#spock: your play style is most illogical captain | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

per-ineptia-ad-astra · 5 years

Text

Star Trek Episode 1.15: Shore Leave

AKA Rabbits and Pistols and Women, Oh My

Our episode begins on the bridge, where Kirk is looking over a pad with a yeoman while awaiting a report from a landing party. He gets a kink in his back, so the yeoman starts giving him a backrub, but since both she and Spock are standing behind Kirk he doesn’t realize who is giving him the backrub. This results in quite possibly one of the most infamous lines in all of Star Trek.

[ID: Kirk sitting in his chair on the bridge, his back being rubbed by a brown-haired yeoman, caught in a moment of realization as he says, “Dig it in there, Mr. Sp--” and sees Spock walking past him.]

As everyone does their best to pretend that didn’t just happen, the yeoman says that Kirk needs sleep. Kirk replies that he gets enough of that from McCoy. Presumably he means that McCoy has been telling him that he needs to sleep, and not that McCoy is somehow giving him sleep, although really, anything’s possible. Spock says McCoy is right—wow, get that one on tape—Kirk and everyone onboard need rest after what they’ve been through the past three months. (Exactly what that is is left to the imagination.) Everyone except Spock, of course. He’s fine. He’s always fine. Evidently Kirk is too tired to bother putting up a fight about this, because he tells Uhura to send the landing party report to his quarters and staggers off the bridge.

We then see said landing party down on the nearby planet, which is so unbelievably lush and green that it has actual trees and grass instead of a soundstage with some foliage stuck on.

[ID: McCoy and Sulu walking down a sunlit grassy lane with trees to the right and tall plants at the edge of a pond to the left.]

McCoy and Sulu are naturally quite awed at this incredible beauty. Sulu says that it has no people and no animals, making it perfect for relaxation. No animals? Wow, that must be a really interesting ecosystem—how did a whole planet evolve with no animal life, while still resembling Earth so closely? The plants would have to have evolved unique mechanisms for reproduction without animal life to help pollinate them, not to mention the effect that no herbivorous consumption would have and—right, sorry. No animals means a good vacation! That’s the important thing. I guess.

Anyway, McCoy thinks the planet is just the place for some relaxation time for the crew, if they can get Kirk to authorize shore leave there. It does seem like a nice place to chill out after a lot of stress, but I question the Starfleet policy of letting crews take shore leave on random newly discovered planets as long as they don’t appear to have sapient native life as determined by some people wandering around on a small portion of it for a few hours. There could be plenty of threats there that they just haven’t uncovered—or, on the flipside, a whole crew full of people beaming down to loiter around could wreck havoc on an alien ecosystem. But, eh, it’s just plants, it’ll be fine.

McCoy comments that “you have to see this place to believe it—it’s like something out of Alice in Wonderland.” Bones, my man, I don’t know what copy of Alice in Wonderland you read, but I don’t remember its primary feature being nice-but-totally-normal-and-physics-obeying parkland.

Sulu stops to get some samples of the plant life, while McCoy wanders off happily, obviously enjoying the chance to just have a nice stroll through nature and chew on a stalk of grass. That is, until he spots something...unexpected.

[ID: A large humanoid white rabbit standing among the foliage, wearing a checked red and yellow shirt, yellow waistcoat, and brown and gray neckcloth, with an umbrella tucked under one arm.]

The rabbit exclaims that he’ll be late and hops (sort off) off through the undergrowth. A moment later a young girl in a blue and white dress runs up and asks McCoy if he’s seen a rabbit around. All poor Bones can do is point mutely in the direction the rabbit went, and the girl gives him a curtsy and runs after the rabbit.

McCoy stands there in abject shock for a moment before managing to bellow for Sulu, who comes running. Despite being only a few yards away, Sulu was evidently too absorbed with horticulture to notice any of what just happened, and there’s now no sign of either rabbit or girl. He asks McCoy what’s wrong, but McCoy can’t seem to find the words, and really, can you blame him?

[ID: McCoy standing by the edge of a pond, holding a grass straw tensely and staring in front of him while Sulu puts a hand on his shoulder and asks, “What is it, doc?”]

“Oh god, this is it. I knew this job was going to drive me insane and it’s FINALLY HAPPENED.”

After the break we get a captain’s log from Kirk talking about how nice this planet they found is. You can tell he’s tired and kind of out of it from the way he rambles a bit, and takes a moment to remember the entire stardate. Despite this, the yeoman currently talking to him in his room notes that he isn’t in any of the shore leave parties. Kirk waves this off and dismisses her, but this does nothing for Kirk’s solitude because she is immediately replaced by Spock.

Kirk asks Spock which shore leave party he wants to go with, but Spock says he’s not interested in going at all. On Vulcan, he says, “to rest is to rest, to cease using energy. To me, it is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass using energy instead of saving it.” Well, it would be. Your planet doesn’t have any green grass. The idea of going outside to relax probably would be pretty foreign on Vulcan, which is generally rather lacking in environments that anyone would consider relaxing.

The conversation is interrupted by Uhura paging Kirk to say there’s a call from McCoy. Kirk genially tells her to open a channel, little suspecting what this conversation is going to be about.

McCoy—remarkably calmly—says that either all their sensor probes are defective, or he is. Kirk naturally asks him to explain, leaving McCoy in the unenviable position of having to describe what he just saw. Kirk takes the whole story to be a joke, while Spock stands there rolling his eyes to the heavens. It’s understandable enough; even for people with as many weird experiences as these guys, giant talking rabbits aren’t something you expect to encounter, although I have heard that they appear here and there, now and then, to this one and that one.

Kirk figures that this is a trick of McCoy’s to get him to come down to the planet—that he doesn’t think Kirk will come down for shore leave unless he’s baited with a bit of mystery. Which doesn’t sound terribly like McCoy, I have to say. He seems less likely to make up a weird story about a rabbit as part of a cunning plan to lure Kirk into shore leave, and more likely to just physically drag him down to the planet by the ear.

Spock, evidently deciding not to get involved in these weird human things, says that actually he did have something he came here to discuss. He’s checked Dr. McCoy’s log—pre-rabbit sightings—and apparently there’s a crew member aboard who’s being a bit of a problem.

“[He’s] showing signs of stress and fatigue, reaction time down nine to twelve percent, associational reading norm minus three.”

“That’s much too low a rating.”

“He’s becoming irritable and quarrelsome, yet he refuses to take rest and rehabilitation. Now he has that right, but we’ve found--”

“A crewman’s right ends where the safety of the ship begins. Now, that man will go ashore on my orders. What’s his name?”

“James Kirk.”

[ID: 1. Spock looking at Kirk with a look of mock surprise and innocence while saying, “James Kirk.” 2. Kirk stares back at Spock. 3. Spock saying, “Enjoy yourself, Captain,” with a decidedly smug smile. 4. Kirk staring at Spock, now with a GTA-style overlay saying ‘wasted’.]

Weeeeelll, there’s not a whole lot Kirk can do about that devastating takedown except swallow the pill and go take some shore leave already. Spock tells him that they’ve detected no animals, no artifacts, no force fields (? was that a potential problem?), it’s just a nice pleasant green planet. But even as he’s saying this we see, down on said pleasant green planet, a rock by a pond slowly move aside on its own to reveal….A GUN! No, not a phaser—an actual, old-fashioned revolver. Dammit! The NRA got here before us!

Unknowing of the terrible threat looming nearby, a couple of crewmen—a goldshirt woman and a blueshirt man—are investigating some of the plant life. The blueshirt is intent on scanning some ferns, prompting a complaint from the goldshirt that he’s too focused on work, work, work, and not appreciating the natural loveliness all around them. The blueshirt responds that he’s focused on work because they’re working—they’ve got a report to make to the captain and things aren’t going to be nearly so pleasant if it’s not ready on time. Right after he says that, who should beam down but Kirk himself, along with the yeoman. Oh man, speak of the devil. Don’t you hate it when you’re talking about your boss and he immediately materializes out of thin air in front of you?

Luckily for the crewmen—Rodriguez and Teller, Kirk calls them—he’s not here to crack the whip. Told that they’ve finished the survey, he tells them to submit it to Spock and then clock out and enjoy themselves. Incidentally, Kirk calls the goldshirt Teller, but she’s played by the same actress who played Martine last episode. The character was named ‘Mary Teller’ in the script, but once they got on set someone noticed that they had—again, somehow—accidentally cast someone who had already appeared as a named character, and changed her first name to Angela to match Martine...but as you can see, it’s a bit inconsistent. And a bit jarring, if she is the same character, to see her so bright and happy and with budding romantic tension between her and Rodriguez, considering what happened to her last week. It worked out pretty well when they did this with Riley, but this time, not so much.

At any rate, Rodriguez points Kirk over to where Sulu and McCoy were. Kirk and the yeoman head over there, talking a bit about how incredibly beautiful the surroundings are. The amount that this planet gets talked up in the episode initially struck me as a bit odd; don’t get me wrong, it’s quite nice and pretty, but I don’t think I would call it jaw-droppingly, impossibly gorgeous. But then, y’know, I see trees everyday. I can see trees right now just by turning my head about ninety degrees. If I spent the majority of my life in a spaceship, seeing the same gray, florescent-lit surroundings every day, breathing in sterilized air and rarely seeing any space more open than Engineering, I’d probably be awestruck at the first bit of green I saw in months too.

The captain and the yeoman find McCoy some way away, still standing by the pond and brooding over his sanity. Kirk is all ready to set into some teasing about rabbits and the sighting thereof, but while McCoy is still not entirely sure he didn’t hallucinate the whole thing, he’s got at least one thing a bit less easy to dismiss: large footprints in the dirt nearby.

[ID: Kirk kneeling in a dirt track, examining two sets of four-toed footprints.]

Those don’t look a great deal like rabbit tracks, but then, that didn’t look a great deal like an actual rabbit either. Kirk is, reasonably enough, not quite ready to commit to giant talking rabbits yet, but evidently something is going on here, so he calls up to the ship and tells the shore leave parties to stand by and not leave the ship. Right when they were about to disembark, too. You could probably hear the collective groan clear on the other side of the ship.

McCoy expresses some surprise at Kirk suspending the leave, since after all it’s only a giant talking rabbit that came from nowhere, what’s worrying about that? Kirk asks if McCoy can explain this whole business and McCoy has to admit that he can’t, and since neither can Kirk, he’s erring on the side of caution and not bringing the entire crew planetside until they figure out for sure that whatever’s going on isn’t dangerous. It’s probably not dangerous, but then again most people would say a quick checkup for a couple of isolated archaeologists probably wasn’t dangerous. A socially stunted teenage boy probably wasn’t dangerous. Someone beaming up with a bit of glittery space dirt on them probably wasn’t—you get my drift.

So nobody’s getting their vacation until Kirk gets some answers, but before they can start working on that there’s a sudden explosion of noise—gunshots. Which I don’t expect people from the twenty-third century could readily identify, but it’s obviously a big scary dangerous-sounding noise, so everyone takes off at a run to go see what’s going on.

What’s going on turns out to be...Sulu, standing in a clearing and happily firing off the revolver we saw earlier. Naturally Kirk is all “wtf, Mr. Sulu” and Sulu cheerfully explains that look! it’s a gun! isn’t it cool??? Apparently antique gun collecting is one of Sulu’s many side hobbies, and this one is a really cool old super rare gun that he’s been wanting for ages, which he just happened to find laying under a rock nearby. He seems weirdly unperturbed by a centuries-old Earth weapon—let alone the specific centuries-old Earth weapon that he just happened to want—turning up on a newly discovered, uninhabited and definitely non-Earth planet. Also, apparently Sulu’s interest in guns did not at any point include an accompanying interest in gun safety, since he thought it was a good idea to just start firing the thing off randomly for kicks.

Kirk puts his hand out and gives Sulu a stern “hand over the toy, young man” expression, and Sulu reluctantly gives it up. He tries to explain to Kirk how the gun works, but fails to mention the part about how you really shouldn’t just stick a loaded gun straight into your belt unless you want to shoot yourself in the leg, so naturally Kirk does exactly that.

Well at any rate, that confirms that there’s more going on here than one brief localized hallucination. Speaking of which, Yeoman Barrows suddenly spots more of the strange tracks they saw earlier, running right past them. Kirk orders Sulu to take Barrows and follow the new tracks AND NO MORE SHOOTING THINGS. Meanwhile, he and McCoy are going back to the glade to investigate the original set of tracks. Frankly I’m not sure how useful ‘the glade’ is as a place name on a planet that seems to consist of nothing but glades, but that seems to be what Kirk is going with. As the captain and the doctor head off, we see a strange antennae rise from the rocks and turn towards them.

Kirk and McCoy walk back to The Glade, chatting about how strange and obnoxious this whole situation is—can’t even go down for a spot of fresh air and sunshine without weird shit happening. Still, McCoy says, it could have been worse—Kirk could have been the one who saw the rabbit. At that Kirk laughs and asks McCoy if he’s feeling a bit picked on about all this, and McCoy admits that yeah, just because you know exactly what’s going to happen when you tell someone you saw a giant humanoid talking rabbit doesn’t make it fun.

Kirk says that he knows what it feels like because he got picked on a lot back at the Academy, though presumably not for rabbit-related reasons. Evidently, as he himself freely owns up to, Kirk was not just a serious student but a “positively grim” one, which made him an easy target for inter-student-body trolling. That Kirk was especially studious and strait-laced in his academic years is an aspect of his character that’s consistent throughout TOS (remember Mitchell’s remarks about Kirk being a “stack of books with legs”), but it’s one that seems to be easily forgotten about in favor of the assumption that Kirk must have been a wild, rule-breaking, carefree kind of student more interested in having dorm room hookups than passing tests. I’m just sayin’. Take notes.

At any rate, Kirk relates how there was one particular upperclassman named Finnegan who took special delight in taunting and pranking him—putting soup in his bed or a bucket of water on the top of a door. Which, honestly, as far as college pranks go that’s pretty lacking in creativity, but it clearly got to Kirk as evidenced by the fact that he’s still kinda sore about it some fifteen years later.

In the midst of all this reminiscing, they notice a new set of tracks—young girl tracks. Or, well, not that there’s anything about them that specifically says ‘young girl’, but since McCoy saw a young girl in the vicinity of the rabbit we can make a safe assumption. Kirk decides to split up; he’ll follow the Alice tracks, and McCoy can follow the rabbit tracks. McCoy’s amenable to this.

[ID: McCoy saying, “I got a personal grudge against that rabbit, Jim,” with a broad grin.]

Kirk hasn’t been alone for very long, though, when he hears a voice calling, “Jim!” He turns—and there, leaning against a nearby tree, is a young man wearing a silver shirt and an insufferable expression, accompanied, as all Irish people are legally obligated to be, by cheerful jig music. It is, or appears to be, Finnegan himself, in the flesh and just as fresh and smirking as he was at the Academy-- something he demonstrates by grasping Kirk’s shoulders in a brotherly fashion before walloping him with a punch that sends Kirk head over heels into the grass. As Kirk lays there stunned, Finnegan dances around laughing like a hyena and taunting Kirk to get up and fight back.

Now, Kirk, of course, is no longer an Academy freshman, but a decorated starship captain with ample experience in dealing with highly unusual circumstances and keeping his head in times of stress, so naturally his measured response to this impossible situation is to stay calm and evaluate what could be causing this and how dangerous—only joking, he gets up and charges at Finnegan with clear intent to strangle the bastard. I can’t really blame him, though. They cast Finnegan to perfection; the actor does a really good job at being an annoying little shit.

Before the fight can really get going, though, a sudden noise cuts across the clearing. Not gunshots, this time, but a terrified scream. Kirk immediately takes off in the direction of the sound, leaving Finnegan behind to jeer at Kirk for running from a fight.

As Kirk pelts across the grass he’s joined by McCoy, also running to see what’s going on. The two of them track the noise down to Barrows, sobbing and gasping on the ground next to a tree with her uniform all torn away from the collar on one shoulder, a rare case of the fragility of Starfleet uniforms being a problem for someone other than Kirk. And honestly I’d say Barrows gets a worse deal out of it, since the female crewmembers have so much less uniform to lose in the first place. Poor yeoman doesn’t get an undershirt, either, or, apparently, even a bra with straps.

Barrows says, rather frantically, that she was just walking along when suddenly “he” appeared—a man in a cloak with a jeweled dagger. Kirk asks if she’s sure she’s not imagining all this. That’s pretty damn rich from a man who was fistfighting his inexplicably appearing college rival a couple minutes ago. What, does he think Barrows imagined this so hard it ripped her uniform?

She gets rather rightfully pissed and tells Kirk that no, she did not dream up being attacked, you jerk. McCoy comments that the man she’s describing sounds like Don Juan. Which is quite a leap since all he has to go on is “cloak and jeweled dagger,” which could potentially describe an incredible amount of characters. Hell, that could be Barrows’s D&D character. But no, apparently McCoy got it in one, because Barrows says that actually, as she was walking through the woods, “it was so sort of storybook...I was thinking, all a girl needs is...Don Juan.”

Really? I mean, I don’t mean to judge anyone else’s romantic fantasies. But, well, I could see walking through some beautiful woods and thinking the scene just needed a charming prince or maybe a unicorn or something. Not so much, “gee, it’s so beautiful around here, all a girl needs is to be violently assaulted by a fictional character legendary for being a womanizing sleaze.”

Well, anyway, that was weird. Hey, come to think of it, where’s Sulu? Shouldn’t he be around here somewhere? Barrows says that he ran after the cloaked fellow. Oh dear. New plan: Kirk tells McCoy to stay with Barrows while he goes to look for Sulu. As Kirk runs off, the mysterious aerial appears again, seemingly tracking him, but it goes unnoticed by everyone.

Kirk soon finds himself leaving the trees and meadows and jogging out into a rocky, desert-like area. It’s still pretty out there, though, with some wildflowers growing around, which Kirk stops to admire. Kirk. Kirk, buddy, I like flowers too, but you’ve got a crewman potentially in danger here. Maybe we could enjoy the foliage later.

A moment later, though, Kirk spots something a lot more distracting than a pretty flower: a pretty woman!

[ID: A white woman with blonde hair braided in a ring around her head, wearing a dress which is half white and half black with a pink flower design on the black half, standing in front of a cliffside surrounded by plants.]

Kirk stares in stunned rapture as the woman approaches. This is not just any woman; this is, judging by Kirk’s disbelieving murmur of, “Ruth…?” someone he knows, or knew. Random woman that Kirk knows who we’ve never heard of before? Gee, I wonder what connection he could possibly have to her. I’m going to guess she’s not his aunt.

“It is me, Jim darling, it is Ruth,” the woman says, and moves in to rub against Kirk’s cheek. Well, that’s an upgrade from Finnegan at any rate.

After the break Kirk gives a rather distracted captain’s log: still investigating this weird planet, lost a crewman but found a woman so it evens out. With a last vestige of professionalism he attempts to call McCoy, but the communicator isn’t working. Kirk is exactly as bothered by this as you would expect someone to be whose phone just broke right when they needed to call someone but really didn’t want to.

Anyway, back to more important matters: “How can it really be you, Ruth?” Kirk says it’s been fifteen years, but she hasn’t aged a day. He really seems quite emotional about all this. Kirk’s always courteous to the girls of his past, but he doesn’t usually get this worked up about seeing them again. Ruth must have been someone really special to him.

Sadly, the dreamy romantic atmosphere can only last so long before it gets shattered by reality, in the form of a communicator chirp, specifically. It’s McCoy, wanting to know if Kirk’s having any luck finding Sulu. You know? Sulu? Your crewman that you’re supposed to be looking for? Might be in danger? Remember him? Apparently not, because Kirk only manages a vague “hmm?” and then, when McCoy wants to know what the heck is going on over there, Kirk mumbles that he’s sure Mr. Sulu will be just fine. Maybe he’ll find a woman too! Or another gun. Whatever. He’s fine. It’s fine.

But Kirk just can’t get a break in here, because he promptly gets another call. This time it’s from Rodriguez, reporting that he just saw a flock of birds go overhead. “Don’t you like birds, Mr. Rodriguez?” Kirk asks, so Rodriguez has to remind him of that tiny little detail that there are no birds on this planet. Or at least, there aren’t supposed to be, according to all those scans they took.

Welp, Kirk says, guess those scans were defective, how bout that, funny ol thing, probably not important though...but, for all that he clearly wants to tell Rodriguez to go away so he can get back to Ruth Time, Kirk’s captain instincts are still hanging in there somewhere, so with a sigh he snaps out of it and tells Rodriguez to have all the search parties meet back at The Glade before hanging up. Ruth tells him to go do what he must and that he’ll see her again if he wants to, then walks off back into the desert, leaving Kirk alone among the rocks with only his memories...but just for like, five seconds, because he promptly gets another call.

This time it’s Spock, reporting that they’re getting some strange readings indicating some kind of ‘power field’ down on the planet, and that there’s “a highly sophisticated energy draining our power and increasing, beginning to affect our communications.” How energy can be highly sophisticated is beyond me, honestly (is it wearing a monocle? what?), but you’re the science expert there, Spock. Seems this energy might be coming from beneath the planet’s surface, possibly indicating some kind of industrial activity going on down there.

Well, I think at this point we can definitively say that Something Weird is going on down here. Kirk heads off back to The Glade in pursuit of answers, and as he leaves we see another aerial, sticking up from a rock and twirling attentively in his direction.

Meanwhile, McCoy and Barrows are having a cheerful meander through the woods. Lovely as the woods are, though, Barrows comments that she wouldn’t want to be alone in them. “Why not?” McCoy asks. I dunno, man, because she just got attacked by an armed man with distinctly dishonorable intentions? I think that’d put most people off a stroll through the woods, no matter how nice said woods are.

Barrows hasn’t been dissuaded from the romantic ideal entirely though, and says that in woods like this a lady should be dressed in some fancy fairy-tale princess duds. I was thinking ‘long pants and hiking boots’ myself, but whatever works for you.

McCoy replies that if she was so dressed she’d have “whole armies of Don Juans to fight off...and me, too.” Not sure if “let me just remind you of that scary encounter you just had with a threatening man” is the best approach to flirting, but going by the moment of tender hand-holding they proceed to have, I’d say Barrows is down with it. (Hmm...Bones...Barrows...kind of goes together. In a morbid way, but still.) Still, the whole thing doesn’t feel quite in character for Bones, which might be explained by this plot originally being intended for Kirk (of course) with McCoy swapped in later. Kirk and McCoy are pretty much interchangeable, right? Sure.

Barrows is quickly distracted from the hand-holding when she spots something in the trees nearby: the exact kind of fancy fairy-tale princess clothes that she was just talking about, hanging on some branches. Imagine that. She runs over to the clothes and holds the dress up to herself gleefully, exclaiming, “Look at me, doctor! A lady to be protected and fought over!” When McCoy suggests the clothes would look even better with her in them, Barrows isn’t sure if it’s a great idea, but decides to go for it. Now, uhhh, if Barrows wants to wear a pretty princess dress that’s entirely her prerogative, and I don’t blame her for wanting to change out of that awkwardly ripped uniform, but putting on a set of fancy clothes that mysteriously appeared in the woods? That sounds like an excellent way to get captured by faeries and I would not recommend it.

Barrows goes to change behind some bushes, brazenly ignoring the possibility of being kidnapped by the fair folk, and McCoy is very deliberately Not Peeking when he gets a call from Rodriguez. The communicator has gone all staticy and squawky, though, and McCoy only just makes out the message that they’re supposed to meet back in The Glade before Rodriguez cuts out, and no amount of shouting “ESTEBAN!” into the communicator gets him back. Which is a pity for Rodriguez, because the scene cuts to show us that he and Marteller are in quite the spot of bother: they’re leaning up against a tree, clutching each other, while a tiger prowls about nearby. Yes, a tiger. Not a dude in a tiger suit, or a dog with stripes painted on, or even stock footage of a tiger: an actual, real, 100% bonafide, quite expensive tiger. Rodriguez tries desperately to get ahold of McCoy again without setting off Shere Khan over there, but the communicator doesn’t pick up at all this time.

Blissfully unaware of the tiger trouble, McCoy watches Barrows emerge, all dolled up. Meanwhile, Kirk is talking to Spock and demanding some answers about all this. Spock is hesitant, but Kirk says it’s his job to provide answers. Cut him some slack there, Kirk. It’s pretty hard to come up with a good scientific explanation for giant talking bunnies and magic women. Well, one that doesn’t involve massive intoxicants, at any rate. Speaking of which, Spock wants to know if they’re really sure these haven’t been hallucinations. Kirk rather doubts that, since one of those ‘hallucinations’ clocked him across the jaw. A fair point, although I would also put forth the rather relevant detail that by now we’ve had multiple people seeing the exact same thing, not a common feature of hallucinations.

Spock wants to know if they should maybe beam down an armed landing party, who I’m sure would be terribly effective, but Kirk says no, there hasn’t been any real danger so far, just weirdness (he hasn’t seen that tiger yet). Right as he says that, he looks up and sees a flock of...are those geese? Oh shit, you better send that armed party down after all, Spock, things just got dangerous.

Meanwhile, Sulu (remember him?) is walking through a nearby canyon, probably wondering where the heck everybody is, when the ground behind him opens up like a trapdoor and a samurai jumps out and starts attacking him. Man, we were getting some perfectly good character development for Sulu this episode but now we’re back to “a samurai! because he’s Japanese! get it? get it?”

Sulu pulls his phaser on the samurai, but the phaser doesn’t seem to want to fire, and Sulu’s forced to make a run for it, right into Kirk, who is trying and failing to call McCoy. Sulu warns Kirk about the aggro’d samurai heading towards them—but he’s gone. No samurai to be seen. “Captain, you’ve got to believe me!” Sulu insists, and usually “you’ve got to believe me” is the best way to guarantee that someone will not believe you, but luckily for Sulu Kirk’s seen enough weird shit of his own today that at this point, sure, samurai, why not.

Sulu reports that he got a call from Rodriguez telling him to meet back at The Glade, but the communicators were acting up, and now it seems his phaser is out too. Kirk tests his, but it’s also dead. Great, now we don’t have any way to fight off the geese.

While they’ll mulling over this latest development, something appears up on a nearby outcropping of rock—the familiar human-shaped swirl of light of someone being transported. It appears to be Spock, but instead of the usual smooth materialization, he fades in and out several times before finally making it all the way. Just your periodic reminder that traveling through transporter is kind of terrifying.

Kirk wants to know what the heck, man, did he not just say to not send anyone else down? Spock says he had to come down because ship-to-planet communications are now completely out, and the mysterious power field is soaking up energy so quickly that he calculated that if they hurried they could just about get one person transported down before that went out too. Naturally he sent himself; I mean, he’s only the first officer, who better to risk sending through a shaky transporter beam? At any rate, that was the last of the transporter juice, so they’re all stuck down there now with no contact with the ship. The shuttles are conspicuously unmentioned by anyone—but then, if the energy-eating field is that strong, flying a shuttle into it probably wouldn’t end real well.

Back in The Glade, McCoy and Barrows have arrived (and McCoy has found another stalk of grass to chew on), but no one else is there yet. At least it doesn’t look like anyone is there yet, but McCoy thinks he hears something or someone moving around nearby. That makes Barrows nervous, but McCoy says her brave knight will protect her.

Over in the desert, Kirk, Spock and Sulu hear the tiger approaching, along with the ominous background music. They spread out to find the source of the noise, but there’s another problem in The Glade: a knight in black armor on a horse, charging towards McCoy and Barrows with lance at the ready. Barrows freaks, but McCoy is done with this shit. First a talking rabbit, then magic guns, and now this nonsense? He’s not having it. These damn things are all just hallucinations, and he’s going to prove it...by standing directly in front of the knight.

Under some circumstances, that might have been the correct option. Unfortunately for McCoy, these are not those circumstances, and Kirk and Spock come into The Glade (having, apparently, missed the tiger completely) just in time to watch their friend get hit in the chest by a very much not imaginary lance. The knight turns towards Kirk and Spock next; Spock tries to fire his phaser at it, but of course, the phasers aren’t working. Luckily Kirk still has that gun he confiscated from Sulu—which has somehow not gone off throughout any of these adventures--and it’s working just fine, fine enough to shoot the knight right off his horse. Dang, Kirk is a good shot with that thing, considering he’s never so much as encountered one before.

Everyone rushes over to McCoy, lying lifeless in the grass. That’s right, McCoy is dead. Oh god! McCoy! We hardly knew ye! Oh, I can’t believe this has happened. And so early on in the show, too. What a tragedy.

[ID: McCoy laying prone on the grass with a small bloody hole in his chest, while Kirk, Spock, and Barrows in her princess clothes kneel around him.]

Not that I have experience with these things but that seems to be a remarkably small and clean wound for a lance to the chest.

In shocked grief, Spock, Kirk and Barrows kneel around the body of their fallen comrade. Barrows is especially emotional, sobbing that it’s all her fault, until Kirk grabs her by the shoulders and sternly tells her to get a grip. I suppose he needs everyone to have a clear head since they’re still in a crisis situation but it seems a wee bit harsh. Poor Barrows. She’s had a really bad day. Although not as bad as McCoy’s day, I guess.

Sulu calls Kirk over to the body of the fallen knight, laying in the grass some way away. As soon as Kirk gets there it’s easy to see what got Sulu’s attention: underneath the visor of his helmet, the knight’s face is plasticky and clearly artificial (although the eyes are just a little unnervingly realistic).

[ID: A headshot of a knight laying on the grass with his helmet visor opened, showing the face of a white man with brown hair but with a flat, artificial sheen.]

“It couldn’t be alive,” Kirk muses. Kirk, don’t be mean to the stuntmen.

Spock comes over to scan the body—luckily his tricorder is still working (don’t ask why). He says that the knight is indeed not a corpse but a “mechanical contrivance” which has the same cell structure as all the plants around them. Which means that not only this knight, but everything on the planet has been manufactured. Oh my god. We’re in WESTWORLD.

So a mysterious black knight just appeared out of the blue, ran down poor McCoy, then got shot and turned out to be fake all along. Okay. Sure. To be honest, you could stick that sequence of events in the Arthurian canon and it wouldn’t stand out much.

Suddenly, just to add to all the weirdness, an airplane flies overhead. Somewhere else, Rodriguez and Marteller are watching it with astonishment. Rodriguez asks if Marteller remembers “the early wars and funny air vehicles they used” that he was telling her about. One wonders how that conversation came about. Was it before or after the tiger?

Anyway, Rodriguez brings this up because that, of course, is one of those very same airplanes he mentioned. Marteller asks if it can hurt them, and Rodriguez says it can’t unless it makes a strafing run. Naturally, the plane immediately makes a strafing run. The two run off, barely avoiding the hail of bullets, and escape into some nearby undergrowth, where Marteller falls over. Rodriguez kneels down, concerned, calling her name, but she doesn’t respond. I have no idea whether she tripped, fainted, or was shot and is now dead. It’s really not clear.

Back in The Glade, something weird (sorry, something else weird) has happened while everyone was distracted by the plane: McCoy’s body has vanished, along with the fake knight. Well, that’s great.

Spock has a hypothesis. He asks Kirk what he was thinking of right before he saw the people he mentioned. Kirk thinks back and says that he was thinking about being in the Academy and his youth and all that, and then Finnegan showed up. And speak of the devil—there he is again, Finnegan himself. Kirk demands Finnegan give him some answers about what’s been happening to them, but Finnegan just laughs and runs away.

Kirk’s not going to stand for that. He’s had a bad enough day—verbally outfoxed by Spock, had a potential bit of lovely shore leave turn into a massive headache, one of his best friends is dead, and now this horrible little bastard is having a laugh at him. There’s only one thing to do—track down Finnegan and take out some aggression on him. He tells Spock to take Sulu and find McCoy’s body—and just, uh, leave Barrows somewhere, I guess—while he goes after Finnegan. Spock is a little taken aback by this sudden turn of events, but Kirk has run off before he has a chance to argue.

The chase takes Kirk back out to the desert. Finnegan keeps popping up in the distance, moving from place to place so quickly and inexplicably that it seems like he’s teleporting. All this time Finnegan’s peppy jig motif is playing, which is suitable enough for the immediate situation but a bit disconcertingly cheerful considering one of our beloved main cast members died and had his body stolen like two minutes ago.

Finally, Kirk tracks Finnegan down to a small ledge and once again demands that Finnegan give him some answers. Finnegan’s response to this is to jump off the ledge, onto Kirk. So begins a long fight scene in the desert dust. Kirk gives it a good show, but Finnegan seems indomitable. He knocks Kirk flat and then stands over him, taunting Kirk about how Kirk went and got old while Finnegan is still a twenty-year-old college student in fine fighting form. Well...a twenty-year-old in fine fighting form, at any rate. He’s got way too much energy to be a college student.

Despite being Super Old, Kirk gets back up and continues the fight. This time he’s the one who knocks Finnegan down, and Finnegan promptly starts moaning about how he can’t feel his leg and Kirk has broken his back. This is, of course, a trick, and as soon as he gets the chance he flips Kirk over onto his back. Somehow, between landing on the ground and getting a close-up, Kirk manages to rip his shirt clean off most of his torso.

[ID: 1. Kirk landing on his back in the dirt while Finnegan begins to get up from the ground nearby. 2. Kirk laying flat on his back, bruised, with his shirt torn off one shoulder almost to his stomach.]

how did you even do that

He lays there, seemingly unconscious, and Finnegan starts laughing about how Kirk can sleep now, sleep as much as he wants, sleep forever and forever. Oh. Uh. That got creepy.

Luckily for Kirk, a commercial break happens, and by the time it’s over, he’s recovered somewhat. He gets up and says, once again, that he wants answers. Finnegan tells him to earn them and throws dirt in his face, and they start going at it. Again. Seriously, this fight lasts for a long time.

Eventually, they come to a halt, both disheveled, bleeding, and covered in dirt. “Kinda makes up for things, huh, Jim?” Finnegan asks. I don’t know if the “things” are Finnegan’s bullying back in the day or everything that’s gone wrong today—or maybe both. Hard to say, because when Kirk questions him yet again, Finnegan says, “I never answer questions from plebes,” causing Kirk, clearly at his breaking point now, to bellow “I’M...NOT...A PLEBE!” as only William Shatner could.

Kirk asks Finnegan why the hell he’s here, magically still a cadet just hanging out on a supposedly uninhabited planet, which is pretty weird, y’know. Finnegan says he’s “being exactly what you expect me to be.” Which is more information than Finnegan’s provided so far, but not enough to dissuade Kirk from getting back up and finally giving Finnegan a right good sock on the jaw.

As he stands there catching his breath, Spock suddenly appears and asks if Kirk enjoyed his fight. Well, I say suddenly. It seems suddenly, but honestly he could have been standing there for the past ten minutes playing a trumpet and wearing light-up sneakers and I doubt Kirk would have noticed during that fight.

Kirk admits that yeah, actually, he did enjoy that. He’s been wanting to beat up Finnegan for years now and he finally got the chance and damn, it felt good. Spock says that this all fits into his theory: that these things and people are showing up because the Enterprise crew were thinking about them. You don’t say? I’m kind of amazed it took them this long to realize that, honestly. I mean, if something becomes relevant soon after I happened to be thinking about it I immediately notice it because that kind of thing strikes you as odd, right? And if something literally appeared in front of me right after I mentioned it, I think my immediate instinct would be to ask for something else just to see what would happen, which in this case would rather give the game away.

Anyway, Spock says that they must all control their thoughts, which is definitely a thing humans can do under pressure. He thinks that everything is being manufactured below ground and placed above via a system of secret tunnels, kind of like Disneyland. Then he starts talking about the tiger Rodriguez encountered—and said tiger immediately shows up nearby. Great job controlling your thoughts, Spock!

Apparently, Shatner wanted Kirk to wrestle this tiger, but basic sense prevailed and he was talked out of it. I wonder how that conversation went. “I gotta fight the tiger! It’s what this Kirk guy’s all about! I know, I’ve studied him!”

Luckily Kirk and Spock make their getaway without anyone having to fight the tiger. As they run back to The Glade, the airplane returns for another strafing run, so they have to outrun that too. Then, because I guess this is the part where all the previous bosses return and you have to fight them again, the samurai appears as well, but Kirk and Spock don’t have any time for that so they just push him over and keep going without even slowing down.

Back in The Glade, Barrows is in her uniform again and sadly hanging up the princess clothes on some branches. Her ripped collar seems to now be on the other side. Man, there’s just magic clothes all over this episode. And just to make Barrows’s day even worse, a leering mustachioed man appears in the brush behind her—Don Juan, one presumes. Man, somebody had a really weird idea of what women fantasize about.

Barrows screams and Sulu and Rodriguez rush over to rescue her—Sulu seems to be hoping that just kind of waving his hands around in the air will do the trick. Before yet another fight scene can break out, Kirk and Spock show up and tell everyone to stop this nonsense, at which point Don Juan just kind of obligingly leaves.

Kirk tells everyone to stand at attention and to not breathe or think. I hope he has some kind of plan beyond that because that is not a sustainable course of action. I mean, that’s how you get a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Or just some passed-out crew. Incidentally, Rodriguez is here, but Marteller is nowhere to be seen. What happened to her? Is she dead? Did he just leave her laying in the woods somewhere? I have no idea, because she never gets mentioned again.

So the crew lines up and tries desperately not to think about tigers or samurai or vintage guns or airplanes or Don Juan or fancy princess clothes or talking rabbits or old flames or college rivals or anything else, and while they’re doing this an old man in blue robes suddenly appears.

[ID: Kirk, still bruised with a badly torn shirt, looking in surprise at a kindly-looking white man with white hair, wearing a blue robe with gold leaf embroideries on the chest and cuffs.]

Dangit! Which one of you was thinking of an old man in blue robes?

The man, who seems to know everyone’s names, introduces himself as the caretaker of the planet. He apologizes for all their troubles and says that ‘they’ only realized just now that the Enterprise crew didn’t understand what was going on—that everything that happened was only meant to amuse and entertain them. On this planet, you can imagine any kind of experience you want, and it’ll happen. Spock calls it an amusement park, and then explains to everyone else that that’s ‘an old Earth term’ for a place where people went to have fun experiences. Wait, does that mean that amusement parks don’t exist anymore? Why not? When did we lose our amusement park capabilities? Man, I don’t know about this future, guys.

The Caretaker says Spock has got it right—this is basically one giant amusement park. The whole planet, in fact, was constructed for the Caretaker’s people to come and play. Sulu expresses surprise at the idea that a species that seems to be so advanced would still play games, but Kirk says that on the contrary, the more advanced the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play, and the Caretaker agrees. Okay, cool planet, guys, but have you considered maybe, I dunno, putting up some signs or warning buoys or something so random space travelers who don’t know what the place is about don’t stumble upon it and have a really bad day?

Speaking of having bad days, Kirk might have his answers now, but he’s not exactly happy about his best friend and CMO getting killed by what was more or less a rogue audio-animatronic. But then who should call out but the CMO himself, who comes strolling over, looking decidedly not dead. Also he has a couple scantily-clad women with him for some reason.

[ID: McCoy saying, “Possibly because no one has died, Jim,” as he stands in front of the pond arm-in-arm with two women wearing fluffy bikinis, feathers in their hair, and what looks like a feather boa wrapped around one leg; one woman is in pink and the other in yellow.]

McCoy says he was taken below ground for ‘repairs’ and that there’s a huge factory complex down there that can make absolutely anything. They even fixed his shirt! So McCoy is fine, and we can call off the mourning, what a relief. Phew. Really had me worried there.

Barrows, though, seems less than amused by the fuzzy girls and asks what’s up with that. McCoy mutters something about a cabaret he visited that had these chorus girls and, well, here they are. Really? That’s what you were thinking about, after being brought back from the dead by an advanced alien civilization in an underground factory? A cabaret you went to once? These people have weird priorities.

This is one part of the episode that strikes me as interesting because it’s quite different from how I would expect a more modern sci-fi story to handle it. The idea of a planet-sized super-advanced alien theme park that can generate whatever you’re thinking about is in itself not a story idea I’d be surprised to encounter today. But the idea that all these creations are mechanical replicas built in a giant underground factory kind of is. You’d expect a race as advanced as that to be using, I dunno, holograms or telepathic projections or just something that’s straight-up never explained. I mean, even by the time of TNG we have regular humans using holodecks, which do everything this planet can do with just hard light or whatever. It’s a sort of linear thought process, I think, which shows up more than once in Star Trek and plenty of other sci-fi, wherein the idea of super-advanced alien/future tech is expressed as “okay think of what we can do right now, and then imagine it could be done faster and better.” Rather than taking a sideways step to imagine some completely new technology, it’s basically “well we have factories that can produce artificial things, so the advanced aliens must have bigger factories that can quickly produce more lifelike artificial things.” Of course, all sci-fi is going to have that to some extent because it’s impossible to completely extricate our imaginations from our current understanding of the world. But sometimes it’s especially obvious.

McCoy, seeing Barrows’s expression, turns the fuzzy girls loose to go pester the rest of the crew. Kirk is curious about the Caretaker’s species, but the Caretaker gently says that he doesn’t think humans are ready to understand them yet. But Uhura calls Kirk to say that ship power and communications are back on, and the Caretaker says that the crew is free to take their shore leave on the planet if they want. Well, that’s nice of them. Not everyone would share their planet-sized amusement park with total strangers.

So Kirk tells the shore leave parties to start beaming down. Spock says that he’s had quite enough excitement and is going to go back and hold the fort on the ship, and Kirk almost overrules him and says that he’ll go instead because as the captain he’s not allowed to have fun. But then he sees Ruth approaching in the distance and decides that, you know what, he’ll stay after all. Personally it seems to me that knowing that the long-lost love you were smooching was actually a plastic simulacrum of them would kind of take the joy out of it, but hey, what do I know about these things. I just hope they explain the ‘anything you think of will immediately appear’ situation to everyone before they come down, or any crewmembers with an anxiety disorder are going to get a nasty surprise.

Some time later, everyone returns to the ship, looking quite refreshed and happy. As Kirk, McCoy, Sulu and Barrows come onto the bridge, Spock asks if they enjoyed their shore leave, and they all agree that they did, very much. “Most illogical,” Spock comments. I don’t know what exactly he finds illogical about that, but then that pretty much is Spock’s fall-back way of expressing disapproval regardless of how much sense it makes.

So everyone laughs, and they fly off, and we have a nice happy ending. The filming of Shore Leave itself was rather less happy. The original script was written by Theodore Sturgeon, but Roddenberry thought it contained too much fantasy, so he handed it off to Gene L. Coon for a rewrite—but in some sitcom-worthy misunderstanding, Coon somehow thought that Roddenberry wanted more fantasy. So Roddenberry himself wound up re-rewriting the script, but at that point they were so out of time that he was writing it while the episode was being filmed. I have no idea exactly what levels of ‘fantasy’ were involved in either version of the script that Roddenberry disliked so much. Unicorns? Werewolves? Women characters not getting harassed by mustachioed stalkers for no real reason? Who knows.

The script also called for an elephant along with the tiger, and an elephant was actually hired and brought to set, but various shooting difficulties meant that it never wound up getting filmed. No word on whether Shatner wanted to wrestle the elephant too.

You may also have noticed Kirk suddenly has a new yeoman seemingly replacing Rand. By this point, Rand had been written out of the series; Balance of Terror was the last episode she would appear in (in filming order, The Conscience of the King was the last episode Grace Lee Whitney worked on). Exactly why the decision was made to write Rand out so unceremoniously is not really clear to me, and there seem to be lot of differing viewpoints on it; one thing that is clear is that it was a huge blow to poor Whitney, who was abruptly dismissed from the show through no fault of her own. To be honest, I don’t personally think that Rand was written especially well most of the time, but I think that she could have been written well, which is what makes it such a shame that she was removed from the show without getting the chance to get any real character development. Within the show itself, there’s no reason given for Rand just being gone one day (people just appear and disappear at random on this ship), though I’m sure the EU has that covered. Personally I just hope she found a ship that was a lot less stressful to be a woman on. We’ll miss ya, Rand!

TREK TROPE TALLY: We’ve got one crewmember death, followed by one crewmember un-death, plus one truly incredible case of a Uniform Unformed with Kirk’s shirt magically destroying itself between shots. Next time we’ll finally see some shuttle action in The Galileo Seven.

#star trek #star trek TOS #star trek TOS season one #1.15 Shore Leave

68 notes · View notes

earlygreyhot · 4 years

Text

Healing Part One : Disaster

Trigger Warning: Death and Grief, Violence

Notes: OC / Bones ; Slow Burn ; This is my first fic that I am posting... this idea came to me in the shower last night, Adria is an original character I have had in my mind for a longgggg time. Hope you all enjoy it, let’s see where this goes.

Adria Estelle is CMO aboard the U.S.S Wakefield, engaged to the first officer. Tragedy strikes, and her world is turned upside down. Will her life ever regain normalcy?

Adria woke up to a warm body next to her, an arm wrapped around her waist. She smiled as she removed her fiance’s hand from her stomach and slowly got out of bed.

“Ugh. Already time for our shift?” The man rose up, rubbing his eyes and running a hand through his hair.

“Well, if you didn’t insist on keeping us up late last night you wouldn’t feel so bad.” She quipped, leaning in for a morning kiss.

“You weren’t complaining last night.” His green eyes wore a mischievous glint, and he pulled her down onto the bed.

“Damian, we can’t be late. Captain Rand said we have an important mission today.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him up with her.

“You’re no fun.” He laughed as he tickled her and ran to their shared bathroom, shutting the door before she could retaliate.

Once they were dressed, they ran to the mess hall for a quick breakfast. They sat with the rest of the bridge crew, including Captain Rand and chief science officer T’lon. Adria, Damian and T’lon had been close since the academy, and had been assigned to the Wakefield together.

T’lon and Adria were discussing a new method of identifying alien bacteria, while the Captain and Damian were discussing today’s business. They all headed to the bridge before debriefing on the mission at hand.

“Ambassador Sarek is currently on the Enterprise with Kirk and his crew. The Klingons have been attacking federation colonies and border planets, killing thousands. We are to assist the Enterprise to make sure everyone walks out of this alive. Everyone needs to be on top of their game.” Captain Rand stood in front of her crew, looking confident. Adria was always grateful for her mentor, who knew how to inspire the crew to be their best.

She absentmindedly played with the ring on her left finger, and Damian came up behind her.

“We’ll be okay baby, we have dealt with much worse than some Klingons.” He lightly touched her back and went to his post next to Captain Rand.

He always knew how to calm her down, without showing too much to the rest of the crew.

T’lon followed Adria onto the transporter, and they shared a glance.

“Adria, it would be illogical to let emotion interfere with duty. The Enterprise is the most efficient ship in the galaxy, we are only being sent as a formality.” T’lon nodded encourangingly towards her friend.

“Yeah, logic blah blah. You are just excited to meet your hero Spock.” Adria laughed good heartedly before stepping off the lift.

“Commander Spock is a very efficient and logical officer. It will be an honor to meet him.”

Adria swore she could see green tints on her friend’s ears.

“Sure. I will check in with you when I am done getting med bay ready. I am sure a red shirt has caused some trouble already today.” She turned in the direction of medbay, leaving her friend to head to the labs.

“Dr. Estelle and Commander T’lon, please report to the bridge.” The captain’s voice echoed across medbay. Adria had just finished a skin regeneration session on an engineer, who burned his entire right arm somehow. She was pretty sure she knew every engineer by name now, as many times as they were her patients.

She made her way to the lift, intercepting T’lon on the way.

“You ready for this?” Adria asked, trying to hide her nerves.

“I am surrounded by many of the best officers in Starfleet, and good friends. I do not see any reason we should fail in our mission today, Adria.” T’lon lightly patted her friends arm before stepping onto the bridge.

Damian winked at Adria before turning back to the Captain. A blonde man’s face was on the screen, and she recognized the infamous Captain Kirk. She saw a tall Vulcan standing behind him, and glanced over to T’lon, choosing not to comment on the green tint on her friend’s face.

“Well, looks like the gang’s all here Captain Rand. Let me introduce you and your crew to the away team that will be joining me on planet.” Kirk gave off a lot of confidence, but it was cockier than Rand’s.

“First Officer Spock and Dr. McCoy here will be joining me, while my crew monitors us from above.” He pointed to each of them, and they both nodded respectfully.

“Thank you Captain. I will be joined by First Officer Paul-” Damian bowed his head to his hero, Kirk. “,Dr. Estelle and Commander T’lon.”

“Confirmed. Well, we will get to the planet in about an hour. I will check in once we are there so that we can coordinate our away teams. Kirk out.” The screen went black.

Captain Rand turned to her crew. “Well, you heard him, let’s get ready people.”

An hour later Adria was heading back up to the bridge with her medical bag. She had changed into her fancy clothes, as she called them, and was greeted on the bridge by Damian. His brown hair was perfectly styled, and his green eyes were complimented by the command formal wear. As she got close, he whispered into her ear “You should wear this more often.” He winked before going back to his duties. She tried to hide her blush before heading over to the captain.

“Doctor, I wanted to warn you about something. You will be working with CMO McCoy, who can be one grumpy son of a bitch. He is a great doctor, though, and I know you will be able to keep a cool head around him.” The captain smirked at her chief medical officer.

“Well, you know me Captain, I am known for my cool head.” Adria tried not to remember the countless times she has lost her temper.

Kirk called a few minutes later, and they confirmed the meet up location. The away team made their way to the transporter room, and Adria felt the familiar sensation of the teleporter.

The planet wasn’t much, red sand and simple stone buildings, but the weather was beautiful. Three suns hung in the sky, but a cool breeze kept it from being too hot.

They made their way to the Enterprise team, and performed formal greetings. Spock, T’lon and Sarek were in a deep discussion, but Adria made her way over to Dr. McCoy.

“Doctor.” Adria held out a hand to shake.

“Dr. Easel was it?” The man looked like he woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

“Estelle.” The woman said dryly. He finally took her hand and grunted.

“Well, you know the drill. If something goes wrong -which, knowing Jim, it will- we’ll patch up the idiots that get themselves injured.” With that encouraging speech, McCoy lugged his bag into the building in front of them.

“Great talk.” Adria rolled her eyes and turned to Damian, who had just finished talking to Kirk.

Before she could say anything, Kirk approached her.

“Ah, Adria is it?” He held out a hand and quirked his eyebrow.

“Er- yes Captain. Dr. Estelle, CMO of the Wakefield.” She reached out a hand, and he kissed the top of it without breaking eye contact.

“Please, call me Jim. Maybe if we get some free time you and I can see how much trouble we can get into, huh?” He winked at her.

“Well, Jim, if we are forgoing formalities you can call me future Mrs. Damian Paul.” She reached out for her fiance, who had a stern look on his face.

“Oops! No disrespect, commander. Maybe at the end of this I can get an invite to the wedding? I would be honored.” The captain sauntered into the doorway of the stone complex.

“Hey, what can I say? Don’t meet your heroes.” Adria laughed at Damian’s deflated face before pulling him into the building.

The day was spent mostly planning, going over complex intergalactic politics, and boring Adria to death.

“What I wouldn’t give for a full medbay right now.” She sighed and leaned into her seat.

“You can come take over the Enterprise medbay for a day and see if you still say that.”

Shit, she forgot McCoy was even sitting next to her. His face was a mix of boredom and crankiness.

“Well, doctor, I wouldn’t want to take your job away when they realize I am much better at it. It wouldn’t be right.” Adria smirked before turning her attention back to Captain Rand’s presentation.

She missed McCoy’s shocked expression, which turned into bemusement.

They all headed back to their ships for the night, and Damian planned a nice quiet night in.

They laid on the couch and watched a few old Earth movies, drinking hot chocolate and eating junk food. He held her close to him, like if he let her go she would disappear.

“What’s wrong baby?” She could feel the tension in his body.

“Well, I know if I lied you could tell immediately, so I guess I have to say it.” He paused before looking into her eyes.

“Just, what if something happens? I can’t help thinking this seems like a trap. The Klingon’s all of a sudden want to meet for peace talks? They ask to meet on a border planet in a zone where we are the only ship besides the Enterprise in range? It just seems sketchy.” He rubbed his forehead.

“Damian, look at me. Even if it is a trap, we have the best Captains and crew in Starfleet here. If the Klingons try to start anything, we will be ready.” She kissed him deeply while rubbing some of the tension out of his shoulders.

“You’re right, it is just hard not to be anxious about this. I don’t know how you are so calm about this stuff.” He ran a hand through her hair.

“Well, my fiance is pretty amazing. I know I am always safe with him. Also, I have a Vulcan best friend. She keeps me pretty grounded.” She smiled before leaning in for another kiss, this time Damian deepened it.

“I know another way I can make you feel.” He said in a low voice. He leaned in to kiss her again.

Luckily they weren’t up too late this time.

The next morning they all ate breakfast together before returning to the planet. Captain Rand and Kirk revealed that they were the only one’s allowed in the actual talks, and that the rest of the team should stay outside the ballroom.

“Is that normal procedure, Captain?” Damian asked, clearly concerned.

“The Klingons have never agreed to peace talks, we must respect their wishes if this is to go anywhere. We will escort Sarek and participate if needed. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious, though.”

With that they moved into their positions.

After a few hours of talks between the Klingon ambassadors, the neutral planet’s representatives, and Sarek, Adria was bored out of her mind.

T’lon and Spock had been in deep conversation, last Adria heard they were talking about an old Vulcan philosopher they both admired.

Damian was being extra vigilant, staring over his shoulder at the slightest noise.

Dr. McCoy sat with his arms crossed, looking like he would fall asleep at any moment.

“Damian, you are going to get yourself worked up. Why don’t you take a seat?” Adria tapped next to her.

Damian looked at her, about to reply, before loud bangs started erupting from the room.

They all ran to the doors, right when Kirk emerged carrying Sarek out of the room.

“Where is Captain Rand?!” Damian demanded.

“The Klingons started firing on us, it is too smoky in there to see anything. I think she is still in there. The Klingons killed the neutral ambassadors before firing on Sarek. I saw teleport beams through the smoke, I think they are gone now.”

Sarek was unconscious, but after a quick vital check Adria determined he was fine.

“Let’s get him back to the Enterprise for evaluation.” Adria instructed. Spock accompanied his father back to the ship.

Damian emerged from the meeting room, looking destroyed.

“No.” Was all Adria could manage before she tried to run into the room. T’lon and Damian grabbed her arms.

She kept shaking her head, while wiping the tears falling from Damian’s eyes.

“Who- what? No no no no.” Adria wrapped her arms around Damian as he tried to come up with a sentence.

“Damian. Look. At. Me.” She grabbed his chin and pointed his face to her.

“Our captain is dead. The Klingons killed her in cold blood. You are the captain of the Wakefield now, you need to step up. She would not want us to forsake our duty. You and T’lon need to get back to the ship to inform the crew and figure out our next steps. I will stay here with the Enterprise team and check for any survivors.” Adria kept eye contact with her lover, knowing that this was the only way to calm him down.

He stood up straight, and pulled her into a deep kiss.

“I love you. Please be careful” He squeezed her hands.

“I love you too, Captain Paul. I will see you soon, okay?” She smiled and let go of him.

T’lon squeezed Adria’s arm and gave her a meaningful look.

“Use your mind Adria, do not let your emotions cloud your reasoning.”

That meant I love you in T’lon speak.

Adria waved goodbye to the two most important people in her life before turning to the rest of the team.

Kirk stood in shock, covered in ash and a few rips in his shirt.

“Captain, we need to look for any survivors in that room.”

Kirk just nodded and Adria threw herself into her work.

She and McCoy checked pulses, moving around the room quickly. The smoke was starting to clear, and a yellow dress shirt stood out in the back of the room.

Adria slowly made her way over to her Captain’s body.

Rand’s eyes were still open, her hand on her phaser belt. She was shot down before she could react. Blood splattered her neck and chest, and she was twisted in an unnatural position.

Adria closed her Captain’s eyes.

“Thank you, Christine. I wish you could be there to officiate our wedding like we planned. I wish you could retire with your husband and kids. I wish this could be different.”

A tear escaped her eye, before she put her brave face back on.

McCoy came behind her.

“She was a good Captain.”

“I know.”

A call came in from the Enterprise, and Kirk picked it up.

“Captain! We are being attacked by Klingon ships. We have lost comms with the Wakefield.” A man spoke across the communicator.

“Sulu, three to beam up. Now!”

They emerged onto an unfamiliar transporter platform, and Adria followed McCoy and Kirk as they ran to the bridge.

She kept trying to reach Damian and T’lon, to no avail.

“Damian! Answer me now! Have you been boarded?”

Finally a soft response came over the comm.

“Adria…. Trap….” T’lon’s voice sounded heavy and weak.

Kirk turned to Adria, after instructing his communications officer to try all frequencies.

“Trap? Shit! Are they boarded? Try to reach them again.” Kirk demanded.

“Damian, it's Adria. Please pick up. What is going on over there?”

“Captain, video message from the Wakefield incoming.” The communications officer spoke urgently.

“Put it on!”

Adria’s worst nightmare came true.

Standing on screen was a Klingon, holding Damian by the hair. Gun fire and screams could be heard in the background.

“Captain Kirk, this is a message for you and your Federation scum. We easily overtook this ship, the crew stood no chance against us. If the Federation does not bend to our will, we will destroy your entire Starfleet just as easily.”

The Klingon dragged Damian back so that he was in full view. Adria saw the lifeless body of T’lon in the background. She squeezed onto the bar in front of her so that she would not faint. She knew any sign of weakness in front of the Klingons would be a mistake.

“This crew is the first to die, and they will not be the last.” The Klingon raised his blade into the air.

“Adria, I love you so much baby I’m so sor-” Damian’s eyes widened as the Klingon’s blade pierced his chest. His yellow shirt turned red as he fell to the ground.

Adria saw black.

#leonard mccoy #star trek #star trek tos #original character #bones #Dr. McCoy #angst #fanfiction #Star Trek fanfic

0 notes