I was thinking a bit more about the entertaining transcription I was using for last night’s Star Trek episode (pretty sure the broadcast captions don’t say, “Rand stands as close to Kirk as is humanly possible”) and I realized—the reason I found that so amusing is because it unintentionally(?) emphasized the artificiality of that little interaction. When you compare Rand being kind of a creeper to Spock casually putting his arm on or around the Captain’s chair during moments of (emotional) crisis, you can really see the divide between the staged requisite-heterosexual-romance and the natural possessiveness that comes to someone who really cares. Does that make sense? Idk, it just struck me, looking at the screencaps last night, how close Spock was getting and it didn’t seem forced at all.
(I’d like to add that if it was actually done well I would be more sympathetic to the Kirk/Rand pairing, but as it is it’s just ridiculous. Doesn’t help that McCoy gets the BIGGEST SMIRK on his face when it becomes obvious that Kirk is happier with him around, that was so great)
