The Test (Star Trek: TOS story)

Fanfiction
Title:	The Test
Author(s):	Eva Stuart
Date(s):	1984
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The Test is a Kirk/Spock story by Eva Stuart.

It was published in the print zine Locusts.. and wild honey.

Summary

"Eva leaves her usual universe for a story of the Beginning. How exactly did Kirk pass Kobayashi Maru?"

Reactions and Reviews

1984

... [This story is] concerned with a youthful Kirk and Spook, both serving lieutenants on different ships; back at the Academy for final year Command Training tests. The most important of these tests is the Kobayashi Maru. There, as we all know from the film, Kirk altered the computer to allow a possible solution; and the story works up to this event, at the same time developing a theme of the rapidly established relationship between the two young men, who are sharing quarters. And it is rapid! I certainly blinked at least twice at Spock's forthright and swift declaration. This is a younger Spock, however. One who has not yet entrenched himself into our familiar, austere Vulcan. So we can accept his declaration. I found this earlier setting, an interesting one, Kirk and Spock really do sound, and act like younger versions of themselves, and I particularly liked the way we discover Kirk's character through Spock's growing awareness of it. I did find it a little hard though, to accept the ending, feeling, that Kirk's determination, and ingenuity as underlined by the Kobayashi episode, would somehow have blasted through all barriers to make the impossible happen again.

Kirk & Spock, on the last stage of command training, are assigned as room-mates. Both are ambitious & dedicated to the pursuit of their chosen careers, and we can see the men they will become. Kirk takes the Kobayashi Maru test & the author has worked out an honourable way for him to have "modified the conditions" and not cheated. Only once, does Kirk's drive towards captaincy of a starship falter, but Spock remains as clear-headed as I would expect of a Vulcan. Excellent, with careful attention to detail, and rny personal favorite.