Now I'd like to tell you how I wrote Simple Gifts, and why.
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| Title: | Now I'd like to tell you how I wrote Simple Gifts, and why. |
| Creator: | Claire Gabriel |
| Date(s): | 1988 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
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| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Now I'd like to tell you how I wrote Simple Gifts, and why. is a 1988 Star Trek: TOS essay written by Claire Gabriel.
The topic is Gabriel's choices in her characterization of Spock in her novel, Simple Gifts.
"I always write stories that I would like to read if someone else wrote them. So now I'm going to write the essay that I would like to read if I had just finished reading Simple Gifts written by someone else."
Some Topics Discussed
- Spock as the character envisioned by D.C. Fontana and Theodore Sturgeon
- five premises of Blacktower
- Spock Integrated
- Spock Marooned
- Spock Needs to Win One for a Change
- The Lodestar Concept
- an unnamed one
From the Essay
First, where do I get my Spock?
Of course we all think that 'my Spock' is 'the real Spock'. You don't have to be around fandom long to find that out. But just for the record: the Blacktower Spock is the Sturgeon/Fontana Spock (as I said earlier). And in "Full Circle", it is also Spock weeping for V'ger, able to show his shipmates that he can shed tears, but rubbing his fingers together nervously the while. It is Spock reaching for his brother's hand after the meld, and Spock saying "...No mystery, no beauty...." in the same scene, with his voice almost breaking. (It should by now be quite dear who 'my Spock' was thinking of at that moment.
This is "where I get my Spock." Yes, I've been selective. My Spock would not do and say some of the things that Spock did and said on television in episodes written by authors other than Sturgeon and Fontana. (I'm thinking here of "Cloud Minders", and of his horribly forgettable line to Rand at the very end of "The Enemy Within" about the Impostor having some "interesting characteristics." And there are others.) But with just a little selectivity, the character that emerges is surprisingly unified, given that several different people had a hand in creating him.
Unified as a character, that is. Not as a person.
Spock Integrated. That's how this whole thing got started. I was sick and tired of stories that tried to make a human out of him. I wanted to see him integrated, and I envisioned that much as he later appeared in TWOK. The problem was that I was absolutely sure it would take a long time, years in fact. And most of the people who read the first drafts of these stories did not want to wait that long. They wanted him to live happily ever after right away. Just like everybody does, right? My answer to that one should also be obvious by now.
The second premise on which Simple Gifts was based was SPOCK MAROONED. This, as we all know, is nothing unusual as a story premise in fandom. He gets marooned with some woman, and then he goes into ... well, you know. We even saw it in TSFS. (Except we didn't.) But my reason was different, I think.
I was firmly convinced that 'my Spock' was never going to be able to develop a significant relationship with a woman unless he was totally isolated with her for a sizable period of time, during most of which he was NOT in pon farr. So I made it happen. Authors can do that. It's a little like playing God - but a lot more fun, I should think.
My third premise was SPOCK NEEDS TO WIN ONE FOR A CHANGE. This was my initial reason for making Sarah "a dead ringer for Zarabeth." It was not a good reason, and I would probably have dumped this premise later on except for two things that grew out of it: the Sarah-is-physiologically-part-alien plotline in "Full Circle", and the necessity of explaining why she becomes pregnant accidentally!?) in "The End of the Beginning", (necessary because of certain aspects of the next two premises). Both of these required that she be part alien, and the former required that her grandmother's world no longer exist. So I was pretty well stuck with this premise by the time I started to have doubts about it, and I also saw an advantage in the reader's being able to visualize Sarah as clearly as the regulars. So I kept SPOCK NEEDS TO WIN ONE, even though I now have strong misgivings about it as a premise.
I think of the fourth premise as THE LODESTAR CONCEPT.
When I originally planned the Blacktower series, we didn't "know about" Carol and David Marcus. But even if we had, it would not have made much difference to me as far as this premise is concerned. Jill's awareness of David's existence contributed a subplot to "Full Circle" that was obviously not present in my original notes, and I think the story is the better for it, at least as a fan story. But THE LODESTAR CONCEPT seemed to demand that Kirk have a daughter. I did not believe that a son would provide the kind of parent/child relationship I wanted him to have. I still don't.
Which brings us to the fifth premise, which I don't have a name for.
Almost every story I have ever written involves family relationships: parents and children, siblings, usually both. This happens because I have always been fascinated by the ways in which children resemble and do not resemble their parents, both physically and psychologically, and by the ways in which they are shaped, deliberately and unconsciously, by the adults who love them. I could write about this forever, and damn near did in Simple Gifts. But writing these stories was the most fun I've ever had as a writer.
The children, of course, would be the children of Kirk and Spock. And given THE LODESTAR PREMISE, it seemed indicated that they would both have daughters if the unique relationship that started all this was to be reprised in an analogous context.
But at that point I ran into a snag. If these two girls had different mothers, I would have to deal with four variables instead of the only two I wanted to deal with. If they had the same mother, I would have two variables and one constant. But the Pandora's box that implied was more than I wanted to deal with. A triangle? No way. Somebody else can do that one, and has. But not me. I just don't have the heart for it. So I wrote the relationship between Kirk and Sarah as you have read about it here.
This, then, was how the four original stories got written, and why.
"Human Voices" was not in the original series. When I came back into fandom and re-read what I'd already written, it was immediately obvious to me that the relationship between Jill and T'Ara had not been developed nearly enough previous to "Full Circle." In addition, I "knew" a great deal more about Jill's friendship with Charlie Harris than was depicted in "The Alternate Christopher Jones": I knew how they began, and how their friendship would change as they grew older. I m also knew something about Charlie's father.
Finally, the significance of kolinahr in the Blacktower universe needed to be spelled out to the fans of the '80's, and the connection between these seemingly unrelated story lines became more obvious to me the more I thought about them. Hence "Human Voices."
Obviously, there are many things in these stories that were not in the first drafts and notes written in the mid-seventies. From Retinax Three to the new uniforms in "Full Circle", many aspects of my universe are there be cause of the movies. The three most important ones are the kolinahr rationalization, the dramatization of the reasons for David's attacking his father, and the explication of the seemingly gratuitous pon farr scene in TSFS.
The prevailing thought in fandom about each of these three events makes no sense to me. With all due respect for the Great Bird of the Galaxy, Vulcans are too smart for what Spock seemed to be up to in the second scene of ST:TMP. As for David: the first time I saw TWOK, Kirk's "Why didn't you tell him?" seemed an obvious follow-up to "I did what you wanted. I stayed away." It was not until I returned to fandom years later that I realized that most fans think David did not know Kirk was his father when he attacked him -- and also that many fans see him as just a nasty person rather than an erratic and troubled young man whose mother may or may not have been unconsciously seductive. But no, I don't think he meant to kill his father. Like Khan, he wanted to hurt him for reasons that seemed important to a tortured soul. But it's not every alienated son who can say "I was wrong about you, and I'm sorry.... I'm proud to be your son." I liked David, and I hurt for him, and I was sorry to see him die.
And as for the celebrated pon farr scene in ST III - well, I think I've had my say on that one in "Full Circle." I don't know what the Bird and the director thought they were doing when they insisted it be included. But even that makes sense once you look at it as neither gratuitous nor sexy, but compassionate -- and totally logical.