Favourite Trek Couple

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

NuTrek 2009 is the slashiest Trek ever. I'm quite convinced they played to that element of the bromance.

 

[borgboy]

Most slashy scenes in new Trek? There's that bit where Spock tires to strangle Kirk, that's pure sex. Prime Spock pretty much is acting like a match maker trying to get the boys together.

 

[Hazel]

NuTrek 2009 is the slashiest Trek ever. I'm quite convinced they played to that element of the bromance.

Sold! I'll watch anything that has a good slash scene or two

 

[borgboy]

I agree that the new movies have some great slashiness in them with Kirk and the two Spocks.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Watch the poker face vid above. SLASH baby slash.

And Hazel the actors definitely know what they are doing

 

[T'Girl]

There's that bit where Spock tires to strangle Kirk, that's pure sex.

Erotic asphyxiation.

(Don't knock it if you haven't tried it)

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

That's not why it's pure sex. It's pure sex because he is on top of him and all that passion could as easily be about fucking him as choking him.

 

[Commishsleer]

Hhhhhhhmmmmm.

I'm especially convinced there's no KS slash in nuTrek.

I looked at the videos. They're taken out of context.

And there's the whole Uhura thing that spoils it...

Isn't nuTrek slash all McCoy/Kirk. Not that I've seen any justification for that either. Not that I look at any slash stuff except by ahem accident.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

So you haven't seen NuTrek?

All trek videos are taken out of context, they are moments exaggerated and wished for.

 

[borgboy]

Slash is subjective. I thought there was all kinds of crazy chemistry with Kirk and Spock. Some people only are going to see the offical canon stuff, but it's there if you want it to be there.
And ITA with teacake (I just about always do it seems) that the chocking scene isn't so sexual because of the chocking, but Spock on top of Kirk, and the intense emotion, passion in it all. Spock is pretty much making his pon farr face there. That scene isn't nice, safe and fuzzy, but there's all kinds of dark sexuality charged in the scene.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

His PON FARR FACE!

OMG I love that.

And yes "charged" is a very good word for that scene.

 

[Malaika]

Same.

I rewatched the first few movies just recently, and some of the stuff makes it hard for me to understand how anyone could NOT be a Kirk/Spock shipper.

On that note, I am currently drinking tea out of a mug with Kirk and Spock on it... ^_^

And of course there is this:

Feel free to ignore me but I always wondered why this points to KS? It it because its OK for Spock to give Kirk a backrub but not the yeoman? Is a man giving another man a backrub some sort of gay signal? I really honestly don't understand. To me this scene is perfectly innocent.
I apologise if I appear dense or naive.

As for the backrub, yeah. Kirk is *really* into it when he thinks Spock is doing it, and puts a stop to it immediately when he realizes it's not Spock working on him. He looks disappointed. I really have no idea what that's supposed to be about if it's not gay. There are lots of little moments like that with K/S, open to interpretation, but sometimes the gay option is the one that makes the most sense, rather than bending over backwards to explain why what just happened wasn't really gay.

I think that the scene is playful. The way I see it, it was way more inappropriate for Kirk (in character, as the captain) to receive a backrub by the yeoman than from one of his male friends.

That said, here's my two cents. (warning: this is complex and a delicate topic, and I'm sure there are people who can explain this stuff way more eloquently than me)
I always try to judge tos with the eyes of the 60s-70s which isn't always so simple, to say the least.....
Context matters and what a lot of people seem to forget, sometimes, is that at the time it was way more likely for a network to censor a scene between a man and a woman than one between two men, even though both were similar and completely innocent for the most part. It's hard to understand it nowadays because nowadays "queer baiting" in fiction is a thing that the writers do but at the time when star trek was created, paradoxically, they allowed two men to be close because they didn't consider that indicative of a sexual/romantic interest by either character (and therefore they didn't think people would interpret it that way). You have to think about it with the logic of a writer from the 60s and how limited that time was. Gay people were so ignored - beyond the stereotypes and homophobic parodies made about gay men - that they didn't even consider it something to take into consideration when they needed to "censor" a scene. Since for them the only sexual relationship/romance could be between men and women, then it's the interactions between characters of different sex that were subjected to censorship and were automatically perceived as being "too much" or inappropriate (even when they weren't) while the same interactions between a man and another man were completely innocent for them (i'm talking about platonic interactions here )
Of course, I'm not saying that female characters weren't purposely used as sexual objects, at times. They did. But that's not the point I'm trying to make here.
Though, it should be taken into consideration that misogyny and sexism were so rampant and because of that too, possibly, only male characters were - perhaps - allowed to have some depth in their relationships with other males. A depth that perhaps a male/female friendship couldn't have because those were automatically perceived as being sexual/romantic in nature.
Male homosocial relationships in media weren't considered "gay", it was in fact the norm.
Furthermore, it had always been considered normal for men that work in certain environments to create close relationships with other men without that having to indicate romantic attraction too (e.g., people in the army itself and sport teams. Just look at how some football players interact... they give to any popular slash ship a run for their money, honestly)
Even the Greek 'ideal' that people often bring up as the basis for the idea that Kirk and Spock are the single most important people in these characters' life is, basically, that women ain't s**t.

All in all, it will never be plausible to me that they would intentionally depict K/S or any other character as gay in the 60s-70s and in that context. (I might argue, though, that later it could have been perceived as queer baiting, especially when the writers knew about the existence of the slash subculture)
K/S was more or less a result of the cultural mindset and biases of the time. As someone said in an essay I read about Spock, he really was "The Othered Nerdy Jewish Friend of Hero" and basically never allowed to get a life outside of that friendship for a number of reasons. You should read some letters between Roddenberry and a friend in which it's basically said that the star of the show had to be Shatner-Kirk but Spock was becoming too popular so they made Kirk and Spock best friends and inseparable to avoid rivalry between them and so that people would love Kirk because of Spock (here's the letters: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/getting-star-trek-on-air-was-impossible.html - in the specific read where it says "I would dearly love to discuss with you a problem about the show and the format. It concerns Captain James Kirk and of course the actor who plays that role")


**Also, but not least important, didn't Roddenberry himself admit being a homophobe?
I'm surprised how many people seem to always dismiss this detail

"I would, sometimes, say something anti-homosexual off the top of my head because it was thought, in those days, to be funny. I never really deeply believed those comments, but I gave the impression of being thoughtless in these areas. I have, over many years, changed my attitude about gay men and women"
- Roddenberry spoke of overcoming his own homophobia, interview with The Humanist, 1991
​

to be fair, he wanted to introduce a gay character in the franchise but that was years and years after the original series was written (more around the time they did TNG I think). But the point is, with all due respect to people that consider him a saint or something like that, I have to express my doubts about whatever it was possible for this same guy to intentionally write gay subtext/characters/relationships in the 60s to 80s where, from his own admission, he hadn't been so open minded and tolerant and respectful about gay people.
Also, to be honest, even some of the things he retroactively said about the K/S relationship (read: when he decided to be more open minded with the slash fans) hide, in my opinion, a tad of ignorance about bisexuality (and homosexuality) even when he was trying to sound tolerant. (e.g, when he basically said it could have been "the particular style of the 23rd century" to have sex with your best friend. I mean, dude.. imma let you finish but it is not 'trend' or fashion ... )

I have read that an early version of Plato's Stepchildren, intended as a series finale, would have Kirk ending up with Uhura and Spock with Chapel. If that had happened, I think the "you can make me soup" bit would be seen as building towards that. So my take on that is that there may have been intention for a Spock/Chapel pairing to happen down the road and it just didn't happen. If the show had gone another year, maybe something would have come of it. I'd be surprised if at least some of the writers weren't thinking that Spock and Chapel were endgame and would get together at the end.

Nichelle Nichols (and George Take) would disagree
she said that Roddenberry had wanted to explore a Spock/Uhura relationship if the show went past the third season. She also commented, though, that a relationship like the reboot one b/w S/U would have been impossible in the 60s because that kind of thing wasn't allowed in the show (because of racial and gender issues for sure)
here's one of sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQrHIQhvWNo
there is a transcript of what she said in the description of the video, if you don't want to watch it
here's the relevant excerpt from it:

"I decided then from the character that I read [Spock] that I wanted to be very much like that character but in a feminine way. And Gene said, and I was sharing this with George the other day, when I told him that I thought of Spock as my mentor. Because if you remember Uhura was the only one he was able to teach the Vulcan lyre too and he sang and spooffed onSpock. Now, you could have never had a love scene in 63 between Uhura and Spock but there were several hints and Gene was one in the kind of beginning to follow that and he wanted to do episodes if we had gone past the third year"
​

Also, for the sake of adding more trivia here
it's well known that the Kirk/Uhura kiss from 'Plato's Stepchildren' was supposed to be between Spock and Uhura originally but Shatner made them change it:
http://www.themarysue.com/uhura-spock-kirk-kiss/

"[She] told The Vancouver Sun she was rehearsing her lip-lock with Leonard Nimoy (a.k.a. the Vulcan, Mr. Spock) when William Shatner (a.k.a. interstellar stud, Captain Kirk) saw the smooch. “Bill Shatner saw what was going on and he said, ‘Woah, woah, woah. If anybody is gonna get to kiss Lieutenant Uhura it’s gonna be me.’ And he had the whole thing changed so the first interracial kiss was with Lieutenant Uhura and Captain Kirk.”
​

As for Spock/Chapel, there is a rumor that the pair also was one of the ideas that tptb had for the character of Spock (perhaps a sort of "plan B" after they saw they weren't allowed to get the interracial pair b/w Spock/Uhura?) but they could never develop that for a number of reasons.
I think that, overall, it wasn't possible at the time to put either Kirk or Spock in a stable romantic relationship with any girl because of what is written below in the bold part:

"Christine Chapel proved to be highly unpopular among some fans of Star Trek's original series. "It was because of her love for Spock and his occasional moments of gentleness toward her that Christine Chapel was largely disliked among the Trekkies who adored Spock," explained David Gerrold. "Female fans saw her as a threat to their own fantasies and male fans saw her as a threat to Spock's Vulcan stoicism." However, the fans who met Majel Barrett were often surprised by how beautiful she was. Gerrold concluded, "They just couldn't see it in her as Chapel because of the relationship between her and Spock." (The World of Star Trek, 3rd ed., p. 28)
______ from http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Christine_Chapel
​

and I think that what is written in the bold part is, sort of, the summary of what I'm trying to say here about the context of the time and why the "bromance" was everything you could get, in terms of important relationships and depth, for some male characters.

again, just my two cents (sorry for going a bit OT perhaps.)

 

[borgboy]

It all seems OT to me
I don't really hold Roddenberry's homophobia against him. Nearly everybody was casually homophobic at that time, and he evolved beyond it and tried to put a gay character in TNG in the 80s, so his intentions were ahead of his time even if he couldn't get it done. It's beyond ridiculous that in 2013 this still hasn't been done outside of metaphor though.
I agree it is unlikely that there was intentional gay/slash at the time, but clever writers were sneaking the gay into their work long before even TOS. It may not have meant to be gay, but I just can't see how the scene makes any sense otherwise. Why else would Kirk be so disappointed that the pretty yeoman is giving him a massage instead of Spock? It's a strange scene.
All the talk of male friendship and slash makes me think of Supernatural, which I think has the strongest male relationships of any show out there now, but it plays up to the slash.
I did notice some really cute flirting with Spock and Uhura in at least one episode in season one. It does make me reevaluate my thoughts on the new movie's take on Spock and Uhura knowing that NN wanted to pursue that in the 60s.
If the original plan was for Spock to kiss Uhura, does that mean Kirk was going to kiss Chapel? That seems strange, considering how much build up had been done in the past with Chapel's feelings for Spock.
That's interesting, and a little sad to me, that some fans were so hostile towards Chapel. Even though I ship Kirk and Spock, I always liked Chapel too. I can see where people saw Chapel as a threat to Spock's stoicism, but Trek did a good job with showing Sarek and Amanda's relationship without compromising his own Vulcan nature.

 

[Reanok]

My favorites:

Trip / T'Pol
Picard / Beverly Crusher
Worf / Jadzia

There was a lot of potential to do something with David and Saavik. It's a shame they cut that bit out of the script, but I can confirm it is part of the novelizations. I remember there's a bit about them performing some sci fi futuristic tantric form of birth control.

Well, sort of. David just says that he "passed all his exams in biocontrol" but they never explain what that actually is.

I agree that David and Saavik made a cute couple though.

Ditto I liked David&Saavik romantic relationship in the books. Chimes of Midnight we get to see their relationship in an alternate universe story of Startrek 3I .also really like Kira&Odo's relationship also Will Riker&Deanna Troi. I always liked Ben Sisko&Kassidy yates relationship.I really like nu trek Spock and Uhura's relationship. Also Sarek and Amanda.

 

[Malaika]

Isn't nuTrek slash all McCoy/Kirk. Not that I've seen any justification for that either. Not that I look at any slash stuff except by ahem accident.

if we are talking about slash shipping, Mckirk is as popular as spirk in the reboot fandom
if we want to talk about subtext then Kirk/Uhura too both in the reboot and in tos have their own moments that could be taken out of context and interpreted in a certain way, if one wants to do that...
I have a lot of fun imagining all the ships we'd get if we were to use for other characters and friendship the same reasoning used to interpret K/S scenes as sexual/romantic

 

[Hazel]

I wouldn't really argue that the writers for TOS absolutely put in slash on purpose, but equally, authorial intent is not really the best argument for ignoring something, especially in a medium like TV where the whole thing is a product of many, many people including actors, writers and directors (and viewers, if you subscribe to the idea of the death of the author. Which I do).
In summary, K/S are totally into each other, so there
I am interested what people who don't see slash make of the scene I mentioned in Turnabout Intruder where Spock and 'Janice' (Kirk) are holding hands. I see it as slashy of course, but how do others explain it?

 

[borgboy]

With so many people involved in making a tv show or movie, there are so many places where the writer, director and/or actors can inject their own subtext into the work. It makes me think of Spartacus where everyone but Charleston Heston was in one the gay subtext in some of the scenes.
I think it's been mentioned earlier, but there is a short story in the late 70s anthology ST: The New Voyages 2, The Procrustean Petard by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, where the Enterprise crew is gender swapped, except for Spock who because of his Vulcan DNA instead gets an extra Y chromosone to make him hyper masculine, and Alpha!Spock is clearly attracted to Girl!Kirk. So I think at the least the bit with Janice/Kirk suggests that Spock is attracted to Kirk, at least when he's female. On the other hand, Kirk is holding Spock's hand too.
It doesn't take much to make a slasher happy. One scene of gender swap hand holding can generate all kind of excitement
For what it's worh, Marshak and Culbreath wrote at least 4 Trek novels as well as a couple of short stories , and from what I've heard they have a real slashy vibe, but also aren't very well reviewed. I suspect a slash vibe would cause a lot of people to give them a biased bad review. I've bought the two New Voyages collections and their first two novels The Price of the Phoenix and the Fate of the Phoenix, which apparently involve some kind of clones being made of Kirk and Spock, which sounds like a lot of crazy fun. I'll report back when I finally get around to reading them, but I'm reading Kevin Ryan's six book series, Errend of Vengeance and Errend of Fury trilogies (focusing at least in the first trilogy on a Klingon spy undercover as an Enterprise crew member in TOS era, lots of fun!). If I like them I plan to track down Marshak and Culbreath's other Trek novels - one of which involves Kirk and Spock both falling for the same woman as Spock enters into his second Pon Farr cycle.
On the subject of slash in Trek novels, there is the famous Killing Time novel by Della Van Hise. Her original draft was more slashy than the publishers liked, and had her make revisions, but due to a mix up the first printing was of the her original draft with the slash subtext included. It is just subtext, but it's there. Subsuquent reprints were of the revised draft, but I've only read the first printing. Van Hise has other sci fi and horror novels available on Amazon, with openly gay leads. One of them is a space opera with what sounds like a thinly disguised Spock and Kirk. That is of course on my to read list
Killing Time involves a Romulan time tampering experiment which leads to a much changed Enterprise and Romulan Empire, with Spock as Captain, Kirk as a troubled Ensign, and the Romulan commander pursuing Spock as he's going thru pon farr (slash writers love pon farr, but then who doesn't?). There are some memorable supporting characters, including a canine alien female crew member.

 

[Hazel]

. It doesn't take much to make a slasher happy. One scene of gender swap hand holding can generate all kind of excitement

Totally - I always think of slashers as media gold panners. We can shift the slashy gold out of the silt very easily - and then we gloat over it and pet it and hug it, just like Gollum. (Gollum/Frodo was absolutely a thing, by the way )

 

[borgboy]

Isn't nuTrek slash all McCoy/Kirk. Not that I've seen any justification for that either. Not that I look at any slash stuff except by ahem accident.

if we are talking about slash shipping, Mckirk is as popular as spirk in the reboot fandom
if we want to talk about subtext then Kirk/Uhura too both in the reboot and in tos have their own moments that could be taken out of context and interpreted in a certain way, if one wants to do that...
I have a lot of fun imagining all the ships we'd get if we were to use for other characters and friendship the same reasoning used to interpret K/S scenes as sexual/romantic

What other characters on Trek do you think can be successfully slashed? The only ones that really jump out at me are Bashir/Garek and Bashir/O'Brien. And Janeway/7 which is a big thing. I'm open to new slash

 

[Hazel]

Isn't nuTrek slash all McCoy/Kirk. Not that I've seen any justification for that either. Not that I look at any slash stuff except by ahem accident.

if we are talking about slash shipping, Mckirk is as popular as spirk in the reboot fandom
if we want to talk about subtext then Kirk/Uhura too both in the reboot and in tos have their own moments that could be taken out of context and interpreted in a certain way, if one wants to do that...
I have a lot of fun imagining all the ships we'd get if we were to use for other characters and friendship the same reasoning used to interpret K/S scenes as sexual/romantic

What other characters on Trek do you think can be successfully slashed? The only ones that really jump out at me are Bashir/Garek and Bashir/O'Brien. And Janeway/7 which is a big thing. I'm open to new slash

I have a fondess for Quark/Odo (in a hate-turns-to-passion theme), Paris/Kim (The Chute stands out in that respect) and Reed/Trip. They aren't as obvious as the others, but I think you can view them all with slash goggles I think some people like Riker/Picard too, but it's not one of my favourites.