Kirk Your Enthusiasm (2)

By: Mark Kingwell
July 31, 2012

Second in a series of posts, each one analyzing a single Captain Kirk scene from the Star Trek canon.

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Kirk teaches his drill thrall to kiss | “The Gamesters of Triskelion” | Star Trek: The Original Series | Season 2, Episode 16 | January 1968

Yes, there are other scenes where Captain Kirk gets lucky with an alien babe in Mod Sixties styling. Shahna the drill thrall is not even among the comeliest of Kirk’s intergalactic eye-candy cabaret. For me, it is a toss-up between Deela, the accelerated Scalosian queen in “Wink of an Eye,” who wears a slitty dress from shoulder to ankle held together with a little belt, and the android Andrea in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” who sports the always-practical backless jumpsuit. I also retain an unsettling interspecies longing for the human version of Gary Seven’s cat-familiar, Isis, in “Assignment Earth.”

And sure, there are lots of scenes where Kirk’s well-muscled physique is exposed to view, whether through torn tunic or amid sick-bay fistfight. Here his manly hairless chest is laid bare by being forced into some kind of SF-S/M drag, with an invisible-fence obedience collar that looks like a decorative choker sported on bottoms-up night. Everyone else is dressed like extras in a Lady Gaga video.

And true, there are many episodes that combine goofy dialogue with attempts at guile in order for clever Kirk to exit sticky situation / prison cell / standoff with numerically superior foes. The interaction here is less spirited than the invented-card-game baffling of Bella Oxmix’s gangsters in “A Piece of the Action,” and not as comprehensive as the Nazi role-playing in “Patterns of Force.”

But this is still the best TOS episode of all time. Bringing so many iconic elements together, even in imperfect versions, creates a perfect storm of TOS joy. In addition to green-haired pin-up, bared torso, and boffo escape scheme, there are the following essential elements: sudden unexplained abduction; awkward Chekhov-accent comedy; pointlessly contrived combat whose rules aren’t followed anyway; aliens who lack basic understanding of basic Earth concepts; enforced ignorance and punishment devices for maintaining it; disembodied aliens who make mortals their playthings; and moral lesson about human weakness, hence superiority, transposed onto said aliens.

The perfection begins with a little beat in Shahna’s dialogue. “What is… beautiful?” she asks when Kirk tells her he’s “never seen a top sergeant who looks like you.” There is a trenchant philosophical moment when the only definition he can offer is her own reflection in a ration tray: “Beautiful.” Later, deploring her acceptance of thralldom, Kirk calls love “the most important thing on Earth, especially to a man and a woman.” Game on! When Shahna, growing ever more curious. is punished by master thrall Galt (sly Ayn Rand allusion?) Kirk demands that he get the shocks instead. She is dumbfounded.

“It’s the custom of my people to help one another when we’re in trouble,” Kirk tells her. Then he kisses her. Of course, why not? “And this. Is this also helping?” shy Shahna wants to know. “You could call it that,” says Kirk, all wry charm. “Please, help me once again.” Again, why not? “I did not know it could be like this between people. Is it always so in the place you come from?”

Alas, no; and not for Kirk and Shahna either. The next time she visits his cell, she is disturbed. “You have made me feel strangely,” she tells Kirk. So he kisses her again — and then punches her lights out to make his escape.

There is a final confrontation between the two when Kirk gambles for his freedom in combat, the disembodied Providers of the space prison having shown themselves to be in thrall to the betting-addiction monster known to Homer Simpson as Gamblor. There are knives held to throats and other phallic action. But Shahna understands now, both the kiss and the deception.

“I would like to go to those lights with you,” Shahna tells Kirk. “Take me?” He can’t, because some things you have to learn yourself, and a kiss is just the beginning. May I help you?

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Kirk Your Enthusiasm (2)

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