The Comic Strip, Part 14 - "/"

"The Bullshitters: Roll out the Gunbarrel" - November 3, 1984

This episode has an entry in the ITV Encyclopedia of Adventure, which is the first place I heard of it. I've not seen it until now, but I've known about it for fifteenish years now. So I knew what was coming. A spoof of The Professionals. I've barely seen The Professionals, so I was figuring that I would have to do some research into the show to help inform my analysis of this episode. I think I've seen one episode of The Professionals in my life. I recall finding it to be almost stupefyingly dull - but in the name of blogging I prepared for the worst.


I lucked out.

I get to talk about Star Trek for a bit instead.

After Star Trek was cancelled, fans of the show began writing stories continuing the series for their own entertainment. Many of these stories were designed to flesh out ideas that some of the fans had about the show. Some of those ideas were of a nature that the creators of the show had not intended, or even considered for a moment. Of those, a surprisingly popular idea was that Kirk and Spock were, in fact, gay lovers. Thus was a genre born, and that genre was called "slash" for the "/" from "Kirk/Spock." The genre expanded to other shows, was parodied, those parodies were taken seriously and now you can find everything from Shakespearian characters to Rocky and Bullwinkle having at it.

I've not read too much slash in my life, but this is it. And I mean that not only in the most basic sense - the "oooh they're gay" sense, but also because the whole episode is just a setup to get the two of them to kiss. The other day, I was flipping through the channels, and found a decade old episode of Law and Order. In the course of the episode, the cops du jour got the chance to look at a computer and marvel at the brave new world of dial-up modems and text-based bulletin boards. I had the same feeling watching that as I did watching this - time had passed. The shocking and strange is now commonplace. It's become a cliche for me to note that the sting has gone out of some of these episodes. This time, I'm actually rather glad of it.