The Vulcan Love Story, or, Being in Pon Farr Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

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Title: The Vulcan Love Story, or, Being in Pon Farr Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Creator: Doris Beetem
Date(s): June 1971
Medium: print
Fandom: Star Trek: TOS
Topic:
External Links:
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The Vulcan Love Story, or, Being in Pon Farr Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry is a 1971 essay by Doris Beetem.

It was printed in Eridani Triad #2.

first page of the essay

From Boldly Writing: "This witty article analyzed all the fanzine stories written and published that had the same general plot: that is, girl-meets-Spock, girl-beds-Spock. The article attributed Spock's attraction to the theory that Spock fit the "Gothic Hero" prototype in romantic fiction, and asserted that therefore it was natural for fans to fantasize about Spock along those lines (and to write up their fantasies as stories."

Some Topics Discussed

  • why is Spock so attractive to women
  • even the writers of Star Trek canon struggled with Spock and his emotions
  • tropes used to uncover Spock's emotions: threatened with rape (threatened and accomplished), spores, trickery required by job, terminal illnesses, telepathic requirements
  • the character of Sarek and the example of Vulcan he provides
  • the characterization of Vulcan females in fan fiction
  • the Vulcan Love Story, with or without pon farr
  • the lack of canon info makes the female brain run amok
  • Mary Sue and wish fulfillment fiction

Excerpts

Everyone acknowledges the attractiveness of our favorite hero, Mr. Spock. James Blish wonders if it might be due to womankind's illicit desire to mis-ceganate [1] (Hah!), Isaac Asimov attributes it to the Vulcan's superior intelligence and ears [2] and innumerable female viewers of Star Trek have made no secret of the attraction Mr. Spock holds for them.

Whether consciously or not, the creators of Star Trek and Mr. Spock fit him rather neatly into the tradition of the Gothic hero, as described by Phyllis A. Whitney, famous writer in the Gothic genre. As inheritor of this tradition, Mr. Spock achieved a popularity at first unbelievable to the makers of Star Trek, but as a character in an action/adventure series, he was denied that grand passion, characteristic of Gothic novels, that so many female viewers would have dearly loved to see. So fan zines like Spockanalia, T-Negative, Impulse, and Triskelion are deluged by stories written by fan-authoresses, supplying this lack.

The aloofness and emotional control of Vulcans has driven many of Star Trek's female viewers crazy, for the almost-stated first principle of the Vulcan Love Story of the Trekzines is to break into the inner emotional nature or the outwardly calm Vulcan. We've all wondered if perhaps we couldn't succeed where Nurse Chapel failed, and the Trek authoress is no different.

In order to activate the inner emotional nature of their Vulcan hero into that outer passion and humanity. Trek authoresses often use relatively standardized plots, unique to their own peculiar genre. The Vulcan Love Story genre can be divided into two categories -- with pon farr, or without.

The pon farr story has been traditional, ever since Theodore Sturgeon's "Amok Time," the few ways to shake a Vulcan's cool. Falling back o nVulcan physiology in a way unknown in mainline literature, soma stories practically go to the extent of raping the hero. This eventuality is indeed both dramatic and emotion-laden. As a general rule of thumb, if Spock is being raped — by Klingons, Romulans, et al., the soft-hearted authoress has him fortunately rescued scant seconds before A Fate Worse Than Death. However, if the lady involved is suitable for happily-ever-aftering (a la Time Enough, where Spock's girlfriend was half-Vulcan), the possibility of continued salacity is considerably greater.

The "This Side of Paradise" type -- after substituting spores for glands -- is very similar. Even on the show, itself, we see a repeat of this particular gimmick in "All Our Yesterdays," showing that even the pros could think of only so many ways to make Mr. Spock amorous.

"Enterprise Incident" by Dorothy Fontana demonstrates how difficult it is to make Mr. Spock grautiatiously emotional, without the use of props. Even this teleplay, written by an expert (although admittedly altered by Fred Freiberger) and played by Leonard Nimoy, has draw, criticism of its believability. The amateur writer, besides lesser expertise, was usually the problem also of attempting to wrestle what started out as her own personal wish-fulfillment fantasy into a valid story. Sometimes, she flops dismally, and is not able to make her own idea of Mr. Spock, which sounds like an oversexed adolescent, resemble the logical, controlled Science Officer of the Enterprise at all.

In contrast with these examples of Vulcan manhood, Vulcan femininity has been dealt an evil blow, characterization-wise, Vulcan heroines suffer from two crushing disadvantages? they are usually overshadowed by being Spock's love interest, and they are often identified with by the authoress. In stories dealing with Mr, Spock, he is almost always the main character, and the girl Vulcan a minor one, either agonizing over Spock, lectured at by or being made love to. (Most often the latter.) Sometimes the the pointy-eared female, either Vulcan or Romulan, is little more than the catalytic agent summoning the logical Spock into bed. While a useful device to explain Spock's emotion, it does make Vulcan women seem sex-mad.

And finally, there is the half-Vulcan, who, due to Star Trek fandorm's inordinate interest in miscegenation, is bound to be popular. Half-Vulcans are ideal for the Vulcan Love Story — the renowned "human half" can be used as explanation for the story's emotional escapades. The example of Spock, the half-Vulcan, and his parents, Sarek and Amanda, make such characters both plausible and frequent. The function of the half-Vulcans in the Vulcan Love Story is simple. They are to suffer. Frequently they are female, crushed by incredible odds, struggling against emotion, looked down upon by their Vulcan peers. Sometimes they marry Spock. (Do we detect unusual character-authoress identifiation here?)

These stories, while attempting an intimacy with the main character greater than that achieved in the programs, often manage to reveal as much about the authoress as Spock. When the heroine's name is the same as the writer's in the Table of Contents, whether it be pseudonym or author's own, it is logical to expect an unusual rapport between the two. As a general rule, the more of the writer that; goes into the story, the more un intelligible, it becomes, as familiar characters alter and distort to fit the authoress's archetypes. However, due to the extreme sparseness of data about Vulcans which the show offered, any writer has unusual opportunities to build the world based on her own psychological axioms. Judith Brownlee's Vulcans find matrimony a problem, Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Vulcan heroine T'ruel dies during her pregnancy. Dorothy Jones's Ambassador Sarek is a hero of prose and verse. This does, of course, lead to conjecture about the "inner emotional nature" of Judith, Jacqueline, and Dorothy.

The Vulcan Love Story is about sex, overt or covert, often including violence, pain., moral dilemmas, and illegitimate children.

In short, the Vulcan Love Story has main elements of the confession story. Like the confessions, it is out to milk the reader's emotions, as well as Spock's. Love interest is often introduced swiftly, and the heroine painted in one-dimensionally with a broad brush. We have all seen stories where the authoress subordinates all to the bed scenes (or, if she is unwilling to write that juicily, to the heroine's monologues on her deathless passions.) All plot contracts to a single point, prose purples, and the dialogue begins to sound most unsuitable for an adult Vulcan. "'But this is highly illogical,' he said, nibbling her earlobe."

And yet, with all it owes to the passion of the confessions, the Vulcan Love Story is still unmistakably stamped as derivative from a television show. The plot prototypes mentioned before show how the flowers of amateur writing grow from the seed of earlier teleplays. Moreover, this writing, even when obviously incapable of passing NBC censorship, is often seemingly designed for the action/adventure TV show format.

Time Enough and Parted From Me, two stories dealing too explicitly and persistently with sex to ever pass the NBC censor, nevertheless follows the Star Trek format. First the menace, then action (Prudence Goodbody would object to it), solution and resolution, and a return to the status quo to be ready for next week's teaser.

An amusing illustration of the Vulcan Love Story's television beginnings is the way authoresses who write erotic passages apparently have the censor somewhere in the back of their minds.

The alternative to the action/adventure format, of course, is the story in which the authoress, frustrated by the huge blank areas left by the show, attempts to answer the question "But what happens to Mr. Spock?"

Some Specific Fic Cited

References

  1. ^ Spock Must Die, James Blish, Bantam Books, p.27
  2. ^ "Being Smart is Sexy," Isaac Asimov, TV guide, April 29, 1967, p.9-11
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