STC Ep. 7: "Embrace The Winds" speculation and discussion....

@Mark 2000 cited some examples of sexism upthread in this post, many if which I find inexcusable. I'll add another example. You don't find it inexcusably sexist that Spock ascribes Uhura's womanhood as the reason that Nomad reads Uhura as "a mass of conflicting impulses" with chaotic thinking? OK.... No doubt they were going for something that would make people laugh.

 

I think you misunderstand me. I don't find TOS inexecusably sexist because I judge it based on the era it was made. That is to say, an excuse can be made for the sexism portrayed in it.

 

Saavik is clearly being trained to be commander of a starship. Anything else would be a waste of resources by Starfleet Academy.

 

But there's still no female captain shown in command of a starship until TVH, is my point.

 

TWOK shows us that female officers on the track towards commanding a starship isn't anything out of the ordinary.
Shown or not, this heavily implies that women in command of starships is normal.

 

The irony is the studio that gave birth to Star Trek was run by a woman.

 

For one thing, I don't think the word "sexism" was even coined until after TOS was cancelled.

 

The word chauvanist might apply.

 

The only other ship on active duty we see in TWOK has a .... wait for it .... heavily male-dominated bridge crew. If anything, Saavik seems unusually precocious, to the point of directly challenging an Admiral during active duty. Saavik wasn't depicted as normal at all, especially relative to the other cadets.

We're free to imagine anything we like, but what we'd actually been shown to that point didn't "heavily imply" what you're saying.

You remember The Making of Star Trek by Whitfield and Roddenberry? Only one-third of the Enterprise crew was said to be female (page 205). That's nothing you'd say about a top-of-the-line ship of an organization in which sexual discrimination didn't occur.

Before you can say, "But that's not canon," the crew being one-third female was straight out of the Writers Guide. Sure, that's not canon either, but it's proof that sexual discrimination was something that Roddenberry conceived as being integral to the premise. Roddenberry even got story credit for "Turnabout Intruder."

It was nice to finally see Star Trek's first female starship captain, in TVH.

 

The theme of TWOK was age. That's the contrast between the young and unexperienced character of Saavik and Kirk. Age not sex.
Saavik and Scotty's nephew represented the younger generation of Starfleet personnel. They were the only one given actual lines of dialogue.
The same dynamic existed between Joachim and Khan.

I'm going to dismiss this idea of sexual discrimination being an integral part of the premise of Star Trek. That is not the Star Trek I've grown up with.

 

I'd've preferred it if sexual discrimination hadn't been a part of Star Trek.

 

Yes. Some of my favorite Trek scenes are when one of the supporting players needed to make command decisions (usually Scotty at the conn. The few times he did that, it was way fun). It gave the show a chance to compare and contrast command-styles.

 

I've heard something similar years ago, that the reason DeSalle is in charge is because of objections over Uhura taking command. But I've yet to see an substantial proof.

 

So was the objection because she was black or because she was a woman or because she was a black woman?

By the time we saw DeSalle in command we had already seen Commodore Stone in command of Starbase 11 and Kirk's superior.

If true where were GR's cojones when they were needed?

Seriously, DeSalle was seen in command for small parts of the episode. It's hard to imagine seeing Uhura in command for such a short time creating much of a stink. Hell, even the backlash over the Kirk/Uhura kiss was essentially nonexistent.

 

The realities of the 1960s aside, sexism never was part of Star Trek, Starfleet or the characters we all like.

 

Take Roddenberry's anecdotes for what they're worth, but he claimed that he originally proposed the crew be half female, but the network objected because, "Don't you see? It's going to look like there's a lot of fooling around going on up there!" so he reduced it to one-third.

 

Thats still 143 female personnel--still a substantial female presence.

The indications are from the beginning ("The Cage") that women were supposed to be on equal footing with men. The intent if not the full-fledged execution was there.

That's partly why I lend "Turnabout Intruder" such little credence and what much of what makes "Embracing The Winds" so disappointing

 

Roddenberry once stated that the initial ratio of the Crew was 50/50 and the network made him change it because it implied the unmarried crew would be pairing up. Then Roddenberry stated that if you applied the same logic to the resulting 1/3, 2/3 ratio implied the women would be sleeping with more than one man.

Was any of that about the network true? We may never know.

 

And a number of fan favorite episodes were written by a woman (DC Fontana) <--- But she knew enough of how the business worked at that time to use DC Fontana, and indirectly mask the fact a woman WAS writing episodes (IE she KNEW by using that version of her name many would assume they were written by a man and not bat an eye.)

 

I suppose if there was an early draft of Block's teleplay for Catspaw that mentioned it, that would cinch it. When Mrs. Trimble mentioned it, it also seemed familiar to me, as something I had read decades ago. But I was still somewhat skeptical, as nice a woman as she is, there is the issue of the fallibility of memory and the standard position that the network suits were the bad guys. Still, it is an intriguing idea.