You are a gentleman, Captain Kirk. KIRK, visibly pleased: Thank you, ma'am.

His last romantic plot is with Rayna in "Requiem for Methuselah," a decidedly mid episode until the absolutely buckwild final scene. It's also probably the weirdest of the romances that aren't obviously tactical. Kirk does meet her in his professional capacity, but it's actually the crew of the Enterprise who need help from Flint, Rayna's guardian (Flint has the resources to cure a terrible disease). Kirk et al. essentially bully Flint into helping them, but Rayna isn't present at that point, and Flint evidently has his own secrets and motives. It's only later that they're allowed to meet Rayna, Flint's highly educated and intelligent, but extremely sheltered, ward. She has never met a man other than Flint before (and for the audience, Flint is very obviously grooming Rayna to be his wife).

So Rayna is not in any way subject to Kirk's authority, although it's the reason he's there, but she's so sheltered that there are definitely ways in which he seems the more proactive of the two of them in this particular romance. But she's also intelligent and curious and actively into him. At first, Flint doesn't want her around them at all, and it's Rayna who insists; Rayna is a bit overwhelmed, but interested in exploring the potential of her romance with Kirk; she starts pushing back against Flint's restrictions, and falls for Kirk in a way she never could with Flint.

Flint basically comes up with delaying tactics that involve throwing Rayna and Kirk together, allowing for the more sentimental, "high romance" type of courtship that Kirk goes for (waltzing, kissing etc). But it turns out that Rayna is a very sophisticated android and oblivious to this fact herself (this Rayna is the latest in a long series of attempts), and Flint finds her interest in Kirk promising as far as Flint's ultimate goal of making her his own immortal wife is concerned. He's essentially keeping Kirk around to encourage Rayna's capability to feel romantic love and sexual attraction in general, like a sort of ... sexy lure??? in hopes that she'll turn those feelings to Flint in time.

The problem is that this is, obviously, super fucked-up towards both Kirk and Rayna (Flint refers to Rayna as his property). Kirk's usual hatred of AI does not extend to an AI who is genuinely a full sentient person, though he has to grapple with the concept for a moment, and this revelation doesn't actually destroy his feelings for her. He insists that a) Rayna is in love with him and he with her, and b) Rayna is clearly a full person, and thus no one's property, and has the right to choose what she wants. In the final scene, the question of power is specifically raised:

FLINT: No man beats me. KIRK: I don't want to beat you. This is no test of power. Rayna belongs to herself and she claims the human right of choice to be as she wills, to do as she wills, to think as she wills.

Rayna's very newly-developed capacity for feeling is torn between her love for Flint as a mentor and father-figure, and her confusing and overwhelming feelings for Kirk, and her desire to avoid hurting either of them. The strain of all these contradictory human feelings and impulses (/sigh) fries her circuits and she self-destructs.

(Spock, who spends most of the episode visibly consumed with jealousy of Rayna, is also sympathetic to her, but his priorities are what they are. McCoy accuses him of being incapable of understanding the love triangle that created this situation, as well as of feeling romantic love in general, in all its agonies and ecstasies, after the exhausted Kirk falls unconscious upon returning to the Enterprise. Spock simply tells McCoy goodnight and once he's gone, mind-melds with Kirk and wipes his rival from Kirk's memory because, uh *looks at hand* he and Kirk are totally normal healthy platonic bros and Spock doesn't experience love.)

But I do think the chasm between the actual Kirk romances and the tactical ones is also very much felt in how Kirk navigates power/control/authority. In seduction, he hangs tightly on to some sense of power and autonomy through his ability to control himself and the situation. In romance, though, it seems like he strongly prefers dynamics where he can (or must) step down from his usual authority and the weight of decisions and responsibility is distributed away from him.

[spockvarietyhour]

First Five Star Trek finales*

Star Trek "Turnabout Intruder" (1966)** Star Trek: The Next Generation "All Good Things..." (1994) Star Trek : Deep Space Nine "What You Leave Behind" (1999) Star Trek: Voyager "Endgame"(2001) Star Trek: Enterprise "These Are the Voyages..." (2005)

*not including The Animated Series **2006 remaster

[orang3cat75]

UMM ?? THAT IS KIRK TALKING TO HIM?!! THAT IS CAPTAIN KIRK TALKING TO HIM.

I feel like they went as far as they could with the queer ''subtext'' at the time in the very last episode. Especially since these scenes are technically with an actress. They truly went all out

[spockeveryday]

[self-made-purgatories]

Running "Interference": Lots of thoughts about Turnabout Intruder through the lens of the big Spirk fight arc in Season 3. I'm sorry to say that I'm pretty sure Spirk have broken up for good now.

To recap: Spirk were still all over each other, touching shoulders, staring at ass, making double entendres, in The Lights of Zetar (S3E18). But everything changed in Requiem for Methuselah (S3E19), when Kirk broke Spock's heart, Spock broke his personal boundaries, and an immense strain was placed on their relationship. They were still fighting and drifting apart in The Way to Eden (S3E20). They were finally speaking again, but cautiously, and with lots of baggage and a surrogate fight, in The Cloud Minders (S3E21). By The Savage Curtain (S3E22), Kirk was already checking out Spock's ass again, and their personal space was once again waning to pre-Methuselah size, and I had hoped they were working things out. But then All Our Yesterdays (S3E23) happened, and Spock went to hell and back with Bones, uncharacteristically partook of both meat and pussy, barely looked at Kirk, and showed what an intense internal crisis he is still going through. Now we arrive at the last episode of the entire series, Turnabout Intruder (S3E24), and while there are some beautiful nods to their relationship in this episode, there is still an awkward distance between them. I think that they have broken up.

The context of this episode is important: Kirk's body has been stolen and switched places with an ex-girlfriend of Kirk's (of course), Janice Lester, who is now pretending to be Kirk. So any interaction with "Kirk" is actually an interaction with Lester in disguise, and any interaction with "Janice Lester" is actually an interaction with Kirk.

We begin here, where a flustered Lester-in-Kirk makes several mistakes in a row on the bridge and Spock calls him out on it. (Keep in mind that Spock still thinks this is Kirk.) Lester-in-Kirk responds to repeatedly being corrected by making a scene, forcefully reprimanding Spock in front of the whole bridge. Spock keeps his cool, calm exterior, of course, but his voice is dripping with ice when he responds:

SPOCK: Since the captain usually deals directly with Starfleet in these matters, I assumed that my suggestions might be deemed interference.

The word interference is really interesting here. Call to mind What Are Little Girls Made Of? (S1E7). When Kirk knows that he will be replaced with an imposter android, he plants a virus in the code, as it were. He "teaches" the android the sentence, "Mind your own business, Mister Spock. I'm sick of your half-breed interference, do you hear?" It is a sentence he would never actually use, and his hope is that Spock knows that. And Spock does. The android uses the phrase against Spock, and Spock figures out the truth right away. With only one sentence, a sentence referring to Kirk seeing Spock's involvement as interference, Spock is able to see right through the imposter and realize that Kirk needs help. He knows Kirk and their relationship so well that he realizes that the words "interference" and "half-breed" from (someone who looks like) Kirk amount to a lie. That is the level of the intimacy they used to share.

But now? Spock, his voice shot through with resentment, dangles that word interference, and Janice-in-Kirk doesn't correct him, and yet he still doesn't see the imposter for who she is. In the next few scenes, he admits that the Captain is acting strangely, but he chalks it up to some sort of mental illness or madness and enlists Bones' medical help in solving the issue.

What has changed between Spock and Kirk? It's the fight they're having. Their relationship is strained and it has affected the intimacy of their connected thoughts and the intimacy of knowing each other inside and out. What other hurtful words have been exchanged between them that has ruined their trust of each other to this degree?

A few scenes later, Kirk-in-Lester finally gets Spock alone (not entirely alone; there is a guard in the room with them and you have to wonder how having an audience affects this conversation). Kirk-in-Lester tries to explain what has happened. And Spock doesn't believe at first. Spock has always seen and known Kirk clearly; quickly recognizing such imposters as that android who said "interference." But this time, Spock hesitates, citing the need for proof.

Kirk-in-Lester starts by trying to appeal to Spock's memories of their adventures together, bringing up events of the episodes The Tholian Web ("you wouldn't leave me") and The Empath ("we wouldn't leave Bones"). Spock quickly points out that those events are a matter of public record and therefore not definitive proof.

And then, Kirk-in-Lester appeals to Spock with the following words:

JANICE: You are closer to the captain than anyone in the universe. You know his thoughts. What does your telepathic mind tell you now?

Kirk-in-Lester could have just shared something kind of private, something that only Kirk would have known and Lester wouldn't. There must be hundreds of other things that could have been said. But instead Kirk-in-Lester digs deep and pulls out the t'hy'la card. The "closer than anyone in the universe" card, even. The come to me, be inside me, and then you will know that you know me card. And yet, Spock still does not believe.

All of this is a parallel for where they are as a couple right now. Kirk is asking Spock to take a leap of faith, to see and believe the truth of who they are to each other before it's too late, and Spock cannot.

I am of the opinion that Kirk is still in love with Spock, but Spock is so hurt that he will not allow their relationship to continue as it was before. I have also said before that mind melds are a stand-in for sex numerous times in this series. Is that what this is? Is this one last deep, intimate, penetrating goodbye to what they used to be?

Spock draws near to Kirk-in-Lester, places his hand on her face, and starts the mind meld.

First his head recoils slightly, then his eyes snap open and his face registers surprise for a quick moment. What did he see there? What did Kirk say to him in the deep intimacy of his innermost self? But then Spock pulls his hand back, turns away. He thinks for a moment. Then he says, finally, resigned, "I believe you."

But the response is heavy-hearted. It is true; he would know him anywhere. But there is no joy in the realization. (Imagine if, instead, he would have brightly responded with "Jim! It is you!" or a sweetly sarcastic remark about how Kirk is always getting into situations, or even a measured but cordial "Hello, Captain.") Remember how dynamically overwhelming and soothingly pleasant Spock's feelings were about visiting with Jim's mind in the past. There is none of that now. There was a time when his heart would have leaped with the light of recognition, a time when he used to brighten up as soon as the Captain would walk in the room. That light is now extinguished and it's so painful to see.

He turns away. And when he turns back, it is to respond in duty alone, devoid of the passion that once used to leak out of his hardened exterior whenever it came to his captain, his love. Now it is just a fact: I believe you.

So, in the name of duty, Spock sets out on a one-man mission to restore the captain to his rightful body, as well as his rightful position in command.

As they leave the room, attempting to trick their way past the guards, Spock grabs Kirk-in-Lester by the wrist, and much has been made of this motion. It is a beautiful, intimate, protective gesture, just a little bit possessive, almost like holding hands. It is also a way to continue communicating telepathically. What are they saying to each other?

This wrist-hold is also something Kirk sometimes does to Spock. (Remember this moment in Errand of Mercy?)

It is short-lived, but it is one of those beautiful nods to their relationship that are peppered throughout this final episode.

Spock confronts Lester-in-Kirk, earning himself a court martial trial. While the other crew members eventually rally behind the real Kirk, Spock stands out as being the first to recognize the real Kirk (even though he didn't recognize him as fast as he used to when they were closer) and to stand with him no matter what.

It is also Spock who is able to reverse the effect of the alien technology that caused this switch situation. Using his mind powers, he is somehow able to pop Kirk-in-Lester's neck in a way that restores both Lester and Kirk to their own bodies.

In so many ways, throughout the whole series, Spock and Kirk have cared for each other, saved each other's lives, believed in each other no matter what. They have shared what Bones (in Requiem for Methuselah) referred to as "the ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, the glorious victories" of love. And now, sadly, the series is ending with one last misery, one last glorious failure. The series is ending with their connection still dampened with pain and grief and misunderstanding and missed connection. But, even though the warmth and passion between them has cooled (at least on Spock's end), Spock's professional loyalty to Jim as his Captain remains as unwavering as it ever was.

Spock's last action in the whole series is this: to restore Kirk and Lester to their original selves. This shows us something important to the whole series: in essence, it is Spock who makes Kirk who he is.

And the very last words of the series: Spock and Kirk walk away together (with Scotty), as Kirk says, "If only, if only."

If only.

[borgcast]

One last dollop of Shacting.

[affixjoy]

[missanthropicprinciple]

“You are closer to the captain than anyone in the universe. You know his thoughts. What does your telepathic mind tell you now?” - Captain Kirk says to Spock when his mind is in Janice's body.

Spock is staring at Kirk's ex lover and that ex is currently housing Kirk's mind and Kirk's mind is saying that Spock is the closest person to him.

Hey quick question, anyone else losing their goddamn mind about this? (Obviously, yes, as the fandom is over half a century old.)

Spock is holding Kirk's wrist. Yeah, ok so Kirk is in Janice's physical form but...omg.

[starberry-cupcake]

no context assortment of the last two eps of tos

jim accused of being a witch

bones feeling a lot of emotions about an ooc (for time travel reasons) spock

pastel library

jim got his boys back and he's gonna caress them a bit

this is janice lester in jim's body but bones doesn't know that yet

this is jim inside janice lester's body and spock is starting to realize that very fast

[entropificationer]

schrodinger’s cat of sexism ass episode. i love and/or hate it depending on how much i try to understand The Implications

[instantpansies]

rewatching turnabout intruder (writing about janice <333 for a short presentation) and it's hilarious that the crew doesn't suspect the switch because of jim's "womanly mannerisms" or whatever but rather because he's a little bit too mean to bones and spock

[anghraine]

I was thinking about my personal "TOS is really its own thing" headcanons for K/S, and also, that one of the things that really surprised me when I actually marathoned the whole series was the acknowledged ethical issue around captain/crew fraternization.

To rewind back to my ship, lol: I definitely think that Spock and Kirk are obsessively in love with each other, and it's pretty obvious that every other relationship and person in their lives pales in comparison, but I don't actually imagine that they've said or done anything about this beyond the kinds of things we've seen onscreen.

I mean. Yes, that includes things like "when Kirk gets a massage on the bridge for his back pain, he just assumes it's Spock and is intensely uncomfortable to discover it's someone else" + the two of them saying breathtaking romantic things with obvious heart eyes while ignoring the existence of everyone around them + Kirk's most compelling and insightful love interest remarking that Spock obviously belongs with him as if he always will be at Kirk's side + everything "Amok Time" chooses to be + mutual seething jealousy/Spock excising his rival from Kirk's mind while he sleeps + Kirk saying Spock is closer to him than anyone in the universe + Spock regularly abandoning his principles when it comes to Kirk etc etc etc. But I don't think they've actually said what they feel or initiated a (physically) sexual relationship during TOS itself.

Taking TOS by itself and ignoring the regular reboots of their characterizations in ... well, everything else, I definitely feel like they're moving inexorably towards that kind of unambiguous romantic relationship in TOS, just that they haven't quite taken that last step yet.

In fact, I suspect that the "You are closer to the captain than anyone in the universe" statement from bodysnatched Kirk to Spock is likely the most explicit statement either has made about how they feel or what their relationship really is, and it carefully stops just short of saying too much. And it's immediately followed by a) a mind-meld, I think the fourth between them, but the first in which Spock effortlessly melds them without a single word to help, and b) one of the most extended periods of physical contact between them, with iirc some 25 seconds of Spock holding Kirk's bare hand/wrist on screen as they try to escape together signifying nothing, with scene cuts suggesting the actual duration may in fact be longer (*gasps in Vulcan*).

The show ends with that episode because of the cancellation, but there's something weirdly apropos about it as a finale on a purely shipping level. I definitely felt like the dynamic between them has reached such a point by "Turnabout Intruder" that there's no going back. But I don't think anything more significant than what we've seen has happened off screen, just that the acknowledgment of the nature of their feelings and the shift to an overtly romantic, sexual relationship seem inevitable at this point. And by "overtly," I mean to each other, not necessarily anyone else.

There are various reasons I feel this way. Partly it's the high-octane yearning and repression that both exhibit in very different ways, which I think make more sense if they haven't acknowledged anything yet or transitioned away from pretending it's platonic. But one reason I envision them as Not Quite There But Definitely Going To Be, that I've rarely seen mentioned thus far, is something I would never have guessed from pop culture or even fandom osmosis.

Early in the series, Kirk explicitly states that he considers his crew completely off-limits in a romantic context. This ethical restriction applies only to him and not any other senior officers. Throughout the rest of the series, we're told and shown that Starfleet does not forbid fraternization among crew members of different ranks. Kirk himself says that it would be fine for Spock to have a romantic relationship with Janice Rand, just not Kirk.

And moreover, Kirk never does voluntarily enter a romantic relationship with any crew member. He and Janice Rand have a mutual infatuation for awhile that both handle with as much professionalism as possible. The closest thing to an openly romantic interaction with a crew member is probably Kirk kissing Helen Noel after Helen and Dr. Adams artificially screwed around with his memories and feelings—but we discover in the process that he was the one who refused to do more than dance at the Christmas party, when he backed off and scrupulously talked about space while Helen was the one with the unsentimental sex fantasy who keeps pushing his boundaries even in the present. That's why he's so unusually hostile; they were never together, even as a fling, and she hasn't taken no for an answer.

I guess Kirk and Mulholl agreeing to be possessed by married aliens for a final goodbye kiss is sort of ...? I mean. You get it, sometimes there's some sci-fi plot device, but nothing real and nothing while he has full control of his body and mind.

Kirk's real exes are all former long-term girlfriends, most of them also part of Starfleet and professionals in science or science-adjacent fields, but never crew members.

It's not 100% clear in TOS if the repeated statements and suggestions about lack of Starfleet restrictions on fraternization except wrt the captain is Starfleet policy, or just Kirk's personal stance. Kirk says he's not allowed to have a relationship of that kind with Janice Rand in "The Naked Time," but he's contracted the disease by then and it's part of a generally unhinged ramble. It's later stated that romance isn't forbidden on Starfleet vessels, but that's about crew romances in general and not the captain in particular. So it's difficult to know the real source of the ethical prohibition. Maybe there are actual regulations around this (makes sense) or maybe it's just a hard ethical line that Kirk has independently chosen for himself (also makes sense), but when he's functional and autonomous enough to be held responsible for his actions, this is a line he does not cross.

The point here is that, while I don't remotely blame other K/S fans for ignoring this inconvenient fraternization detail, Spock is a member of Kirk's crew. Yes, he's a senior officer and the highest-ranking person on the ship after Kirk himself, so maybe it wouldn't be as egregious as with someone else—but then again, maybe Kirk propositioning Spock would be considered even more unethical than propositioning Janice, since Janice at least has other authorities over her, while Spock answers directly to Kirk in the chain of command and will do virtually anything Kirk tells or asks him to do.

Kirk and Spock's relationship is intense and [gestures] everything enough that there are scenarios where I could imagine Kirk dropping this otherwise non-negotiable ethical line (the classic is, of course, "Spock's human heritage makes his pon farr cycle erratic and it comes back early ... oh no..."). I don't think we've seen any such scenario during TOS, though.

In any case, I feel like Kirk is unlikely to proposition Spock either romantically or sexually during the five-year mission. After years of constant proximity and yearning and ostensibly platonic hijinks and assuming it would never happen, I could see his resolve crumbling if Spock tried to initiate a romance with him. But that is also unlikely throughout most of TOS, because of Spock's own hang-ups around emotion and attachment—he's struggling with shame over feeling basic friendly affection, and in reality he feels far more than that.

I also don't think their true preferences when it comes to love, or their sense of what love really is for them, are inclined towards casual/undefined relationships or even poly relationships. So I don't personally envision them as FWBs or in a "they were in love but not taking it that seriously" scenario; I don't think either situation would be all that probable or desirable for them. They're both conspicuously jealous of anything or anyone that could possibly compete with their own absolute centrality in each other's lives; Spock never so much as kisses anyone without being dubconned into it and is guilty about having friends; Kirk's entire sexual history when it's not For The Mission is consistently geared towards long-term and sentimentally romantic relationships. Kirk supplies a very clear, emphatic description of love as he understands it:

Is he important to you, more important than anything? Is he as though he were a part of you? [...] But you can't really love him. You haven't the slightest knowledge of love, the total union of two people.

Kirk understands impossible/forbidden love in terms of some fundamental separation from a single beloved, being perpetually apart from them and unable to achieve the kind of absolute joining of lives and minds that he regards as love. (In some ways, this seems an incredibly Vulcan perspective on love, which, well.)

I think he and Spock are close to crossing the last barriers to that point of absolute union by "Turnabout Intruder," given their extreme intimacy as well as the very real possibility of grafting their lives and minds to each other in the way both pretty clearly crave. But I feel like there are only two ways it can really happen: 1) some wildly fortunate circumstance makes it ethically justifiable for Kirk to approach Spock, or 2) Spock makes the first move, which means that unless they're just randomly very lucky, everything hangs on him coming to terms with himself.

Then again, I also think Spock's arc across the show is building towards a point where he is coming to terms with himself in that way, with asserting what he wants, what bothers him, and what he's willing to reach for or accept. By the finale, I can believe he's truly on the point of getting there.

The movies hit the reset and retcon buttons hard, but taking TOS by itself as aired, the arc of their relationship and its development over the course of the show feels more hopeful to me. I can believe that S3 Spock has grown into himself enough to get to the point he needs to be at to make the first ("first") move before much longer. This is the Spock who essentially told Starfleet to go fuck themselves because they wouldn't let him jeopardize a fraught diplomatic situation to search for Kirk, told Sulu to scan for Kirk for potentially years, then defied explicit orders and tracked him down personally. There is very little he wouldn't do for Kirk by S3.

Kirk, meanwhile, has never been anything but 1000% receptive to whatever Spock is willing to give him; he spends a significant portion of TOS looking like he's about to dissolve into hearts at eye contact and a slight mouth twitch from Spock, if that. By S3, though, he's visibly more ground-down and tired, he's been put through further horrors that he often only escaped via his intimacy with Spock, and he's increasingly desperate for real connection. I can believe that at this point, he'd finally be at "fuck it" if Spock's love was on the table.

So I don't think that during the time period of TOS, their romance is formalized at all, or even acknowledged, or that they have a sexual relationship beyond the turbo-charged UST and frequent physical contact (to a degree that seems likely obscene on Vulcan. but as Spock no doubt justifies to himself, they're not on Vulcan). But I also think that by the end of the show, their dynamic has moved towards a stage where the shift to an unambiguously romantic relationship, even if hidden, feels inevitable and imminent. I genuinely feel like they're so close to full honesty with each other at this point that it can't be long, and that's with over a year of the mission left.

[dig-jules]

poor captain kirk hes always got some college situationship trying to kill him

[lichqueenlibrarian]

Kirk and Spock would recognize one another in any universe, in different bodies, in any time.

[spockeveryday]

[borgcast]

Even purple-Kirk can't win Anne-Marie over.