Star Trek The Motion Picture 45th Anniversary Book Club

[Christopher]

IIRC, it was a panel with David Gerrold and DC Fontana present. Also some fanfic authors. I had the impression that there was a general brainstorm and then the name was selected, so that it could appear in a TAS scene.

You're thinking of the better-known 1973 appearance where Gerrold called it out. Memory Alpha says that Fontana mentioned it earlier in a 1972 convention interview.

@Christopher - I suspect my disconnect is simply that when I was a kid I took it as presented in the movie as being just "what Vulcans do". Clearly it's not.

I think it's self-evident in the film that it's a higher level of commitment to logic than the norm, given that Spock hadn't already done it before, and given that he had to break the discipline in order to return to Starfleet. The remote, forbidding environment where the ceremony was conducted in the Kolinahr scene suggests that it's a monkish ascetic discipline.

 

[Airin]

There is a footnote about the meanings of t’hy’la. Friend, brother, lover. And then there is a note from Kirk himself over the rumor of he and Spock being lovers. Great that GR not only addresses K/S head on, but he even gets Kirk and Spock to do so as well. Kirk says essentially "not that there's anything wrong with that but I like women". Also once every seven years isn't enough. Spock just raised an eyebrow at the whole thing.

The whole issue is far murkier than this when given the full context. In several interviews with Roddenberry from the mid-70's (collected in books like Star Trek Lives! or Shatner: Where no man...) he referred to Kirk and Spock as a "love relationship", compared it to the relationship between man and woman, and literally said that a sexual relationship between them, though not explicit in the series, was nonetheless possible. In that same interview, he trails off, saying that the thought is... interesting.
Fast forward a couple of years, and suddenly you have all this t'hy'la business in the novel. Roddenberry didn't really need to invent this new word, he didn't need to add the "lover" meaning into the mix (what, isn't "friend" and "brother" enough!?), didn't need to use the word in such loaded phrases in the book, and certainly didn't need to inform the broader public about such obscure and recent trend as "K/S slash" in 1979.

So, when you reach that footnote, is in the context of Roddenberry having fanned the flames considerably, unprompted and in a gratuitous way. Is the footnote then a "take that!" against slash writers (with whom Gene had good relations anyway; notably, with Marshak & Culbreath)? Or a way to appease the Karens and moral watchdogs of America? An attempt at putting out the flames that he HIMSELF had raised so unnecessarily?
Also notice that in the footnote, Kirk says he finds his "best gratification in women", which implies he doesn't just sleep with women. And besides, the myth that Vulcans only have sex every seven years (because they can ONLY have sex during pon-farr) is just a fandom myth. Fontana knew it (and addressed this in her later novel), and Roddenberry certainly knew it when he wrote that footnote.

 

[Tallguy]

That's some fascinating (and kind of hilarious) context.

And besides, the myth that Vulcans only have sex every seven years (because they can ONLY have sex during pon-farr) is just a fandom myth. Fontana knew it (and addressed this in her later novel), and Roddenberry certainly knew it when he wrote that footnote.

I know Fontana had weighed in on this from time to time. And heaven knows that has considerable weight with me. But to say that what the novel says is "a fandom myth" has it backwards, since he's just repeating what is in Amok Time.

My thought when I read it this time was actually along the lines that KIRK would have known better as well and would have been saying this to add some sting to his retort. (Surely he remembers This Side of Paradise?)

 

[Christopher]

Fast forward a couple of years, and suddenly you have all this t'hy'la business in the novel. Roddenberry didn't really need to invent this new word, he didn't need to add the "lover" meaning into the mix (what, isn't "friend" and "brother" enough!?), didn't need to use the word in such loaded phrases in the book, and certainly didn't need to inform the broader public about such obscure and recent trend as "K/S slash" in 1979.

"Need?" I find it so strange when people criticize fiction with words like "need." Fiction and art are about what their creators choose to say, what they think and feel is worth expressing or exploring. If we limited ourselves to "need," there'd be no art or fiction at all, just instruction manuals and catalogs.

I think Roddenberry was progressive enough to be aware of gay/lesbian issues and supportive in principle of their rights, within a cultural context where he couldn't easily come out and express that openly in his TV/film writing. It's also part and parcel of his embrace of the '70s idea that future society would be more sexually enlightened and inclusive, that people would have overcome their sexual hangups and nudity taboos, free love would be accepted, there would be short-term marriage contracts or group marriages, that sort of thing. It stands to reason that homophobia would be extinct in such a culture as well, so it made sense within the context of that worldbuilding to acknowledge that.

I really don't see why you consider that "loaded" or "gratuitous," as if there were something offensive about it. If anything, it was extremely tentative by the standards of the era's science fiction and fantasy literature in general, which featured a lot of exploration of LGBTQ themes: https://www.queerscifi.com/out-of-t...antasy-and-horror-in-the-1970s/?cn-reloaded=1

And besides, the myth that Vulcans only have sex every seven years (because they can ONLY have sex during pon-farr) is just a fandom myth. Fontana knew it (and addressed this in her later novel), and Roddenberry certainly knew it when he wrote that footnote.

"Knew?" Vulcans aren't real, they're just characters in stories. There's nothing to "know" about them, just whatever different storytellers choose to postulate in their fiction. Fontana's own belief about the imaginary Vulcan culture was that they had sex regularly between pon farrs, but since that wasn't overtly established onscreen, Roddenberry was under no obligation to agree with Fontana's speculations. There was no universally agreed-upon "truth" about the Trek universe in the 1970s; beyond what was depicted in the episodes, everything else was open to conjecture and there were multiple competing speculations within the literature and fandom, and among the creators as well.

 

[Airin]

I know Fontana had weighed in on this from time to time. And heaven knows that has considerable weight with me. But to say that what the novel says is "a fandom myth" has it backwards, since he's just repeating what is in Amok Time.

But that is the thing, "Amok Time" doesn't really say that Vulcans only can have sex every seven years, just that they MUST have sex, at the very least, every seven years. Sarek was married to a human, and is a bit unrealistic to think they'd have sex only once in such a long period. And T'Pring was having an affair with Stonn all this time. Fontana put a young Spock in a relationship with a Vulcan in her novel, partly because she was tired of people being confused about this. She was responsible for creating a great deal of Vulcan culture in the series, so I think her opinion carries much weight in these issues.
So yeah, I think that Kirk in the footnote is being somewhat sarcastic. He doesn't want people to think "Kirk is a fool for having sex only once in seven years", yet he knows this is a prejudice about Vulcans, and he knows better.

I really don't see why you consider that "loaded" or "gratuitous," as if there were something offensive about it. If anything, it was extremely tentative by the standards of the era's science fiction and fantasy literature in general, which featured a lot of exploration of LGBTQ themes

This is diametrically opposed to what I meant. My jab was against people who use this footnote to prove that Roddenberry was hostile against slash, and thus, the slash fandom is somehow a "disgrace" for the "true fandom", and that they don't understand Star Trek or Roddenberry's vision (this may not be the case in these forums, but it's a very, very prevalent view in other places). Those people hold the opinion that Roddenberry absolutely needed to disapprove of slash in his novel, because slash was the enemy. But Roddenberry didn't need to do anything of that. He created the t'hy'la word because he wanted to. He made eyebrows rise with the "lover" definition because he wanted to. Because he didn't care, and was in fact okay with slash. That's what I meant by "gratuitous".
As I said before, when confronted with the direct question about Kirk and Spock having a sexual relationship, Roddenberry's reaction was the equivalent of shrugging and saying: "Yeah, why not? If that's the style in the 23rd century... Maybe. Who cares?"

 

[David cgc]

But that is the thing, "Amok Time" doesn't really say that Vulcans only can have sex every seven years, just that they MUST have sex, at the very least, every seven years. Sarek was married to a human, and is a bit unrealistic to think they'd have sex only once in such a long period.

"Amok Time" doesn't even say that. The "seven year cycle" idea doesn't come about until "The Cloud Minders" (though, in that conversation, it did imply that it was possible to "disturb" that schedule). In "Amok," pon farr would seem to be a one-and-done.

 

[Tallguy]

I really should have seen this coming.

 

[Tallguy]

Chapter Three
Kirk shuttles over to Gibraltar and talks to his lover and colleague about the intruder and finds out that the ship being prepared to intercept is the Enterprise.

We find out that the Mediterranean Sea was dammed up for power by the Mediterranean Alliance in the 21st century and that sea is now a long slender lake. (Loving it.) He also notes that this power station is bulky and inefficient by current standards but historically important.

Kirk has been miserable as an Admiral. We also find out the he had been manipulated into taking the promotion because he was valuable as a propaganda tool.

I have to admit, this book is so much a part of my experience of TMP (I read it soon after seeing the film) that I really cannot unentangle this book from the movie. When I see Shatner's performance in TMP I just know all of this now.

This is Kirk's narrative but it's also describing a version of the events that Kirk didn't know about at this time regarding Starfleet pushing him into promotion.

McCoy had argued against Kirk's promotion and Spock was not involved, having already departed for Vulcan. We also learn that he has had "the basic and simple one-year arrangement together" with the zeno-psychologist (zeno?) Vice Admiral Lori Ciani. We also get to hear how she makes Kirk physically excited. Thanks, Gene.

She shows up as a hologram. This is after Star Wars, you have to have holograms. (DSICO isn't so crazy now, is it?)

Together they watch the beginning of the movie again. But they don't see the Klingons get destroyed this time?

When Kirk realizes that Admiral Nogura has kept him out of the discussions of the intruder and has sent Ciani to "deal with him" and because Kirk figures out that that THE ship in range is the Enterprise he thinks:

Your next words could brand you a whore, Lori. Nogura’s staff whore. I hope I’m wrong.

As I get older this gets harsher. Too harsh, IMHO.

I DO love that Kirk just goes along with all of it and then says:

“Thank you, Lori. Mind if I close down this console now? I’ve an appointment and I’m already running late on it.”

It both reminds me of Heywood Floyd in 2001: A Space Odyssey and more importantly Kirk at the end of his conversation with Morrow in The Search for Spock. "I had to try." (Pay no attention to me, he says. I'm harmless!)

 

[Christopher]

We find out that the Mediterranean Sea was dammed up for power by the Mediterranean Alliance in the 21st century and that sea is now a long slender lake. (Loving it.)

That would no doubt be an environmental disaster of titanic proportions.

She shows up as a hologram. This is after Star Wars, you have to have holograms. (DSICO isn't so crazy now, is it?)

Star Wars didn't invent sci-fi holograms any more than it invented anything else. Asimov's original "Foundation" novella in 1942 had recorded holograms of Hari Seldon revealing his predictions generations after his death, and there are even earlier examples in prose. Forbidden Planet in 1956 had a scene where Morbius used a Krell thought projector to create a holographic image of his daughter. 1976's Westworld sequel Futureworld had a holographic chess scene, and in the same year, Logan's Run used a real hologram of Michael York in the brain-scan sequence leading up to the climax.

And TOS had several instances of things that were effectively holograms, like the projections of the Thasian in "Charlie X" and Landru in "Return of the Archons." Losira in "That Which Survives" was basically a "solid" hologram of the sort seen in the 24th century. The Making of Star Trek in 1968 asserted that the Enterprise recreation deck had a holographic theater for immersive 3D movies and lifelike holographic letters from home.

 

[KRAD]

For decades, people have complained that the Enterprise flyby was too long and slow, but we needed that, because it was the first time we'd ever gotten a really good, close, high-resolution look at the ship we loved.

As one of the people who has been complaining about that four minute and forty-four second flyby for decades, "we" didn't need a goddamn thing, and kindly don't try to universalize the experience, especially for those of us who don't have the bone in our head to give a damn about the minutiae of ship design and visuals.

Sorry, but to me, that was one of the many tired excesses of that film. I didn't need a high-resolution look at the ship that lasted nearly five minutes. Ten seconds would've been more than sufficient. What we got was mastubatory and one of many examples of the director and editors taking every opportunity they could to show off the movie's budget.

 

[Christopher]

Sorry, but to me, that was one of the many tired excesses of that film. I didn't need a high-resolution look at the ship that lasted nearly five minutes. Ten seconds would've been more than sufficient. What we got was mastubatory and one of many examples of the director and editors taking every opportunity they could to show off the movie's budget.

Well, all objections aside, that sequence and the V'Ger flyover were rare opportunities to hear five minutes' worth of Jerry Goldsmith's music almost entirely in the clear. Maybe it helps to think of them as music videos within the film. I realized some years back that TMP and West Side Story have something in common, in that both Robert Wise films make heavy use of long, wordless sequences driven by music and visuals.

I mean, there are even more long sequences in 2001: A Space Odyssey that are even more slow-paced and don't even have original music, yet people love that film for reasons I've never understood. I find 2001 quite boring to watch, but TMP never, as long as Goldsmith's score is audible.

 

[FredH]

With respect, the much-hated Enterprise Flyby sequence is what made ten-year-old me fall in love with the Enterprise in the first place. The whole sequence was about cementing that Kirk Loves This Ship (and further fueling his later competitiveness about it). (And yeah, the music’s great too.). I recognize that many or most have always found this sequence a boring ride, but I’ve always enjoyed it. (Do we need it? Probably not. But it’s nice as heck.)

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

I think I split the difference on the fly-by opinion. I do really love the visuals of the Enterprise, especially at the time the movie came out, after seeing the Enterprise only as a somewhat fuzzy (didn't have cable back then) gray-white ship on small TV screens. However, nearly five minutes of those visuals is at least two minutes too long. As I recall, there is a much shorter montage of that fly-by in Wrath of Khan, accompanied by that film's much brisker score, which I find very well-suited to TWOK.

Anyway, speaking of the novelization (I am in the right forum, aren't I?), Chapters 3 and 4 show the strength a novelization can have over film. In these chapters we meet two characters that I think were planned to appear in the film, but got cut at some point - Lori Ciana and Heihachiro Nogura. Both later showed up in novels - Ciana in at least a couple of novels set between the end of the five-year mission and TMP, and Nogura in multiple novels, including some of the Vanguard books.

Chapter 3 gives us some sense of what has been happening with Kirk during that time period, and in a way that would have been harder to do on film. A lot of the strength of the exchange between Kirk and Ciana comes from his reflection on their relationship. I don't know how that could have been conveyed in a filmed scene with the purpose of showing that Kirk has been cut out of the decision-making process regarding Vejur. We also learn that the five-year mission took a toll on Kirk that sounds close to PTSD. While I've read most (maybe all) of the novels set between the five-year mission and TMP, I don't remember any of them focusing on the traumatic effects on Kirk.

This scene also suggests what became one of the weaknesses of making the Star Trek films fit into the mold of "sci-fi action-adventure" - the lack of time for more introspective or reflective moments in the stories. We don't get scenes in the movies like the scenes where Kirk discusses his regrets or fears regarding his actions with McCoy, or gets Spock to reveal the truth about pon farr, or Picard reflecting on the choices he and his crew are faced with. (This is particularly true of the Abrams films, but it is noticeable in the earlier films as well, especially from TWOK on.) I really can't imagine there being a scene in TMP where we learned about Kirk's relationship with Ciana, especially the way they both were manipulated by Nogura.

I'm also enjoying the glimpses we're getting of Roddenberry's ideas about the future of Earth itself. Christopher is probably right above when he says that damming the Straits of Gibraltar would create an ecological nightmare, but whenever I read this passage I get an amazing mental picture of the dam with the vast valley opened up below, and wind up wondering what those lands beneath the Mediterranean Sea would look like. It also makes me think about the way Roddenberry viewed technology and its ability to solve our problems, and how he might think differently today. To me, the last couple of decades suggest that, while we likely will use some technological advances to address climate change and other issues we face today, we also will need to change our own societies significantly as we learn to live on the earth in a more eco-friendly way.

That's all I've got for now. I look forward to talking more about Chapter 4 soon!

 

[Christopher]

I think I split the difference on the fly-by opinion. I do really love the visuals of the Enterprise, especially at the time the movie came out, after seeing the Enterprise only as a somewhat fuzzy (didn't have cable back then) gray-white ship on small TV screens. However, nearly five minutes of those visuals is at least two minutes too long. As I recall, there is a much shorter montage of that fly-by in Wrath of Khan, accompanied by that film's much brisker score, which I find very well-suited to TWOK.

Wise did intend to trim the long FX sequences some (and Goldsmith actually composed their cues with repetitive elements to allow for easy cutting), but the immutable release deadline required releasing a rough edit to theaters. When he finally got the chance to supervise the Director's Edition 22 years later, he cut down the cloud and V'Ger flyover sequences by a couple of minutes, but he chose to leave the drydock sequence effectively untouched.

Although there was one part that I wished they'd cut, that long empty shot as the travel pod slowly circles around to the front. I appreciate having a bit of quiet buildup before the big reveal, but it could've been maybe 50% shorter and still worked.

Anyway, speaking of the novelization (I am in the right forum, aren't I?), Chapters 3 and 4 show the strength a novelization can have over film. In these chapters we meet two characters that I think were planned to appear in the film, but got cut at some point - Lori Ciana and Heihachiro Nogura. Both later showed up in novels - Ciana in at least a couple of novels set between the end of the five-year mission and TMP, and Nogura in multiple novels, including some of the Vanguard books.

Nogura did appear onscreen in Harold Livingston's first-draft script, but I'm not sure Ciana existed anywhere but the novelization.

 

[FredH]

Wise did intend to trim the long FX sequences some (and Goldsmith actually composed their cues with repetitive elements to allow for easy cutting), but the immutable release deadline required releasing a rough edit to theaters. When he finally got the chance to supervise the Director's Edition 22 years later, he cut down the cloud and V'Ger flyover sequences by a couple of minutes, but he chose to leave the drydock sequence effectively untouched.

Although there was one part that I wished they'd cut, that long empty shot as the travel pod slowly circles around to the front. I appreciate having a bit of quiet buildup before the big reveal, but it could've been maybe 50% shorter and still worked.




Nogura did appear onscreen in Harold Livingston's first-draft script, but I'm not sure Ciana existed anywhere but the novelization.

Isn’t she the other person beaming in with Sonak during the transporter accident?

 

[Christopher]

Isn’t she the other person beaming in with Sonak during the transporter accident?

Only in the novelization. In the film, she's just a random officer with what appear to be lieutenant's stripes. Rober Wise suggested she was the original navigator that Ilia was brought in to replace.

 

[Tallguy]

Isn’t she the other person beaming in with Sonak during the transporter accident?

She is. But she isn't credited as such (is she credited at all?) and Kirk only mentions Sonak in the film.

^^^ Also what @Christopher said. I think that image was actually one of the months in the 1980 TMP calendar which I saw right before I saw the film. (Edit: Your image SAYS calendar. Hey, I'm on my lunch break! )

 

[Christopher]

(is she credited at all?)

Susan J. Sullivan was credited only as "Woman." (No relation to the Susan Sullivan who starred in Dharma & Greg and Castle as well as the pilot movie of The Incredible Hulk).

 

[Commander Troi]

Well this is a fun idea! I honestly can't remember the last time I looked at the novelization. It certainly had some dust on it!

Good point. It's hard for people today to understand just how much it meant to have new Trek at last, and in a big prestigious form like a feature film. For decades, people have complained that the Enterprise flyby was too long and slow, but we needed that, because it was the first time we'd ever gotten a really good, close, high-resolution look at the ship we loved.

I'm not even a ship/tech geek and I agree. I remember fairly well the excitement my parents and I had going to see Star Trek! On the big screen!

But I think "It was the only ship that survived its mission" is far too melodramatic a justification for that conceit, in contrast to his TOS-era insistence on plausibility and naturalism.

I think that footnote was meant to separate the Enterprise's successful mission from the previous unsuccessful ones with the "new humans" (which was a deeply fascinating concept to me as an 11 year old).

The novelization of Forbidden Planet, for instance, is written in epistolary format, in several sections representing different characters' personal journals, so it omits a lot of scenes that the viewpoint characters weren't present for while filling in lots of new material in their place, making for a considerably different experience. Then there's Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage novelization, where he tweaked and elaborated on a lot of the plot details to make the fanciful premise somewhat more scientifically grounded, and notably made a major alteration to the climax to fix a glaring plot hole the filmmakers had overlooked.

I didn't know either of these things, so thank you! I'll need to see if I can find them.

It also clearly reflects Roddenberry's utopian and sexual preoccupations.

Yes. But honestly, it's part of what I love about Star Trek.

Is this a museum ABOUT Egypt-Israel? Because they're not THERE anymore? This was a notion that just occurred to me.

Ooh! I hadn't thought about that!

Is Spock really that unaware of himself?

Yes, at this point. He's surprisingly obtuse.

The remote, forbidding environment where the ceremony was conducted in the Kolinahr scene suggests that it's a monkish ascetic discipline.

THAT makes sense.

I think Roddenberry was progressive enough to be aware of gay/lesbian issues and supportive in principle of their rights, within a cultural context where he couldn't easily come out and express that openly in his TV/film writing. It's also part and parcel of his embrace of the '70s idea that future society would be more sexually enlightened and inclusive, that people would have overcome their sexual hangups and nudity taboos, free love would be accepted, there would be short-term marriage contracts or group marriages, that sort of thing. It stands to reason that homophobia would be extinct in such a culture as well, so it made sense within the context of that worldbuilding to acknowledge that.

I figured it was much like with Heinlein (writing in the same era). Both were ok with gay and lesbian folks in theory. Heinlein, being a bit older (IIRC), a little less so. But many writers in the 70s definitely saw a more free love future. It seemed inevitable.

I have to admit, this book is so much a part of my experience of TMP (I read it soon after seeing the film) that I really cannot unentangle this book from the movie. When I see Shatner's performance in TMP I just know all of this now.

Same. The last time I watched TMP, I felt like I was "missing" some scenes. Now I know they were from the novel.

As I get older this gets harsher. Too harsh, IMHO.

It is harsh. But it fits with Kirk's hatred of being manipulated. It's natural for him to wonder if Lori was in on the whole thing with Nogura. But yeah, calling her a "whore" seems too much given what the sexual mores are supposed to be.

We also learn that the five-year mission took a toll on Kirk that sounds close to PTSD.

Definitely.

Kirk's relationship with Ciana, especially the way they both were manipulated by Nogura.

Again, were they both manipulated, or was Ciana asked to help out with Kirk that way?

Anyway, I'm enjoying the worldbuilding and the look inside Kirk's and Spock's minds.

 

[Christopher]

But yeah, calling her a "whore" seems too much given what the sexual mores are supposed to be.

I dunno, I think that even a sexually open and enlightened person might see an ethical distinction between someone pursuing a sexual relationship sincerely and someone using a sexual relationship to manipulate someone or extract something of value from them, particularly under orders from someone else. Although on the other hand, such a culture probably wouldn't stigmatize prostitution and sex work and thus wouldn't be likely to use "whore" as an insult.

When I first read the novel as an 11-year-old, I don't think I understood what the word even meant.