History Headscratchers / StarTrekTheOriginalSeries

** In the modern navy, sure, he wouldn't. On the other hand, Captain James Cook did. On the griping hand, that's probably why he got killed in Hawaii...

* In ''A taste of Armageddon'', Kirk finds a civilization that wages war with computer simulations that spares their cities from harm, but agrees to have its population killed in response to "deaths" produced in the simulation. Why? Why did they create a system that makes the destruction of war virtual, but not the deaths? Why wouldn't they simply create a virtual population to kill off just like they created virtual destruction of their cities? If they've really reached an agreement with their enemies to avoid the physical destruction of war, wouldn't they eventually make an agreement to avoid the physical deaths of war as well? I can't see why they wouldn't reach this logical progression.

** Not to mention that many if not most people were still watching the show on black and white televisions when it first came out. Lighting, contrast, etc. are all entirely different. Not only does the show have to look good on both types of televisions, there's the issue of makeup artists adjusting their techniques to compensate.
*** Plus the fact that even people watching on color TV at that time were not seeing what you are today with the "remastered" episodes on your HDTV.

[[folder: Feel free to read our tech manuals! Please don't kill us!]]
* Khan is known to be a genetic superman, with strength, memory and intelligence all enhanced from regular human beings. And God knows he's ambitious. Hospitality aside, why in the ''world'' would Kirk give him an ''Enterprise'' technical manual?
** Perhaps he figured [[TechnologyMarchesOn progress had left Khan so far behind]] he wouldn't be able to catch up just by reading a manual. Still, this is the sort of thing that's classified in a real military/security organization, and Kirk should be in real hot water over it. It's hard to believe that the ''Enterprise'' didn't have some magazines or novels on board for Khan to read if he was that bored. Maybe even some newspaper archives, so Khan could get caught up?
*** The image of Khan lying in sickbay, annoyedly paging through back-issues of "Redbook" and "Seventeen," comes to mind.
** Consider the type of man Kirk is, and the society that he lives in: each person strives to do their level best to improve themselves, with little if any thought towards bringing another low. He was probably hoping that Khan, realizing how much had changed, would use his advanced mind to better the world around him rather than attempt to destroy/conquer it.
** Kirk had no idea who Khan was at this point. Khan was refusing to answer all questions, and claimed to be a ship engineer of the '''Botany Bay'''. He was given the tech manuals, presumably, because Kirk sympathized with his FishOutOfTemporalWater situation and like above, didn't believe he would be able to catch up with 200+ years of technological progress.
** It was, nonetheless, ''extremely'' stupid. If you find yourself in a Pentagon waiting room, or a military hospital, they don't hand you schematics for the F-35 fighter and just assume you won't understand them!
** The tech manuals for such a big ship would probably be thousands of pages if printed out. Maybe Khan was only given the superficial, preliminary stuff on the less vital systems, which *seemed* harmless enough.
** Khan also specifically asked for technical manuals, to familiarize himself with the technology of the century he now found himself in, and Kirk agreed. It's unlikely they gave him specific plans to ''Enterprise'' herself, but more likely generic materials on technology in the 23rd century and some non-classified material on ''Enterprise'', and Khan was just smart enough to actually put it all together in a way he could exploit.

[[folder: Do the words "War Criminals" mean anything to you, Kirk?]]
* Khan and his crew may have been adrift in the ''Botany Bay'' for nearly 300 years, but they did so as HumanPopsicle[=s=]. Which means that from ''their'' perspective the Eugenics Wars were literally something that happened yesterday! By rights, shouldn't Kirk's ''immediate'' response have been to drag them back to Earth to face a war crimes tribunal? After all, it's not as if they had served any kind of prison sentence (that they were conscious for). One would expect that a spacefaring civilization possessed of cryogenics technology would be savvy enough to have modified their Statute of Limitations to cope with cases where criminals attempt to wait out the timeframe during which they can be prosecuted by going into stasis.
** Kirk didn't prosecute them for trying to murder him and commandeer the ''Enterprise'', so why would he take them back to answer for crimes 300 years old? Obviously Kirk had broad latitude in determining what to do with Khan and company, and he exercises it by exiling them. It does come back to bite him later.
** When they find out who Khan is, Kirk, Scotty, and [=McCoy=] show a certain degree of respect for him, noting that there were no massacres under his rule and that he did not fight wars until he was attacked. Spock is dismayed by their attitude, but does not challenge the stated facts. This suggests that Khan, while a ruthless dictator, was ''not'' actually a war criminal.
** Presumably their exile was the result of some kind of tribunal to begin with. Since they haven't done anything else, it would be double jeopardy to try them again for the same offense. If anything, sending them to Ceti Alpha V is adhering to the spirit of the original punishment.
*** Nobody knew what had happened to Khan and the other eugenic "supermen" until the ''Botany Bay'' was discovered. That is more consistent with a last-ditch escape than with a formal judgment and exile.
*** Another objection to the idea is raised in the episode:
---->'''Spock:''' If you're suggesting this was a penal deportation vessel, you've arrived at a totally illogical conclusion.\\
'''Kirk:''' Oh?\\
'''Spock:''' Your Earth was on the verge of a dark ages. Whole populations were being bombed out of existence. A group of criminals could have been dealt with far more efficiently than wasting one of their most advanced spaceships.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Commandeering Commodore]]
* Commodore Decker was ''quite obviously'' out of his mind. Why did Spock and [=McCoy=] back down so easily and let him take command of the ''Enterprise''? [=McCoy=] should have insisted on having those psychological evaluations beforehand, at the very least.
** While Spock would have backed up [=McCoy=] had the doctor pushed the issue (he did so with regard to ''Kirk'' in a similar situation), the case can be made that time was of the essence and that Decker ''did'' have critical intelligence on the Doomsday Machine that would ensure the survival of the ''Enterprise'' and its crew. Declaring him incompetent would have ended any further cooperation from him, resulting in a risk neither Spock nor [=McCoy=] is willing to take.
** The lack of psychological evaluations is easy to explain. The ship went to red alert right after Decker and [=McCoy=] beamed aboard, and Decker rushed to the bridge before the doctor could get him to sickbay. However, psychological evaluations shouldn't have been necessary to relieve Decker; it was clear enough from the way he was acting that he was unfit for command and [=McCoy=] should have noted that.
[[/folder]]

*** Nobody knew what had happened to Khan and the other eugenic "supermen" until the ''Botany Bay'' was discovered. That is more consistent with a last-ditch escape than with a formal judgment and exile. Another objection to the idea is raised in the episode:
--->'''Spock:''' If you're suggesting this was a penal deportation vessel, you've arrived at a totally illogical conclusion.\\

** One is a nerve attack, which Gary can be trained to withstand and/or genetically engineered to have protection against. The other is a concussion-inducing blunt force demonstration of Sir Issac Newton's 3rd Law of Motion (combined with Pascal's Law). There is a difference.

* In ''The Enemy Within'', the plot is about the ship trying to repair their transporters so they can evacuate their away team stranded on a dangerous planet. But can't they just land the ship on the planet to pick them up? Is the Enterprise not capable of landing on planets? That's really odd if they aren't, seeing as how the original Enterprise in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' has the ability to land on planets. Also does the Enterprise not have shuttles? The original Enterprise in ''Star Trek Enterprise'' in that series has shuttles too.

** Concerning Chekov's name, being born and raised in Russia, his actual birth name should be "Павел Андреевич Чехов" (at least according to Wiki/TheOtherWiki), with "Pavel Andreievich Chekov" being just the English transliteration, serving kind of as a pronunciation guide for anyone who can't read Cyrillic letters. The "v" of the Latin alphabet thus doesn't ''actually'' exist in Chekov's name.

* In episode "The Ultimate Computer" once the computer goes crackpot and starts shooting for real at the other ships, killing crewmembers of those ships, the Admiral assumes Kirk went rough and is doing it himself, not the computer. Why would and Admiral assume that a condecorated captain with decades of service and not the experimental computer in his ship was doing that? Even more, even if he jumps to the conclusion that is Kirk doing it, he also has to assume that the entire bridge from Spock to the ensigns is in it with him (considering that it has been shown that a captain considered mentally unstable can be disobeyed and taken out of command by his subordinates). What is more plausible, that an entire crew of trustworthy officers with many years of service went mad or that the computer they are actually testing is malfunctioning?

* In a late season 3 episode when Kirk, Bones, and Spock get sent to a planet's past, we learn that everyone wasn't modified (or something) before they were sent through the time travel thing. So if that's the case, why did Spock start acting like an emotional Vulcan?

** Chekov's claims were a parody of a specific type of CulturalPosturing that the Soviets were infamous for in real life: essentially giving themselves credit for every technological or cultural advancement mankind has ever made. Creator/NicholasMeyer took the joke UpToEleven in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', when the [[KlingonsLoveShakespeare Klingons took credit for the works of William Shakespeare]]--even claiming that his plays could only truly be appreciated properly InTheOriginalKlingon. In the same film, Spock borrows the joke from Chekov twice: First when he quoted the old Vulcan proverb: "Only [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Nixon]] could go to China," and later when he claims to be a descendant of Literature/SherlockHolmes.

** "The Alternative Factory"? I don't remember that episode.
** Typo. It was called "The Alternative Factor", it did have two Lazaruses, this troper has no answers to the above troper's questions because she hated that episode.
*** I knew that. I was making a (fairly lame) joke.

** To an extent there is a bit of TruthInTelevision though. Russian does not contain the W sound, and Russians who don't bother with right pronunciation would avoid it. But those Russians (this troper included) who did learn this sound tend to forget (at first at least), that the letter V also exists in English, and they replace all Vs with Ws. This troper used to say "woice" instead of "voice" just because the latter didn't sound English enough for her. Still it is strange in the case of Chekov, who daily deals with native English speakers and most likely would correct his mistake once he heard the right version.
*** While German instead of Russian, this troper also has issues with the V/W thing for the same reason (and with S/TH, since TH doesn't exist in German this troper occasionally makes an "s" into a "th"). We don't really know how Chekov spends his off time, but I highly doubt he's the ''only'' Russian on board, so there's a good chance he wouldn't be speaking English 24/7. And even if he were, accents can take many years to fade.

** One question this troper has is "Why only 20"? Granted, I can see a number of button-pusher positions being eliminated by the computer (helm, captain, navigation, weapons operators, etc. and the secretarial jobs performed by Rand) but what about the entire engineering complement? What about the medical crew? Laboratory staff? Then there's the support personnel for those positions, redundancy. Was it simply a matter of "only 20 needed for the duration of this experiment"?

[[folder:Kirk and Spock... They're Just Friends, Honest!]]
* Possibly a prime example of "One troper's {{Squee}} is another troper's {{Squick}}, but ''what'' is up with all the K/S shipping. To me it seems like CanonDefilement of the worst kind.
** That was my reaction for a long time, but now it either makes sense, or I'm desensitized to it. I think it's about their enduring, rock-solid friendship. After all, I presume K/S fics aren't just one of them dropping trou and begging the other for penis. Quite a few of them are probably IfItsYouItsOkay.
*** Actually, quite a few of them ''are'' the first thing you said.
** You do realize this sounds a little homophobic, don't you? If you were talking about, for example, Kirk/Uhura, you wouldn't call it CanonDefilement. It's just some fans seeing romance where others don't. It's natural for any fandom.
*** I think the fact that you even brought it up when there was no reason for you to do is telling of how well-known the pairing is. It [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series created the whole]] [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/History_of_Slash_Fandom modern slash fan fic subgenre]] and is one of the most popular pairings more than 40 years later. It's highly ambiguous and there does seem to be a reasonable amount of subtext which leaves this all open for interpretation. In any case, all works of fiction are open for interpretation. And even though you wouldn't be able to convince many people Spock and Uhura is TOS canon[[note]]Not so non-canon as you might think; early episodes showed some pretty flirty stuff between those two. The creators were clearly toying with the idea that they would end up together. Watch Spock when Uhura is mindwiped by Nomad. As late as season 3, Spock is still going to her first after an attack or accident, picking her up and often saying "Are you alright Lt.?".[[/note]] I wouldn't call Abrams' addition of it in his universe "canon defilement".
*** Besides, it's traditional by now. [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/SlashTerminology The need to describe the Kirk/Spock pairing]] is the TropeNamer for SlashFic.
*** It's possible to be squicked out purely by the CanonDefilement aspect of that ship without any implication of homophobia; if it's any consolation there are definitely gay Trek fans out there who find this pairing unsettling for that reason.
*** Including gay screenwriter [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/David_Gerrold David Gerrold]], who [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_K/S_Fandom_by_David_Gerrold loathes it]] with the [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_K/S_Fandom_by_David_Gerrold#Views_Unchanged:_2013 burning passion]] [[https://www.facebook.com/david.gerrold/posts/10201196256560847 of a thousand suns]].
*** Sure, but the fact that some gay people hate the pairing doesn't mean that there's no homophobia in the disproportionate amount of disgust it gets from some parts of fandom. I mean, you can disagree about whether or not that's a reasonable interpretation of their relationship in canon without finding the whole idea utterly disgusting...and if you do find it utterly disgusting, maybe do a little thinking about why that's the case, because from here it makes you look homophobic.
*** Given Kirk's practically a notorious womanizer anyway, it wouldn't be all too out of character for him if not for her [Uhura] to engage in such a pairing. (Granted their one kiss was forced by aliens, but that hasn't stopped main characters from ending up together in [[Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross at least one other show]].) Uhura also seems pretty much a straight gal. But neither Kirk nor Spock are obviously bisexual to a casual audience, and most of the non-gay audience in the '60s would even have expected such.
*** Regarding the "homophobia" accusation, there is also the easy-to-make assumption that since MostFanficWritersAreGirls, one can chalk up most SlashFic to the YaoiFangirl brigade. It seems perfectly acceptable to get offended by the GirlOnGirlIsHot thing without being called a "homophobe", but not the other way round; yet such unlikely pairings appear essentially the gender-inversion for some of us. It's still bad stereotyping (not least ignoring the gay male fanfic authors who seem in part to have been responsible for the whole thing),[[note]]Yes, there were male fanfic authors in the earliest days of the fandom. And it's entirely logical to assume that some slash writers were gay men using female names. The [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Slash_Controversies#Illegality_of_Slash illegality of sending gay porn through the mail]] meant its authors, regardless of gender, had to resort to [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Pseudonym pseudonyms]] anyway.[[/note]] of course, but there you go. Furthermore, Kirk/Spock has pretty much been done to death.
** Blame ''Saturday Night Live'', their geriatric Trek sketch helped start it.
*** The slashing actually started while the original series was still airing. While the first fanzine devoted to K/S was published in 1976, individual stories date all the way back to 1968. [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_K/S_Fandom More here]].
** Two guys, one a ChivalrousPervert playboy hero and the other an emotionally desensitized telepathic Woobie, who run around saving one another's lives, sharing charming banter, failing at all of their romantic relationships, pressing their hands together through transparent-but-insurmountable barriers, and spending the majority of their screen time with each other... whether or not you feel that it's CanonDefilement, it's not like you can't see where the slash fans would get their ideas from.
** K/S has only a thin canonical basis (but it's not hard to see how people might get the idea, like when Edith Keeler tells Spock that he belongs "At [Kirk's] side, as if you've always been there and always will"), but it's quite understandable to me that fans starved for any representation of alternative sexuality in Franchise/StarTrek gravitate towards this brand of textual poaching (to borrow Henry Jenkins' term).
*** Slash wasn't about representation of alternative sexuality, inclusion or visibility. It was by straight women who thought GuyOnGuyIsHot and had their ShippingGoggles set to maximum looking for the least indication of HoYay.
*** So representations of homosexuality that turn on (these specific) straight women are innately illegitimate? Is that what you're saying?
*** I didn't write the comment you are replying to, but I thought that I would give my two cents. One of the more controversial debates in certain quarters of the LGBT community over the years is whether it is right or wrong for heterosexuals to have any sort of fantasy or fetish for gays or lesbians - I believe that may be the sort of sentiment being got at here. I personally do not agree as I think that having fantasies and fetishes is all very well and good as long as no one is harmed by it, but I suppose some people think that the image of the LGBT community is being harmed by the portrayal of homosexual love purely for the enjoyment of the heterosexual viewer. On the flip side of course, the amount of heterosexuals (men in particular) who find the concept of the same sex finding them attractive disgusting, it seems that there must be similar discussions on both sides in different forms for different reasons.
*** I think I did write the comment being replied to. I'm male and bi, and my view of slash itself is positive; it's a creative act, [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Textual_Poachers:_Television_Fans_and_Participatory_Culture folklore, taking control of the narrative]], culture jamming. What I object to is slashophiles' insistence that it's canon; that the ''Star Trek'' creative team inserted numerous subtexts which are "obvious" to viewers "in on the secret". To me, that's more like canon defilement. It reads like conspiracy theory, ''and'', most important, it cancels out the aforementioned creative power of fan-controlled, folkloric narrative, by establishing it as part of the show's reality all along. It's a form of Jossing, if you want the truth. Also, D.C. Fontana when asked [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Amok_Time#Fannish_Reactions:_Slash_Possibilities replied with a strongly worded negative.]] As far as slash writers consciously intending gay inclusion & visibility, no, although these may have evolved over time. As far as I can tell, slash began as kind of an erotic thought experiment. But I agree that these are [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Slash very]], [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Slash_Controversies very]] [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Why_Slash complex]] [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Why_do_fangirls_always_make_them_gay%3F issues]].
** Sorry to break it to you with your claim of CanonDefilement but Gene Roddenberry went on record as saying that he would have made Kirk and Spock gay if he could have gotten away with it. Back in the 1960's, not even the man who screened the first inter-racial kiss in history could get around the homosexuality taboo. If you re-watch the series with this in mind, the subtext suddenly makes infinitely more sense when you realize he was deliberately writing them this way.
*** This is probably another example of Roddenberry RetCon. He was initially looking for a way to bring audience attention back on Shatner, who was getting seriously pissed that Nimoy was getting ten times the fan mail/attention he was. It was [[http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/getting-star-trek-on-air-was-impossible.html Isaac Asimov who suggested that Roddenberry portray the two as friends]] so that Spock fans would pay attention to Kirk. It's a pretty safe bet that Roddenberry was talking out his ass in the book you're quoting from (which is the now-forgotten ''[[http://fanlore.org/wiki/Shatner:_Where_No_Man Shatner, Where No Man]]'', a 1979 bio written by [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sondra_Marshak Sondra Marshak]] and Myrna Culbreath, a couple of [[Creator/AynRand Objectivist]] devotees who had some of the most bizarre ideas ever in ST fandom). Be that as it may, learning about slash gave Roddenberry himself the idea to include the "t'hy'la" business in his novel for ''Star Trek: The Motion Picture''. Fans who had never heard of slash discovered it through that infamous footnote. Also, Roddenberry himself was apparently accused of being gay as a child because he didn't fit the "[[ARealManIsAKiller real man]]" stereotype of his dad's culture. According to Creator/GeorgeTakei, he was very supportive of real gays.
** Not to mention that Star Trek is a FreeLoveFuture according to WordOfGod.
*** Which (both realistically and in context) need not imply that everyone does everything with everyone else, simply that they ''can'' (without becoming social pariahs or worse). For a FreeLoveFuture, the Trek franchise in practice is pretty conservative.
*** David Gerrold did say (in Shat's 2015 documentary film ''Film/ChaosOnTheBridge''), that in the TNG episode on Risa, Roddenberry asked if they could show gay and Lesbian couples kissing and making out along with the straight ones in that world.
** An important point as well is that slash fans didn't necessarily see something that sprang out of thin air. Rather, they were seeing the ghost of something that was once meant to be explicitly canon -- sexual tension between a first officer and the captain. Originally, the show would have centered around Captain Pike and his logical first (and female) officer, Number One, who had romantic feelings for him. When Pike was replaced with Kirk and Spock took Number One's place after the executives got involved, though, the remnants of that relationship still lingered. Additionally, some of the writers for Trek did write stories sympathetic to homosexuality, even in a time as prejudiced against gay people as the 60s was. The most prominent is Theodore Sturgeon who wrote "The World Well Lost" which depicts the love Grunty holds for Rootes -- his Captain who is described as a "arrogant, loquacious womanizer." Sound familiar? Sturgeon wrote "Amok Time" as well as "Shore Leave" -- both of which contain clear homosexual subtext, such as Kirk trying to get a backrub out of Spock. Given that "The World Well Lost" was published in 1953, it's likely that Gene Roddenberry was aware of Sturgeon's views. And, as has been pointed out on this very wiki, Roddenberry himself coined the term t'hy'la to describe Spock and Kirk's relationship -- meaning "friend, brother, lover." And given that Vulcan is a fantasy language and constructed, there was no need for Roddenberry to include the word "lover" as part of the definition. That's not to say that people can't find it Squicky, but to say it is CanonDefilement is a bit much, I would say because, in canon at least, there's little doubt that Kirk and Spock do love each other. They may not be in love, of course, but they are clearly among the most important people in each other's lives. And given that neither of them have shown an opposition to same-sex relations, it wouldn't be out of character necessarily for them to fall in love.
*** [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/Amok_Time Sturgeon didn't write Amok Time alone]], however. He based it on an original idea by Roddenberry and Coon, and his outline was passed around for many, many rewrites by Roddenberry, Coon, Fontana, Justman, Solow, NBC program director Stan Robertson and Kellam-Deforest Research team Peter Sloman and Joan Pierce -- who threw out half of what Sturgeon wrote! We don't know who wrote what. What we ''do'' know is that Vulcan was originally conceived by Sturgeon as a B&D culture, with women "absolutely owned" and giving "absolute obedience"!
** It also doesn't help that the two of them are basically ConfirmedBachelor[=s=]. Kirk may become infatuated with the GirlOfTheWeek, but he never seems to even think about them afterward unless (as with Dr. Carol Marcus) he happens to run into them again at a later date. Spock has also had some brief liaisons, but these never seem to go anywhere either. So their closest and most enduring relationship remains with each other (with a little [=McCoy=] on the side). Even though they often go off on separate career paths by the time of the movies, they still gravitate towards each other. Hence it is very easy to read HoYay into their relationship. Unless you are a firm believer in NoBisexuals, it is not hard to speculate that they are essentially a couple in an open relationship due to mutual aversion to commitment.
** Just something to ponder here but in ''Star Trek Generations'' Kirk's most heartfelt dream made flesh wasn't to sit on the bridge of the Enterprise with Spock, it was to settle down back on Earth with his long lost ''female'' love. If there was this massive secret forbidden love between them then why would Kirk choose some woman he hasn't seen in years over Spock? Sorry but these two are HeterosexualLifePartners and nothing more.
** Something else to think about; when the ''Trek'' novel ''Killing Time'' was published (in 1985), Pocket neglected to remove [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Killing_Time_(Star_Trek_tie-in_novel)#The_Rumored_K.2FS_Version a heaping amount of K/S (or at least strong subtext)]] that Paramount had told them to edit out. A copy made its way into Roddenberry's hands and he was ''furious''. It wasn't the idea of homosexuality that he was angry with. It was the suggestion that ''Kirk and Spock'' were gay for each other. He was so pissed a revised edition was required. [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Killing_Time_(Star_Trek_tie-in_novel) Much more here about Killing Time and what happened with the revision.]] This was also what put the nail in the coffin when it came to whether or not the novels could be considered part of the canon. Not sure how that jibes with the idea that he initially wanted to make them in love but wasn't allowed to. Also, that footnote referred to above has Kirk saying that while he's not offended by the suggestion that he and Spock were lovers, he simply is not attracted to men in that fashion.
*** The decree that the novels had to fit into the canon came ''much'' earlier, after [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sondra_Marshak Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath]]'s ''[[https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Fate_of_the_Phoenix Fate of the Phoenix]]'' (1979) in which [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Fate_of_the_Phoenix#Not_Canon.2C_and_The_Hands_of_TPTB an edict came down from Roddenberry and/or his assistant]] that a duplicate Kirk created in the ''Phoenix'' novels must die at the end because with ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' then in production, "there could not be a second, identical, real Kirk left in the Star Trek universe." \\
FWIW, according to David Gerrold (whom they relentlessly badgered at conventions), Marshak and Culbreath were notoriously aggressive promoters of the "Slash Premise" although they couldn't make it explicit in their published novels[[note]]they wrote special editions of the ''Phoenix'' books with explicit K/S scenes included - these were circulated underground for years[[/note]] and were finally barred from the Paramount lot and from any contact with the actors, producers or staff at around the time ''The Motion Picture'' was being made.

* I get what people are saying in defense of the pairing, but to me, it highlights a problem with our culture that Doctor Nerdlove pointed out; some people can't see emotional intimacy between two men without it being sexual. Why couldn't Kirk and Spock just be taken at face value? Actually, that highlights another problem -- people twisting everything in a work around to find something that isn't really there.
** It's not just between two men though. If anything, I'd say a lot of people have an even harder time accepting a platonic friendship between a straight man and a straight woman. Non-canon shipping in general is a massive thing in fanfiction; Kirk/Spock happens to be one of the earliest well-known cases, but it's not like it isn't something that happens constantly and across multiple orientations.
[[/folder]]

*** That seems remarkably inefficient. To have no backup method to recover your away teams if the transporters ever malfunction or are damaged.

* This was one of the best episodes in season 1, but a few things stand out. The second half the episode is all about the landing party trying to get their communicators back so they can contact the Enterprise. But wouldn't the crew back on the Enterprise suspect something was wrong after going such a long time with no contact from the away team and just beam down some more communicators? Also, was there ever any explanation for why the planet looked exactly like earth, and seemed to be set in the 1960s? It seemed like they just completely forgot about that issue right after bringing it up. Finally, how could the colony have been there for more than 300 years? The original series takes place in the 23rd century. 300 years before that, Earth didn't have the technology to be setting up colonies on other planets.

* Possibly a prime example of "One {{Troper}}'s {{Squee}} is another troper's {{Squick}}, but ''what'' is up with all the K/S shipping. To me it seems like CanonDefilement of the worst kind.