To Need a Friend

To Need a Friend is a Star Trek story written by Carol Hydeman and first published in Warped Space #12 and was the topic of much heated debate.
The story was also reprinted almost a year later in Warp Factor #2, a zine with a much smaller readership, and received little commentary.
==The Story's Place in Time and History==
"To Need a Friend" appeared one year after Diane Marchant published her coded Star Trek K/S story A Fragment Out of Time, a fact which is essential to understanding the strong reaction the story engendered. The story was published long before the term K/S was coined. It served, however, as part of the catalyst for the first great debate on K/S in fandom: do they or don't they? 
The debate was more of a case of the story being in the right place at the right time than actually being about the story itself. Some fans read a sexual relationship into the story, something which surprised both the writer as well as the editor. 
==The Splash==
The letters printed in The Halkan Council caused an explosion of debate, one which raged on in various forums for the rest of the year until it came to a head at Sekwester*Con Too the following spring. 
The letters in response to the story and comments in Warped Space and Menagerie, were incendiary, and may have contributed to Paula Smith's decision to stop publishing LoC's in Menagerie after issue #14. 
See the con reports at the Sekwester*Con Too page for examples. 
==What the Story is About==
In the story, McCoy comforts a grieving Spock after the death of Kirk. Spock reads a posthumous letter from Kirk, urging him to confide in McCoy. There is no sex in the story - the extent of any physical contact between Spock and McCoy is a gentle touch of the arm as McCoy helps a grief-weakened Spock rise from his bed to take a walk.
A summary from The McCoy List: "Both Spock and McCoy are devastated by the death of Jim Kirk, but it is Spock who suffers the most as he tries to hide his grief. McCoy draws Spock out of his cabin and into the garden on the Enterprise. As they talk and Spock is able to finally express his grief, he realizes how much he needs the friendship of Leonard McCoy."
==Reactions When It Was Published==
===The Halkan Council===
 
Most of the initial discussion was sub rosa or in coded letters to letterzines. The letters below in The Halkan Council were only a few in that issue that dealt with sexuality and only one of them mentioned specially named "To Need A Friend."
For example in Halkan Council #20/21 published in August, 1976, one fan angrily wrote: 
Another fan wrote in Halkan Council #20/21: 
From Halkan Council #20/21: 
 
The vagueness of the topic did not last long: another fan in Halkan Council #20/21: opened her letter with: 
From September 1976 in Halkan Council #22: 
===Warped Space===
The letters of comment were at first very general.
They then started to be suggestive, and finally called the topic out. 
==Later Reactions==
===1993===
Some 18 years after publication, the author posted the story to the Virgule-L mailing list and asked fans to discuss it with her. She said that she'd written it as a strictly straight piece, showing the deep friendship I felt was between Kirk and Spock, and which could be between Spock and McCoy, given a chance, and that an implied sexual relationship between any of the men was the furthest thing from her mind. The author wrote that she wanted to show how Spock and McCoy would be affected by the loss of Kirk, and specifically, she wanted it to be in a situation when Kirk could NOT be revived at the end of the story for a happy reunion. She wrote that fans were just getting their sea legs in fanfic back then, and many people were still in the mode of "I can't kill off any of the main characters." She had always always been fascinated by the interactions of those characters and wanted to see precisely what might happen to the structure of the Great Triumvirate if a key member were taken out. She also added that she was very young, naive, and that sex was the furthest thing from her mind. She also notes that it wasn't that she was horrified by the idea of a sexually intimate relationship between two men, but that people were reading it into something where she had not intended it to be. 
The author also mentioned that the editor of Warped Space, where it was published, did not see it as a slash story, or she would have slid the story into one of the "adult" issues of that zine series.
 
== References ==
Category:Star Trek TOS Fanfiction
Category:1975 Fanfiction