Snowflake challenge no. 8

[kathleen_dailey]

In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for a beloved character, relationship or fandom



I was so intrigued and moved and puzzled by the events in "The Enterprise Incident" that apparently I took the line of dialogue quoted in the cut text literally.

In the cast list of female TOS characters, whether recurring or one-off, the Romulan Commander who appeared in that episode stood out. Dorothy Fontana gave her command of a flagship, with all that that status implies, and Joanne Linville gave her gravitas and incendiary sexuality. The fact that she fell for Spock's charade illustrated both her ambition and her vulnerability--a combination that seemed ideal for character exploration.

Fontana's script and Linville's portrayal of a woman who was at once authoritative and fallible, hubristic and unguarded, captured my interest. Even now, when I encounter "The Enterprise Incident" in a rerun for the gazillionth time, I'm just as enthralled by the character and the impact of her story as I was the very first time I saw the episode all those years ago.

For every Trek fan who was favourably impressed by the Romulan Commander as a character, there were many more who dismissed her as gullible, unfit for command, and generally deserving of scorn and derision. Even the few fan writers who acknowleged her appeal and complexity felt compelled to make sure that her powerful on-screen chemistry with Spock never went anywhere lest the sacrosanct pairing of K/S be compromised. (One well-known example of this approach was Syn Ferguson's Courts of Honor.) To me, though, the Romulan Commander was and is the only character whom I could picture as an appropriate and equal match for Spock.

For many years (and perhaps today), the received wisdom among a significant subset of TOS fan writers was that it was impossible for anyone to write a credible f/m relationship of equality and mutuality for any of the TOS characters; Kirk and Spock were the only possible matches for each other by virtue of the fact that they were both males and thus equal by nature and definition. I argued forcefully--but obviously not persuasively--that we were writers, after all; if Gene Roddenberry had been unable or unwilling to show us female and male characters who were true partners, colleagues, or friends in the 1960s, then it was our job to fix that failure. But after years (decades, actually) of hoping in vain to read a fan or pro story that did in-depth justice to the Romulan Commander and believably explained why she did what she did (and why Kirk and Spock did what they did) in the episode, I eventually gave up waiting and decided to tell the story myself.

I'd like to think that if the storyline of "The Enterprise Incident" were to be seriously re-evaluated in the 21st century, we might see a more sensitive and perceptive fannish response to a woman who demonstrated all the strengths and frailties and contradictions that make a fictional character compelling and appealing to viewers--and to fan writers.