"I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge"

Well, this is a franchise that has a hot planet "Vulcan" and a feline race called "Caitians".

 

To be fair I'm sure Roddenberry got the name Vulcan from the hypothetical planet inside the orbit of Mercury as proposed by Le Verrier to account for eccentricities in that planet's orbit. It was an outmoded concept, but it fits with some of the frankly nutty stuff Roddenberry imagined for Spock while writing 2nd pilot version of "The Omega Glory."

 

Yes, that was probably the case. The 1966 Who story Power of the Daleks is set on Vulcan, though in early outlines it was Pluto.

 

To completely blow your mind, the early draft script that James Blish used had Captain Christopher thinking that was the Vulcan Spock was from.

 

And Christopher wonders why he didn’t get accepted into the astronaut program—he didn’t even know the basics of the solar system.

 

Source? Because Blish routinely made up stuff that wasn't in the scripts. AND scripts don't typically tell you what characters are thinking because there's no way to film that.

 

The adaptation has Kirk or Spock telling Christopher Spock is from Vulcan, and Christopher asking "You mean the one inside the orbit of Mercury?" It's been years since I read it, but that always sticks out because it was something I'd never heard of before.

 

Sounds very much like a Blish addition. I've seen nothing like that in any of the story outlines or scripts, but that's not an episode I've dug into much.

People assume Blish worked literally from the scripts. He didn't. He changed and invented stuff. @Harvey is working of some Fact Trek material on that right now, in fact (trek).

 

I feel like I'll be toiling away on that piece for a while yet. But yes, in general, the assumption that lines and plot developments found only in Blish's adaptations* appear therein because he was sent an early draft of a certain script is not typically accurate. He often invented things that are simply not present in any script drafts, and was almost always sent shooting scripts, not earlier versions. (Shooting scripts, of course, still having material that was filmed and then deleted in editing. And on some occasions he was sent the wrong script draft.)

*This is a whole other can of worms, but apparently Blish didn't write most of the adaptations that appear under his byline.

 

I'm surprised this isn't more common knowledge, since it was first revealed in Blish's biography in 1987.

That said, I just learned about it this year. Read the @FactTrek tweets here and here. I will cover this in more depth when we publish the piece I'm working on, but that may not arrive for several months.

 

^^ I knew about the last few stories, but not about anything before those.

 

That is in the same adaptation where Blish references the Vegan tyranny, which is from his own books, so some may be from drafts, but some might be from him.

 

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I’ll give him this— his idea of THE KING IN YELLOW was perfect (“More Light”)

 

Were there any episodes of TOS where there wasn't a woman on the bridge?

 

A couple of times in This Side of Paradise. (Kirk then Kirk plus Spock)

 

Those were scenes, not entire episode. There were scenes in TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise with no women on the bridge.

(Thinking of a scene with no men on the bridge far harder)

Uhura was on the bridge in the very first scene of that episode.

 

TOS Season 3: "The Empath".

 

Nope, second scene



And final scene

 

I was watching the 2nd half of Wolf in the Fold. I didn't see any women stationed on the bridge in the 2nd half at least. Except for the visiting nurse. But there may have been commercial break cuts.