The famous "What's a kiss?" gal. Shanah was Captain Kirk's Drill Thrall while he was in captivity on Triskelion. That means that she was in charge of training him. She is one of the more memorable of the Star Trek beauties, partially because of her spectacular tin-foil bikini, but mostly because of the way that she wore it.
Shanah was born into captivity. Her mother was a Thrall, too. We never learned the name of her home world or her species, probably because Shanah herself didn't know. Shanah never had any education, and all she seemed to know anything about was arena fighting. Nobody had ever showed her any affection or told her she was beautiful, so she had no idea about how to react when Kirk started trying to seduce her in hopes of obtaining information, or winning her over as an ally. Kirk gave her the first kiss she ever received, poor loved-starved thing.
She did have a tiny bit of information, but was punished by "the Providers" promptly when she tried to divulge it.
Kirk apparently finally realized that she would never be really useful to him, so he knocked her out with a punch to the jaw and stole her key to his cell. His escape attempt was thwarted, so Shanah had a chance to confront him about his betrayal a little later... with a big weapon in her hand and fire in her eyes.
In the end, Kirk won his wager with the Providers, and thereby earned freedom for all the Thralls. Shanah forgave Kirk then, and begged Kirk to be allowed to go with him when he left, but he refused to take her. Kirk was never in love with her, and they never had sex. A couple of kisses is the best that she got.
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