How to Write Angst

by Jane Seaton

What is angst? Why are some Trek episodes mere action-adventure, while others, the ones the fans replay until the tape snaps, are pure, emotional goldmines? And how can a writer be sure to bury those nuggets of twenty-four carat feeling throughout her story?

A Starfleet officer (and let's face it, all Trek fiction heroes are Starfleet officers or as near as makes no difference) has certain characteristics. They are, for the most part, morally sure of themselves and their role in the universe. They may have to take difficult decisions, particularly where the Prime Directive is concerned, but this rarely causes them to suffer sleepless nights. They are highly educated and technically competent, and have set up on their computers pro forma letters with mail merge, so that the occasional tragedy can be appropriately and compassionately resolved. They support each other in moments of crisis. They know that there is always another Starfleet Officer at their back, armed with a phaser.

Space, however, is a risky place to be. Aliens may attack you, technology fail you, and the very fabric of space-time itself plunge you into unthinkable weirdness, but this doesn't always give rise to angst. No one would ever describe Scotty's battles to save his engines as angsty. Such occurrences are mere plot devices. As an exercise for the reader, I suggest you try to write a Scotty angst fest. Sure, the engineer fell in love with Mira Romaine, and suffered a few anxious moments when she was taken over by the luminous Zetarians, but that was romance, or possibly melodrama, not angst. Scotty is simply too practical, realistic and self-sufficient to suffer a believable emotional crisis. A few stories exist which deal with his resentment at young green officers rising at warp speed towards command, and at the closeness of the 'triad' of senior officers, but is resentment, envy if you like, really a basis for angst? Surely resentment and envy are the result of feeling that you deserve more than you are getting. Angst flourishes when the protagonist is subjected to untold awfulness, and lacking sufficient self-confidence and objectivity to blame fate, Klingons or the incompetence of Starfleet, turns to blaming himself.

Lacking self confidence? How then can anyone write Kirk angst? Objectivity? What of Spock?

Kirk's self confidence derives from his ability to defeat the no-win scenario. Forced to depend on someone else, or forced to fail someone else, his whole self-image comes into question. In the case of K/S fiction, he is not necessarily a self-confident homosexual. And he has made mistakes in the past which he has not resolved, and which come back to haunt him from time to time. He has no conviction that he will learn from his mistakes and avoid repeating them. Instead, they seem to exert a strange fascination, drawing him irresistably into a cycle of failure.

Spock, when faced with feelings of intense friendship or lust for his captain, or anyone else, is as objective as a teenage boy experiencing his first crush. He neither admits the attraction and acts upon it, nor denies it and purges it from his thinking. He allows it to influence his actions in a disorganised and unpredictable fashion, causing problems for himself and his colleagues. He then feels guilty, as he should. He is living a lie, and knowing this in his heart of hearts, he is a hothouse for angst.

But why, I hear you cry - or even Vhy? - are we talking about Spock, Kirk and Scotty? What of Chekov?

Chekov, by contrast to his esteemed superiors, has no worries. He is the pick of his year at the Academy, or he wouldn't be on the Enterprise. Starfleet has trained him to deal with all known dangers in space, and to be flexible and resourceful in dealing with the unknown. He serves under the best captain in the fleet, who is dedicated to ensuring the safety of his crew. He is mentored by the objective and dispassionate Vulcan science officer, and has as his close friends those wonderfully sane and compassionate people, Lieutenants Sulu and Uhura. His physical health is the first priority of a near-legendary duo of medics. His family is close knit and black-sheep proof, and his girlfriends are too vapid and flighty to cause any concern, while being just numerous enough to leave no doubt of his sexual orientation. He will, being young, make occasional mistakes, but his captain will counsel him wisely and he will be a better person once the dust dies down.

Or, alternatively:

• Chekov, being the lowest form of life officially acknowledged by Starfleet, is encouraged to feel inadequate and undeserving at every turn. He is disposable. He knows this. His parent's address is at the head of the letter_of_condolence.data file. All the external dangers seem to target him remorselessly. He asks himself whether this reflects unknown inadequacies in his character, or merely Starfleet's plan to avoid ever having to pay him a pension.
• His captain has an unfortunate tendency to identify with the young officers under his command and project on to them all his unresolved guilt. Kirk also has an aversion to taking security guards on landing parties, so that navigators and the like are thrust into the front line when things go wrong. The captain fails to control his over-active sex drive, and might at any moment focus his attention on someone else's girlfriend, or indeed, simply 'someone else'.
• Spock finds it difficult to discuss emotional issues, and uses his Vulcan mindmeld to resolve difficult situations, with scant regard for the side effects.
• Sulu is a devil-may-care flyboy, with a taste for alcohol, swordplay and plunging obsessively into the fad of the week. He may, or may not, harbour repressed homosexual feelings for his helm partner.
• Uhura is a career woman, with no patience for younger officers encountering problems which she has successfully resolved through hard work and discipline.
• Ensign Chekov's family is small and claustrophobic. His parents have high ambitions for him, and he is not sure how they will react to failure. He has no siblings who could help him to develop a more balanced view of his parent's expectations. An older brother or sister might also have intervened, or alerted the authorities, when his father psychologically and physically abused him.
• Doctor McCoy is still tormented by his failure to spot the replacement of Nancy Crater by the salt vampire, and consequently remains icily aloof from his patients, in case he has to kill them.
• Chapel regards Chekov as a rival, since he spends so much time with Spock professionally.
• His relationships with girlfriends rarely last longer than a week, and if they reappear later, they are only interested in exploiting any lingering regard he may have for them. Strange alien women, or possibly men in drag, are irresistably drawn to him.

Chekov knows that life should live up to the first of these two scenarios. After all, he inhabits Gene Rodenberry's twenty third century (where schoolchildren daily salute the Great Bird for his benign influence). He is still young enough to believe in liberty, equality, fraternity and cabbage pie. His high expectations cry out to be disappointed. He has a lot to learn.