I really hope most people are aware of why Amok Time was made in the first place
I should start off by saying that Star Trek was made with a female audience in mind. It’s why Captain Kirk’s shirt rips and why he’s shirtless a lot, since the makers of the show were expecting to draw in a female audience with the good looks of William Shatner. Star Trek was even considered fake sci fi for girls by most male sci fi fans.
I have to mention that first because the show was banking on the female audience to fawn over Captain Kirk, and many of the women watching did, but they soon realized that even more women were fawning over Spock. When the show got renewed for a second season, they wanted to make sure they could retain the same female audience, most importantly the Spock fangirls, so they decided to treat their female audience with Amok Time.
Every single decision involved in the plot of the episode was made with “how do we give these ladies what they want without hurting his likability?”. Pon Farr was made up so Spock would have a reason to act super horny while still being the same alien everyone knew and love, T’Pring leaving Spock while Spock was planning on being loyal to her to show off how loyal he is to romantic partners, and his Pon Farr being cured without actually having sex was to keep him single.
TL;DR Amok Time was made for straight girl wank bank but instead they created the K/S community
I don’t think it was inadvertent at all – Theodore Sturgeon, the writer of Amok Time, was openly gay and was known for constantly trying to slip gay shit past the censors. He also wrote the backrub scene and lots of other k/s moments. Lgbt people in the 60s wanted to see themselves represented in media just as much as we do, but because of censorship laws it all had to be subtextual.
I’d like to look at this from another angle, because I think there’s more to it than Sturgeon was gay, therefore the gay subtext.
At the time Trek was airing, CBS thought of it as a kids’ show and boys were assumed to be the primary audience of Sci-Fi. In 1967 – 1969 girls were not thought of as being interested in Sci-Fi for its own sake (no matter how wrong media producers were about that). Girls were the half of the demographic that had to be brought in by “girl things”, e.g., fashion and romance and cute (non-threateningly good looking) male characters. An example would be the inclusion of Chekov with his Monkees haircut during the second season.
So yes, when it was discovered that there was actually a female demographic gravitating to the show on its own, for its own reasons (e.g., Spock, the dynamic between Spock & Kirk), then Roddenberry, a very clever man, decided to exploit these things for all they were worth.
One of the best and most time-honored ways of doing this is through the “Are They Or Aren’t They (Lovers)?” question (aka the Bromance), primarily of interest (so it is assumed) to the female audience. What makes the question work is that it’s always hinted at but never, ever answered. If you answer the question, you resolve the undercurrent of sexual tension and you kill the show (or it must become another kind of show).
It is also something that Theodore Sturgeon, a well-established science fiction writer at the time “Amok Time” was written, would have known. He would also have known where to look for a story idea that would really grab the audience, not with fistfights, rubber monsters or planet-devouring robots, but with the question: What do I (and the rest of the audience) most want to see? The answer is always the forbidden, the thing held back, kept under wraps.
“Amok Time” and Pon Farr is one of the best examples of “Are They Or Aren’t They?” because the engine that drives the story is that strong undercurrent of unresolved sexual tension (aka gay subtext). At the time the show aired, few in the audience would have spotted that subtext, which was how they got away with it, but the female and gay contingent would certainly have felt its effects. When a show brushes close to your half-conscious fantasies, it is absolutely electrifying, though you may not be able to explain exactly why.
Sturgeon headed straight for the forbidden: to strip Spock emotionally naked. Pon Farr was the vehicle with which to do it. Show after show (and Nimoy himself, as he developed the character) gave the female audience teasing little hints at the inner Spock, the smouldering interior landscape, the potentially barbaric sexual and emotional inner being he was keeping hold of with an iron fist. “Amok Time” is an emotional striptease that pays off by symbolically answering Are They Or Aren’t They?
In writing, and this includes television writing, when you have written a fight scene, particularly one that is cathartic, you should examine it with the same critical eye as you would a sex scene. This is because in terms of character development, fight scenes and sex scenes do the same thing: they strip the character bare by showing you their “inner animal”, their deepest needs, desires and fears. This is something else Sturgeon would have known. It is the reason Pon Farr is structured to only have two possible resolutions: sex or a fight (or denied either, death). So when Spock finally does explode, how does it happen? A fight to the death not with Stonn, his actual rival for T’Pring, but with Kirk (with the acknowledgment that Spock didn’t choose Kirk for this purpose, but Sturgeon, the writer did).
On an emotional and symbolic level, the answer to Are They Or Aren’t They is a resounding YES, THEY ARE. On a conscious, visual level, the answer remains ambiguous, a hint, subtext, thus keeping the unresolved sexual tension intact. However physical the fight, the consummation remains emotional only, and thus the show, and the chemistry between Kirk & Spock, goes on. It’s an elegant solution to a big problem: How can you give the audience what it wants, without really giving them what they want and destroying the show (as it would have been at that time)?
So IMO, Pon Farr was not quite so deliberately created to give Trek a hefty dose of gay subtext, nor is that subtext just an accidental byproduct. It’s a great writer weaving all of that together to make a very compelling story.
damn….
Just one last thing, Sturgeon won a “Gaylactic Spectrum Award” (given to LGBT+ science fiction/fantasy novels and short stories) for a piece he wrote called The World Well Lost. It’s about humans who discover a pair of male aliens who are deeply, intrinsically in love, kinda like Spock and Jim ☺️
(Also, I don’t believe Sturgeon was gay, I believe he was actually bisexual or sexually fluid, but I’ll have to check because I don’t know for sure.)
The convention of using the symbiote’s name as a kind of surname for a joined Trill is really odd to me. At least, as it translates into our culture, perhaps their own culture has different conventions
But the thing is, “Jadzia” and “Dax” are different people. When you address her as “Lieutenant Dax”, you’re effectively addressing the symbiote while when you address her as “Jadzia”, you’re addressing the host. So, it’s not the same as, say, the distinction between saying “Captain Sisko” and “Benjamin”, because “Sisko” and “Benjamin” refer to the same person
So, it seems to me that it would make more sense to simply treat “Jadzia Dax” as a single name (”Jadzia-Dax”), and then using either “Jadzia” or “Dax” by itself would be reserved for times when one is referring solely to the symbiote or solely to the host
And there’s certainly precedent for treating aliens as having single names. Worf’s full name is “Worf Son of Mogh”, but “Son of Mogh” isn’t treated as a surname. He’s “Lt Worf” not “Lt Son-of-Mogh” or “Lt Moghson”. And Spock was only ever Spock, and there’s no official canon for his surname (there’s a semi-canonical name but I can’t remember it)
i can sort of see how the connection of people who shared a symbiote is comparable to a family, as another line of descent comparable to patrilineal surnames. it makes sense that in trill culture, your symbiote becomes more important and that it sort of replaces any other kind of family tree you had before. it fits in a lot with how trills pre and post joining are considered different people. at least, this was the easiest way that i could make sense of this question when i watched it. i wonder if joined trills are technically disowned by their family too, if their culture sees the joined trill as a new person (or maybe trills don’t ever have last names? it’s been a while) (i can also see joined trills being disallowed from receiving inheritances, so that you can’t profit from just having had previous hosts. there is also that law about meeting people who knew a past host, i guess they’d have a lot of laws to avoid joined trills abusing their status for money or power or connections)
my favorite trope is the thing star trek does where when a character lists something and they’ll list real things/people but add 1 thats fictional, like “great writers such as shakespeare, robert frost, edgar allan poe and zaxar the giant rat man“
also damn i really wish ds9 had done more with the revelation that the trill government was lying to its population about how being symbiont compatible isn’t NEARLY as rare they claimed it was
oh worm
I imagine that Trill society must be painfully classist, though not in wealth as we tend to think it. Imagine competing for a promotion or a position with someone who is joined and you aren’t. That person has multiple life times of “work experience” and you have…what? 20 years? Yeah, you’re not getting that job. Imagine spending your youth practicing and instrument, then the guy down the street gets joined to the symbiont that was a concert performer 90 years ago. Two weeks of practice and he’s now as good at that guy. Welp…looks like you just lost your concert schedule. Can you imagine the bitterness in a society like that?
things I think about a lot in regards to joining politics:
– there would be symbionts with sensitive political information who are probably passed only to pre-selected Trill already working in the government to protect information.
– maybe a secret intelligence organzation that’s actually been made up of the same group of symbionts since its beginning.
– black market symbiont sales to off-world Trill from exiled Trill looking to make money for their families or to settle debts when they are near death.
– the Comission would probably perpetuate the idea that an indifferent to or anti-joining position should be considered radicalized and negative on the Trill home world, and yet it would be a pretty standard sentiment for off-world dwelling Trill.
– (many off-world Trill may have emigrated from Trill for that reason)
– Trill society supports capital punishment at least via forced unjoining.
– a host would take on any trauma the symbiont’s previous hosts endured post joining, but because of the risk of having the symbiont be deemed ‘unfit to be rejoined’ upon its current host’s death, they probably wouldn’t talk about it with anyone??
– in short the Comission is probably an incredibly corrupt and powerful organization.
I love all of these ideas about Trill society. I really do wish they’d been explored more.
a very good concept: kirk pulls out the “to find New Life, and New Civilisations” speech when mccoy tells him to clear out the Depression Mugs™ from his room
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