Unknown actress and John Saxon in Planet Earth (1974), one of several unsold pilots developed by Gene Roddenberry in the 1970s.

A hero in more ways than one

Most 70s image of the Star Trek cast ever.

Hmmm I wonder what Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek thinks about all this Kirk/Spock business?

[Interviewer]: “There’s a great deal of writing in the Star Trek movement which compares the relationship between Alexander and Hephaistion* to the relationship between Kirk and Spock - focusing on the closeness of the friendship, the feeling that they would die for one another…”

[Roddenberry]: “Yes, there’s certainly some of that - certainly with love overtones. Deep love. The only difference being, the Greek ideal - we never suggested in the series - physical love between the two. But it’s the - we certainly had the feeling that the affection was sufficient for that, if that were the particular style of the 23rd century.”

AND THEN…

[Roddenberry]:”Oh yes. As I’ve said, I definitely designed it as a love relationship. I think that’s what we’re all about - love, the effort to reach out to each other. I think that’s a lovely thing. Also, dramatically, I designed Kirk and Spock to complete each other - and in fact, the Kirk, Spock McCoy triad to be the dramatic embodiment of the parts of one person: logic, emotion, and the balance between them. You cannot have an internal monologue on the screen, so that is a way of personifying it, getting it out where it can be seen - that internal debate which we all have within. AND I designed Kirk and Spock, as I told you, as dream images of myself, the two halves. But in terms of the characters, yes. That closeness… absolutely.”

He didn’t deny it, so why should you?