So the obvious enemyslash ship for Star Trek is Spock/McCoy. (Reboot tried to make it work with Kirk/Spock but it always felt a bit forced.) I do, in fact, ship Spock/McCoy! I am super, super picky about it though.

Also, last week I joined in on Galactic Journey's Star Trek watch. Galactic Journey, if you aren't familiar, is basically a bunch of SUPER nerds role-playing 1960s SF fandom, if it had blogs. And they just got up to 1966, so they are watching every episode of Star Trek, exactly 55 years after first airing, in a stream with the original commercials, with a Discord room where you can discuss it as long as you keep kayfabe. My mom actually *did* watch Star Trek in the first airing, and occasionally reminisces, so I thought I would try to get her to watchalong with me. (We'll see if it outlasts the first two episodes.)

Last week was Charlie X and it really brought forward how little I know TOS? I'm fairly sure I *did* watch every episode (possibly I never managed to catch The Cloud Minders) but that was out of order, 25 years ago, on VHS home-taped off of a Philadephia station's 2 AM reruns, often with extremely bad reception. Later I listened to most of them on the radio in my mom's sewing room, which picked up TV-band audio signal. And I read all the Bliss novelizations! But as we know I am really bad at actually watching things, so other than bits and pieces here and there I haven't really rewatched since. So I suspect that if I keep up on watching through a stream that actually lets me see people's faces, I might come away with very different impressions! Charlie X had much better roles for Rand and Uhura than I remembered, and Kirk was much dorkier. (Also I was not super embarrassment squicked? I did not have to hide behind the couch once? Maybe I am starting to outgrow that! Maybe I'll finally make it all the way through Amok Time!)

I may not have rewatched, but I did read a lot of tie-in novels. A LOT. I may come back and do a proper TOS enemyfic recs set later if this goes on long enough, but today I am going to revert back in time, to the version of me who didn't have access to any shared fandom other than tie-in novels, and rec some published tie-in novels. Novels for the real most important TOS enemyship: Starfleet officers and Romulan Commanders.

The Price of the Phoenix and the Fate of the Phoenix, by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. These are the ones where there is a clone of Captain Kirk, and the original is being held captive, so Spock establishes a telepathic soulbond with the clone, and then they team up with them Romulan Commander to rescue him, and then the Romulan Commander claims the clone as her reward, disguises him as a Romulan, and takes him back to a part of Romulan space where "where men are properly treated as delicate creatures and not permitted to fight."

I am not going to claim these are, idk, objectively good, but when I read them I discovered something about myself and everything changed. (Along with bringing in the Romulan Commander as an enemy-turned-ally love interest, they are deeply, deeply slashy in a way 14-year-old me had never yet encountered.)

My Enemy, My Ally, by Diane Duane, and the rest of the Rihannsu extended universe around it, are objectively good however! Another female Romulan Commander - the aunt of the original - has discovered a deadly secret festering in the Romulan high command, and unable to get help from her own people, she turns to her most honorable enemy, Kirk and the Enterprise! And together they take the Federation and the Romulan Empire down a whole new pathway together.

(And you should also read The Final Reflection by John M. Ford, which does for the Klingons what My Enemy, My Ally does for the Romulans, although sadly in a much less shippy way.)