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.)
Reblogging for the excellent commentary AND this line which I want to be engraved on my headstone:
“…
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?”
I feel like our economy has been driven by mass production for so long that we’ve forgotten just how intensely time-consuming making things by hand is. Mass production was revolutionary for a reason. It DRASTICALLY reduced the cost of things. And I’m all for making things more affordable! But the problem arises when people decide they want something handmade for the cost of something mass produced. People get an idea in their mind “this is how much x item should cost” when in actuality that’s how much a machine made version of that thing costs. Then they hear the price of something made entirely by hand and think “that person is ripping me off.” If you want something handmade, you have to compensate the person making it fairly.
13 years ago today, Pepsi’s Super Bowl commercial starring Beyoncé, BritneySpears, Pink & Enrique Iglesias was premiered. #PepsiGladiators
Damn these were simpler times
so lemme break this down
-lord caesar iglesias, who does not sing in this musical commercial, has captured britney spears, pink, and beyonce to battle it out gladiator style -our trio decides instead of fighting, they will instead rock so hard that the audience forgets about their battle to the death -their musical prowess is so damn powerful they rock the foundation of the earth and overthrow caesar iglesias along with his stash of ancient roman pepsi -beyonce, britney spears, and pink drink pepsi while the audience cheers -enrique iglesias is eaten by a lion
To really appreciate the significance of this commercial, it’s important to understand the cultural context surrounding it.
OK, so to some extent musicans have always been treated like competitors in modern culture (and perhaps to some extent they are) but this was especially pronounced in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
It seemed like everyone had an opinion about whether Backstreet Boys or N’Sync was better, and for female pop singers, it was even more ridiculous. And it was all pushed HARD by entertainment news and media.
I first became aware of this as a young teenager when Christina Aguilera released her first hit single. You have to understand that just months before that, Brittany Spears had hit the Top 40 scene BIG. Nobody could even handle this young singer with her hypnotic voice, clean choreography, masterfully engineered and modern-sounding instrumentals, and flawless skin.
And then some OTHER singer with blonde hair has the nerve to think she can ALSO make pop music?! Obviously these two must be the bitterest of rivals!! (Ignoring the fact that it was the same people writing the music, and the two already knew each other from their days on the New Mickey Mouse Club.)
Magazines, radio shows, and television entertainment “news” all served up this narrative and ate it up like it was an all-you-can-eat-everyday buffet. And it extended beyond Brittany and Christina to practically any female pop “queen.” Because after all, there can only be ONE queen, right? RIGHT?!
OK, so now imagine this scenario where you’ve got an American audience who, for years now, has been fed the line that these singers are all bitter rivals. They just all HATE each other, y’all! In fact, if given the opportunity, they’d probably kill each other to finally get rid of the competition.
And then this commercial comes out, and we see the three most popular and polarizing female pop singers of the day, DRESSED IN ACTUAL(totally unrealistic, impractical, and unhelpful) GLADIATOR GEAR, ARMED AND READY TO FINALLY BATTLE IT OUT ONCE AND FOR ALL!!
…And of course they don’t. Because they were never each other’s enemies in the first place. It was the people pulling the strings who were driving that narrative and baying for blood. The singers just wanted to make awesome music, and most of the audience just wanted to listen to awesome music.
So Pepsi basically pays for this huge cinematic allegory music video that basically calls out the entertainment news industry for its crappy treatment of these women, and a lot of people GET IT! There’s this huge positive reaction to the video, not just because the music is great, but because it resonated with so many people who wanted to shout, “YEAH! WE’RE TIRED OF ALL THIS CRAP TOO!”
Now, did the people at Pepsi know that’s the message they were sending when they created this commercial? I honestly have no idea. But I have to believe the singers all knew exactly what they were doing, because you can see it in the smiles on their faces.
If you have time to read this excellent analysis please do.
My new line of plushes, the Beshoulders, is now live! This line of beholderkin loves to sit on your shoulders to go on fun adventures with you. Pick from Moxie, Cantrip, Angor, or Amorette as they each have their own distinct look and personality. Plus they are 100% handsewn with love and passion! I hope you guys love them as much as I do. 😀
Plot Designing 