No female starship captains in the 2250s-60s?

Except she'd clearly been planning this for some time, so she would've done her research beforehand.

 

That's what I figured too, that Lester studied the crew manifest as least well enough to be familiar with the bridge crew. It really works as a simple but believable explanation.

 

The thing is, unlike a novel, it's impossible to show every little detail with fifty minutes of story on television when you need to keep things going at a decent pace. In a novel you can use exposition or omniscient narrative to explain pretty much everything because there's time constraint.

 

Very true, guys, and I agree that this must be what happened. I just thought it would've been fun, and another early, subtle indicator that all was not 'right' with Kirk.

This reminds me of when I was back in school. Every time we'd have a substitute teacher for a class, two random wiseguy kids would always decide to "switch identities" on the teacher. So, as 'Charlie' and 'Steve' would "be" each other, it was great fun for me as it never, EVER worked. Sooner or later, the teacher would call on, say, Charlie, and momentarily forgetting the clever prank, would just sit there as if he were deaf!

 

Oh I think the intention was that there really were no female captains at that time, and there was probably an offical regulation about it. The issue is how well we can wiggle around to distort the intention of the episode because of how sexist and awful it is. It really tarnishes the optimistic future where Earth has overcome prejudice.

 

I think the bridge crew were aware something was off with their Captain almost from the get-go because of his uncharacteristic behaviour. Lester/Kirk was certainly unnecessarily rude to Spock almost right off and in front of the entire bridge crew.

And in fairness it's not impossible that Kirk could address an officer or crewman by their position or rank rather than their name. If he wasn't immediately familiar with a new face it's an easy out when addressing them. He also might use their rank or position depending on circumstance.

To Sulu: "Helmsman, I want a right angle course."
To Lt. Leslie (in "This Side Of Paradise"): "This is mutiny, Mister."

 

True, Warped9. In the teaser of Spectre of the Gun, Kirk did refer to Spock simply as 'Science Officer...twice!

 

But you have no clear onscreen evidence to support that notion. Actually that's the beauty of what is on the screen in that they didn't paint themselves into a corner. If they had then this discussion wouldn't be happening.

It would have been nice if TOS had simply shown us (or referred to) a woman of command rank. Imagine if one of the Starfleet Admirals seen on the viewscreen or one of the starbase Commodores had been cast as a woman. What if Commodore Stone, Commodore Wesley or Commodore Mendez had been a woman? That said I don't think it would have been a good idea to have cast Commodore Decker or Captain Tracy or Commodore Stocker as women because I could just see some attributing their erratic behaviour to being female.

Seeing Matt Decker's emotional breakdown is a genuinely powerful dramatic moment made all the more so because Decker is a man of Kirk's breed, position and training. You can just imagine the horror witnessed to break this man. I don't think it would have played as well if Decker had been a woman, at least not back then.

 

I always thought the most glaring mistake Janice was making was how she always referred to herself as captain. It was always "Captain Kirk here," "Captain Kirk out," which most of them, especially Spock and McCoy, should have picked up. Kirk himself usually dropped the rank title.

 

There's a lot to criticize about this episode, but it has to be said that Shatner's performance sold this idea. His performance as Kirk inhabited by Lester was equal mix of WTF! and brilliant nuance. Equally Sandra Smith was pretty good as Lester inhabited by Kirk.

 

I guess she was flaunting the ability to finally being able to do so.

I wonder why she was so determined to be a Captain? Considering her general state of mind, that's a rather alarming notion!

 

If she had managed to pull it off I could see her as another Garth of Izar waiting to happen.

 

"That's LORD Garth!!"

 

There ya go.

 

I don't recall if any of the novels had a TOS era female starship Captain. I know I had one in one of my TOS fanfic stories. Does anyone know if there's been one in one of the TOS fan film productions?

 

Well, Star Trek would seem to be contradictory on this. Number One in the the Cage/Menagerie is XO of the Enterprise. You don't become an XO, if you can't become a CO.

 

Okay, I know this is really, really reaching...but what if Starfleet did have some sort of a temporary "moratorium" on the idea of female starship captains? What if the Federation was in some sort of sensitive negotiations with some planet who scorned the idea of female captains/authority figures, and they were bending over backwards to accommodate them during this time? That sort of thing is not beyond Starfleet thinking, based on what I remember.

I find Star Trek a lot more fun when trying to justify why things work, as opposed to why they don't. Keeps my inner cynic caged, too!

 

^Sounds more like Picard's Starfleet than Kirk's.

 

Mmm, that's a good point!

 

Alternatively, perhaps there had been an experimental program with a ship comparable to the Enterprise commanded by a woman, and it had gone missing in an unknown or hostile situation. Starfleet might have temporarily postponed adding more women in command, under the theory that space was too dangerous to risk the program any further pending investigation.

I'm probably using some 1960's thinking here, as there were few women airline pilots or sea captains at the time, and those that did exist didn't get a lot of press. Women weren't deployed into combat situations at the time.