Who Was Zarabeth?
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| Title: | Who Was Zarabeth? |
| Creator: | Rusty Hancock |
| Date(s): | November 1976 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Who Was Zarabeth? is a 1976 essay by Rusty Hancock.
It was printed in Beta Niobe Revisited, and is about the Star Trek: TOS character Zarabeth.
Some Topics Discussed
- the female love interests tossed Spock's way in canon
- how intelligent is Zarabeth
- the differences in the Blish version of Zarabeth and the air version
Excerpts
At some time during the 3-year network run of the popular TV series STAR TREK, there arose a movement known as the "More Raw Sex on Star Trek" campaign. At one point, a petition formally requesting this hung on the wall of Fred Phillips' make-up room at the studio where filming took place. In addition to the original signatures, eventually it bore those of most of the STAR TREK notables, including producer Gene Roddenberry. You might think the now-legendary-among-fandom amorous pursuits of Captain Kirk—not to mention the occasional female thrown at Scott, Chekov and McCoy — would have been enough to satisfy anyone. But, as the perpetrators of the petition often complained, "we didn't mean them!"
What they usually did mean was "give Mr. Spock a girl -- or better yet, a woman."
... she exists, she speaks, she acts, she thinks. She was a political exile: must she not, therefore, have had some sort of character worth commenting on? If it was worth a tyrant's wrath, might it not have been worth Spock's love, if circumstances had been somewhat different? It might be of interest to see what she says about herself. She gives as a reason for her exile that she was unfortunate enough to have the wrong relatives, implying that through no fault of her own, she was swept along in events that went beyond her control, possibly oven her understanding.
When she first appears, she is nothing but a vaguely human shape swathed in grey-white furs that cover her entire body, face and extremities included. In one version, she is firing a rifle of some sort at a band of subhuman creatures, and evidently driving them off with sufficient success that the stranded space travelers are able to get to her cave. She tells Spock that she has been left sufficient survival-kit type materials to keep her alive, as that was to have been the punishment — survival without any intelligent human companionship, which she (logically enough) views as a kind of death, and a cruel kind at that.
There is little evidence that Zarabeth's long exile has worked serious psychological damage. She is, on the whole, calm, confident, and very like a good hostess with unexpected but welcome guests. She breaks down only once, at the mention of Spock's obvious alienness, which suggests to her the possibility that she has gone mad and is hallucinating. We are spared the cliche'd slap, followed by a contrite "Thanks, I needed that," but she does receive a firm grip by the arms that almost seems preliminary to a good shaking if she needs it. Spock calmly assures her that he "is substantial" and she requires little more in the way of shock tactics.
On the whole, Zarabeth exhibits an amazing amount of stoic serenity. We are justified in assuming this to be her nature. If she were the type to become unbalanced over her banishment, she would probably have either greeted them with total abandon, or else gone completely catatonic long before. Instead, she seems capable of ruling her more disruptive emotions in a way that Spock just might have found praiseworthy and attractive even in his normal state. He must surely recognize the stability and controlling intelligence that has enabled her to survive in such fashion, allowing her to collapse only after she has been "saved"— as far as she knows—from her fate by the arrival of two other exiles.
Her reaction to Spock's revelation that Zor Kahn, who sent: her there, had been deposed and executed over 100 years ago is rather interesting. This is omitted from the aired version, but in the final draft she is convinced that she has only been there two years—which subjectively she has—and exclaims with horror "Then I am truly lost here!" Spock tries to explain that there may be no relationship between time there and in the library, and that she may be able to go back with them, but she is convinced that she cannot, saying "I can't go back through the portal now." (Underlines mine.) "I will be dead!" This would seem to indicate that she had entertained hopes of being able to return—until she realized exactly how much time had elapsed. Could she not have known until this time that she was "truly lost" and been expecting rescue? Was that the secret of her optimism and acceptance of her life there? Was it just that she was totally unable to grasp her situation and secretly felt that,she must have been able to go back? Did she have such simplistic notions atout linear time despite the fact that she was literally in the past? She reacts like she thinks she just got on a train and rode to Siberia.
But considered in light of the description of Zarabeth that speaks so glowingly of her face without a trace of artifice, we may tend to believe her as totally as Spock did. And anyone who has watched Mariotto Hartley's work with any regularity knows that she frequently rounds off the sharp edges of her villainesses so that it is much more difficult to dislike them, perhaps, than an author intended, and there is the fact that having an honest face doesn't necessarily mean the person behind it deserves the face.
So what are we left with? Actually, precious little. Even the well-researched STAR TREK CONCORDANCE merely accepts that Zarabeth was a political exile whose family attempted to execute a tyrant and drug her down with its failure. Perhaps someday Jean Lisetto Aroeste or Dorothy Fontana or someone will tell us, but until then—we'll just have to manage to live with the uncertainty of it all.