Something tells me that by the 24th Century, such problems would be eradicated, either through a more mature outlook on sex education and through medical science.
Anyway, Dr Tropp and Beverly together is a most unpleasant thought
Trek Lit: Adult only?
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Something tells me that by the 24th Century, such problems would be eradicated, either through a more mature outlook on sex education and through medical science.
Anyway, Dr Tropp and Beverly together is a most unpleasant thought
Thank you, I am quite aware of the current year. I am not at all offended by the scenes, they just did not work for me as a reader.
The story is set in 1930, and involves a character named "Sister Edith Keeler" in the credits. I thought it would be more powerful if the love between the characters was about their personalities, their outlooks on life and their good qualities.
I found the descriptions focused too much on the physical and thus weakened, or at least missed the chance to properly explain and expand, an already overplayed relationship. Then again, I had a few issues with the series, so perhaps I'm taking a negative approach to it.
^ I'm afraid I agree in this instance. I'm all for consenting adults to do whatever it is they want the but the idea of Kirk/Keeler does cheapen (IMO only - I know!) the regard they had for each other. I felt that what Keeler was trying to accomplish and what Kirk was trying to accomplish were collectively above that.
^ "Sex is bad."
^ You're probably doing it wrong.
It took me fifteen or twenty years to understand the "hope springs internal" joke from about IUDs from that Simpsons episode.
Well, Homer didn't get it either... I'm guessing the censors didn't too, because that's actually really dirty for early 1990s prime-time TV! Pretty funny play on words, though.
Therin of Andor said:
You had me at hello.
Ironically, when I made it a point to plow through the TOS film novels about a decade ago, I think I skipped TMP--because I thought it would be boring.
I must admit that I am almost mystified by this opinion, but then every reader brings there own mores to the objects of their reading. As you say, those scenes were not explicit, but in addition to that, they were written with the intention of strengthening the relationship between Kirk and Keeler. Of course, I might have failed as a writer in fulfilling that goal.donners22 said:
You say the books "stretched it," but it is unclear to me to what the "it" refers. Kirk and Keeler's relationship, perhaps? If so, then I can say that my feeling as a Star Trek fan has always been that Edith Keeler was the one true love of Kirk's life. Though living her life in the 1930s, Edith held a vision of life and the universe seemingly beyond her time, and one completely compatible with Kirk's own. The two felt kindred to me, fated to be together, though, tragically, only briefly.
More than that, Kirk and Keeler struck me as adults. They were people who chose to take on serious responsibilities in their lives, who worked to better the societies of which they were a part, willing to take on the duties attendant with such aspirations. As mature, healthy adults who fell in love with each other, it seemed only natural to me that they would consummate their relationship. Though it is unclear in "The City on the Edge of Forever," I explicitly stated in Crucible that Kirk and Spock were in the past for almost seven weeks, a long enough time for a physical relationship to develop between Kirk and Keeler in a natural, unhurried way.
Also, those scenes, while hardly explicit, also sought to portray that aspect of their romance as something special and important to them. During one such scene, for example, Kirk reveals to Keeler something about which he virtually never speaks: his feelings about his long-lost parents.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything here. For all I know, I might have failed as a writer to convey that which I wished to convey in those scenes. Even if I succeeded, you are certainly entitled to your opinions. But I don't quite understand why sex would necessarily cheapen a romantic relationship. If anything, such physicality can bring intimacy and trust to new levels.
Yes, the story is set in 1930, actually at the end of a period known in America as the "Roaring Twenties." Take a look at some pre-Code films from that era and you might be surprised at their prurient nature (the remnants of Frank Borzage's The River, from 1929, is a fascinating example). Still, Edith Keeler was hardly portrayed as a loose woman, either in the television series or in Crucible.donners22 said:
As for the credits listing the character as "Sister Edith Keeler," there is absolutely no mention, nor even any hint, within the actual episode that Keeler is a nun or a member of a chaste--or any--religious sect. Still, I did take note of the character listing in the credits, and I even had one character call her "Sister Edith." I took the time to explain that Keeler did not like such an appellation, that she did not belong to any religious group, but that she understood why some people employed that monicker.
Anyway, I submit that the relationship between Jim Kirk and Edith Keeler was almost entirely about their personalities. They loved each other, not because of simple physical attraction, but because of their shared outlook on life.
Also, I am surprised to read that my descriptions "focused too much on the physical." It is my feeling that my descriptions, with regard to Kirk and Keeler's relationship, focused almost entirely on the emotional. I'm not sure what you mean by an "already overplayed" relationship, but part of my aim in Crucible was to further explore the attraction between Kirk and Keeler. Perhaps I failed to do that well, but I don't think that introducing sex into a nearly two-month long romantic relationship weakened that relationship.
Not sure what's so funny here, other than that the metaphor strays toward the cliche.donners22 said:
And actually, to explicitly bring this back to the topic of the thread, my own feeling as a reader of Trek fiction is that I want what I read to be mature. I prefer not to read violence for the sake of violence, or sex for the sake of sex; I also have no taste for teenage-type sexual behavior. As a writer, I pretty much have the same opinions. In Olympus Descending, during Taran'atar's escape from Ananke Alpha, I wrote a scene in which he literally tore a security guard's arm completely off, then used the handprint of the disembodied limb to open a gate. After reading what I'd written, I decided on my own to tone the scene down. Though not violence for the sake of violence, I felt that having a character's arm ripped off crossed the line of what I felt comfortable putting in a Star Trek novel.
I have to tread very carefully here, because I am honestly not trying to insult you, BUT....
I think you need to pause and consider the implications of what you just said. You just argued that if Kirk and Edith had sex, this would cheapen the regard they had for each other. In other words, you seem to be arguing that sex between two adults cheapens the regard they have for one-another.
Again, I'm not trying to insult you, but that is, to me, a really disturbing outlook on sexuality. What kind of relationships can you possibly be capable of if you can't have sex without losing your respect for your partner? How on earth can you possibly build a lifelong partnership of love and commitment if one of the principles instruments of affection, sexuality, causes you to disrespect -- and apparently feel disrespected by -- your partner?
Maybe you didn't think the implications of your statement there through, and maybe your relationships are not tainted by a loss of mutual regard stemming from sexual intimacy. But I really question how emotionally healthy a person who loses respect for someone because they had sex can possibly be -- and, for that matter, how mature they can possibly be. Only someone who views sex as a matter of "conquest," of "conquering" a person or as a means of dominating them, would lose respect for someone after having sex with them.
Of course, like time, it's all relative. What does "cheapen" a relationship mean these days?
I know what I think it does?
But so many people on so many levels in so many fora seem to think SO differently from me that I'm almost at wit's end.
I see Truth as an objective outcome of philosophy, but I am willing to entertain the exceptions. But I always recognise them as such - exceptions.
Sex is part of a whole. On its own it's just momentary, existential, experience - nothing more, nothing less. Do we learn from it? Perhaps.
If we don't then all it's about is behaviour that at its core is ultimately self-destructive.
Today, sex and lifelong partnership are considered mutually exclusive. If you've got the first then Go Girl. If you want the second, then, hey we feel your pain.
Glad I'm not alone, at least!
It's not something I'm prepared to defend or justify, because it's not a position I arrived at through careful analysis, thought and exploration. It was a gut reaction that the relationship in the book just felt completely wrong to me, and that was the only explanation that came to mind. The problem with such reactions is that no amount of considered counter-arguing can dislodge it.
Admittedly, my views on sex and relationships are completely screwed up thanks to spending the last few years dealing solely with sexual offences in the legal system. Not sure how that would impact my reaction, but I guess all reactions are the product of experience in some way.
Then again, perhaps I was just bitter about Australia being invaded by Japan in the books.
In hindsight, it was probably because I'd just re-read a PAD book where they talk about sending an away team up Jellico's butt. So when I read about exploring bodies, I had a momentary vision of Kirk and Keeler sending miniaturised crew members inside each other. My fault rather than yours.
Like I said, my work has completely screwed me up...
It's not something I'm prepared to defend or justify, because it's not a position I arrived at through careful analysis, thought and exploration. It was a gut reaction that the relationship in the book just felt completely wrong to me, and that was the only explanation that came to mind. The problem with such reactions is that no amount of considered counter-arguing can dislodge it.
Admittedly, my views on sex and relationships are completely screwed up thanks to spending the last few years dealing solely with sexual offences in the legal system. Not sure how that would impact my reaction, but I guess all reactions are the product of experience in some way.
Then again, perhaps I was just bitter about Australia being invaded by Japan in the books.
In hindsight, it was probably because I'd just re-read a PAD book where they talk about sending an away team up Jellico's butt. So when I read about exploring bodies, I had a momentary vision of Kirk and Keeler sending miniaturised crew members inside each other. My fault rather than yours.
Like I said, my work has completely screwed me up...
Trek books used to very tame. It's only recently that we started to see swear words in the books. Truthfully, since the post Nemesis and relaunches, the stories have become more violent and explicit especially when Grim Reaper Mack writes them.
I like them as it brings us more excitement and enjoyment. Also, it's like watching an action packed epidsode.
I like them as it brings us more excitement and enjoyment. Also, it's like watching an action packed epidsode.
This is how I feel as well.
I thought the exploration of Andorian sexuality in the post DS9 series was extremely well handled. It wasn't pornographic. It wasn't clumsy. And it was key to the story being told. Not that sexuality has to be central to be valid. But that story felt relevent without pulling any punches. Star Trek is about people. Many people have sex for many different reasons. It's that simple. It doesn't have to be graphic. But when you omit sexuality completely you lose something...you lose a bit of credibility I think.
I really enjoy the New Frontier series because it is very inclusive. There are no main characters that are gay, for instance. But the series makes it very plain that gay people exist and it's not that big a deal. And this theme isn't central to the series overall, but it's there, and I appreciate it. And the sex in New Frontier is a little more graphic than your average Trek, but it's never x-rated. It's no worse than you'd see on late night television. And there's always a context. That's about as far as the sex should go IMO.
I don't like sex scenes in novels. I don't need to hear about the ins and outs and groans and moans. But I like hearing that the characters I love have sex lives. It makes them more realistic to me. People have needs. Some of those needs are sexual in nature. And reading about characters that don't have those needs, or who ignore them, are harder for me to relate to, and harder for me to respect really. Of course there are characters who are interesting precisely because they don't have sex. But that quality is only interesting if they're the exception to the rule. I'm not saying that every story should have sex, or that characters should be having sex all the time, but there are moments where it's not only completely appropriate for a sexual encounter to happen, but in which as a reader it seems completely unrealistic for the characters to not have sex.
As far as violence goes, I'd much rather it be realistic, with consequences. There was this bit in "This Film is Not Yet Rated" in which Kevin Smith (at least I think it was him) said that he felt that movies and tv shows in which the hero gets shot or punched (or there's a war) and there's no blood or death or some realistic consequence for the violence...should be rated more harshly than a movie or tv show that demonstrated the truth about the really heartbreaking consqences of violent actions. And I think he's right. And as long as violence is treated in such a way, I think it has a place at the table. Violence is handy tool in storytelling, and as long as it's wielded responsibly it doesn't bother me.
What in the...
I must be misunderstanding you, because if not, this is the strangest post I've ever read on here.
I am in an absolutely lifelong partnership where we often have very beautiful sex. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. And I *CERTAINLY* don't think sex is inherently self-destructive.
I'd say that anyone who does think so is... not approaching life correctly. To put it mildly.
Or am I totally getting your post wrong?
Thank you for trying not to insult me. Sometimes it seems the relative anonymity of the internet looses peoples fingers on the board and things are said one might not say in polite conversation. If the things some people write are things they would say I am sorry for that.
But I digress . .
I like sex as much as anyone and indulge in bodice rippers on occasion myself and have no objection to reading about sex in TrekLit.
I admit to being guilty of having first watched the epi as a youngster and the thought of the written version including sex was a surprise and my first reaction was that it didn't seem right.
In retrospect a hundred years later I still think that K/K not having sex still places the occurrence in the "higher love" /Love as philos - brotherly love / love for another human for me and I choose to think that about Kirk and Keeler.
There is of course no doubt there was attraction on both sides.
I have been married 20+ years and do not feel that sex makes a relationship dirty or cheap in any way and I am sorry if that is how my post came off.
I am not shocked at the idea of anyone else in the Trekverse - especially Kirk having sex with anyone they want - I just feel that for the story it does separate it from the typical space adventure/have sex with an alien (Yes - I know neither Kirk or Keeler are aliens - do not post about that) and makes it special in Treklore.
Otherwise I'm all for lovers and fighters going where no one has gone before . . .
Does that make any sense?
Here's a very simple issue.. Kirk having sex in the 1930s with Keeler would pretty much completely screw up his very purpose in the episode, wouldn't it? Here's there to NOT screw up the timeline, which would proably include NOT risking having children a few hundred years before he was born.
And Keeler probably was a woman that would have a long courtship and wait until she was married for the consumation. Not every woman who is in love spreads her legs two months into a relationship. Given her stature and status in the 1930s, it's extremely unlikely that she would have a night of passion.
Seems to me that the demand for her to have sex is nothing but a very immature design to 'sex up' Star Trek for audiences who cling to 'modern sexuality' so much that they don't understand that part of sexuality includes not having sex, or just enjoying the romance for its own sake.
And Keeler probably was a woman that would have a long courtship and wait until she was married for the consumation. Not every woman who is in love spreads her legs two months into a relationship. Given her stature and status in the 1930s, it's extremely unlikely that she would have a night of passion.
Seems to me that the demand for her to have sex is nothing but a very immature design to 'sex up' Star Trek for audiences who cling to 'modern sexuality' so much that they don't understand that part of sexuality includes not having sex, or just enjoying the romance for its own sake.
We know from DS9 that men in the 24th century take contraceptive injections, and we know from real life that such technology is being developed today. So there's no reason to assume that there would be any risk of conception, even if they hadn't been using some contemporary form of contraception such as condoms or the rhythm method. (Yes, they had condoms back then, and going as far back as prehistory.)
This point has already been addressed more than once upthread. 1930 was actually one of the more sexually liberated times in American history, and despite the "Sister Edith Keeler" billing in the end titles, there's no evidence in the episode itself that Edith was celibate. Certainly society would've frowned on an unmarried woman having sex if it became public knowledge, but that doesn't mean people didn't do it anyway.
Also, "a night of passion" is misrepresenting it. Kirk and Edith were deeply in love and made a choice to commit to an escalation of their relationship.
There's nothing immature about a healthy appreciation of sexuality as an expression of love between consenting adults. What is immature is assuming that sex must automatically be something tawdry and shallow.
David Marcus disagrees.
That does not mean that every woman in 1930 was a whore, however, which seems to be the thrust of your counter-point. What we see of Keeler is that she's definately the type to wait until she's married. Hell, there's dialog in the episode that hints strongly at that.
Oh, I think it's totally immature to defend a 'fuck' scene between two characters who would both have to be dramatically out of character to have the consummation occur in the way described. and that is, frankly, what we're talking about here. It's yet another bit of badly written slash-fan-fic which has given Star Trek novels the reputation for utter crap that they have.
Simply because a woman has sex outside of wed-lock doesn't make her a whore. Which is what you seem to be implying.
Slash fan-fic is about relations/sex between two characters who are the same sex and generally have no indication that they are attracted to each other in the source material.
Kirk and Keller are of differing genders and clearly have an attraction to each other on screen.
Quite right, actually. But it is also reasonable to assume that Jim Kirk employed birth control (condom use, for example, dates back centuries). Kirk might even have had a vasectomy. But I take your point. I can only say that Captain Kirk didn't always do the expected.
I have to disagree with your assessment here. When you say that not every woman in love "spreads her legs two months into a relationship," you appear to be demeaning the sexual act by reducing it to a vulgarism. You also draw a conclusion that, while a possibility, is by no means the only one, nor necessarily the right one. For one thing, America of the 1920s was hardly a chaste landscape. For another, Edith Keeler struck me as a mature woman, capable of making up her own mind about how to live her life. Also, my depiction of her physical relationship of Kirk was not about her "spreading her legs," but a natural, positive choice that strengthened their intimacy.
While the discussion we're having is clearly quite subjective, I have to take exception to the statement above. I did not have Kirk and Keeler sleep together in order to "sex up" Star Trek. Nor am I an immature person who does not understand sexuality. The decision I made to have Kirk and Keeler take their relationship to the next step came about as the result of a long creative process where it seemed a natural, mature progression to me. You clearly disagree with that choice, which is perfectly fine, but please do not impugn my artistic motivations or my maturity.
And David Marcus was born years before Kirk met Edith. Do you really think that if Kirk slipped up on his safe-sex practices once, he'd be foolish enough to let it happen again?
It is extremely offensive and misogynistic to refer to a sexually active woman as a "whore." By using such hate speech, you've just proven that you're incapable of discussing sexuality in an adult manner, so you have no business accusing anyone else of immaturity.
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