Janice Lester grievance....

[ChasFink]

I had always interpreted Lester's motivation as being based on her perception of women not being made starship captains. And while the point has been made that her statement that Kirk's "world of starship captains doesn't admit women" could refer to her relationship with Kirk (not a bad point) there is plenty to indicate she wanted to be a captain and felt discriminated against because of her sex.

• Lester (in Kirk's body) says "Love? Him? I love the life he led. The power of a starship commander. It's my life now."
• And later: "At last I attain what is my just due. Command of a starship. All the months of preparation now come to fruition."
• Kirk (in Lester's body) says "Janice has driven herself mad with jealousy, hatred and ambition" - hatred perhaps of Kirk for not taking her with him, but the jealousy and ambition only make sense if she wanted to be like him.
• And during the hearing: "To get the power she craved, to attain a position she doesn't merit by temperament or training."
• When Lester is back in her own body: "Oh, I'm never going to be the captain."

I do think she overstates the discrimination against women (there is also plenty of dialogue to show that she herself hates being a woman) but overall this is all consistent with a starfleet that doesn't prohibit female captains, but probably doesn't have a lot of them. Remember, according to the writer's guide the Enterprise crew is only 33% female. As others have pointed out, this may sound odd today, but less so in a show made in the late 1960s.

 

[Kor]

...
Remember, according to the writer's guide the Enterprise crew is only 33% female. As others have pointed out, this may sound odd today, but less so in a show made in the late 1960s.

It might have been considered quite radical. Even today, half a century later, the US Navy is only 16.4% women!

From 1960 to 1970, fewer than 4% of officers in the US Navy were women, and only 1% of enlisted personnel were women.

Kor

 

[F. King Daniel]

Remember Kirk's line, "Her life could have been as rich and full as any woman's." (Emphasis mine.) And the even-worse response (from Spock of all people!) in the Blish adaptation: "If only she had been able to accept the limitations of being a woman."

holy shit!

Star Trek Continues did an episode about the "no women captains" thing, where Starfleet actually was sexist in the 23rd century. It's not the path I would have chosen (basically the ENT/BEY/DSC route ignoring it and featuring female captains and admirals), but it's an interesting attempt at making a current-day statement about of a sexist 1960's line.

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[Kor]

holy shit!

Star Trek Continues did an episode about the "no women captains" thing, where Starfleet actually was sexist in the 23rd century. It's not the path I would have chosen (basically the ENT/BEY/DSC route ignoring it and featuring female captains and admirals), but it's an interesting attempt at making a current-day statement about of a sexist 1960's line.

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We tend to optimistically assume that the future will reflect the social changes of recent decades. But these things do fluctuate over the centuries.

Kor

 

[Commishsleer]

It might have been considered quite radical. Even today, half a century later, the US Navy is only 16.4% women!

From 1960 to 1970, fewer than 4% of officers in the US Navy were women, and only 1% of enlisted personnel were women.

Kor

And even now in my country they're trying like mad to recruit women into the armed forces yet there's still the old-boys network hand-waving away reports of sexual harassment and assaults of women recruits.

Look I don't know the figures but I'm pretty sure that if you looked at captains of ships in my country's navy today you'd probably see what was reflected in TOS so its not like the show isn't reflective of current times. (Maybe its different in the US)
However I can see a time in the future where there might be more than one or two female captains of the line and maybe there is in other countries. A time in the future where women and minorities are not shut out of important positions because they are not part of the old-boys network.

I'm surprised GR said he'd put in the sexist statement because he claimed he'd been the one championing women from the beginning of TOS, Perhaps he'd been too long away from it by the end of the 3rd Season.

I've got the Blish/Lawrence adaption in front of me and in it Spock say pride, not limitation. Not great I suppose but not as bad as limitation.
Reading the story it has a somewhat different conversation between Lester and Kirk concerning the "world of Starship captains." IMO more sexist but you could interpret it differently I suppose. It might be interesting to see GR's initial draft.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

Wait... I thought for sure that Blish's line for Spock was more like "If only she had been able to take pride in being a woman!"

As in, Blish trying to challenge the obvious sexism of the episode in some small way. I'll have to go dig out my copy now to check.

Kor

You're quite right, Kor!
Spock: "If only she had ever been able to take any pride in being a woman."

 

[Brennyren]

You're quite right, Kor!
Spock: "If only she had ever been able to take any pride in being a woman."

Whoops! I stand corrected on that point.

 

[Phaser Two]

You're quite right, Kor!
Spock: "If only she had ever been able to take any pride in being a woman."

Ah, well that's a relief. Still a mostly meaningless observation and a weird thing for Spock in particular to say.

 

[BillJ]

Roddenberry was in no position to "admit" anything here - he didn't write the line, and clearly he didn't understand it, either.

Roddenberry wrote the story for "Turnabout Intruder". So he may understand the line better than you think.

 

[Forbin]

How about this interpretaion of Janice's "doesn't admit women" line: At the time of TOS, there were only 12 Constellation class starships (minus those destroyed during previous episodes). Let's assume that all of those ships happened to have male captains at that particular time. While many lesser vessels may have had female captains, it was a Conny that Janice wanted to command, and in her paranoid/delusional state, she ranted that "the world of STARSHIP (Constellation Class) captains doesn't admit women."

 

[Brennyren]

Star Trek Continues did an episode about the "no women captains" thing, where Starfleet actually was sexist in the 23rd century. It's not the path I would have chosen (basically the ENT/BEY/DSC route ignoring it and featuring female captains and admirals), but it's an interesting attempt at making a current-day statement about of a sexist 1960's line.

Thanks for the heads-up. That was worth watching!

 

[J.T.B.]

What Lester says in the episode is a little confusing. The "admit women" line comes amidst talk of her previous relationship with Kirk. I never stopped you from continuing your "space work," Kirk says. That's when she replies "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair." Kirk agrees that it's not fair, but adds that Lester had punished Kirk -- and presumably blamed him -- for the unfairness.

The next thing Lester says is "I loved you. We could've roamed among the stars," to which Kirk replies "We'd have killed each other." That's an odd thing for Lester to say if she wanted a relationship with Kirk while both had careers with Starfleet, because there would be no guarantee that they could be assigned near each other. And it's an especially odd thing to say if she envisioned herself as a starship captain, because of course two captains would never be roaming the stars together.

Though she later says she thinks it was her "due" to be a starship captain, actually becoming one would obviously be the culmination of career choices begun much earlier. If she was not already on that path when she was involved with Kirk, she would have to have started on it soon after.

So the evidence in the episode seems to me to indicate that the "world of starship captains" she spoke of is the "world" involving Kirk and their relationship, not Starfleet in general. And that her talk of becoming a starship captain was not a realistic life or career goal, but a means of exerting power and exacting revenge, in a way that seemed... less than rational.

With that in mind, I am always inclined to give less weight to what Lester said and more to what the series actually showed: Number One was next in line to command a starship, and actually did take command of a starship.

 

[johnnybear]

Discovery is in an alternate reality (Kelvin timeline possibly) and Enterprise was a past that never actually occurred so simple!
JB

 

[Charles Phipps]

Poor Erica Hernandez is forgotten.

I actually don't think she was being literal even in the original episode. Janet was also seriously mentally ill.

 

[Mytran]

I would never take the evidence of a crazy person (Lester) against that of my own eyes (Number One was the defacto captain whenever Pike was off the ship)

 

[TOSalltheway]

I did consider Hernandez and the Columbia but also realized that this was Starfleet with the United Earth Space Probe Agency and pre Federation. ( A technicality ?)

 

[UnknownSample]

It's about Starfleet not having women captains. Because Star Trek tries to have a point-- and to make a point, you have to communicate straightforwardly. It's only when we need to undo the point that we come up with convoluted alternative explanations, but worth it I suppose, if it gets sexism out of there.

Is it sexism though? Kirk agrees that it's unfair. Women can be anything up to first officer, though #1 is a very special case apparently. Note that nowhere do our heroes say that it's at all a good thing that women are barred. And are they barred? Is this a very early dealing-with of the "glass ceiling" idea , coming down against the glass ceiling? Is it a glass ceiling, or have the higher-up women just not reached the top spot yet?

Maybe this story's point is a bit convoluted after all. Maybe it's muddled because Gene R was unfocused on the issue, maybe it's because no script editor was cleaning the stories up by this point. I choose to see it all as meaning that as far as civilization had come, even now it wasn't right yet. Gene was criticizing his own fictional world in a 3 dimensional way.

It may have been script edited by committee, by anyone still hanging around, with the result that it shifted toward some typical 60s sexist implications.

 

[Noname Given]

Remember Kirk's line, "Her life could have been as rich and full as any woman's." (Emphasis mine.) And the even-worse response (from Spock of all people!) in the Blish adaptation: "If only she had been able to accept the limitations of being a woman." Thank goodness that latter line never made it to screen, or we would have no room for interpretation at all.

I was age 6 in1969 - and the first episode of Star Trek I saw first run on NBC was TOS - "Elaan of Troyius" from the third season (and I've been a fan of Star Trek ever since. But the portion of teh post I quoted above shows just how much PR BS GR's statedment that Star Trek was always about the future and 'forward thinking' in every episode because youhave A LOT of 1960ies era mores and attitudes that slipped between the cracks and got into various episodes across every season of fhe original Star Trek like:

From: TOS - "The Enemy Within":
Remember Yeoman Rand was nearly forcibly raped by Kirk's 'dark side' - BUT, at the end of thew episode:

KIRK: The impostor's back where he belongs. Let's forget him.

RAND: Captain? The impostor told me what happened, who he really was, and I'd just like to say that. Well, sir, what I'd like is

KIRK: Thank you, Yeoman.

SPOCK: The, er, impostor had some interesting qualities, wouldn't you say, Yeoman?

KIRK: This is the Captain speaking. Navigator, set in course correction. Helmsman, steady as she goes.

^^^
Spock's line is the old belief that somehow women like men who take them by force. Yep, very forward thinking there. (And yes, as a person who remembers that time, even I have to roll my eyes and say even for a TV show in the 1960ies that line was over the top ridiculous at the time.)

So, yeah, I laugh whenever I hear GR claim "Star Trek was always forward thinking in it's characters and presentation of mores/issues.
^^^
No, that wan't really accurate. Star Trek presented a positive look on the future that said: "Hey we didn't blow ourselves up with Nuclear Weapons and in general life is better for all - and we're exploring deep space." (And unless you grew up in the time of The Cold War ere - you have no idea how BADLY everyone there wanted to believe this would be the case; and there was REAL fear in general that it wouldn't.) <--- That's what drew a lot of people to like Star Trek at the time whether they were into Science Fiction or not at that time.

BUT - as to mores and many issues Star Trek was also still mired in a lot of 'attitudes' from the 1960ies and not always as 'forward thinking in that aspect as GR loved to claim in later years and through TNG.

 

[suarezguy]

I once read that Roddenberry responded to alternate interpretations of Lester's statement by admitting that the line was simply sexist. In the late 1960s, it was hard to imagine a woman commanding a capital ship like the Enterprise.

And yet in "The Menagerie" Number One very much and clearly was the second in command and took command on Pike being captured. That position but not captaincy being allowed seems pretty hard to imagine so it really should make the ambiguous statement more likely referring to Kirk's personal life.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

And yet in "The Menagerie" Number One very much and clearly was the second in command and took command on Pike being captured. That position but not captaincy being allowed seems pretty hard to imagine so it really should make the ambiguous statement more likely referring to Kirk's personal life.

This is a good point. But "The Cage" is a huge outlier, far removed from the limited rank Starfleet women would have for the rest of the series. It happened in "The Cage" because GR wanted to give a lead role to the woman-not-his-wife that he was serious about.

When NBC said fine, but re-cast the powerful woman with another actress, he told Majel that NBC said no woman would be allowed in a command role, probably to spare her feelings. And from then on, GR was boxed in. He had to keep Starfleet women down to maintain the charade that NBC was the bad guy.

The icing on the cake: while keeping the (human) female roles largely powerless, and incidentally while having lots of sex with subordinates, he posed as a fighter for women's rights in the face of NBC's supposed intransigence! And his self-made legend lived for decades.

But you're right: maybe it would have been culturally possible to portray female starship captains all along, if not for GR driving that concept into a ditch.