Textual Treks

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The--ahem--climax of Ensign George’s participation in this story. Cogswell and Spano carry on for a full page describing her performance, but I’ll spare you that.

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Greth demonstrates his knowledge of anatomy while Cogswell and Spano leer from the sidelines.

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Cogswell and Spano, on the other hand, find her nudity very much worthy of attention.

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Seriously, they’re in hostile territory on a planet that has just erupted in civil war, and Ensign George wants to go for a swim. And Kirk’s sees no problem with it, either. Of course not, he’s just there to help Cogswell and Spano get her naked.

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Cogswell and Spano must have thought it was really cute having Kirk saying this to McCoy, but even a good joke gets stale if you keep repeating it.

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Booze, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.

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This makes no sense. The Messiah isn’t literally hypnotizing them or doing anything else but talking. It’s supposed to be some king of allusion to Hitler, but “He fought for control of his body as it tried to stamp and jerk in cadence with the rest of the puppets...” is going too far and then too far again for good measure. One would expect Kirk’s reaction to be closer to “we’re pilgrims in an unholy land” than to this.

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I do not believe Kirk would ever refer to an ensign as “our little sex machine”.

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I’m not sure exactly what kind of voyeurism this qualifies as, but I’m sure this passage is here more for titillation than anything else.

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Ah, women. It’s amazing they can even function with all those unnatural emotions and things bubbling out at every opportunity. But they manage... somehow.

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Just so we’re clear on the important points. Wouldn’t want anyone unfamiliar with the series mistaking Mbenga, Uhura, Sulu, or Chekov for regular officers instead of black, Oriental, or Russian ones.

I’m sure this is largely a product of the book’s time (and, to be fair, being ‘the Russian’ was Chekov’s shtick), but it’s weird to see in Trek.

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IQ is such an outmoded, 20th-century concept. It’s surely been done away with... nope! IQ is so cool, they’ve invented four more meaningless numbers to mull over: logic quotient, emotional quotient, delusional quotient, and--of course--sensuality quotient. I blame the Eugenics Wars for all this.

And once again, Cogswell and Spano didn’t miss an opportunity to insert some sex stuff into the story. You’ve got to admire their dedication, I guess.

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Even Scotty knows all about pon farr.

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McCoy knows the correct level of inebriation for performing surgery. Just enough to lubricate his thinking and steady his hands.

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This bit of canon has to do with sex, so we can trust Cogswell and Spano to have remembered it.

Wasn’t the whole pon farr thing kind of a shameful Vulcan secret that they kept very much to themselves? I don’t think that everyone in general is aware of this little bit of Vulcan trivia.

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Yeah, the women are supposed to be pining for the captain of the ship, not the first officer!

I’m pretty sure Kirk would never say this, nor call Spock ‘that walking computer’.

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In the Future, of course, all this has been worked out: women’s bodies are there for men’s entertainment. Pity that Ensign George is such a throwback, eh?

Here’s the first sign of another of the book’s major problems: extremely jarring attitudes towards women and sex. Poor Sara’s primary function in this book will be titillation, either of the reader or of some character who needs distracting.