Forbidden Garden

Fanfiction
Title:	Forbidden Garden
Author(s):	Bryan Taylor
Date(s):	1993
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
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Forbidden Garden is a Kirk/Spock story by Bryan Taylor.

It was published in the print zine Counterpoint #9.

Reactions and Reviews

1993

This was a different approach to Spock under mysterious substance story. The ending, too, was not the usual one. left me with mixed feelings, but was an enjoyable read.

Called to a planet where the all-male inhabitants live a life of chastity, etc., as required by their religion (this planet is the equivalent of a monastery) the Enterprise finds the inhabitants indulging in a total orgy. They have been infected by something in the forbidden garden: and then Spock, too, is affected.

While the ending is not, perhaps, what a K/S devotee might prefer, it is logical, and all in all, I enjoyed the story: but I did have some serious difficulties believing in the garden. I wish mine was as cooperative! The garden is beautifully laid out. obviously cared for - yet it was prohibited for the natives to enter it. So who looked after

it? Gardens don't look after themselves, even when they're laid out as low maintenance: weeds grow and usually seem to flourish better than the plants you want! I also found it hard to swallow just so many different plants with aphrodisiac qualities, even gathered from throughout the galaxy. The garden would possibly have been more credible (to me) if there had been just the one plant (the one that got Spock) that was forbidden - maybe a really beautiful one in a bed on its own, except for the weeds; for a people who cared for the rest of the garden devotedly, a great temptation would have been to tidy the bed around it, at the risk of being pricked by its thorns and thus 'infected'. That would still have given the beautiful garden, the forbidden plant and the temptation - perfect for the agnostic life.