I kinda love her, sure. There's a lot of great fic out there, either featuring her or with her as a fabulous supporting character. I read it. I bookmark it. I love it.
However, there's just one thing that confuses me about all this Gaila love; I didn't say anything before because I thought maybe I was mistaken, so I waited until I saw the movie again and now I'm sure:
Gaila's dead.
No, really. She wasn't on the Enterprise. The last time we see her, she gives Uhura an excited grin and goes off to her assigned shuttle, and Uhura heads in a different direction to go to the Enterprise shuttles and confront Spock. Therefore, Gaila was on one of the ships that the Narada destroyed.
Now, I have seen one fic -- and only one -- where the author has this be the case. They have Gaila survive in a piece of debris, needing massive reconstructive surgery and winding up as Pike's assistant, which I found kinda cute. And that's a clever way to go, given as there were some pretty hefty chunks o' ship that the Enterprise had to navigate past when they arrived at Vulcan... But there's a problem with that, too.
Even if Gaila survived in a piece of debris, that debris was floating around Vulcan which was turned into a black hole. It, and she, would have been sucked in.
So Gaila is gone.
Although I would happily read her adventures in a reboot!TNG 'verse where somehow she got spat back out again.
Meanwhile, I'll just consider all the fic where she survived and/or was on the Enterprise as minor AUs in that respect. Because I love reading about her -- but I just had to confront the fandom's case of denial.
