The Tantalus Field

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan Moonlit Matinee event

2009-08-21T17:22:00.001-07:00

http://www.showclix.com/shows_listing3.php?event=2674

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Perving with action figures

2009-07-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last week I picked up some older action figures of TOS' Big Three. And, being a slasher, the inevitable occurred. After chiding myself as a perv for abusing children's toys, I promptly reposed the figures and hauled out the camera.

Slashers are a compulsive lot.

However, it was only after someone over at Spock-McCoy Haven discovered a site of a similar ly minded individual that I decided to post a few of my pics ... along with a first-time scene set after the episode, "The Empath," by all reports, DeForest Kelley's personal favorite:

For more than a week after the incident with the Vians, Spock had intended to initiate a discussion with Doctor McCoy about his illogical and unethical impulse to sedate both he and the captain. However, research of the Minaran nova had monopolized the first officer's off-duty hours.

Spock knew, of course, that the doctor had suffered what humans refer to as "a chewing out" from Jim, along with a threat to officially censure the doctor if he ever again attempted to circumvent a senior officer's command position.

At worst, McCoy's actions could have been considered mutinous; at the least, insubordinate. However, Spock immediately concurred with the captain's decision not to officially report McCoy. The vulcan understood both Jim's ire and grudging admiration for the chief medical officer's act.

McCoy had never received Starfleet training to cope with acts of torture. And what the Vians had done to him could not be construed as anything less than torture. Moreover, the Vians had made it clear McCoy's very life was in jeopardy. The doctor himself would never claim to possess an overtly courageous personality.

Nonetheless, Spock found the doctor's act undeniably courageous. Heroic even. Not that the first officer planned to voice such opinions to the human.

When Spock finally confronted the doctor in his office, it was late on delta shift. The doctor still appeared haggard, the half-vulcan noted. He understood the emotional, rather than the physical, residual effects of the torture would negatively impact McCoy for some weeks. Because of that, Spock tempered his criticism of the doctor's insubordinate acts.

Regardless, McCoy rounded on the first officer at the first mention of the Vians and hyposprays.

"I don't want to talk about this, Spock."

The vulcan raised an eyebrow.

"Perhaps tomorrow, doctor?"

"No," McCoy drawled. "Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Never."

The human made a sharp cutting motion with his hand to punctuate the declaration.

"Doctor, I am willing to postpone this discussion until you have fully recovered your emotional and physical equanimity; however, the fact remains that we must eventually reach an understanding that guarantees no future occurrences of such actions," Spock stated dispassionately.

McCoy's brows furrowed dangerously. "My emotional and phys-- Spock, I've got work to do. Don't let the door hit you on your way out."

The first officer's brows dipped toward each other. "Doctor, the doors of the Enterprise are programmed against such an eventu--"

McCoy grabbed the vulcan's forearms and shook him.

"Dammit, Spock. I said no! Now just get out and leave me alone."

The vulcan science officer straightened abruptly, and immediately erected his control shielding against the onslaught of waves of physical and emotional distress spilling through the contact with McCoy.

McCoy's blue eyes were awash with emotion. Dangerously so. Even without a tricorder, it was obvious the good doctor was suffering. Spock considered calling Doctor M'Benga's quarters to render aid, although he suspected that might worsen the situation. McCoy's emotions were unpredictable at the best of times. But now ... even through the shielding, Spock could sense the human's volatility.

Then as abruptly as McCoy grabbed the first officer, he released him with a slight shove then turned sharply away. His hand rose to rub first at his eyes then smooth down hair that was not at all out of order, Spock noted.

"Doctor, you are unwell. Shall I call someone?" Spock asked in a softer tone than normal.

McCoy shook his head violently, still smoothing his hair in nervous agitation.

"Sorry, Spock. I don't know what the hell's wrong with me. Just need rest, I suppose. If you'll excuse me, please--"

"Doctor, you are mistaken if you believe I will leave you alone when it is apparent you require assistance. If you do not desire a member of your medical staff to attend you, perhaps I should call Jim?"

McCoy's shoulders tensed and his hand dropped to his side, the fist curled.

"Jim? What the blazes can Jim do?"

Spock took a hesitant step toward the doctor then retreated.

"He would be concerned if he learned his good friend was suffering from some manner of difficulty alone."

"Don't tell him," the doctor said.

Spock's brows dipped again in confusion.

"Leonard, are you upset with Jim?"

McCoy released a frustrated sigh and stared up at the ceiling a moment before answering.

"No. Of course not. Why would I be?"

"No reason of which I would be aware," Spock answered rationally. "He would wish to offer consolation. He is your friend."

"So are you," McCoy said in a whisper. But Spock's vulcan ears had not failed to catch the comment.

"Unquestionably," the vulcan agreed. "However, as our typical interactions are often fraught with--"

Without warning, McCoy spun around, stepped into Spock's personal space and pulled the vulcan toward him. A pained blue gaze drilled into widened, yet placid, brown eyes.

"No more time for bullshit," McCoy said in a grating voice that wavered somewhere between a snarl and a sob.

Then McCoy's hand glided up the vulcan's painfully straight spine to cup the back of Spock's head, fingers slipping through the sleek black hair. He guided Spock's head to turn to the right. Then the doctor gently pulled the vulcan's head toward him.

Spock had kissed humans before. Leila, Chapel, Uhura. Although those experiences occurred through either coercion or artificial means, he knew how to kiss. Knew how to monitor the activity of his orbicularis oris muscle, could manipulate it to best effect in order to provide safe tactile stimulation necessary for human oral pleasuring.

Kissing human females had not proven a particularly heady experience; had required little in the way of mental shielding. It created considerably less of an emotional flutter than those moments when Jim would grip Spock's forearm or shoulder or slip a supporting arm around his waist, when circumstances warranted. Even kissing Leila, whose intellect, naivete and honest admiration had appealed to him, had not been particularly ... distracting.

Spock was startled to find this was not the case with McCoy. Although manifestations of the doctor's physical and emotional arousal were undoubtedly bleeding through to Spock, the half-vulcan could not deny that the majority of what he was experiencing was not secondary.

He was stimulated.

While a human's initial response to an unwanted romantic overture would be to push away the aggressor, Spock's first instinct was to erect mental shields that would eliminate any reaction to the doctor's activities. The vulcan's failure to respond would quickly communicate itself to the doctor, who would then cease kissing him.

Spock was reluctant to do so because it was obvious that McCoy was suffering considerable emotional upheaval. To reject his advances in such an ... unfeeling manner would only exacerbate the doctor's distress. The logical decision, Spock reasoned, was to judiciously respond to McCoy's overtures until the human could be persuaded to elucidate just what was troubling him.

So Spock logically returned McCoy's kiss. Not surprisingly, the doctor escalated his attentions to the first officer's mouth, his tongue emerging to lick at Spock's closed lips while his fingers carded through the jet black hair, finger pads lightly massaging the scalp beneath them.

Spock's lips did not yield to McCoy's questing tongue, but he did move a hand up toward the doctor's head. What the half-vulcan did not immediately realize was that his fingers had instinctively spread into the standard meld position. Once awareness descended, Spock refrained from actually touching McCoy's head for fear of commencing an automatic, if shallow, link. Such an act would be unethical without McCoy's consent

And at the moment, McCoy did not seem amenable to stopping for a discussion about vulcan telepathic ethics.

Instead, Spock moved his other hand to rest at the doctor's left hip, fingers curling just along the human's gluteus medius muscle. The muscle immediately tensed, jutting the doctor's hips forward. A low growl erupted from McCoy, the breath of which was spent against Spock's still-closed lips.

Spock found it an interesting sound. Not sonorous by any means, but neither was it discordant. He became curious as to whether similar sounds might be produced in a differing register, higher or lower. Just when Spock began to formulate methods to extract such, he simultaneously heard the door to McCoy's office whoosh and a half-strangled cry.

The cry, Spock noted, was delivered in a far higher register than McCoy's growl. The vulcan science officer preferred to more accurately term the cry a squeak. That done, he continued to return the doctor's kiss.

"Bones! Spock?" Jim Kirk cleared his throat, trying to prevent any future squeaks.

McCoy broke the kiss and looked over Spock's right shoulder to see Kirk, a shocked expression on his face, his hand at his forehead as though a migraine was threatening.

"You don't know how to buzz before you barge in?" McCoy spat.

Jim's eyes went wide. Spock bent his head toward McCoy's right ear and whispered a soothing "Leonard, please calm down." Although the vulcan knew he should acknowledge Jim's presence, he believed the best way to defuse the situation was in appeasing McCoy. And remaining in the doctor's embrace, Spock reasoned, was the best way to achieve that goal.

"What? Bones, what's going on? What's the matter with you?" Kirk asked in utter shock and confusion.

Spock lowered his left hand from McCoy's head toward the small of the doctor's back. Without touching, the vulcan released telepathic waves of calm and reassurance to the chief medical officer.

"I may be a doctor, Jim, but I'm not a cloistered monk! So either deal with the ensuing emotional scarring or go get a sedative from Chapel. You never made your move, so get your roving eyes off Spock ..."

Bones' tirade fell off as he watched Jim's shoulders slump and his gaze fall. The doctor's eyes widened and he reached out toward Kirk.

"Jim--" Bones said.

But by the time the name left his lips, Jim spun around and exited McCoy's office.

"Shit."

Spock sighed softly. "An all-encompassing assessment," he said, his baritone emerging in an even deeper register than normal. 'Fascinating,' Spock thought.

McCoy began pulling away, but Spock did not allow it. The doctor, still out of breath from both the kiss and his tirade, pulled his head back slightly to glance at the vulcan.

"Why are you still here?"

"Is it your desire that I go elsewhere?" Spock asked.

The growl sounded again. And it was in a different timbre, Spock recognized--a higher one. This one sounded even more desperate than the last.

Then McCoy kissed him again. It was gentler, Spock judged. He searched his eidetic memory for a better descriptor and swiftly found one.

Needy.

Hardly a typical state of mind for the Leonard McCoy he knew.

Spock knew enough of human psychiatric conditions to recognize this was not a normal case of post-traumatic stress.

This time when McCoy tentatively licked at the vulcan's lips, Spock opened to him. He resolved to indulge the doctor's current needs for seven point five more minutes. Afterward, Spock would escort McCoy to his cabin and ensure he was sufficiently calmed to achieve sleep.

Then the first officer would consult with both the captain and Doctor M'Benga to plan how best to help their mutual friend.

2009-07-08T20:36:00.000-07:00

Was perusing the ether for Karl Urban pix (that I haven't already seen, snagged or upon which I've perpetrated iconage) and happened on a pair of interviews done in New Zealand during the ST XI publicity tour.

Part 1 is with Karl Urban and John Cho. What I found interesting was Karl's musings on the Kirk & McCoy friendship. Nicely put & we slashers would heartily agree.

Part 2 with Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine is even more delightful. Nice things said about Karl Urban, The Shat and, of course, Leonard Nimoy (I'd mentally red-matter anyone who'd say something un-nice about Leonard). But the most enjoyable aspect for me is the comfortable banter between the boys. Check out ZQ's Vulcanesque command of the English language when he feeds Chris a couple BIG words. Ah, that's what happens when you grow up in Pittsburgh, folks! We find reasons to use words like that every freakin' hour--just deliver them replete with a Pittsburgh accent! ;)

Part 2 includes the fun moment when Chris Pine laughingly admits to his man-crush on Karl. He also acknowledges that it's an impossibility for Karl to take a bad photo.

That's an affirmative, Captain.

Karl Urban: Dancing with McCoy Action Figure

2009-07-08T18:36:00.001-07:00

Kevin Costner is nowhere to be found! Fun interview!

Karl Urban Interview

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2009-07-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. I've been meaning to create a blog for Star Trek fics I may (or likely may not) actually finish. But this isn't one of those.

Rather, it's something that assaulted me while reading the fics of Anne Higgins, author of the all-too-wonderful ST XI Kirk/McCoy "No-Win Scenario." In another slashy follow-up tale, she introduces the brilliant idea that Bones uses tribbles in a sedative capacity in sickbay. He actually goes so far as to assign a tribble to every crew member (yeah, even Spock).

Appropriately, Jim Kirk names his tribble: Shitfaced.

For some reason, the whole premise conjured up a very alarming image in my sick brain that Would. Not. Leave. That of Cyrano Jones (for the uninitiated, see TOS "The Trouble with Tribbles") hawking his tribble-y wares in a holovid infomercial. Sincere apologies for perpetrating 23rd-century hack advertising-speak--and for this blog's first post to boot. *hangs head*

Greetings, gentlebeings!

Cyrano Jones here and have I got the solution for everyone who's feeling a little grumpy or weepy or blue. Be honest now.
Do you ever find yourself:

Bored into a coma on an isolated Federation outpost because you lack sufficiently stimulating company?
Suicidal because you're stuck endlessly spouting dialogue no one understands like "wessel" and "wector" and people, inexplicably, keep asking you to scream?
Secretly enraged because a) you feel you're nothing but a glorified taxi driver who spends all his time reacting to a green screen; b) you never get ANY noogie--with either sex; c) everyone thinks you're utterly even-tempered because of the whole restrained-Asian thing so you NEVER get any good lines beyond "Engaging thrusters, Captain," which happens to make you achingly hard every single time (see item "b")?
Stressed by your job and your colleagues and your ex and your environment and your phobias and just about everything else in this or any other known universe or timeline until you're one cranky, cursing, drawling, whiskey-guzzling, eyebrow-arching bundle of exposed nerve endings?
Depressed because you're the butt of snide gossip going round that despite being a sexy chick, you lost your exotic, stoic, hotter-than-desert-planets-everywhere boyfriend to a mainstream-audience-friendly (thus monkey-sex-deficient) bromance plotline?
Constantly losing your oh-so-alien cool over your boss' insane, argumentative and/or potentially universe-ending antics or maybe just because you're experiencing recurring bouts of UST due to the disturbingly suggestive manner in which he positions himself in his chair?
Suffering from humiliating performance issues with your significant other(s) due to a tragic service-related injury caused by the ingestion of an alien creature during a torture session that was first thought up like 27 years ago, but in another universe and another time?
Sad because you're marooned in a time and place where everyone thinks you're a weird, old, slightly creepy, inscrutable might-know-future-events type of Oracle, and no one seems to consider you the Emissary of Hotness you know you once were because everyone in your new neighborhood is shallow and self-absorbed and prejudiced and immature and a turd besides? And are you afraid that if said turds don't pony up a suitable partner when your next gimme-sex-now-or-I'm-going-batshit Time comes round, you're gonna get really pissed and let loose with your hundred-or-so years of stored-up psychic mindfuck power until people's brains go 'splodey?

FRIENDS! Do not just sit/stand/crawl/wheel/hover there saying, "Unhappiness. Is. Me." The power to rejuvenate your miserable existence exists in a soft package small enough to be held in the palm of your hand. Believe it! You can find relief for whatever ails with Your Very Own TRIBBLE(TM), The Only Love That Money Can Buy(TM)!

Don't be fooled by imitators! There's an Authentic, New and Improved, Lifetime-Guaranteed* TRIBBLE just waiting to Coo All Over You(TM) and give your I'm-such-a-loser ego a much-needed kick in the Id! You can be the envy of all your serotonin-challenged friends by ordering a TRIBBLE today!

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