I agree that Hollywierd writers and producers of that era seemed to have no idea how to get beyond the blatant sexism of the Cold War era (which continued right up to 20 years ago, including the early TNG days) and depict female characters as serious players in the TREK Universe, and the hilarious miniskirts the female Enterprise crewmembers wore didn't help matters any (nor did the repeated application of the enlisted term "yeoman", which practically became synonymous with "woman") but sexism is a very difficult scourge to eradicate.
It didn't do TNG's reputation any good to start the
Berman-era catsuit tradition with
Troi, then continue it with DS9's tight-suited
Kira and the
Dabo Girls, then VOY's over-the-top
Seven of Nine, then ENT's
T'Pol. The whole oversexed crewmen-in-tights thing was more than just poor taste and bad costuming. It showed a lack of creative direction. The viewer got eye candy, a poor substitute for good writing and overall direction.
Better stories and character development, arising from a more thoughtful direction of the show, would've corrected all of this, but not just by answering the question "how do we depict a sexism-less Utopia?"
You have to go back and question alot of things about each of the shows, from TOS forward. Every one of them fumbled, especially on depicting equality between the sexes. Part of the way you do it is to avoid drawing attention to it. Yes, the uniforms could've been less sexist. (I think the
DS9 jumpsuits finally were going in the right direction. They weren't as tight and looked more utilitarian, without completely repudiating the TREK "look".) But in order to change the tone of TREK to deflate the sexism, you would probably have to do more than just eliminate tights and miniskirts, have better-written stories and ones with more interesting female characters. Yuo need a direction, that's what I mean by a change in tone.
I was actually more impressed by the first four TREK movies than I was with early TNG. Uhura and other female regulars were older, and they weren't wearing minis or tights, and the atmosphere, while sometimes silly, seemed more like co-workers talking to each other than the old stilted "aye, sir"; Uhura's best lines were "Now, what's
that supposed to mean?" in TMP2 and her "
Mr. Adventure" scene in TMP3. Of course, it has to be said that the movies were supremely lacking in direction; they simply benefitted from momentum of each succeeding story.
One thing STARGATE SG-1 did well that TREK never really tried was semi-serialization. Ongoing plot threads and an overall direction for SG-1 showed what TREK could've done. The whole SG-1 environment allowed the characters to develop and thrive much more comprehensively than any of the TREK series.
but some of us out here are attracted to women who are not fabulously good looking but who combine that with brains, self confidence and competence. She wasn't just some helpless damsel. She was Kirk's equal, knew it and didn't bother trying to hide it. She was a more complete character to me than even the Romulan Commander who in the end, ruined her career by lusting too much for a man she should have known she couldn't have.
