The Women Of Star Trek: Leila Kalomi

by Laura Goodwin

Botanist Leila Kalomi (Jill Ireland)

Leila Kalomi is a scientist we met in This Side of Paradise. What sort of a scientist is she? She is a botanist.

Leila met Spock on Earth years before and was infatuated with him, but he could not and did not return her affections at that time. He encountered her again while she was a member of a colony expedition that settled on Omicron Ceti 3.

The spores from a plant on Omicron Ceti 3 acted as a kind of happiness pill and aphrodisiac. All the colonists were effected, and when Leila showed Spock the special plants, they shot him with spores and he became effected too.

While effected by the spores, Spock and Leila acted like dizzy teens in love. They may have even had sex.

Captain Kirk figured out that anger removed the effect of the spores, so he beamed Spock up to the ship, verbally and physically attacked Spock, and succeeded in enraging Spock. This removed Spock's intoxication, and when his intoxication ended, so did his delusional romantic ideas about Ms. Kalomi.

Spock brought the disappointed Ms. Kalomi to tears when he rejected her at the end, by saying (among other things), "I am what I am."

Ultimately, Kalomi and the others of her party had to abandon their failed colony, to escape the deadly Berthod rays which were bombarding the planet.

This is one of very few times in all of TOS when Spock may have had an erotic relationship with a woman. He was under the influence of a mind-altering substance at the time, and furthermore it wasn't even really his idea.

BTW, Captain Kirk didn't get with Kalomi, nor with any other woman in this episode. That's right: here's one more beautiful woman that Kirk never touched. FWIW, here's one more episode where Kirk showed no interest in any women. FYI, the only person he really cared about in this episode was Spock, as usual.


All site contents Copyright L. Goodwin 1990 - 2003

Back to TOS Women

Back to SSTO