Yeoman Rand & Production order

That doesn't make sense at all. Obama didn't became President because all the male half-black half-white university professors voted for him.

 

This is the first time I ever heard Nixon described as a female candidate.

Television hurt Nixon in the 1960 debate. He was fair skinned, didn't want to wear makeup for the camera, wore a light grey suit, and perhaps hadn't shaved since morning, so by airtime his five o'clock shadow was showing. Kennedy was healthily tanned in a dark suit, so he photographed well.

People who watched the debate thought Kennedy won, those who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon did.

 

Trying to get back on topic, I love Spock's character development in production order. It definitely gives you a certain perspective on the character that I haven't had before. Very interesting.

 

Yes, he starts out as "Happy Spock" in The Cage, and by the end of the first season, has become the Spock that we all know and love.

 

And director Joseph Sargent in "Corbomite" gave Nimoy a key clue to the character when suggesting how to say "Fascinating."

 

Yep. I will never understand why it's become fashionable to revert to broadcast order for TOS when production order, at least for the first season, flows so much more organically. No, there's not a lot of actual plot continuity to favor one order over the other, but there are clear progressions in the way the writers, actors, and production staff were gradually developing the characters and the world, refining the costumes and sets, and so on, building and discovering the universe as they went. There is simply no advantage to broadcast order, and it's a travesty that it's been pushed as the "correct" order ever since the first DVD box set came out. (Before that, production order had been all but universally accepted for at least a couple of decades, routinely used in syndication and in every major reference work.)

 

Broadcast order is only interesting if you want to try to experience the show as regular viewers would have back in the day, but otherwise, why bother?

 

What do you mean by embarrassing?


Embarrassing for Rand? I think she is thinking that she's within 48 hours of death and embarrasment is not something that still has room left. She may never have expressed any feeling about wanting to attract Kirk in normal circumstances, but dying and being mentally impared could make buried feelings surface. I thought it was well done as Captain Kirk and Janice were trying to cope with their own relationships, personal and professional, and dealing with them both coming to an abrupt end, because they were nearly dead.

Plus, I've seen enough shows where the "oh were dying, let's get some sex in before were dead because we'll be dead soon"
That is embarrassing, imo. I'm thinking of a recent show that was redone, but I'm not mentioning the name.

 

However, there was an unprecedented turnout of black and Hispanic voters for Obama's first Presidential election. My polling place was mobbed with new faces. You can't tell me they all walked in to vote en masse for the first time to support John McCain....

Whether or not folks think individual votes count for anything, the point is that people pick candidates for whatever reason motivates them, whether it be the issues or how a person looks. Society decides what reason is most acceptable, but every person keeps their own counsel.

 

That's an in-story rationalization, but metatextually, it just feels like another instance of the writers reducing Rand to a sexually submissive doormat who was more concerned with being attractive to her male employer than with being good at her job. Which is perfectly consistent with how most working women were written in the 1960s -- just working until they could succeed in attracting a husband, whereupon they'd happily retire to homemaking and motherhood -- but it's hardly the progressiveness we'd like to see in Star Trek. Combined with Rand's "If the Captain wanted to rape me, I guess it'd be okay" attitude in "The Enemy Within," it adds up to make her a very conventional, backward portrayal of a female character and just leaves me with a sour taste.

Could it be, though, that they were actually thoughtful enough to realize that Obama would represent their interests and needs better than McCain, rather than simply being mindless creatures of impulse voting based on surface appearance? I didn't see women coming out in droves to vote for Sarah Palin. A subtantial majority of women voted for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008, while men were almost evenly split between them and McCain-Palin. It was women who gave Obama the election (or at least who ensured he'd win by a clear margin), even though it was the Republican ticket that had a woman on it.

Not to mention that I was one of those voters who eagerly waited in line to vote early for Obama, and I'm about as white as it's possible to get without being an albino. I'm sure there are some voters who approach an election merely as a beauty pageant or popularity contest, but it's simplistic to assume we're all like that. There are many voters who genuinely care about their future and that of their children and who make their decisions based on issues and policies, and on the character of the candidates rather than simply what boxes they tick off on a census form.

 

Thank you. I understand what you mean, now. I didn't see it that way because of what I said, but I know there was that kind of attitude more prevelant then. Kind of like a show I was watching that was about how to treat employees, like to let the secretary know she was doing a good job was to pat her on the butt. I could see that in "The Enemy Within" but I didn't see it in Miri. But I can understand.

 

A real simulation of the experience would also imply to watch only one epiode each thursday night and to skip an episode if you don't have time to watch it on the schedule...so yeah, it's pretty limitated.

According to my own experience, it's really suck to see "The Corbomite Maneuver" on the fourth DVD, especially because Rand's introduced here as the newly assigned Captain's Yeoman.

 

Not to mention the problems with watching "Where No Man..." as the third episode.

 

Indeed, at least it's on the first disk, but's it remains unpleasing. The only consequence for season 2 is to see that ridiculous Chekov's first wig on the seventh and eleventh episode, but yeah, it sucks for season 1.

 

I watched the reruns every afternoon after school through the 70s. They weren't playing them in any specific order on my local station back then, I think, but I saw them so many times that it doesn't matter any more what the production or airdate order was.

Now I just watch them randomly and enjoy. I don't worry about the little things.

 

They were random in the '70s, but by the '80s they were routinely syndicated in production order, and starting with The Star Trek Compendium in 1980, all the reference books favored production order. And the first VHS and 2-disk DVD releases were in production order too. So I learned to embrace and expect production order, and the recent change back to favoring airdate order is very frustrating to me.

 

That was my reaction as well. I thought the line was actually a good dramatic moment and perfectly in character. Maybe it's a generational thing.

 

It was in character, sure, but the way the character of Rand was written was rather sexist. That's the problem. She's a 1960s secretary/love interest in a 23rd-century setting, and that's a rather backward portrayal of a female character. Rand is one of the biggest counterarguments to the premise that TOS was progressive in its portrayal of gender roles.