Old-school fandom lawlz

[hsavinien]

I'm finally getting around to watching the Kirk/Spock TOS analysis series "The Ship's Closet" on YouTube.  She makes a compelling case, well backed-up by the text of the show/movies and Roddenberry's own words.  Good lord, Roddenberry outright compared their relationship to Alexander/Hephaistion and basically said the only reason they weren't having sex during the actual series was because of 1960s *cough* 23rd century mores.  (Though that says nothing about the development of their sexual contact during the movies.)  I mean, goodness knows it doesn't take much to convince me, but I do like a well-constructed thesis defense even so.  ^_^

Comments

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I'm finally getting around to watching the Kirk/Spock TOS analysis series "The Ship's Closet" on YouTube.

Huh, cool, I'd never heard of that vlog series before.

After watching the first three episodes and reading that article dissecting the T'hy'la footnote, I remain inclined to think it wasn't Roddenberry's or the ST:TOS writing staff's prevailing intention to imply that Kirk and Spock were romantically or sexually involved. Not that I don't ship them, because I'm totally for it myself. But for me Kirk and Spock are in the same league as Holmes and Watson: I don't think they were ever intended to be gay for each other, but the prevalence and perseverance of the notion that they were has sort of created this dual vision of the texts, whereby both readings seem equally real and valid simultaneously.

That said, wow the Backrub Scene is gay. Like, try as I might, I can't figure out what the writer of that scene was going for, if not "Kirk contrives to get Spock to touch him in a semi-intimate way."

So while I'm not convinced that the prevailing notion in the writing room was that Kirk and Spock were gay for each other, it seems entirely plausible that at least a couple of the writers were inclined to slash them.

Also, I just went to IMDB to find out who the primary writer of Shore Leave was, and oh my god it's Theodore Sturgeon, of Sturgeon's Law fame! Which you probably already knew. I'm just having a 'Woah, it's a small world" moment.

[hsavinien.livejournal.com]

*nods* Prevailing intention, no, but there had to have been a couple of folks there who knew what they were implying. And yeah, the Backrub Scene is reeeeeally pretty gay.

Didn't know that, actually. I'm not really up on the behind-the-scenes folks so much, so yay, today I learned.

Edited to add: Holmes and Watson, though, have the excuse of being written Way Back When. One of the writers for Star Trek had actually previously published a Sci-Fi book with honest-to-god-not-subtext-acknowledged-on-page homosexual characters.