cimorene

tavella wanted to know yesterday what the slashiest scene in all of star trek is. i'd highly recommend that everyone go watch it for themselves, because it's very cute, and it can be found in the first tos movie, star trek: the motion picture, a bit more than halfway through, i think. maybe even more towards the end than that. i must warn you, to be fair, that on the whole the movie sucks so much ass that it's actually painful to watch. we're not talking on the scale of st v, either, which was a shatner project and thus unsurprisingly was so bad that it was actually amusing. no, no, this is just really really. bad. and mediocre. mischaracterized, somewhat boring, poorly costumed (::shudder::). and yet--entirely WORTH IT, for this scene alone.

the scene:

spock has been called back to the enterprise on the verge of completing a religious/philosophical vulcan cleansing-of-emotion thing that would leave him in pure logic with no emotion left. jim, of course, was understandably a little hurt by this, as they've been friends a long time and the whole "how human is spock?" debate was a little more serious than it often appeared on the surface. the tension between them is palpable. they're not speaking. spock nearly reduces jim to tears, or possibly a temper tantrum. then he takes it upon himself to risk his life by going inside v'ger, the evil space probe, and mind-melding to try to undertand its motivation. it spits him back out, nearly dead, and he's in sickbay, awake, with a burningly urgent new knowledge of v'ger. he can understand, all of a sudden, that emotion is important. he gasps, as if with his last breath, and reaches up to grip jim's arm and shoulder, gazes deeply into his eyes, and says huskily, "this--simple--feeling--" squeezing jim's shoulder-- "is beyond v'ger's comprehension." and slips back into unconsciousness.

Chapel looked up, frowning. "A living machine?"

Kirk hardly spared her a glance. "It considers the Enterprise a living machine. That's why the probe refers to our ship as an entity." He knew his calm was slipping. For an instant, Spock had looked at him--really looked at him-- and the need to see that look again was reducing him to distraction.

"I saw Vejur's planet," Spock murmured, lost deep in reverie. "A planet populated by living machines. Unbelievable technology. Vejur has knowledge that spans this universe."

His eyes found Kirk's then, his next words a confession heavy with remembered grief not his own. "And yet, with all its pure logic, Vejur is barren. Cold." His voice broke; he seemed suddenly, astonishingly to be on the brink of tears. "No mystery," Spock whispered, still as if they were utterly alone. "No beauty." His eyes drifted closed, exhaustion overtaking him. "I should have known."

Stunned, Kirk felt as if he'd run head on into a grav chamber set for three g's. An echo of memory flushed suddenly hot through his body: You are so beautiful, I do not have words for it. "Known?" he managed finally, though it came out in a strangled, stranger's voice. "Known what?" His hands were on the Vulcan's shoulders--how had that happened? "Spock."

"Captain." McCoy tried to make him back off.

Kirk almost snarled at him. "Bones--!" Then he was shaking the Vulcan, pleading with him, not caring that his command composure was shot to hell. "Spock, what should you have known? What should you have known?" For an instant he thought Spock had lapsed into unconsciousness or sleep, and he despaired. Please...

Dark eyes opened then, full of starlight.

"Jim," he said, as if it were an answer to every question ever asked. And his hand closed on Kirk's bicep, then slid down his arm--took his hand, touching him gently in a place no one else had ever touched, a place James Kirk hadn't been touched in almost three years. Kirk held very still. A tremor ran through him, and Spock's voice washed over him in a low, devastating, intimate ripple of certainty. "This... simple feeling... is beyond Vejur's comprehension."

The captain of the Enterprise could not speak. He smiled unsteadily because he could not help himself, and closed his other hand over Spock's, heat rising powerfully behind his eyes. At last he nodded, struggling to control himself, acknowledging the unspoken promise.

full circle, the sequel to turning point, another melodrama of similar proportions.

and while i'm at it, i should definitely elaborate further on the suckiness of star trek five. this movie sucked so much that it was actually hysterically funny. i wouldn't have missed seeing it for the world. it was full of delightful inconsistencies, bizarre mischaracterizations, bad dialogue, wholly surreal scenes, etc.

ellen_fremedon's brilliant parody of it, "life is but a dream," spackles all these problems neatly and with even more intensely giggle-inducing humor. i highly reccomend it to anyone at all. i think the only place it exists online thus far is in the ASCEML archives (here), but maybe ellen has it elsewhere. or maybe she'd let me put it up? ::hopeful look::

[EDIT: AHA! found it! "life is but a dream." go read it, everyone! right now!]