Not of That Feather

Star Trek TOS Fanfiction
Title:	Not of That Feather
Author(s):	Nancy Kippax and Beverly Volker
Date(s):	1975
Length:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
External Links:	online here.
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Not of That Feather is a Star Trek: TOS short short by Nancy Kippax and Beverly Volker.

It was published in the print zine Contact #1.

Reactions and Reviews

'Not of that Feather' is the typical tale where Kirk is hurt, and what Spock will do to save him. The answer is, as always, anything. To be truthful, though... this wouldn't have made a bad filmed episode with a couple of added subplots. This one sticks in mind mainly because of the maddenly elusive Shakespearian allusion it contains. 'The Silent Connection' has a plot I swear I first saw in 1965 on Outer Limits. Kirk disappears on a mysterious planet and later turns up with memory loss and terrible headaches. Meanwhile, there is this sabotage to the Enterprise... who can be responsible? Guess.

The tone gets pretty set by the first story, "Not Of That Feather" by Nancy Kippax and Beverly Volker. It's, um. Well, Kirk gets hurt in a life-threatening way, an evil colonist says he can help him, but says he will only do it if Spock gets on his knees and begs. No, that's not a metaphor, that's literally what happens. So Spock obviously does it, right? Wrong! He goes "Klingons never bluff!"...uh, wait, I mean..."A Vulcan does not beg!!" and has a big existential crisis about it before doing it, and then angsts with shame. Spock, you petted a tribble in canon. Get over yourself. But still, you can't accuse the story of not trying. It's not a lazy story, it's just that the writers can't write very well, at least at the point in time when they wrote this. And...you know, this was before Star Trek: The Franchise. Before the immense fleshing out and crystallization of themes and species traits and in-universe logic that occurred in the films/TNG/DS9. It's hard for me to say whether certain conceptions of the characters could seem implausible or not. Another story by them, The Silent Connection, is similarly crappy-but-sincere.