In The Lights Of Zetar, we meet this specialist who is in charge of supervising the transfer of equipment to the Memory Alpha station. She was born on Martian Colony 3, so technically, she is not an Earth woman: she's Martian! Interestingly, her father, Jacques Romaine, was a Starfleet chief engineer (retired). Her mother, Lydia Romaine, was deceased at the time that the events depicted in this episode took place.
Mr. Scott (sweetly and sincerely, to Romaine): "You're the sanest, the smartest, the nicest woman that has ever come aboard this ship!"
It doesn't hurt that she is also a dynamite-looking dame. Sulu doubts that Scotty has even noticed that she has a brain, but as you can see from the quote above, he's noticed!
Mr. Scott is most emphatically totally in love with Mira Romaine. Fortunately, she encourages him, and it looks like the fond feelings are mutual, hoorah, hoorah.
During the mission, Romaine's mind was invaded and her brain-wave pattern was altered by noncorporeal life-forms, who turn out to be the spirits of the last survivors from planet Zetar. They were very powerful and destructive, and at first the Enterprise ran from them. Kirk finally had the wits to ask Romaine to stop resisting the Zetarians, just so it might be seen what would happen next.
This was incredibly difficult for her. It was her first deep-space mission, and she naturally had some qualms, but she bravely followed her orders, aided by Scotty's loving encouragement.
Kirk (earnestly, to Romaine): "Don't lose yourself to them! Hold on!"
Romaine (with intense focus): "I am Mira Romaine. I will be who I choose to be!"
Zetarians (through Romaine): "We only want the girl."
Kirk (to Zetarians): "You can't have her! You are entitled to your own life, but not another's!"
Whose body is it anyway? That's the question! Kirk and his comrades are all firmly on the side of Romaine's ownership of herself! You can't just bully your way into the body of a person, plant a ding-dong flag, and declare the body to now be yours in the name of Zetar! HELL NO! In this episode, a line was drawn in the sand!
As this epic struggle for supremacy over Romaine's body reached its climax, Scotty dared to touch the dangerous Mira/Zetarian combo, because he trusted in Mira's ability to keep him from being killed. He successfully inserted her into the pressure chamber, and the Zetarians were pressurized out of her, so that Romaine could reclaim ownership of herself.
Got that? The guys were all playing this hugely supportive role so that Romaine could retain rightful ownership of herself!
Mira Romaine survived this ordeal, much to Mr. Scott's delight. BTW, Scotty-in-love was absolutely adorable in this episode.
Now there. That's what normal love between a man and a woman looks like. So see? It is possible to show normal heterosexual love on Star Trek.
Got that? Romaine wasn't just a heroine, she was a romantic heroine. Mr. Scott's romantic heroine, to be precise. In fact, she's one of the most significant romantic heroines of TOS.
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