The Way of The Spores: Review of the first draft of This Side of Paradise

[Sir Rhosis]

My latest review is up at Orion Press. I'm probably too lenient on this draft as I'm a fan of Sohl's novels. What are your thoughts?

Sir Rhosis

The Way of the Spores (orionpressfanzines.com)

 

[Christopher]

Interesting. It had its clumsy bits, like Sandoval's group being full Amish, alcohol saving the day, and Kirk going all Gold Key #1 and wanting to blast all life off the planet. I'm also not clear on how the farm machines were attacking people. Were the spores controlling them too? But it had some points of interest too, like Scotty being a mole, and the spores healing an injury that would've ended a regular's career (although that beat kind of foreshadows "For the World is Hollow").

Giving Sulu the Leila subplot would've been a nice focus for him, but though I regret losing that, I think I kind of agree with Fontana's choice to give the love interest to Spock. I always figured it was just about building up Spock as the breakout star at the expense of the supporting cast, or perhaps about network discomfort at giving a romantic role to an Asian man. But I see now that combining Spock's spore-induced emotional release with the romantic subplot made them both much stronger. Spock just saying he doesn't feel lonely anymore doesn't have anywhere near the same impact as letting us see him fall in love and then break her heart at the end.

 

[Phaser Two]

I like it. It actually had some cool-sounding action bits featuring Kirk, Spock and Scotty working together, which didn't happen very often off the Enterprise. Those three were hardly ever on a landing or boarding party together, incredibly.

I also like the Sulu emphasis, which actually seems a bit more plausible than Spock repressing his feelings for Leila. I mean, his father loved and married a human woman (and we knew that this early even if we hadn't seen Sarek and Amanda yet), so in retrospect the Spock/Leila "Vulcan-blocked" failed relationship doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe Spock just ghosted her and used his Vulcan exterior as an excuse. (I have actually always had that lingering feeling when watching "This Side of Paradise" (hereinafter "TSOP") and it took me out of the show a bit even though I find Spock's situation and speech at the end quite poignant. Plus, how many red-blooded - ERRR, well, you know what I mean - people would friendzone the charming, sweet, intelligent, attractive Leila??)

Back to Scotty - I like that the writers at least briefly had him apparently immune to the spores, like Kirk. I'm sure Doohan wasn't available or the producers were trying to save costs or something, but Scotty's unfortunate omission from TSOP did solve a problem, intentionally or not. It's hard for me to see the Enterprise-focused, very military-minded and duty-bound chief engineer and second officer deciding that living in the eighteenth century was a heaven-sent plan. Spores or not.

 

[drt]

I also like the Sulu emphasis, which actually seems a bit more plausible than Spock repressing his feelings for Leila. I mean, his father loved and married a human woman (and we knew that this early even if we hadn't seen Sarek and Amanda yet), so in retrospect their "Vulcan-blocked" failed relationship doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I never got the sense that Spock had any feelings at all for Leila until the spores affected his mind.

 

[Phaser Two]

I never got the sense that Spock had any feelings at all for Leila until the spores affected his mind.

Maybe. But his final words - which make the episode for me - suggest otherwise.

 

[drt]

Maybe. But his final words - which make the episode for me - suggest otherwise.

But was it Leila or not having to be repress his human side? I think the latter is a little more than interesting for his character, and maybe telegraphing where they took him in the film series.

 

[Phaser Two]

But was it Leila or not having to be repress his human side? I think the latter is a little more than interesting for his character, and maybe telegraphing where they took him in the film series.

Again, you could be right. But if Leila was just someone that he in effect suddenly saw through beer goggles (spore goggles?), I think that significantly lessens the impact of the episode. In fact, if spore goggles were at work, it would arguably make more sense for Spock to show feelings for a member of the crew he respected and found attractive (say . . . Uhura!). After all, he probably knew more about them than he did about Leila, and his experiences and interactions with them were far more recent. Of course that would have complicated things down the road (which didn't have to be bad - think the handling of Data and Tasha Yar in TNG post-fully functional incident) instead of the Enterprise flying off and Leila never drawing another mention, but such is the nature of episodic television.

I'm pretty sure we're supposed to think that Spock had actual feelings for Leila that he repressed, and the spores enabled him to set all of that aside. (In this respect, the episode has some similarities with "The Naked Time.") I just don't believe that D.C. Fontana would write an episode where Spock fell under an alien influence and suddenly took an instant liking to a woman he knew in the relatively distant past because she just happened to be handy and still harbored feelings for him.

 

[Christopher]

Some years back, a memo from Roddenberry came out that clarified his intentions for Spock in a disturbing way. I don't have a link to it -- hopefully someone here will remember where to find it -- but basically, Roddenberry's rather creepy idea was that Vulcan males had a Svengali-like hypnotic effect on women, necessary to induce passion in their "frigid" Vulcan mates (ick). So Spock couldn't help having human women fall desperately in love with him, though he struggled not to take advantage of this power. That's why Chapel and Leila were so obsessively in love with him and why he couldn't let himself respond. (The one time we did see him using his hypnotic woman-enslaving power was in "The Omega Glory," since that was a Roddenberry script. But it came off as just a variation of his normal telepathic powers, since we weren't given the intended context, thank goodness.)

 

[Phaser Two]

Some years back, a memo from Roddenberry came out that clarified his intentions for Spock in a disturbing way. I don't have a link to it -- hopefully someone here will remember where to find it -- but basically, Roddenberry's rather creepy idea was that Vulcan males had a Svengali-like hypnotic effect on women, necessary to induce passion in their "frigid" Vulcan mates (ick). So Spock couldn't help having human women fall desperately in love with him, though he struggled not to take advantage of this power. That's why Chapel and Leila were so obsessively in love with him and why he couldn't let himself respond. (The one time we did see him using his hypnotic woman-enslaving power was in "The Omega Glory," since that was a Roddenberry script. But it came off as just a variation of his normal telepathic powers, since we weren't given the intended context, thank goodness.)

You may remember that one of your fellow officially licensed authors - I don't recall whom and as I type this, I hope I'm actually misremembering myself - included a bizarre throwaway scene in an 80s or 90s novel. In essence, near the end of the story as I recall it, Spock privately admits to Kirk that while in some sort of alien-induced coma or sleep state that also included an astral projection component, he visited the quarters of some unnamed sleeping female crewmember as a phantom and engaged in telepathic sexual activity with her. The dialogue makes clear that it was really just a dream to the crewmember and would be remembered as nothing more than that. But Spock is horrified and tells Kirk about it. Kirk reacts with aplomb and nothing more happens.

The rest of the novel was pretty good, but I found the above scene - which I think was written by a woman, perhaps expressing a fantasy for the author or others - to be utterly gratuitous and completely distasteful (to say the least). It took me out of the story and I've never forgotten it, 30-35 years later. (Well, provided that I'm not misremembering it completely, that is!) I don't know how the editors approved it and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make the final cut today.

However, it seems to jibe with what you describe above. Yuck.

 

[Christopher]

You may remember that one of your fellow officially licensed authors - I don't recall whom and as I type this, I hope I'm actually misremembering myself - included a bizarre throwaway scene in an 80s or 90s novel. In essence, near the end of the story as I recall it, Spock privately admits to Kirk that while in some sort of alien-induced coma or sleep state that also included an astral projection component, he visited the quarters of some unnamed sleeping female crewmember as a phantom and engaged in telepathic sexual activity with her. The dialogue makes clear that it was really just a dream to the crewmember and would be remembered as nothing more than that. But Spock is horrified and tells Kirk about it. Kirk reacts with aplomb and nothing more happens.

I'm not sure, but that sounds like it might have been from Death's Angel by Kathleen Sky, the last Bantam Trek novel, published in 1981.

 

[I am not Herbert]

I'm not sure, but that sounds like it might have been from Death's Angel by Kathleen Sky, the last Bantam Trek novel, published in 1981.

Having randomly read Death's Angel recently, I can confirm that this is unfortunately true. Feel free to throw out any other memories of that book, however outlandish and improbable they might seem to you, and I will likely confirm those as unfortunately true as well.

 

[Phaser Two]

I'm not sure, but that sounds like it might have been from Death's Angel by Kathleen Sky, the last Bantam Trek novel, published in 1981.

Yes, that's it. It must have been reprinted later or stayed in print, because I definitely did not read it until the late 80s or early-to-mid 90s, after "The Entropy Effect," so I figured it was a Pocket title. Good story and an enjoyable read, but the Spock part I mentioned - completely and totally unnecessary - was shocking and disturbing to me even at a relatively young age in that halcyon era.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, that's it. It must have been reprinted later or stayed in print, because I definitely did not read it until the late 80s or early-to-mid 90s, after "The Entropy Effect," so I figured it was a Pocket title.

It actually came out only two months before The Entropy Effect. Pocket got the license in 1979 when TMP came out, but Pocket couldn't begin putting original novels on bookstore shelves until Bantam released the last novel in their contract.

Bantam did re-release its novels in the '90s under the Bantam Spectra imprint, and Titan Books published them in the UK around the same time. Both of them reprinted Death's Angel in 1995, according to Memory Alpha.

 

[Phaser Two]

It actually came out only two months before The Entropy Effect. Pocket got the license in 1979 when TMP came out, but Pocket couldn't begin putting original novels on bookstore shelves until Bantam released the last novel in their contract.

Bantam did re-release its novels in the '90s under the Bantam Spectra imprint, and Titan Books published them in the UK around the same time. Both of them reprinted Death's Angel in 1995, according to Memory Alpha.

1995's too late for me to have read it for the first time. I must have gotten a hold of a copy in the late 80s or early 90s when it was still in print. I don't know where it is, or I would definitely check my recollection of that horrid scene.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I rather liked Death's Angel. And I would say that the scene to which "Phaser Two" refers was a product of its time.
It wasn't with Kirk, but with Schaeffer, and under duress. She needed to know if the astral projection phenomenon gave one the ability to interact with others, because it was a potential explanation of the murders. So she gave him a choice: either he would tell her about it, or she would have Sarek obtain the information by mind-meld, a prospect that terrified him. After he'd spilled the information, she assured him that (1) she was convinced he was acting under alien influence, (2) she would therefore take it to her grave, and (3) that any Human crew member who'd done something similar would have shrugged it off.

As I said, a product of its time. In terms of the level at which fannish sexual fantasies, Mary-Sue characters, and out-of-character behavior was permitted in TrekLit, and also in terms of U.S. culture at the time, especially among typical ST fans. And it was not even remotely as raunchy as parts of Spock: Messiah, or most (or all) of Marshak & Culbreath's works.

 

[Daddy Todd]

1995's too late for me to have read it for the first time

Bantam reprinted all its Trek novels in 1984-1986, most with new cover illustrations. And again throughout the '90's, with a different set of new wraparound covers.

In between "reissues" (with new covers) they were pretty much all in print from the 70's throughout the '90s. It's an interesting study in just how fast paperback prices were inflating in those years. Spock Must Die! started out at $.60 in 1970 (that's sixty cents, but I don't know how to get the "cents" character on this keyboard) to $5.50 in 1999.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

Regarding the spores and machinery--a quick glance back through the script confirmed what I thought (and didn't make clear)--the spores are said to operate the machinery for the colonists, but never exactly how. Telepathy, I suppose. Keys turn seeming by themselves in tractor ignitions, gasoline powered belts start turning seemingly by themselves, etc.

Sir Rhosis

 

[Phaser Two]

In response to a third-party poster above, everyone should be advised that on good authority, "Phaser Two" still found the scene gratuitous and disturbing. In fact, "Phaser Two" is sort of retrospectively proud of having that attitude because that was not an automatically popular or common take at the time.

Bantam reprinted all its Trek novels in 1984-1986, most with new cover illustrations. And again throughout the '90's, with a different set of new wraparound covers.

In between "reissues" (with new covers) they were pretty much all in print from the 70's throughout the '90s. It's an interesting study in just how fast paperback prices were inflating in those years. Spock Must Die! started out at $.60 in 1970 (that's sixty cents, but I don't know how to get the "cents" character on this keyboard) to $5.50 in 1999.

Ah. That makes sense and fits the timetable better. Thanks.

 

[Christopher]

I was not fond of Death's Angel for a number of reasons. I didn't like the lazy alien concepts, which were all just big talking versions of Earth animals or mythical creatures, no creativity at all -- and with ridiculously on-the-nose names that were just based on foreign-language names for the animal species. I also thought the main cast were written badly out of character, and Elizabeth Schaeffer was one of the two most blatant and extreme Mary Sues in all of professional Trek Lit, the other being Sola Thane from Marshak & Culbreath's Triangle. (Although the guest character from Kathleen Sky's previous novel Vulcan! was right up there too, with the same problem of the main cast being written out of character to make her superior to and/or adored by them.) I don't remember specifically how I felt about the "astral projection" scene, but I'm pretty sure I didn't care for the way Spock was written there. I don't know if it was for the same reasons as Phaser Two's concerns, though.

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

Spock Must Die! started out at $.60 in 1970 (that's sixty cents, but I don't know how to get the "cents" character on this keyboard) to $5.50 in 1999.

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