The Quality of Command

Fanfiction
Title:	The Quality of Command
Author(s):	Ellen O'Neil
Date(s):	1992
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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The Quality of Command is a Kirk/Spock story by Ellen O'Neil.

It was published in the print zine T'hy'la #11.

Summary

"Will their new relationship affect Kirk’s ability to command? Or will his insistence on keeping Spock out of danger consign them both to ground assignments?"

Reactions and Reviews

1992

I really admired the style of writing here -- little details that created such vivid images. (Example: Kirk could "remove Spock's inhibitions as easily as Spock's clothes, stripping them away until Spock's body eagerly answered the quest of his hands....") The reader was right in the middle of all the activity, and said activity was well presented in terms of logistics and suspense.

My quibble with this story is that I found myself questioning Kirk and Spock's behavior regarding the main conflict. While the conflict itself -- that of Kirk allowing his feelings for Spock to interfere with his command decisions -- was intelligently presented, I found it difficult to believe that Kirk would have made such an issue of sending Spock to Auxiliary Control. It seemed like Kirk was trying to make a point for its own sake, and I don't think someone as responsible and as impulsive as he would have questioned Spock's confidence in the Vulcan's ability to do what he needed to do from the bridge, particularly when they were in such a dangerous situation where time was critical. (In fact. I thought Kirk's behavior in that scene was how Spock probably would have behaved, had their ranks been reversed.)

I also thought the ending a bit too pat with Kirk more or less shrugging off Spock's insubordination and accepting that Spock would no doubt be insubordinate again in the future. While it's certainly realistic to think that situations will arise where Spock would feel it necessary to be insubordinate, Kirk the commander, I feel, would tell Spock that he doesn't expect such behavior to be repeated by his first officer. I feel Kirk would feel it necessary to say the words, even if it were just 'for show'. Up until the 'Auxiliary Bridge' conflict, I liked the way they handled the dilemma, and particularly the way it was brought up and discussed in the privacy of their quarters. That scene felt very real. Also, that's an erotic bit of writing at the top of page 149.

I had never suspected that Ellen was a fairly new writer. She writes with such sensitivity and style that I thought her much more experienced.

That elusive "quality of command" is the subject of Ellen's fine story, and what happens to it when our captain finds himself unable to separate his feelings for Spock as his new lover from Spock as First Officer.

The dialogue, especially between McCoy and Spock when he is sent down to Sickbay to protect him from a potentially dangerous situation on the bridge, rings true. Plot, sex scenes, action scenes, all very well done. I especially like the scene where Kirk tells Spock to remove his hands from the science console. And the image of our usually meticulous Spock appearing on the bridge with his undershirt backwards and inside out tickled me.

I didn't get the feeling, however, that the situation was completely resolved by the story's end. Given the same situation, I had the sneaking suspicion that Kirk night do exactly the same thing again despite his protestations to the contrary. It gave the story a bit of an unfinished feeling to me.

Other than this minor quibble, I found this story extremely enjoyable. Well done, Ellen! Now I'm really looking forward to that novel of yours!

I applaud the author for attempting to deal with what is surely one of the toughest problems in K/S literature: How could Kirk and Spock justify an intimate relationship between the top two command officers, and how could it not affect their professional behavior? There are no easy answers to these questions, and I enjoy this story even more because it doesn't come up with any pat conclusions. Finding a balance between them isn't easy, but it is gratifying to watch this author help our favorite characters search for it in a nature, realistic, loving way.

There were a few points of characterization that struck me as being a little off. First, when Spock accuses Kirk of being over-protective, the captain denies that he consciously sent Spock off the bridge to ensure his safety. This was hard for me to swallow. I can't believe that Kirk isn't more self-aware.

Equally difficult for me was the paragraph on page 151 where Spock says. "I feel that who I am is your second in command." In a way, I agree with this statement; part of what makes Kirk and Spock such an inevitable couple is the way Kirk leads and Spock follows so effortlessly, so naturally. Their positions could not possibly be reversed. But Spock has his own kind of strengths, totally different from Kirk's, although not always acknowledged, and it made me uncomfortable to hear Spock stating so badly his 'inferior' position. And I know that later in the paragraph the author attempts to soften this statement by having Spock say, "We must instead learn to be equal while preserving and valuing our differences," but I still think the author went a little too far there.

One of this story's strengths is how marvelous the intimate scenes between our guys are. I never thought I'd think brushing teeth was foreplay, but this story did it for me. And how nice to see a K/S story so grounded in reality! No high-flying poetry and fantastic descriptions of orgasms here! Instead, we're treated to a description of how methodically Spock eats, and we get to see it from Kirk's own loving viewpoint. I have a feeling this author could write a scene where Spock is simply walking across the room, and make me love it.

The scene where the bridge crew rushes to the bridge in various states of dress is amusing and well-written, but it brings up a favorite gripe of mine. This is the first shift bridge crew. Isn't anybody else on the Enterprise competent? If the second and third shift navigator, for instance, were constantly being relieved during every emergency, I think Kirk would have one heck of a morale problem on his hands.

On page 149, is there such a word as 'subduedly?' If there is. it sure doesn't sound right!

Quibbles aside, I really liked this story, and would recommend it. It has a very warm, intimate feeling to it, especially in the last Sickbay scene where Spock first hugs Kirk desperately, and then straightens to present himself for disciplinary action. I just loved it when Kirk says, "Yeah... Sure. Like I'm going to have you court-martialed." Terrific!

Very relevant premise, relationship interfering with command priorities; important underlying issues dealt with subtlety. Good ship/space technology. Totally charming, apt characterizations; some poignant details. The concept of equality (or not) in relationships was very interesting; also Kirk's and Spock's intrinsic qualities of leading and following, respectively. NICE sex -- exquisite, simple, mostly plain-language but enough poetics -- perfectly erotic and romantic and real.

This story is a superb character study of James T. Kirk, one of the best I've read in a long, long time. it deals with an issue that is critical to K/S and that should be explored much more in K/s literature than it is -- the potential for conflict between Kirk's love for Spock and his command duties. The author's prose is fully equal to her task: clear, strong, and tough-minded. Her Kirk and Spock are perfectly in character (breathtakingly so in the case of Kirk) and she captures their "voices" perfectly.

As an ardent Kirk fan. I cannot praise the portrayal of Kirk in this story highly enough. Ms. O'Neill's Kirk is strong, passionate, decisive, and every inch the commander of the Enterprise, He is capable of being drawn into error, not so much by emotion that clouds his judgment as by the very strength of his devotion to both Spock and the Enterprise, One could quibble about whether Kirk would actually have insisted on Spock's going to Auxiliary Control, and whether he would have been more aware that he was going overboard to protect Spock. Still, I think the author got the basic dynamic right.

Ms. O'Neil also does justice to Spock's complexity. In a wonderful piece of dialogue between the two Ben. she captures the tension between Spock's need to follow Kirk and his need to be allowed to do his job as the First Officer of the Enterprise. This isn't simply a conflict between their love relationship and their work relationship, but a contradiction within the work relationship as well. In fact, I think the author was managed to show both the contradiction between the two dimensions of the relationship, love and work, and the fact that ultimately the two dimensions cannot be separated.

The author doesn't find easy answers, and this distinguishes her story from lesser, more sentimentalized treatments of the same theme. One could quibble, again, whether Spock in fact would state that he would probably disobey orders in the future: the real point is that the problem is not going to disappear, nor can it be easily or superficially resolved.

A final plus is the heavy eroticism. Whew!) of the sex scenes.

The story is an insightful exploration of Kirk as Captain and Spock as First Officer balancing with their love for each other. The Enterprise gets caught in an abandoned alien force field around a planet and this provides the iapetus to explore these feelings. Conflict arises during a tense situation on the bridge, when Kirk orders Spock to sickbay with the excuse to help McCoy during the crisis. Of course, his real motivation was to save Spock (the sickbay being the most secure part of the ship), but it causes problems with Spock's pride (he'd never admit it) as an officer and as Kirk's bondmate.

Good use of ship's technology and reality touches, such as when the alarm sounds and each crew member was doing something else and had to come quickly to the bridge. Clever way to show they have a life beyond "the bridge".

Nice characterizations of Chekov. Uhura, and Sulu. I really like stories that involve them, especially when it's done as well as it is here.

Just a little on the dry side, but not all stories have to be huge, wide-sweeping epics of grand proportions, and I enjoyed the simplicity and quietness of this one. Including the lovely line that I quote here: "Yes, he thought, tightening his arms about his love, the command chair was definitely his second favorite place in the galaxy."

1999

It’s not so much the quality of command which is the topic—but Kirk’s difficulty in separating first officer Spock from Spock—the lover.

Kirk’s love for his friend interferes with his command, so much so that in a dangerous situation, he orders Spock from the bridge to sickbay, one of the safest places on the ship. I still have the feeling though that the author just scratched the surface. They came much too easily to a solution. There’s too much missing. Still, it’s enjoyable to read.

2001

I consider it the weakest of her stories, but it is still really interesting. (I haven't mentioned at all that O'Neil is a technically excellent writer. There's not much at all to complain about in mechanics of writing, she's actually one of the best who's ever written K/S in that area, in my opinion. Her prose is smooth, she has an excellent command of point of view, her structure works just right.)

The Quality of Command examines a basic question that too many of us skim over, and that is how Kirk and Spock will be able to function as officers when they are lovers, how their emotions will interfere with their duty. It's a great topic that should be pondered more often, but O'Neil does so by setting up what I consider implausible situations. First Kirk orders Spock off the bridge to sickbay, the most protected area of the ship, during a very dangerous situation when he should be more suitably in the command area. (They are lovers for three months during this story.) Then when Spock confronts him later with how unsuitable this command was, Kirk denies being consciously aware that he was allowing his protective feelings for Spock to get the best of him. Finally, in a later dangerous incident, Spock literally disobeys one of Kirk's orders. It turns out that it would have been disastrous if the command had been obeyed, but....

I guess my primary complaint is that I believe Kirk would have been more self-aware; he would have understood what he was doing to Spock (robbing him of his capacity to function as first officer) and why. I also find the disobeying-a-direct-order scene somewhat too obvious. And I really don't like that throughout Spock is so subservient to the wishes of his bondmate and captain. I wanted to kick him and say "Think of yourself!" As a matter of fact, McCoy says essentially the same thing to him here:

"Look, I never thought I'd be saying this, but...you're probably the best thing that ever happened to Jim Kirk. I'd like to see Jim's relationship with you succeed. But if it is going to succeed, you may need to learn to flex your own ego a little bit. And I don't mean that boilerplate Vulcan superiority you flaunt all the time. I mean the ego of you, you Spock, the individual being you are. I know from personal experience, as wed as professionally, that relationships that don't leave room for both partners to have an expanding sense of self-worth aren't likely to work:

"Doctor," Spock interrupted. "I do not question your expertise in human inter-relationships. However, you erroneously attribute to me the human characteristic of an ego. I have no ego to flex, or to bruise. You concern yourself with a false issue."

"Do I?" McCoy raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Maybe you've got no ego, Spock, but Jim Kirk has one hell of an ego, and if you spend the rest of your life in a relationship with him denying yourself the kind of strokes Jim is going to expect and demand from you, at some point you may start feeling short-changed, and you'll sure as hell have to learn to like being on the losing end of all the arguments."

2006

Ellen's excellent exploration of the problem of lovers serving on the bridge together. Nice weaving of the love story with a background adventure - in this case Enterprise has been trapped in a residual forcefield after a world has destroyed itself. Jim is making decisions that seem to be based on protecting his lover rather than using his first officer to the best of his ability. Also nicely handles the problem of Kirk's aggressiveness and Spock's tendency to submit.

2007

The story “Quality of Command” by Ellen O'Neil appears in T’hy’la 11 (1992), the first of four stories that would be printed within two years. Here Kirk’s solicitude for Spock as his lover undermines their ability to function as a command team. I remember when this story first appeared, how there was quite a bit of conversation about it as readers wondered if Kirk could be so short-sighted.