Gambit (Star Trek: TOS zine)

See also Gambit (disambiguation).

Zine
Title:	Gambit
Publisher:	Merry Men Press
Editor:
Author(s):	Kay Wells
Cover Artist(s):	DEW
Illustrator(s):	DEW
Date(s):	April 1991
Series?:	No
Medium:	print zine
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:	zine on the MMP site
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Gambit is a K/S slash 162-page novel by Kay Wells.

Summaries

Summary from the publisher: "This novel involves the mirror characters AFTER Star Trek V. Twenty years in the future...Just think of the changes in the universe...or are there any?"

Summary by Gilda F: "Twenty years after their mission on Halka, Kirk and Spock search for their counterparts when the Mirror Kirk and Spock become trapped in this universe and commit crimes the bonded command team are being blamed for."

Summary from The Zine Connection: "A story of 'our boys' when they meet up with the mirror universe 20 years in the future... written in Kay's hot and steamy style, fully illustrated by DEW. Now a chance to see a book with exactly the art the author intended. What else could you ask for?"

Gallery

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  front cover by DEW

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  back cover by DEW

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  interior art by DEW

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  poem from zine

Reactions and Reviews

[art]: Art by DEW. Favorite: page 99a. not in medium/style so much, but in mood -- quiet and intense both. Both covers excellent. Page 18 (Mirror Spock): great drawing and apt for story, but I can't take chains around necks. Page 44 (Kirk and Spock): good. Page 55 (McCoy): good. Pages 66- 67 (Kirk): good, although there is a too-youthful quality to his face which doesn't ring true.

Kay Wells is a mistress of her craft. The story is well paced; the by-play between both pairs is realistic and appropriate to the characters; and the plot idea is good. However, I cannot help but agree with the author — this would have been a better short story. In a short story, one would not have noticed the repetitious sex scenes. (Kirk is constantly reassuring Spock that he can 'handle' more forceful sex. It would have been better to have this as a problem between at least one pair.) Nor would the unanswered questions raised by the plot be so vexing in a short story. I do not understand why the Other Kirk required the pon farr, given the time constraints, nor am I clear how V'ger perceived the difference between the two couples so early. In a novel, these questions should have been addressed in more detail. "Gambit" gives us a glimpse of the parallels between the universes, but that's all. A novel that tells us what actually happened in that other universe has yet to be written.

I feel it might have been better had this novel remained a short story, as originally written. (Perhaps my comments are colored by the fact that I do know it was originally written as a short story?) It was a good plot, but the events surrounding Mirror Kirk and Spock, and V'ger, could have had a sharper focus. As it was, there seemed to be a lot of "filler" — too much instrument reading, checking of more mine sites, buzzes-by of the mysterious vessel. I kind of forgot later on why our Kirk and Spock were even there. In a short story, the motivations of the Mirror Kirk and Spock, for instance, or the anomaly of the co-existence of both pairs of men in the same universe, could have been presented succinctly, leaving more specific details for the reader to figure out; but in a novel I would expect those areas to be explored more in depth, and they were not. Interaction between the four of them also lost some tension due to there being too much of it, at times without anything really coalescing. I liked: Both pairs in their separate shuttles engaged simultaneously in the heat of pon farr and bonding. The super-enhanced bonding between mainline Kirk and Spock. What Mirror Kirk and Spock went through in the beginning, becoming lovers but Kirk holding out on bonding in order to maintain some degree of power over Spock. The poetic interludes between chapters.