When the Enterprise crew set out to explore strange new worlds, they perhaps didn’t realize matrimony would be one of them. The central trio of Star Trek: The Original Series, Captain James T. Kirk, First Officer Spock, and Chief Medical Officer Leonard “Bones” McCoy, each encountered a host of love interests during their three seasons of space exploration aboard the Enterprise, but some left a bigger impression than others.

Kirk famously became the Casanova of the group, falling into a woman’s arms on every other planet the Enterprise visited, but lest we forget, Spock formed a handful of meaningful connections also. Having unexpectedly become Star Trek‘s real-life sex symbol in the ’60s, Leonard Nimoy’s character very nearly got married to T’Pring, and perhaps would have got married to the Romulan commander from season 3’s “The Enterprise Incident” if circumstances were different.

Despite not being as outwardly charismatic as his captain or as innately mysterious as his first officer, Leonard McCoy still had his fair share of romantic moments during Star Trek: The Original Series, and one theory even suggests he secretly fathered a child before the events of season 2’s “Friday’s Child.”

Despite the prevalence of romantic entanglements during Star Trek: The Original Series, it’s still easy to overlook how Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy both got married within the space of just five episodes, and how both of their wives were forgotten just as quickly as they arrived.

Kirk Lost His Memory And Got Married During “The Paradise Syndrome”

Anyone could see that Captain Kirk was only ever married to the Enterprise, so Star Trek knew setting him up with a wife must involve some kind of memory lapse to drag Kirk away from his beloved ship. So it proved in Star Trek: The Original Series season 3’s “The Paradise Syndrome,” which saw an amnesiac Kirk taken in by a local tribe after attempting to save the planet from an oncoming asteroid. Hailed as a god due to miraculous medical and technological knowledge that he’s unable to explain, Kirk finds himself betrothed to the village priestess in a time-honored tradition.

Kirk and Miramanee fall in love, conceive a child, and look destined for a happy future together until the Enterprise returns to reclaim their captain (and stop that asteroid everyone forgot about). A quick mind meld makes light work of Kirk’s amnesia, but the Enterprise captain’s inability to live up his godlike status among the villagers results in the pregnant Miramanee being stoned to death in a scene that, alongside other elements of the episode, has not aged well.

It’s painfully clear that Miramanee gets killed off because Kirk having a pregnant wife was viewed as some kind of obstacle to his future as Star Trek‘s lead character. Despite Kirk’s genuine love for Miramanee, the character never gets brought up in any meaningful way again, and the captain is back to his usual chipper self in the very next episode. This was, admittedly, par for the course in weekly shows of yore.

Whenever the topic of Kirk’s romantic relationships is raised today, the conversation is more likely to turn toward Carol Marcus or Edith Keeler. The former perhaps isn’t surprising, given that Kirk and Marcus had a son together, but Keeler’s reputation as one of Kirk’s greatest love interests comes more from Joan Collins’ timeless performance than the connection between characters, which was far more fleeting than Kirk’s time with Miramanee.

5 Episodes Later, It Was McCoy’s Turn To Tie The Knot

A short five episodes after Kirk’s ill-fated nuptials, the Enterprise’s chief medical officer followed suit in the catchily-titled “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.”

Rather than Kirk’s amnesia from earlier in the season, Star Trek opted for a terminal illness as the mechanism for McCoy’s Enterprise departure. Facing his own mortality and receiving an unexpected proposal from Yonadan oracle Natira prompted a swift resignation from Starfleet duties.

Whereas Kirk’s relationship with Miramanee played out over a slightly longer period, McCoy and Natira’s bond came across as the less believable romance. It often felt like McCoy was getting swept along in a wave of his own post-diagnosis trauma and the cult-like behavior of the Yonadans. Natira’s feelings appeared genuine, at least.

As luck would have it, the Yonadans held the key to curing McCoy’s incurable disease. Faced with the prospect of his marriage lasting longer than he initially expected, McCoy immediately decided to return to the Enterprise. Natira, having just discovered her people were being duped by a villainous supercomputer (in Star Trek? Never!) had business of her own to attend to, so the amicable split sort of worked out for both parties.

The intriguing part of McCoy’s marriage to Natira was that Star Trek subtly hinted their relationship would actually continue. In the episode’s closing scene, Kirk massaged the Enterprise’s diary to let McCoy and Natira reunite just over one year in the future, tacitly implying divorce papers would not be signed. Alas, Natira still wouldn’t be mentioned again in Star Trek canon.

Star Trek Didn’t Leave Spock Out Either

It’s clear that Star Trek: The Original Series was in its romantic era during the first half of season 3, and while Kirk and McCoy were the only crew members to hear wedding bells, Spock didn’t get left out entirely.

Only one episode before Kirk met Miramanee, Spock was afforded a romance storyline of his own, albeit one borne of very different cultural customs. During “The Enterprise Incident,” Spock found himself tasked with deceiving a Romulan commander while his colleagues stole a valuable cloaking device. Despite the subterfuge, Spock developed a strong connection to the enemy commander, and they parted on the solemn acknowledgement that an intimate and unspoken bond had been forged. Politics and duty prevented them from acting upon it, but Spock had more chemistry with this unnamed Romulan leader than he ever did with T’Pring in “Amok Time.”

Counting Spock’s story, this six-episode run of episodes in Star Trek: The Original Series season 3 gave all three of the show’s main heroes a meaningful love interest. Two marriages, one pregnancy, and zero prospect of seeing any of those three women ever again.

Release Date

1966 – 1969-00-00

Showrunner

Gene Roddenberry

Directors

Marc Daniels, Joseph Pevney, Ralph Senensky, Vincent McEveety, Herb Wallerstein, Jud Taylor, Marvin J. Chomsky, David Alexander, Gerd Oswald, Herschel Daugherty, James Goldstone, Robert Butler, Anton Leader, Gene Nelson, Harvey Hart, Herbert Kenwith, James Komack, John Erman, John Newland, Joseph Sargent, Lawrence Dobkin, Leo Penn, Michael O’Herlihy, Murray Golden

Writers

D.C. Fontana, Jerome Bixby, Arthur Heinemann, David Gerrold, Jerry Sohl, Oliver Crawford, Robert Bloch, David P. Harmon, Don Ingalls, Paul Schneider, Shimon Wincelberg, Steven W. Carabatsos, Theodore Sturgeon, Jean Lisette Aroeste, Art Wallace, Adrian Spies, Barry Trivers, Don Mankiewicz, Edward J. Lakso, Fredric Brown, George Clayton Johnson, George F. Slavin, Gilbert Ralston, Harlan Ellison