The Displaced

Zine
Title:	The Displaced
Publisher:	Catspaw Printers
Editor:
Author(s):	Lois Welling
Cover Artist(s):
Illustrator(s):	Beverly Zuk
Date(s):	1978
Series?:	yes
Medium:	print zine
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:	online at Trek Tales (via Internet Archive) front cover, Beverly Zuk
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

centerfold, Beverly Zuk -- a domestic scene

The Displaced is a het Star Trek: TOS fanzine. It is a 126-page Spock/OFC novel by Lois Welling. The art is by Beverly Zuk. It had an original print run of 300 and has a stapled binding. The second printing was numbered, and also had a print run of 300. At least 9 printings were made. The author notes in an ad that "it contains one sexually explicit scene. If you are hyper-sensitive, be warned."

This story features an original female character who was viewed by many readers as a Mary Sue in the sense of possible self-insertion, albeit well-written. It displaces the main character (aptly named "Sue"), a "typical" 20th century nurse, ordinary looking and in her thirties, through time and space into the Star Trek universe and ends up being forced together with Spock through a captivity pon farr and slavery trope.

From an Ad

From Universal Translator #23: "'The Displaced' is the story of the occupants of Cell #9 on a breeding farm in the Towan solor system. Three females -- Susan, a human from the 1970s, an Andorian just barely 15, and a Romulan. The male in the cell is Commander Spock. All three were kidnapped and are now forced to live together and breed -- and work toward gaining their freedom."

The Series

• The Displaced
• Transition
• Continuum

Gallery

• 

  interior art by Bev Zuk

• 

  interior art by Bev Zuk -- the author notes in an ad that the zine "contains one sexually explicit scene. If you are hyper-sensitive, be warned." -- this is that image.

• 

  interior art by Bev Zuk

• 

  interior art by Bev Zuk

Reactions and Reviews

Unknown Date

On his way to Vulcan where this time he has made arrangements for his second pon-farr, Spock is captured by slavers and taken to the planet Towan, where slaves are used up in the mines if not kept as breeding stock. Susan, an Earthwoman captured from the 1970s, Thela, a Romulan starship officer, and Soy-An, a disturbed Andorian girl all work at the clinic and share a cell. They have so far managed not to be assigned a stud male yet, and Sue and Thela have made careful plans to get themselves a Starfleet officer the next time one comes along. They manage to get Spock but their plans go awry when the drug they use to spirit him away turns out to have unfortunate consequences because of his human genes and his state of pon-farr. Spock is seriously amok but when the dust settles they have become a family unit, and Spock is assigned work as a computer specialist. Over the next five years they continue to lay plans and produce hybrid children - a specialty of the station's drunken doctor. Sue's twins Jamie and Len and Thela's boy Thone result from the first round; Sue's Amanda and Soy-An's little girl Thay-An come along later. By the time the older boys are three, with just another year until they are taken away from the family, Spock must effect his escape by faking his death, and Susan must manage to keep the family going until he returns - or kill them all before the children are taken. The story is well-written, and doled out compellingly in flashbacks from the "present" in which the rescue is effected - the story emerges like a jigsaw puzzle. The three women's varied reactions to the horrors of their situation are convincing, as is the unorthodox family, and the resolution, which will enable Spock to return to the stars. Thela has taken Thone and returned to her own husband after some restorative surgery by McCoy; Soy-An committed suicide after Spock's reported death; Sue will live on Vulcan with Sarek and Amanda. All is not entirely well; McCoy is unable to save Sue's latest baby Chucka, born prematurely - the effects of the slave experience.

1978

This novel is the story of a very alien Spock in pon farr, kidnapped while on his way to Vulcan and sold to a slave planet, how he managed to stay alive for five years and to finally escape. His subtle emotional and character growth is seen through the eyes of another prisoner, a 'displaced' 1970s woman whose flight through the Bermuda Triangle was hijacked into a time/space warp and all passengers enslaved. Spock has the American woman, a Romulan female, and an Andorian girl for cell mates on a breeder farm, and the author deals with what happened during his plak two in a very realistic fashion. The narrative of their problems, misunderstandings, and courage as they gradually blend into a devoted family unit makes excellent reading. Lois has a nice smooth style, and her heroine, Susan, comes across as a real women; warm, loving, sensible, intelligent, and high spirited. Susan does what has to be done efficiently and with panache, and is in no way to be confused with a marysue. Were it not for the somewhat banal surrender to general fandom in the choice of endings (and in strict opposition to all Spock has learned and become during his imprisonment), this would be a splendid work. As it is, it is merely highly entertaining, beautifully written with a most inventive background, well worth reading.

This is a good story. I liked it. A few basics of the plot are as follows: Spock -- in pon farr — gets captured by pirates on his way back to Vulcan; on Towan II he is made part of the group that is slowly bringing a higher degree of technology to the slave-labor system of mining used by the Towans (They recognize their own need for a computer expert although they don't know that he's a Star Fleet officer.). The other thing they're doing is carrying out an intensive breeding program for more slaves in a greater variety. (There's an exiled Federation geneticist working on the problem of interspecies breeding. He's been very successful.)

I could go on, but I have a congenital dislike of accidentally spilling the beans on somebody else's story. Perhaps you can see from what I've already said that there are several levels to this novella, and one of the most interesting is that it is not told from Spock's point-of-view (POV) for the most part.

The subject of the title is a woman who was captured by another group of pirates that time-jumped backwards and did a hit-and-run job on a contemporary tourist flight from Florida to the Bahamas (you have heard about that funny section of Earth where planes and people and ships disappear, haven't you?). Susan has been dragged from her own time and place to another. She has to learn to cope first with the conditions on Towan II... and then with the situation after they are freed. She's in a tough position, one with which Federation sociologists are quite familiar. They even have a name for it, the time-displaced, hence the title of the story. Unfortunately, not too many people survive the transition.

Susan's disadvantages are obvious. The same problems that would have beset Captain John Christopher in 'Today is Yesterday' -- if he had be been taken into STAR TREK's present -- await Susan. Can an individual be retrained for future-shock with a gap the size of 200 years? Remember the cliche about old dogs and new tricks? Susan is/was about 34 years old in 1976. Look at the people around you, younger/older/same age... and Susan wasn't even a science fiction reader/fan.

Susan's advantages are not as easy to discern. Okay, yes. She's a registered nurse with emergency medical training and it just so happens that when she arrives on Towan the doctor-geneticist (quack) is asking for someone with medical training. Since he has some peculiar habits that interfere with his efficiency and he is by no means a free man on this planet, it is to his advantage to keep Susan alive and in good working condition. This he does. Other than that, she's in the same boat as everyone else.

And now comes a list of more subtly detailed advantages. The planet Towan itself is of assistance to Susan. It's a stop-gap, a crazy-quilt mixture of the very primitive and (to her eyes) the very advanced. In addition, it provides something she needs — a challenge. Susan's greatest advantage is that she is of the same species that produced James T. Kirk. She is stubborn as hell. She is also a lot of the other good things that make up an intelligent, thinking Human being... and some of the bad. Altogether, she's a complete individual and she just can't let herself take the situation lying down. She's the one who th thinks of a long-shot chance for escape and gets to work before Spock has even been captured. She's the one who meets Spock head on (remember that unrelieved pon farr I mentioned?) and gets BOTH of them through it without a death or the destruction of either psyche, which destruction is very likely within the parameters of this story.

I like her...and don't anybody dare say 'Mary Sue' around me. There arecompetent, likable, female Humans running around this galaxy.

Now we come to the very large difficulty with this story. I remember getting a paper back from an English professor with a grade of C. I had received top marks for content and the lowest for style. Lois Welling has done the same. She took a long windup and delivered the pitch with great force and speed, but her form was off and consequently the pitch went foul. Very simply, the story needed one more editor for grammatical inaccuracies, for inconsistency of POV, for smoother transitions, for a hell of a lot of little things. None of these by themselves would be so bad, but all together they are an interference. Lois's own words get in the way of the tale she wants to tell.

The story is there though. I can't touch her plotting or her ideas. I think they're pretty good. Also, the characters come through and they are interesting. Susan, Spock through her eyes, the Romulan Thela, the very young Andorian Soyan, even the doctor and the Towan guards are all fully-fleshed and living. Susan's displaced view of the regular TREK characters (Kirk, KcCoy, Sarek, Amanda) is refreshing and, to my eyes, accurately matched to the people we see on the screen. ButSuscm,isnew. Lois created her and succeeded in monopolizing my my attention with this woman's problem and her solutions to them.

I realize I haven't said much about Beverly Zuk's illos. That's mainly because I'm not an art critic or even very well versed in talking about it. I only know what I like and what I don't like. There are not many illos in this publication, but the ones that are here are definitely illustrations and not just portraits. I think my favorite is the family grouping back on board the Enterprise. It's priceless, and exactly matches the description of the scene in the body of the work.

Conclusion: I recommend 'The Displaced" for anybody's rainy day.

1981

"The Displaced" by Lois Welling is yet another tale of a time-displaced woman who finds herself married to Spock. Susan is very different from Jenny [in One Way Mirror] or Aidan [in Echoes from the Past], however, in that she is a mature woman who has a career, a happy marriage and a family behind her before she is carried off by slavers. When she is forced by circumstances to cohabit with Spock and to share his attentions with two other women (one Romulan, one Andorian) and to produce children for the local economic system, her response is totally pragmatic -- if mating and motherhood will keep her and her fellow female prisoners alive, then mating and motherhood it will be, but on her terms as much as possible. Thus she and the Romulan choose Spock as being the male most likely to be useful in their endeavours to escape. Her final decision to encourage Spock to return to his position in Star Fleet after their successful escape is based on her recognition that for him a "proper" family life would be at best an onerous duty. She is one of the few females in fan fiction who seems capable of distinguishing between love and self-interest. In terms of the practical problems of her existence. Welling does give her protagonist some advantages, including intelligence, emotional maturity, and, perhaps unfairly, a slew of Terran/Vulcan, Romulan, or Andorian crossbred children for Amanda to dote upon.

1983

I'm a reader, not a writer, but these are my very favorite zines, so I'd like to spread the word. The central characters of [this zine and Transition ] are Susan, a time-displaced woman from our century, and Spock.

It is a very interesting and involving story in which Spock and Susan are thrown together by bizarre circumstances which are beyond their control, how they deal with it and build a relationship.

[...]

For truly enjoyable reading, I highly recommend The Displaced.

1986

On Towan II, three things predominate - slavery, mining, and brooding. The controllers now few in number capture people for their mining and breeding operations. Any Federation personnel are eliminated. Spock en route to Vulcan, also in a second ponn farr cycle has been captured. Susan a nurse and Thela her friend arrange for him to be their male. All fertile females are required to breed. For five years, these people survive Tarvan II. This story is told through Susan's eyes, from the first you know she will take charge. She has been thrust into this world, and survive it, she will. This story is good. Believable, well-written - you really feel for them in their situation. Susan makes Spock face up to his actions - if she can survive surely he can do so too! If there is any complaint, it is any complaint it is that the story ends when it becomes more interesting. Lois had written two sequels. I look forward to reading them. Also in this story, Spock's two halves seam to be in harmony - his human half help the 'family situation', his Vulcan half controls his actions towards the Ibwans. She had managed to balance this factor very well. Highly recommended.

1992

The Displaced is a book length novella that will be of interest to Spock fans. At first glance, it would appear to be a purely exploitative piece. Spock is captured. Spock is enslaved. Spock is forced to undergo Pon Farr with three alien women. However, the story does not exploit Spock or the other characters. The book opens with Jim Kirk happy and weak with relief to have found Spock injured but recovering, after his five year disappearance. The story unfolds to reveal that Spock was a prisoner for five years on the planet Towan I. It is revealed that pirates in the Towan system routinely raid passing ships. They have enslaved beings from all over the galaxy to work in their mines and to become guinea pigs for their extensive_ breeding program. Their ultimate plan is to breed enough of their own workers so "that the raids will no longer be necessary. One such "breeding unit" is comprised of Susan, Thela and Soy-an. Susan emerges as the leader of the group. Human and a scrappy survivor, she uses her nursing skills in the Towan clinic to avoid working in the mines. Thela is a captured Romulan officer. A bit more rigid than Susan, she is nonetheless very Intelligent and a survivor. Soy-an is a very young Andorian woman, hardly more than a child and existing in a very fragile emotional state. Susan and Thela do their best to shield her. It is to Spock's great fortune that Susan and Thela are working the night he is brought in with a new group of prisoners. They have an ambitious escape plan But it will require the help of someone who is a computer expert and able to fly a spaceship. A member of Starfleet would be perfect. Lucky for Spock, they pluck him from a new group of arrivals before anyone notices his Starfleet uniform (a sure death sentence on Towan), and he becomes their male. Susan is quite an unusual lady. Not only is she a captive of place, but of time as well. She is one of the "time-displaced," a twentieth century Earth woman living in the 23rd century. Not especially beautiful or brilliant, she is an ordinary woman forced to cope with extraordinary circumstances. What emerges is a portrait of a steel-willed, loving woman who is forced into an unusual relationship with Spock. But this is not a gratuitous sex and violence story. It is unlikely that Spock would fall under the spell of any woman and the author respects that about his character. Instead, he is forced to live and work with the three women. At first, his only goal is the same as theirs - escape. But all four come to care about each other and the new family unit that they form. The layout is professional and easy to read. The artwork is also quite good and provides excellent illustration for the story.

2000

In the old days, fans often acknowledged the Mary Sue-ish origins of their characters up front. If anything, it was considered an achievement to take a classic Mary Sue scenario and create a fine piece of fan fiction out of it. As an example, consider the print novel "The Displaced," published in 1979 or so. In it, a newly widowed 20th century housewife winds up in the 23d century, is captured by slavers and joins Spock in a sort of prison camp. Spock goes into pon farr, the heroine saves him, they stay together and have several children together before they are finally rescued by the Big E. The stuff out of which Mary Sues are made, right? But the maturity, integrity and honesty of the writing transforms it into a Good Story in spite of its Mary Sue-ish origins.

External Link

• The Displaced archived online at Trek Tales