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

Oh yeah. Bewitched especially had a subversive message of female empowerment, even if Sam was staying in the witch closet to please Darren. You can also read a lot into Bewitched for the gay experience. She's "magical" and has all these amazing flamboyant friends and relatives but she has to keep it all a secret.
I Dream of Jeannie is a fun show I'm fond of, but I don't see Jeannie as being as liberated as Samantha. Jeannie is more of a hetero male fantasty.
And neither one of them were starship captains either (just to get things back OT)

 

There's also Honey West, starring Ann Francis as a P.I who uses gadgets. I thought it was a cool show when I was six. Probably haven't seen it since. Funny what sticks with you.

 

Here ya go.

 

Bewitched was actually an allegory for mixed marriages. The networks weren't ready to openly show a couple from two different cultures or races. One could also see it as class friction as the girl from an upper class family marries a working man.

 

Sure, but it's open to different interpretations like any work of art. I hardly invented the idea of Bewitched as a gay metaphor, that's been around for ages and people much more well spoken and informed than me have written about it.

 

What I've read, though, is that she wasn't really allowed to be a strong heroine, that the network or the producers insisted that her male co-star do all the action stuff because it was unseemly for a woman. Which I can believe, since The Man from UNCLE is often quite blatantly sexist to the point of misogyny (especially the episodes written by Peter Allan Fields, which is surprising, considering that he went on to write Kira and Dax so well in DS9).

I agree with the above mention of Batgirl as a great example of a strong woman in '60s TV. The network wouldn't let her throw a punch, but other than that, she was smart, fearless, capable, and resourceful, able to achieve everything Batman and Robin did without the resources of a multimillionaire as a crutch.

There's also Agent 99 from Get Smart; she was the smartest, most competent secret agent on the show, albeit still very feminine.

 

Well, that wasn't too hard!

 

I always thought a good uniform for a female starship Captain would be a version of Kirk's alternate green wraparound tunic over the black trousers. I saw a period photo of Honor Blackman in a wraparound like shirt (wrapped in the reverse direction) and that gave me the idea.

 

I've noticed that at least in the first half of the first season in my ongoing TOS marathon that you do occasionally see a female crew member in thee pants variant. So at least the mini skirt is optional. Unlike TNG though we don't see any of the male crew in the mini skirt.

 

Yes, it was there in the background. I think what hurt the design was the collar was like that on the skirt uniform and too large for the tunic design. But it does indicate that with the right design a trouser variant for women is possible.

In the pilots the women's tunic was looser fitting than the men's and with a larger collar made it look more like a sweater. But the general idea is still there for a woman's variant of a tunic and trousers.

 

This was on Ebay a while back...what do our female posters think? Captain-worthy?

 

I Photoshopped this many years ago. It's not exactly right, but it's a step or two in the right direction I think.



It's a pity they didn't find a good trouser alternative for the women during the series. A trouser variant makes more sense for women on landing party duty (protects the legs) and could look more businesslike. In fairness they were strapped for cash and so when it came to costumes the extra cash was slated for totally different outfits rather than variations for the gegular cast and background ship's crew. Given more money we might indeed have seen more variety in the show.

- The field jackets seen in "The Cage" are a good idea and one that would return in TMP and versions seen throughout the films.
- An anti-contamination suit was a good idea even if not well executed ("The Naked Time")
- The space suits from "The Tholian Web" were a distinctive design (and seen again in Star Trek Continues).
- We saw radiation suits in the background and again in the films.
- We see service fatigues in the background.

The miniskirt worked to a point partly because of the '60s era when women were asserting their sexuality, but it can seem like an anachronism today. Ind you Areel Shaw in "Court Martial" had a longer version of the skirt.

 

Yes.

There were around ten or so instances here and there of women wearing pants, most or all confined to the first season. Someone posted a picture on the board of all or almost all of them, I think it might have been GSchnitzer, but I'm not 100% sure about that at the moment.

Here's one of the more stand-out examples. It's from Charlie X:

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x02hd/charliexhd483.jpg
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=2&page=17

 

I remember that, too, here it is:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=4386245&postcount=36

 

Thanks! Alright, so, that's at least five examples outside the pilots, in three first-season episodes (two at the beginning, and one at the end!).