Observations on Star Trek the Original Series
Observations on Star Trek the Original Series from an H-C forum
Why Kirk Is My Favorite Character
My prime fandom is Star Trek the original series. My favorite character is James Tiberius Kirk. In the early days of Trek fandom, Kirk fans were much rarer than Spock fans. It was cool to ‘grok’ Spock, and Kirk was, well, part of the military industrial complex, and therefore suspect. (It was the sixties after all.)
In spite of Kirk being regarded as Mr. Establishment, I still loved the character and that love has only grown through time. Kirk was designed by the writers with all the traditional manly virtues. He was brave, loyal, intelligent, a gentleman, a man of action, a superb strategist, an outdoorsman, a lover of literature and philosophy, an antiquarian, an historian, a Shakespeare spouter, a chess master, and many other things.
But it wasn’t the traditional virtues that attracted me to him. It was his ability to think outside his limitations. He possessed a mind always ready to reinvent the situation he was in. He was smart and he knew it, but he knew Spock was smarter and wasn’t intimidated. He was willing to risk looking like a fool, and willingly sacrificed his dignity to achieve his ends. He had a difficult childhood, and survived a concentration camp when he was a young teenager.
He is relentless in the pursuit of truth even if it takes him into dark places, and he learned just how ugly the world could be from Kodos, and yet he remains an optimist, not letting his childhood experience with evil define him.
He laughs at life, he enjoys himself, he eats too much, he has bad hair, he enjoys goofing around with his friends, needling McCoy, one-upping Spock and chasing women who are obviously wrong for him.
There was always a little of the ‘snotty-frat-boy’ about James T. Kirk. Shatner remains unsurpassed in his portrayal of the prancing, smirking, pretty-boy buttoned-down, wiseass Kirk. (Joe Flanigan does a similar and respectable
Job as John Sheppard--you can see the parallels)
Kirk is a frustrating guy to love but once he’s gotten under your skin you willingly cheer him on, especially when he wins against impossible odds and he always wins. Few leading men in Shatner’s era could pull off the trifecta of comedy, pathos and bravura--so outrageously ‘out there’ that it pours over into pure sublime-but Shatner did it. Only Ricardo Montalban could keep up with him. Nimoy was wise enough to act in counter point to him with sly-dignity and smug silence. Kirk and Spock are an iconic pair like Watson and Sherlock, Aubrey and Maturin, Sheppard and McKay, Moulder and Skulley all men of action paired with a conflicted man (and woman) of science. I love that combination.
Some Observations on the Hurt-Comfort Genre
Kirk knows all his life that he will die alone. He is a man with great interior strength, and a profound sense of his destiny. The great love of his life, (whether you want to slash them or not), is Spock. This is canon, and their relationship is one of the central themes of Star Trek
Kirk has internalized a personal mythology that he is destined to live and die alone. As an observer of his life, I want to alter that misplaced vision and change it so he can find happiness. And that is what fanfiction is for, fixing the mistakes.
Slash or K/S was born when fans started questioning and disagreeing with this hurtful destiny. It wasn’t even a question of sex, or being gay-initially-- it was the seeking of a solution to end their suffering--Spock from his relentless mating cycle and Kirk from his restless loneliness. But the origin of slash is just an aside here.
Today fans use the Hurt-Comfort (H-C) term as a name for a genre of fan fiction. I still tend to think of H-C as a writer’s device for adding emotional punch to relationship stories. I think of H-C as being a method that is found in all categories of fan writing. Action Adventure, First Time stories, AU’s-all of them.
Hurt-Comfort, also called gitch, angst, get-stories, pounce-stories and now whump, very quickly became a stand alone story category, but it didn’t start out that way.
The H-C scenario as I recall it was originally a writer’s device, and as an ‘accelerant to intimacy,’ no other technique was as ruthlessly efficient. It brings sensation and instant audience involvement to a story. Some fans have complained that the ‘Hurt’ part of Hurt-Comfort erotizes violence and goes overboard on titillation. I only agree with that for certain extreme stories, in most stories the violence is usually in line with the scale of the plot. And the stories I prefer are the ones that actually have a plot. There could be a whole sub-genre of Hurt-comfort out there I don’t know about. (PWP/H-C) I’m afraid to ask-yikes.
In fan-fiction stories, especially short vignettes and action adventure-stores H-C is the most efficient way to draw the audience into a story quickly. It is a very successful formula. It can be used with sophistication by experienced writers and with relative ease by beginning writers-H-C works in a user friendly manner, which is why so many beginning writers are attracted to that template. That’s why it’s ubiquitous. The quickest way to enliven prose is to the ‘hammer’ the hero. It is said that the key to a good story is getting your characters into trouble and keeping them there. H-C is one of the favorite methods of doing that. It’s a short cut that works especially well with emotionally reticent characters.
Many fans have commented on the implausibility that trauma, and intense pain is conducive to getting people together. I tend to agree with that. when I dislocated my arm I was in no mood to appreciate the ‘finer traits ’ of the man who was putting my arm back in it’s socket, it happed to be a friend doing the deed and I can report that I didn’t feel any special bonding going on, mostly I was gritting my teeth trying not to vomit. But then maybe that’s just me, perhaps I’m not enough of a romantic. LOL.
As I discovered it isn’t the ‘Hurt’ part of H-C that merges people together it is the aftermath of the trauma. It’s the recovery, the healing, the talking, the working things out that most matters to me. The character’s recovery and re-evaluation of self is just more interesting. That is what I concentrate on when I write H-C scenes into my stories.
Comfort stories are a special favorite of mine. Even better is a ‘Comfort’ story not preceded by any ‘Hurt’, but those stories are hard to set up, The desire not to have a whumper explains the perennial popularity of the hero gets-- drunk, drugged, sick, tired or spazed-out stories.
It’s all about getting the reader inside the head of the character, seeing the changes going on. Watching as the character’s self-definition realigns or even better watching the character heal by letting go of old pain. We learn from these stories how to get rid of our own pain, and that is the ‘second story’ within the main story, which speaks to our own escapes--about how to recover or how to change.
I was told by a writer friend that all stories should actually be two stories; I think she might have been quoting Grace Paley. But where ever the thought comes from I think it is correct. I think that is why a Hurt-Comfort scenario by itself isn’t enough; it must function within a deeper story to tell deeper truths.
Hurt-Comfort is ultimately a catalyst to bring about change. And I hope that when Kirk changes or Spock changes they might see each other differently and have the courage to make their lives better. It is not a guarantee, but then nothing is.
Star Trek Universe Writing and Reading Preferences
I like the dynamic of reading and writing stories within the constraints of their parent universe. Even when I explore an AU (alternate universe) the characters remain recognizable. They behave in ways most other fans would say that’s Spock or that’s Kirk. However, I have a very expansive imagination, so what I consider AU might be considered too ‘far out’ by many readers.
Rather than write a story with extreme ‘character’ changes, I think I would write an original non-Trek story. There is a point where an AU shatters under too much strangeness, and at that point if you choose to continue writing you are making original fiction. I know several writers who have published their ‘busted’ Star Trek AUs as original SF.
Most of the Trek fan-fiction stories I have read are close to the canon or at least close to reasonable extrapolations from the canon. Star Trek because of the great variety of canon story-experiments leaves a lot of running room and fans use that to their advantage.
The Trek universe (TOS) has changed as its audience has aged. And fan-fiction also mirrors that. For instance the Kirk of 1966 is different from the Kirk of 2009 even though it’s the same episode, then and now, audiences see him differently so fans write him differently. If I concentrate and try to filter out 40 years of change I can call that 1966 guy back into reality. He was so cool. The Trek universe was the world as you wanted it to be, so much so, you were willing to overlook the sexism, the bad props, the stupid hair, dumb story ideas (Spocks Brain) and all the other annoyances. Fans today, bless them; usually write their stories without those annoyances and that is why I’m still reading them.