They killed Hengist!

[Phaser Two]

You haven't seen it in a while. Spock lost his mind in "Operation Annihilate" and attacked everyone on the bridge. He was screaming. He tried to take the ship down.

Yup. Something similar happens in "Is There In Truth No Beauty" and even "Day of the Dove" has a brief scene that fits the overall pattern. Those are two seasons later, but add in "Return to Tomorrow" and "All Our Yesterdays" and it would be hard for someone watching/rewatching the whole series at once not to detect, if not a trope exactly, a well to which the writers/producers loved to return.

 

[Santa Kang]

Yup. Something similar happens in "Is There In Truth No Beauty" and even "Day of the Dove" has a brief scene that fits the overall pattern. Those are two seasons later, but add in "Return to Tomorrow" and "All Our Yesterdays" and it would be hard for someone watching/rewatching the whole series at once not to detect, if not a trope exactly, a well to which the writers/producers loved to return.

Nimoy probably liked being able to "stretch" a little.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Yup. Something similar happens in "Is There In Truth No Beauty" and even "Day of the Dove" has a brief scene that fits the overall pattern. Those are two seasons later, but add in "Return to Tomorrow" and "All Our Yesterdays" and it would be hard for someone watching/rewatching the whole series at once not to detect, if not a trope exactly, a well to which the writers/producers loved to return.

I love that bit in "All Our Yesterdays" when Spock takes McCoy by the throat and tells him off. The presence of a scantily clad woman that both men desire takes Star Trek to a primal place it seldom went.

It kind of mirrors McCoy yanking Spock against the wall in "Bread and Circuses" and, frankly, coming in a little hot for the situation. But that outburst might be realism if we remember that the characters aren't supposed to know they are regulars in a series, and that everything will be fine. Realism-McCoy is under pressure from not knowing if he'll be alive tomorrow, and he snaps.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

I love that bit in "All Our Yesterdays" when Spock takes McCoy by the throat and tells him off. The presence of a scantily clad woman that both men desire takes Star Trek to a primal place it seldom went.

It kind of mirrors McCoy yanking Spock against the wall in "Bread and Circuses" and, frankly, coming in a little hot for the situation.

He was trying to thank the pointy-eared hobgoblin. But wasn't it essentially verbal, as opposed to McCoy's violent Captain's chair THOLIAN WEB swivel?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

You haven't seen it in a while.

Well, it's not all that good of an episode, so I don't rewatch it very much.

 

[Adventerprise]

But that outburst might be realism if we remember that the characters aren't supposed to know they are regulars in a series, and that everything will be fine. Realism-McCoy is under pressure from not knowing if he'll be alive tomorrow, and he snaps.

It speeds up the time it would take for people to become desperate for the sake of a program with a one hour time slot (two parters not included). Anyone who could really become that crazed in a matter of minutes or hours is either unstable to begin with, or under the influence of forces unlike any real humans have ever encountered.

 

[Phaser Two]

It speeds up the time it would take for people to become desperate for the sake of a program with a one hour time slot (two parters not included). Anyone who could really become that crazed in a matter of minutes or hours is either unstable to begin with, or under the influence of forces unlike any real humans have ever encountered.

Right. It's also, perhaps deliberately, not really clear how much time they spend in the past. (That element could have been workshopped a bit further, but for me the point of "All Our Yesterdays," the only ep (IIRC) without a scene on the Enterprise, lies elsewhere.)

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

the 1960s assumption

I just don't see this as being a scene forcing any kind of norm upon the characters. To me, they just wanted to hang out in this certain bar and were saying what was in their minds, but obscuring it so as not to refer directly to what happened to Scotty that apparently injured him badly.

under the influence of forces unlike any real humans have ever encountered

I think that the original series often leaves the impression that just this MAY be happening. There's no clear reason for why these forces may be so unusual, yet a number of episodes seem to claim that space could affect people in ways that the characters don't fully understand. Yet no episode makes this clear or full confirms this. I think that's part of what makes TOS seem fully of drama and the unknown.

 

[Christopher]

I just don't see this as being a scene forcing any kind of norm upon the characters.

Huh? I didn't say "forcing," I said "assumption," which is just the opposite. It's what people at the time took for granted, the default cultural attitude.

 

[Adventerprise]

Reinforcing, confirming, validating?

 

[Christopher]

Reinforcing, confirming, validating?

More just not questioning. Like I said, it was taken for granted.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

"Forcing" might have been a stronger word that I intended. But again, I just don't see that exchange as being actually meant to establish that visiting this bar is literally therapy for Scotty. I get the impression that would not have been the expectation, even in the 1960's.

 

[Christopher]

"Forcing" might have been a stronger word that I intended. But again, I just don't see that exchange as being actually meant to establish that visiting this bar is literally therapy for Scotty. I get the impression that would not have been the expectation, even in the 1960's.

Maybe not in a formal medical sense, but yes, the intent was to remind him of his natural attraction to women as a way of getting him past his irrational aversion -- getting him back on the horse, so to speak, though maybe that's a terrible metaphor in this context. My point has not been about whether it's formal medical therapy, it's about the sexism of the writers' assumption that the way to get a man over an aversion to women is not to encourage him to talk to them and get to know them and think of them as people, but to take him to a hedonistic pleasure planet and encourage him to think of them as sex objects.

 

[Charlie Xmas]

My point has not been about whether it's formal medical therapy, it's about the sexism of the writers' assumption that the way to get a man over an aversion to women is not to encourage him to talk to them and get to know them and think of them as people, but to take him to a hedonistic pleasure planet and encourage him to think of them as sex objects.

This is known as the Roddenberry Reboot.

 

[Christopher]

This is known as the Roddenberry Reboot.

There's no reason to think it wasn't part of Robert Bloch's script drafts. Roddenberry was not an outlier for his time in his gender values. If anything, he was more feminist than most of his contemporaries, or at least aspired to be.

 

[Set Harth]

getting him back on the horse, so to speak, though maybe that's a terrible metaphor in this context.

"Horse! I said horse!"

 

[Maurice]

Bloch is not the Ur-source of the misogyny in question.

1. 1967-04-20 story outline by Bloch—None of it the misogyny appears, which has Sulu as the suspect.
2. 1967-04-21 Justman memo—Suggested Doohan replace Takei. He also adds, "Unless I am highly mistaken, Jack the Ripper only preyed on female prostitutes."
3. 1967-5-15 First draft script by Bloch—The whole angry at women thing first manifests itself here, where it's point-blank stated that Uhura pulled the switch, resulting in the accident that affects Scott's behavior. There's no mention of why Redjac targets women other than the unexplained "hatred of all women" thing.
4. 1967-5-18 Memo from Coon to Bloch—The guilty party as to why Redjac targets women is revealed to be none other than Gene L. Coon, who wrote:

I would like in the sequence, incidentally, to have someone raise the question of why the Ripper kills only women, and the answer given that women, generally, generate more fear and terror than men.

Interestingly, Bloch's outline contains this for the moment when Redjac flees the computer:

…The desperate hammering of relentless logic feeding into the computer makes it impossible for the entity to endure there; we see it forced forth in its original form -- the shimmering, wavering, transparent essence of mouths, talons, claws and fangs -- as it subsides again into Hengist's body.

 

[Christopher]

So Coon was the culprit. Still, it was a common belief at the time that women were more fearful than men. Of course, the reason for that was that women had more to fear from men than men did.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

If anything, he was more feminist than most of his contemporaries, or at least aspired to be.

Indeed. He said it best himself:

. . . but to be fair, we have always, and will be continuing to use males as sex objects too. As a matter of fact, when I was younger and much more agile, I've been used as a sex object myself; I think it's great fun.

-- Gene Roddenberry, convention lecture, on the classic spoken word album, Inside Star Trek.

 

[Adventerprise]

Women also showed their fear more audibly (screaming, crying) and visibly (fainting, clinging to someone else) than men did.