STAR. TREK.

dduane Answer:

Well, let’s take this in stages.

(a) The phrasing “All that stuff” instantly seems to me to reveal greater or lesser levels of bias-against. (You were there, so you’d be in a better position to judge than I would.) So anything further from this source ought rightfully to be subject to greater-than-usual levels of scrutiny.

(b) By “the writer” I assume he means Gene Roddenberry. (While, horrors, possibly not knowing about the existence of other Trek writers? Not knowing about Gene Coon, or Harlan Ellison, or Dorothy Fontana, or Ted Sturgeon, or or or…? God, what an arid boring place such a worldview must be.)

And if he means Roddenberry, then he’s wrong about “fan insert” being the only source of, at the very least, implications of possible love between Kirk and Spock. Pro insert? That we’ve got. All you need to do is Google around for information about the term “t’hy’la”, which Roddenberry coined and which appears a number of times in the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This term, which Spock several times uses in the narrative to describe Kirk, is defined as follows by Roddenberry:

The word “t’hy’la“ is Vulcan and means ‘brother’, ‘friend’ and/or ‘lover’.

You also get kind of a sly “editor’s note” about this term (and I’d give a pretty to know whether this appears in the first edition or was added later):

The human concept of friend is most nearly duplicated in Vulcan thought by the term “t’hy’la”, which can also mean “brother” and “lover”. Spock’s recollection (from which this chapter is drawn) is that it was a most difficult moment for him since he did indeed consider Kirk to have become his brother. However, because “t’hy’la” can be used to mean “lover” and since Kirk’s and Spock’s friendship was unusually close, this has led to some speculation over whether or not they had actually indeed become lovers. At our request, Admiral Kirk supplied the following comments on this subject:

“I was never aware of this ‘lovers’ rumor, although I have been told that Spock encountered it several times. Apparently, he had always dismissed it with his characteristic lifting of his right eyebrow, which usually connoted some combination of surprise, disbelief, and/or annoyance. As for myself… I have always found my best gratification in that creature called woman. Also, I would not like to be thought of as being so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years.”

The disclaimer kind of makes me chuckle, and possibly not for the reasons people might necessarily expect. (For one thing, it’s interesting for what it doesn’t say… but let’s put that aside for the moment.) Most important to note here is that there was probably never a Trek book that was as closely vetted by Gene and his office as that one, and if something appeared in it, then either Gene or Paramount meant it to be there.

The corporate side of Paramount was an extremely buttoned-down sort of place in the 70s and 80s (as, frankly, most media companies were) and would have been terrified of doing anything that might alienate or freak out their viewers / readers. And things only normally get worse in such situations when a fictional property starts to be seen as being worth serious money… which was what was happening with Trek around then. I could be wrong — and if anyone has correction for me on this, I wouldn’t be surprised — but it seems likely to me that Star Trek was the first really visible TV property to be resurrected as a feature film with a serious budget. (If not the first such TV property to be so  resurrected, period.) Suddenly here was this long-deceased series coming back as a movie, suddenly here was a serious director at the helm in David Wise, and Isaac Asimov, God rest him, brought on as science advisor… and behold, the smell of money was in the air.

At such times the parent company tends to become terrified of doing anything, or allowing anything to happen, that might possibly screw things up. And whatever might have been going on in Gene’s head as regarded his real feelings about Kirk and Spock being More Than Just Good Friends, he was enough of a producer and aware enough of how things worked in the real world of film production and its attendant publicity that — for public consumption — he was going to have to either deny the possibility outright, or be publicly ambivalent.

Straightforward denial on “Kirk’s” part here would have been simple enough. And I’m sure I remember anecdotal mentions about Gene laughing the concept off at one convention or another when the subject came up. But the one print declaration we’ve got is what you see above, and the ambivalence strikes me as both funny and transparent in terms of its attempt to conceal an opinion that Paramount (or was it Gulf + Western then? I lose track.*) would not have approved of and which Gene, if wise, would never publicly confirm.

Inside his head, though… I may be from Long Island but I am not a medium, so I do not have current access to the only being who would know for sure. Yet at the same time, you want to examine the evidence. Here we have a man who campaigned hard with the network to have an alien first officer (even though the Network freaked so badly over his “satanic” appearance that they airbrushed his ears round in the promotional material for the affiliates): who would have had a woman first officer if things had gone differently: who wanted a racially diverse crew: who went out of his way to include nationalities (like Russians) that the US had recently been on the outs with: who set up and saw through to film the first interracial TV kiss. Roddenberry was routinely ahead of his time on issues like these. It would not surprise me in the slightest to discover he’d at least entertained thoughts like this for two of his three leads, who from first to last we are shown as partners in a truly extraordinary friendship.

Now, that said —  The inside of the Great Bird’s head was one thing. But if even Gene was being cautious, you may imagine that elsewhere in the Franchise, the concept of saying anything in the clear about the, um, nuts and bolts of a possible t’hy’la relationship between Kirk and Spock, was not kindly received by TPTB. Writers who attempted such — or at least, failed to get away with it — were shown the door at Pocket Books and emphatically invited not to darken it again. About “fan insert” outside of the professionally published books, I know what any moderately well-read fanzine fan of the 70s and 80s and 90s knows: that it was rampant, and Paramount knew about it, and it was winked at.

More than this, respondent saith not. The jury would probably have to be out permanently on this issue (meaning auctorial intent. But wait a minute: we’re concerned about this why? I thought The Author was Dead.)  :)  …In any case, for us at this end of time, all the “hard” evidence is and must remain ambivalent. But then, things being as they were, how could it be otherwise…?

*A lot of the Trek novelists and editors during that period used to call it “Engulf + Devour.” This would have been before Viacom, which did its own engulfing + devouring on Paramount.