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anghraineSpeaking of my coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb perspective on the various obligatory het romance plots in TOS, I’ve been really struck by how many seem dub-con at best. Maybe that’s partly because I’m finishing the third season and it’s especially pronounced there, and it’s also been particularly glaring with Spock in particular (the Kirk dubcon plots tend to be more viscerally horrifying, but he at least gets to consent sometimes).
Spock has a small fraction of the number of romantic (or "romantic") plots that Kirk does, and while I might be misremembering something in the many episodes I’ve seen—
1— “This Side of Paradise”
The premise of this "romance" is that Leila, the softly-lit blonde girl of the episode, was in love with Spock six years earlier, but his issues meant their love could never be, and he rejected any possibility of romance with her. It's not at all clear what past!Spock actually felt about the situation (Leila says "you couldn't give anything of yourself" and he wouldn't even put his arms around her), both because of his general manner when not under the effect of the sex/docility/spore cult pollen, and because her feelings are so much the main driver of both the backstory and the present events.
Early on, lead spore cultist Elias asks Leila if she’d like Spock to join their creepy community. She replies, “There is no choice, Elias. He will stay.” It doesn’t seem like she actually cares about what he’d choose in his right mind, just about using the sex pollen to railroad him into the life she wants with him. This doesn’t mean she was always like that (she herself has been exposed for a long time, though she doesn't change much when the spores lose their hold on her), but her disinterest in his consent to life with her makes this ostensibly sweet romance 100x creepier. Not helped by the sex pollen itself and her avoidance of explanations when Spock is still in his right mind and could decide for himself.
Everyone including Spock falls prey to the sex pollen and its lalala everything is fine nothing matters effects (except Kirk eventually, mostly because he’s more frustrated at losing the Enterprise and Spock than anything else—his seething hatred of Leila from the moment she makes eyes at Spock is kind of hilarious, though it's not a great episode for him). And noticeably, the spores have the same false peace/belonging/sex pollen effects in general, rather than revealing widely varying repressed feelings/fantasies as in "The Naked Time," so the interpretation that the pollen simply removes Spock's inhibitions and directly reveals his true desires doesn't work for me. Rather, it indirectly reveals his desires through his sense of loss when he's abruptly forced out of the spore haze—specifically, he mourns the loss of the sense of belonging (however artificial) the spores had given him, and later says that this was as close as he's ever come to experiencing happiness, without mentioning Leila herself on either occasion.
As Leila is removed from the spore cult, she explicitly says she believes that Spock would never voluntarily enter into a relationship with her under any other circumstances than the influence of the spores, and urges him to return with her to the planet, the only place they can be together (...). But the sole reason the spore planet is the only place she could have a romantic relationship with him is because he wouldn't consent to one without being drugged; there is no other obstacle. When she talks about how much she loves him, Spock avoids saying what he does or doesn't feel about her, instead replying to "I can't lose you" with this kind of incredible speech:
Okay!
Spock also tells her that Kirk discovered that "strong emotions and needs" break the spores' influence, but she insists that she loves him regardless and asks what his full name is. Spock gently (but significantly) tells her that she couldn't pronounce it.
(Bonus: Leila puts her hand on his chest to make her appeals to him in the episode, where his heart would be if he were human—but it's not actually where his heart is. Probably an unintentional retcon, but it weirdly fits.)
2— “Amok Time”
We all know about this one. Spock super ultra hates the prospect of pon farr, and had hoped it simply wouldn’t happen to him (given that he’s got to be in his 30s, his human heritage, and all indication in the episode being that this is his first pon farr, it’s a not-impossible conclusion). As he starts to lose control early in pon farr, he gets furious at Chapel for her attempts to cater to him as “a man who is not hers” (significantly, he's already previously rejected Chapel's romantic overtures, so his anger at her coming near him while he's in pon farr but it's early enough that his sense of who he is and what he wants hasn't been completely eroded makes more sense than with some random woman). He’s only interested in T'Pring during pon farr and unambiguously says he loses all attraction to her once it’s over.
3— “The Enterprise Incident”
The Romulan Commander is an absolute delight, honestly. I love her and the actors actually have great chemistry, though Spock’s actual feelings remain highly ambiguous due to the plot and his demeanor. But the unsurprising revelation that Spock has been assigned to be the honeypot in a Starfleet operation is, uhhh. Well. I think he does come to admire her and regret using her, but as usual, it’s not at all clear what he feels beyond that.
4— “Plato’s Stepchildren”
This can only be described as non-con kissing for everyone. Chapel admits that she’s wanted him close like that, but not actually like that; she’s ashamed and correctly regards the whole thing as a horrific violation.
5— “The Cloud Minders”
I think this may be the only time Spock doesn’t seem to have any particular ulterior motive or mind-altering circumstances for the obligatory het subplot. Unfortunately, Droxine sucks. She’s not a bad character in the sense of lacking verisimilitude (I’ve known plenty of people like her), to be clear; she’s a sheltered young bigot who eventually starts to learn the error of her ways, but it’s no more than a good start. Damn weird choice of a love interest for anyone, much less Spock (though it doesn't go anywhere and they never kiss or anything like that). I would have much preferred Vanna as the obligatory love interest if we had to have one (though I appreciate that Vanna’s priorities are elsewhere and she honestly rules).
6— “All Our Yesterdays”
I just got to this one, which J had vaguely remembered as a sweet Spock romance. I think it’s dub-con in multiple ways and don’t especially like Zarabeth, though her circumstances are really pitiable. But she presents McCoy and Spock’s stranding in her time as a certainty because she’s (understandably!) lonely, and while she doesn’t know for sure that it’s not true, she does know it’s not the certainty she presents it as, and it takes McCoy putting the pieces together to reveal that uncertainty.
Additionally, this kind of time travel without “preparation” (um) fucks people up by reverting them to the nature of their people at that time. For Spock, this means aggression, passion, and enjoyment of eating meat just like the Vulcans of the 5000-years-earlier era they’re stuck in, compounding the sense of dubious consent around the whole thing (McCoy, fwiw, seems more cerebral than usual, and grumpier but no worse, while Kirk is cunning). I don’t think it’s presented as purely a removal of inhibitions, either (there is an episode where that does happen, which is why I keep bringing it up; but that reveals Spock truly without inhibitions as just miserable and ashamed and crying, not lalalala everything's great and none of my pre-existing relationships and priorities matter any more).
His enjoyment of meat in particular is the “fatal” evidence of this episode, IMO; he isn’t repressing a secret longing for meat the rest of the time, but viscerally averse to it. This revulsion is pretty clearly being overridden by the conceit of the ancestral qualities overriding individual ones with increasing intensity over time, regardless of what "unprepared" people would ordinarily feel. And in fact, not just eating meat but enjoying it without regret is a major part of what sways him from denial to realizing McCoy is right and he’s not himself. So this one is a LOT, actually.
Honorable mentions: Uhura is introduced openly trying to flirt with Spock, which he mainly seems to find baffling, along with her anger over him not doing more to help Kirk. After all the fandom drama, I’ve actually been surprised by how little Spock and Uhura interact throughout the vast majority of the show (especially outside a purely professional context of neutral communications reports). They get along and respect each other, but there's very little personal about it after the first couple of episodes. Meanwhile, I think “Plato’s Stepchildren” is trying to present Uhura’s anxiety about the prospect of not being able to relax when she hears Kirk’s voice over the intercom and how soothing she’s always found it as totally platonic, only deepening the horror of what’s being done to them. And I do love the existence of a sweet, very platonic male-female friendship in the background of the show—but regardless, I genuinely think that Uhura and Kirk have a lot more mutual affection than Uhura and Spock, which I didn't expect at all after all the discourse over Kirk/Spock vs Uhura/Spock.
(I know a lot of this comes from the JJ Abrams movies, but the whole "it was so brave of them to pair her off with Spock instead of Kirk" argument now seems super bullshit to me, ngl. The famous "Plato's Stepchildren" kiss is pretty obviously giving itself plausible deniability through the mutual non-con of it, so it avoids a romance between a white man and Black woman while still showing it happen visually. Even so, iirc Shatner deliberately fucked up the "safer" alternative versions and the kiss might not even have aired otherwise. I think "what if the 'Plato's Stepchildren' kiss but it's real" would honestly mean more in terms of ST's complicated legacy, that Spock is actually the somewhat safer option of the two leading men, and that Uhura and Kirk had the closer relationship as well, so...meh.)
2nd honorable mention: in “The Naked Time,” Nurse Chapel hits on Spock, he rejects her, and (as mentioned above) it turns out “Spock without brakes” is mostly upset about hurting her and also his mother and also his own shame over his feelings for Kirk. Soooo.
Oh, and this doesn't get into the multiple scenes where Spock expresses a general sexual disinterest in women or is specifically described by various other characters as innately unable to appreciate women in the way the other men do, but combined with "Spock never so much as kisses a woman without his ability to consent to it being stripped away in some capacity," it's ... something, for sure.
(By semi-contrast to the Spock dub-con trend, Kirk’s many romances/"romances" range from “he’s super into this woman and fully consenting” to questionable enthusiasm on his side because he’s trying to escape/has amnesia/is trying to protect crew members/whatever to uhhhh what I can’t really see as anything but rape. I would have supported Elaan in murdering him because for some reason they decided to retell The Taming of the Shrew of all plays in that episode with Kirk as Petruchio, and he’s a dick for much of that episode, but instead she uses her chemical powers to make him fall in love with her even though he actively loathed her previously, and then she has sex with him before he shakes it off, something which he very obviously would not have remotely considered without being drugged. I wished she’d just kept throwing knives at him instead of that. There’s a similar but not identical dynamic with Deela in "Wink of an Eye"; it feels even more fucked-up because the episode has much more of an understanding that it's dealing with repeated sexual assaults, so she's framed as much creepier than Elaan by the episode itself. It emphasizes things like her kissing him when he couldn't tell she was there, Kirk being only one of a long line of people abducted for sex/reproduction by not just Deela but her husband and presumably the other Scalosians, and you get these very clear shots of Kirk trying to force her away from him. There's something grim about the post-sex scene in which she cheerfully turns away, and he stops performing and just blankly puts his boots back on. And Deela admits that she finds him more attractive when he's trying to fight back, she's gleeful about noticing Kirk's affection for Spock and wonders if they'll show it to her (really), and she's less interested once she thinks Kirk has gone docile, but not so much less interested that she's going to let him go before accelerated time burns him up. His choice to strand the "abduction and rape is just part of our way of life :(" Scalosians to die in, like, 20 minutes rather than sharing the cure was just kind of cathartic by the end.)
Tagged: #feels weird that this is SUCH a consistent element of the show and kind of overwhelmingly so in s3. esp given how bad it is about gender #so much of the time. sometimes it doesn't seem to get how dubious the consent is and sometimes it DEFINITELY knows #women are targeted by sexual violence as well but not nearly as often i think? #but yeah spock's agency is virtually always compromised in his het subplots with the absolutely dire exception of droxine
Spock has a small fraction of the number of romantic (or "romantic") plots that Kirk does, and while I might be misremembering something in the many episodes I’ve seen—
1— “This Side of Paradise”
The premise of this "romance" is that Leila, the softly-lit blonde girl of the episode, was in love with Spock six years earlier, but his issues meant their love could never be, and he rejected any possibility of romance with her. It's not at all clear what past!Spock actually felt about the situation (Leila says "you couldn't give anything of yourself" and he wouldn't even put his arms around her), both because of his general manner when not under the effect of the sex/docility/spore cult pollen, and because her feelings are so much the main driver of both the backstory and the present events.
Early on, lead spore cultist Elias asks Leila if she’d like Spock to join their creepy community. She replies, “There is no choice, Elias. He will stay.” It doesn’t seem like she actually cares about what he’d choose in his right mind, just about using the sex pollen to railroad him into the life she wants with him. This doesn’t mean she was always like that (she herself has been exposed for a long time, though she doesn't change much when the spores lose their hold on her), but her disinterest in his consent to life with her makes this ostensibly sweet romance 100x creepier. Not helped by the sex pollen itself and her avoidance of explanations when Spock is still in his right mind and could decide for himself.
Everyone including Spock falls prey to the sex pollen and its lalala everything is fine nothing matters effects (except Kirk eventually, mostly because he’s more frustrated at losing the Enterprise and Spock than anything else—his seething hatred of Leila from the moment she makes eyes at Spock is kind of hilarious, though it's not a great episode for him). And noticeably, the spores have the same false peace/belonging/sex pollen effects in general, rather than revealing widely varying repressed feelings/fantasies as in "The Naked Time," so the interpretation that the pollen simply removes Spock's inhibitions and directly reveals his true desires doesn't work for me. Rather, it indirectly reveals his desires through his sense of loss when he's abruptly forced out of the spore haze—specifically, he mourns the loss of the sense of belonging (however artificial) the spores had given him, and later says that this was as close as he's ever come to experiencing happiness, without mentioning Leila herself on either occasion.
As Leila is removed from the spore cult, she explicitly says she believes that Spock would never voluntarily enter into a relationship with her under any other circumstances than the influence of the spores, and urges him to return with her to the planet, the only place they can be together (...). But the sole reason the spore planet is the only place she could have a romantic relationship with him is because he wouldn't consent to one without being drugged; there is no other obstacle. When she talks about how much she loves him, Spock avoids saying what he does or doesn't feel about her, instead replying to "I can't lose you" with this kind of incredible speech:
"I have a responsibility to this ship, to that man on the bridge [Kirk]. I am what I am, Leila, and if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them."
Okay!
Spock also tells her that Kirk discovered that "strong emotions and needs" break the spores' influence, but she insists that she loves him regardless and asks what his full name is. Spock gently (but significantly) tells her that she couldn't pronounce it.
(Bonus: Leila puts her hand on his chest to make her appeals to him in the episode, where his heart would be if he were human—but it's not actually where his heart is. Probably an unintentional retcon, but it weirdly fits.)
2— “Amok Time”
We all know about this one. Spock super ultra hates the prospect of pon farr, and had hoped it simply wouldn’t happen to him (given that he’s got to be in his 30s, his human heritage, and all indication in the episode being that this is his first pon farr, it’s a not-impossible conclusion). As he starts to lose control early in pon farr, he gets furious at Chapel for her attempts to cater to him as “a man who is not hers” (significantly, he's already previously rejected Chapel's romantic overtures, so his anger at her coming near him while he's in pon farr but it's early enough that his sense of who he is and what he wants hasn't been completely eroded makes more sense than with some random woman). He’s only interested in T'Pring during pon farr and unambiguously says he loses all attraction to her once it’s over.
3— “The Enterprise Incident”
The Romulan Commander is an absolute delight, honestly. I love her and the actors actually have great chemistry, though Spock’s actual feelings remain highly ambiguous due to the plot and his demeanor. But the unsurprising revelation that Spock has been assigned to be the honeypot in a Starfleet operation is, uhhh. Well. I think he does come to admire her and regret using her, but as usual, it’s not at all clear what he feels beyond that.
4— “Plato’s Stepchildren”
This can only be described as non-con kissing for everyone. Chapel admits that she’s wanted him close like that, but not actually like that; she’s ashamed and correctly regards the whole thing as a horrific violation.
5— “The Cloud Minders”
I think this may be the only time Spock doesn’t seem to have any particular ulterior motive or mind-altering circumstances for the obligatory het subplot. Unfortunately, Droxine sucks. She’s not a bad character in the sense of lacking verisimilitude (I’ve known plenty of people like her), to be clear; she’s a sheltered young bigot who eventually starts to learn the error of her ways, but it’s no more than a good start. Damn weird choice of a love interest for anyone, much less Spock (though it doesn't go anywhere and they never kiss or anything like that). I would have much preferred Vanna as the obligatory love interest if we had to have one (though I appreciate that Vanna’s priorities are elsewhere and she honestly rules).
6— “All Our Yesterdays”
I just got to this one, which J had vaguely remembered as a sweet Spock romance. I think it’s dub-con in multiple ways and don’t especially like Zarabeth, though her circumstances are really pitiable. But she presents McCoy and Spock’s stranding in her time as a certainty because she’s (understandably!) lonely, and while she doesn’t know for sure that it’s not true, she does know it’s not the certainty she presents it as, and it takes McCoy putting the pieces together to reveal that uncertainty.
Additionally, this kind of time travel without “preparation” (um) fucks people up by reverting them to the nature of their people at that time. For Spock, this means aggression, passion, and enjoyment of eating meat just like the Vulcans of the 5000-years-earlier era they’re stuck in, compounding the sense of dubious consent around the whole thing (McCoy, fwiw, seems more cerebral than usual, and grumpier but no worse, while Kirk is cunning). I don’t think it’s presented as purely a removal of inhibitions, either (there is an episode where that does happen, which is why I keep bringing it up; but that reveals Spock truly without inhibitions as just miserable and ashamed and crying, not lalalala everything's great and none of my pre-existing relationships and priorities matter any more).
His enjoyment of meat in particular is the “fatal” evidence of this episode, IMO; he isn’t repressing a secret longing for meat the rest of the time, but viscerally averse to it. This revulsion is pretty clearly being overridden by the conceit of the ancestral qualities overriding individual ones with increasing intensity over time, regardless of what "unprepared" people would ordinarily feel. And in fact, not just eating meat but enjoying it without regret is a major part of what sways him from denial to realizing McCoy is right and he’s not himself. So this one is a LOT, actually.
Honorable mentions: Uhura is introduced openly trying to flirt with Spock, which he mainly seems to find baffling, along with her anger over him not doing more to help Kirk. After all the fandom drama, I’ve actually been surprised by how little Spock and Uhura interact throughout the vast majority of the show (especially outside a purely professional context of neutral communications reports). They get along and respect each other, but there's very little personal about it after the first couple of episodes. Meanwhile, I think “Plato’s Stepchildren” is trying to present Uhura’s anxiety about the prospect of not being able to relax when she hears Kirk’s voice over the intercom and how soothing she’s always found it as totally platonic, only deepening the horror of what’s being done to them. And I do love the existence of a sweet, very platonic male-female friendship in the background of the show—but regardless, I genuinely think that Uhura and Kirk have a lot more mutual affection than Uhura and Spock, which I didn't expect at all after all the discourse over Kirk/Spock vs Uhura/Spock.
(I know a lot of this comes from the JJ Abrams movies, but the whole "it was so brave of them to pair her off with Spock instead of Kirk" argument now seems super bullshit to me, ngl. The famous "Plato's Stepchildren" kiss is pretty obviously giving itself plausible deniability through the mutual non-con of it, so it avoids a romance between a white man and Black woman while still showing it happen visually. Even so, iirc Shatner deliberately fucked up the "safer" alternative versions and the kiss might not even have aired otherwise. I think "what if the 'Plato's Stepchildren' kiss but it's real" would honestly mean more in terms of ST's complicated legacy, that Spock is actually the somewhat safer option of the two leading men, and that Uhura and Kirk had the closer relationship as well, so...meh.)
2nd honorable mention: in “The Naked Time,” Nurse Chapel hits on Spock, he rejects her, and (as mentioned above) it turns out “Spock without brakes” is mostly upset about hurting her and also his mother and also his own shame over his feelings for Kirk. Soooo.
Oh, and this doesn't get into the multiple scenes where Spock expresses a general sexual disinterest in women or is specifically described by various other characters as innately unable to appreciate women in the way the other men do, but combined with "Spock never so much as kisses a woman without his ability to consent to it being stripped away in some capacity," it's ... something, for sure.
(By semi-contrast to the Spock dub-con trend, Kirk’s many romances/"romances" range from “he’s super into this woman and fully consenting” to questionable enthusiasm on his side because he’s trying to escape/has amnesia/is trying to protect crew members/whatever to uhhhh what I can’t really see as anything but rape. I would have supported Elaan in murdering him because for some reason they decided to retell The Taming of the Shrew of all plays in that episode with Kirk as Petruchio, and he’s a dick for much of that episode, but instead she uses her chemical powers to make him fall in love with her even though he actively loathed her previously, and then she has sex with him before he shakes it off, something which he very obviously would not have remotely considered without being drugged. I wished she’d just kept throwing knives at him instead of that. There’s a similar but not identical dynamic with Deela in "Wink of an Eye"; it feels even more fucked-up because the episode has much more of an understanding that it's dealing with repeated sexual assaults, so she's framed as much creepier than Elaan by the episode itself. It emphasizes things like her kissing him when he couldn't tell she was there, Kirk being only one of a long line of people abducted for sex/reproduction by not just Deela but her husband and presumably the other Scalosians, and you get these very clear shots of Kirk trying to force her away from him. There's something grim about the post-sex scene in which she cheerfully turns away, and he stops performing and just blankly puts his boots back on. And Deela admits that she finds him more attractive when he's trying to fight back, she's gleeful about noticing Kirk's affection for Spock and wonders if they'll show it to her (really), and she's less interested once she thinks Kirk has gone docile, but not so much less interested that she's going to let him go before accelerated time burns him up. His choice to strand the "abduction and rape is just part of our way of life :(" Scalosians to die in, like, 20 minutes rather than sharing the cure was just kind of cathartic by the end.)
Tagged: #feels weird that this is SUCH a consistent element of the show and kind of overwhelmingly so in s3. esp given how bad it is about gender #so much of the time. sometimes it doesn't seem to get how dubious the consent is and sometimes it DEFINITELY knows #women are targeted by sexual violence as well but not nearly as often i think? #but yeah spock's agency is virtually always compromised in his het subplots with the absolutely dire exception of droxine