TOS most sexist episodes/moments

[Cheapjack]

'Dead Armed', is where you punch someone on the shoulder, and their arm doesn't work, for a while. I've seen it done to a secretary and two of the bosse's daughters, and the people I worked with thought I'd just walked off a spaceship!

Enough of that.

I think that a woman in command shouldn't be Queen Bee, either, she shouldn't be using her sexuality to command. She should just be a woman. She may even be ugly! It's the proved ability to command that's the thing.

 

[Hermiod]

^I don't think Janeway matches that description. Her crew treated her a lot like Sisko or Picard's crew did, perhaps with a little bit less of the intimidation factor the more junior members of the crew seemed to suffer from - Sonya Gomez's panic when she spilled coffee all over Picard, for instance.

I can't remember any instances of other female command officers like Kira or Dax doing that either. The closest I can think of was Mirror Kira and we can hardly use her as an example.

 

[Pauln6]

^Since when does James Kirk need a bodyguard ?

Ah yes, that old chestnut. Kirk often beamed down onto planets with a security escort. He also had to be 'saved' in NuTrek by Spock and Pike. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

The primary focus of the Captain's Yeoman is admin. We know this. However, if s/he is there at the Captain's side, why can't s/he act as a bodyguard?

The fact that Kirk 'thinks' he doesn't need a bodyguard is the cue for some comedy value. Especially if Rand is overprotective: "I thought she had a knife hidden in her space bikini, sir."

And let's leave the ludicrous nature of "butt kicking" women out of Star Trek for now, please. We had enough of that with pregnant Kira beating up Cardassian soldiers.

Surely the issue is the pregnancy rather than her gender? But who is to say that Bajoran pregnancy doesn't increase the strength of expectant mothers - she is an alien after all.

If you're suggesting that no woman in Trek should ever be shown fighting and winning then you need to join a different thread!

 

[Hermiod]

Ah yes, that old chestnut. Kirk often beamed down onto planets with a security escort. He also had to be 'saved' in NuTrek by Spock and Pike. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

The primary focus of the Captain's Yeoman is admin. We know this. However, if s/he is there at the Captain's side, why can't s/he act as a bodyguard?

Simple fact for you: James Kirk is not going to let anyone, male or female, do his fighting for him. He's not Picard, he doesn't have Riker telling him to stand behind him all the time.

Sure, he brings backup, but he's the boss.

Surely the issue is the pregnancy rather than her gender? But who is to say that Bajoran pregnancy doesn't increase the strength of expectant mothers - she is an alien after all.

Some scenes of her breaking coffee cups because she doesn't know her own strength might have established that a bit better. The issue is with her gender because she's not a large woman by any stretch of the imagination.

If you're suggesting that no woman in Trek should ever be shown fighting and winning then you need to join a different thread!

No, I'm not. Denying the physical advantages each gender has is sexist too. Men are, by and large, bigger and stronger than women. There's no getting around that.

There's no reason why Kira (as an example) can't be shown to be tough or Dax can't be shown to be skilled with a bat'leth but when they start beating up guards twice their size and taking punches to the face that they really shouldn't be shrugging off it's ridiculous.

 

[Pauln6]

The primary focus of the Captain's Yeoman is admin. We know this. However, if s/he is there at the Captain's side, why can't s/he act as a bodyguard?

Simple fact for you: James Kirk is not going to let anyone, male or female, do his fighting for him. He's not Picard, he doesn't have Riker telling him to stand behind him all the time.

Sure, he brings backup, but he's the boss.

Sure, but I still don't get the automatic reaction that I often see about Yeomen also being trained as bodyguards. It's as if people are frightened that Kirk would be imasculated if somebody else got some fight time. Pine isn't Shatner - I really can't see him going through the script to give himself more lines or action scenes. Plus his Kirk is younger and less sure of his bravado.

And yeomen aren't trained to order for specific captains, they're trained as standard. Should Kirk insist that his Yeoman should never be armed just in case they shot somebody that he wanted to shoot? The dynamic will be determined by the plot at the end of the day.

I think it would be fun as a running joke to establish Rand's bodyguard credentials if she steals Kirk's thunder by decking/stunning some villains when he wanted to get his hands dirty. Even TOS Rand used to chase him round the ship to make sure he was eating - this version adds a more modern, less sexist spin on that concept.

If Kira knew the weak spots on cardassians then she might be able to take them out. However, what you're pointing out is no different to the Worf syndrome where the most powerful character was always getting duffed up by somebody else or Kirk successfully winning fights against physically more powerful Romulans through skill, guile, and luck. It still isn't a gender issue per se.

 

[Hermiod]

Sure, but I still don't get the automatic reaction that I often see about Yeomen also being trained as bodyguards. It's as if people are frightened that Kirk would be imasculated if somebody else got some fight time. Pine isn't Shatner - I really can't see him going through the script to give himself more lines or action scenes. Plus his Kirk is younger and less sure of his bravado.

What ? He picked a fight with an entire bar full of Starfleet cadets!

It's not about Kirk being emasculated, that's going to happen no matter what you do - this is 2010, emasculating male characters is what Hollywood is all about.

If Kira knew the weak spots on cardassians then she might be able to take them out.

She punches them in the face! That's the least weak spot on their entire body! What do you think all those bumps on their heads are, day old Weetabix ?

However, what you're pointing out is no different to the Worf syndrome where the most powerful character was always getting duffed up by somebody else or Kirk successfully winning fights against physically more powerful Romulans through skill, guile, and luck. It still isn't a gender issue per se.

If I'd seen some actual skill, guile or luck I'd be happy.

What this comes down to is this - males have advantages in size, upper body strength, muscle mass, bone density etc over females. We are happy to acknowledge these advantages when it comes to having men almost exclusively do dirty, life threatening jobs - serving as front infantry being the most obvious but there are many others - but when it comes to our entertainment we treat their depiction with horror.

This is the ultimate in sexism. This blows anything about Uhura's skirt or Janice Lester's delusional ranting out of the water. This is the active devaluing of the male contribution to our society. It is the deliberate, purposeful reduction of everything that makes a man different from a woman to a negative.

As I have pointed out, with all but three exceptions, nearly every member of Starfleet who dies in TOS is male. The vast majority of these deaths are faceless redshirts whose deaths are treated as water off a duck's back by the more prominent characters on the show.

Moving on to later series, we see in TNG and DS9 that the Cardassian military is almost exclusively male, with the sciences being female dominated. We accept that because women are getting the nice cushy desk jobs while men are out putting their lives on the line. Compare that to how the Ferengi are depicted. I would have loved it if it had turned out to be true - that Ferengi females actually were inferior. We had enough episodes with matriarchal societies, after all.

Instead, we got the let's shove human standards of equality down the throats of aliens storyline.

TNG had far more prominent female security officers but the show did not feature random deaths of those officer nearly as frequently as its predecessor.

 

[Pauln6]

I think Kirk's macho credentials will be largely secure. This is bubble-gum sci fi. Still, there is no reason why a woman shouldn't be allowed to get in on the action. A bit of cross-gender rivalry can add a bit of fluid humour - look at Indy and Marion for example.

Personally I don't mind there being a racial gender divide just as long as they're up front about it and as long as it cuts both ways (so we need a lot more female-dominated species to redress the imbalance). I do object to the pretensions of equality that we see in Starfleet when it clearly isn't practised. I like the fact that the actresses they used for the (few) female andorians in Enterprise were very tall compared to the men but since it was never stated and it wasn't always applied that way e.g. TMP make-up shots it is a quirk that will be forgotten.

I also agree with what you say about some fights being depicted illogically but it must be hard to ensure that stunt co-ordinators abide by 'canon' when they're on such a tight schedule. Of course it could also be that cardassian males have a weak spot if you hit their noses just right...

Another classically stupid and infamous moment that came about as a result of stunt co-ordination on set was when Gates and Marina had to smash pots on the heads of villains when all the male actors got to fight with swords in spite of the fact that both actresses had fencing experience and some of the actors didn't.

 

[Cheapjack]

OK, men are bigger and stronger than women, today, but maybe not in another 300 years? Would we want to see that? Could women cope with it? Boobs, wombs and muscles? And, in Vonda McIntyres book for ST2, it stated, that when Spock left the bridge, to save the ship, Saavik feels guilty, cos she was the only one who could physically stop him, cos Vulcan women are nearly as strong, if not equal to Vulcan males!

And Klingon women are terrifying! Maybe they should just explore that?

 

[Hermiod]

Personally I don't mind there being a racial gender divide just as long as they're up front about it and as long as it cuts both ways (so we need a lot more female-dominated species to redress the imbalance). I do object to the pretensions of equality that we see in Starfleet when it clearly isn't practised.

We had several episodes with female dominated societies. It was only the male dominated Ferengi that were portrayed as being offensive in their attitudes to people from the Federation.

I saw this as an opportunity for Deep Space Nine, which wasn't shy about criticising its predecessors portrayal of Federation self-righteousness (Sisko's whole "the problem is Earth" speech, for instance) to show a different side to the argument. What if those first Ferengi were right to be surprised to see Tasha Yar on the bridge ? What if Ferengi women really were slow and stupid and they were right to keep them off of their ships and out of harm's way ?

Instead, the story we got was Quark being portrayed as a relic for trying to preserve the old Ferengi society while his dumb, weak-willed gullible moron of a brother becomes the most powerful person in the alliance.

Another classically stupid and infamous moment that came about as a result of stunt co-ordination on set was when Gates and Marina had to smash pots on the heads of villains when all the male actors got to fight with swords in spite of the fact that both actresses had fencing experience and some of the actors didn't.

Gates and Marina smashed pots on the guys heads because it's the most sensible thing to do. Why get in to a prolonged fight with a physically superior opponent that you might lose when you can just smack them with a computer ? I praise them for doing that, that's just common sense!

One of the better known female "butt kicker" shows was Alias. The lead character, Sydney Bristow, used a real-life Israeli fighting style called Krav Maga. It was designed by their security forces - who, unlike the rest of the world, have national service for men and women equally - to allow a combatant to disable an opponent as quickly as possible, rather than focusing on more the artistic aspects as Eastern martial arts do. It strongly emphasizes the use of weapons of opportunity. So, if that means grabbing a pot and smashing it over your enemy's head then do so! It'll save your life a lot more reliably than getting in to some silly, showy swordfight.

OK, men are bigger and stronger than women, today, but maybe not in another 300 years? Would we want to see that? Could women cope with it? Boobs, wombs and muscles?

Evolution doesn't work that fast.

And, in Vonda McIntyres book for ST2, it stated, that when Spock left the bridge, to save the ship, Saavik feels guilty, cos she was the only one who could physically stop him, cos Vulcan women are nearly as strong, if not equal to Vulcan males!

I'm going to stick to canon here and not argue with you on that. There's no indication from canon sources of this.

And Klingon women are terrifying! Maybe they should just explore that?

They did. Several times.

 

[Pauln6]

We had several episodes with female dominated societies. It was only the male dominated Ferengi that were portrayed as being offensive in their attitudes to people from the Federation.

Yeah they tended to be one-shot species where there was overt criticism about a gender divide that was often less restrictive than the Ferengi (or the Kzinti). Even on Earth there are many species (such as reptiles and insects) where the females are larger and stronger than males and many more where the sexes are equally strong.

Gates and Marina smashed pots on the guys heads because it's the most sensible thing to do. Why get in to a prolonged fight with a physically superior opponent that you might lose when you can just smack them with a computer ? I praise them for doing that, that's just common sense!

One of the better known female "butt kicker" shows was Alias. The lead character, Sydney Bristow, used a real-life Israeli fighting style called Krav Maga. It was designed by their security forces - who, unlike the rest of the world, have national service for men and women equally - to allow a combatant to disable an opponent as quickly as possible, rather than focusing on more the artistic aspects as Eastern martial arts do. It strongly emphasizes the use of weapons of opportunity. So, if that means grabbing a pot and smashing it over your enemy's head then do so! It'll save your life a lot more reliably than getting in to some silly, showy swordfight.

And yet both actresses would have preferred a sword fight and none of the men, including Geordi who is pretty much a short nerd who values brains over brawn, were getting stuck in with weapons.

Gotta love Sydney Bristow. The show was bonkers but great fun. Lots wigs and of bikinis I recall.

Evolution is always at work and I speak as a 9 stone 5'7" asthmatic male who works in an office job and would have died as a child as little as 60 years ago. Physically the sexes will be far more similar in 300 years' time and in fact women have a slight advantage because they are less prone to genetic disorders that are no longer being weeded out by Darwinian principles.

 

[Hermiod]

^You alone are not a statistically significant sample of the entire human race. If anything males are getting taller. Evolution is, after all, the survival of the fittest.

To this day, Riker gets bashed for having sex with the female leader from "Angel One". Nobody seems able to see what really happened there. Riker is taller, stronger and more "manly" than any man she's ever met because all of the men she knows are what we humans would call "feminine". To her, that's the same as a guy having a thing for so-called "Amazonian" women. And from Riker's perspective, here's this strong, confident woman - traits present in many of the women Riker is attracted to during the course of the series.

Riker is aggressively pursued by numerous women throughout the series, Ro Laren being another example. Yet, he is criticised for his "womanizing" ways.

So, here's the question, how would Star Trek fans have reacted to a one-off episode where we see a kind of anti-Angel One, an alien race where all the women are slow witted and generally not very useful for anything except sex and doing what they're told and are treated as such ?

What if the male leader of that society saw someone like Troi, an intelligent, confident woman, and pursued her - successfully - as a result ?

 

[Pauln6]

^You alone are not a statistically significant sample of the entire human race. If anything males are getting taller. Evolution is, after all, the survival of the fittest.

To this day, Riker gets bashed for having sex with the female leader from "Angel One". Nobody seems able to see what really happened there. Riker is taller, stronger and more "manly" than any man she's ever met because all of the men she knows are what we humans would call "feminine". To her, that's the same as a guy having a thing for so-called "Amazonian" women. And from Riker's perspective, here's this strong, confident woman - traits present in many of the women Riker is attracted to during the course of the series.

Riker is aggressively pursued by numerous women throughout the series, Ro Laren being another example. Yet, he is criticised for his "womanizing" ways.

So, here's the question, how would Star Trek fans have reacted to a one-off episode where we see a kind of anti-Angel One, an alien race where all the women are slow witted and generally not very useful for anything except sex and doing what they're told and are treated as such ?

What if the male leader of that society saw someone like Troi, an intelligent, confident woman, and pursued her - successfully - as a result ?

Lol - personally I try to avoid criticising characters for their behaviour, even Neelix, since we don't want carbon copy characters cropping up all the time. I have more of a problem with under-use, lack of character development, or just ridiculousness such as Troi's ineptitude or Trip's lack of professionalism in spite of being senior officers.

The problem for me with Angel One was more to do with the heavy-handed, preachy way they approached the female-dominated society when it really shouldn't have been that much of an issue for experienced diplomats (although Riker does stand his ground in one scene when the women laugh at his outfit). The later show about domestic terrorism (was it Proving Ground?) took on a more mature approach to civil disobedience.

But this is part of the problem I have with alien of the week shows. I would have preferred several stories featuring the alien society, none of which revolved around the male/female divide, which could colour the main plot and drive it in certain directions but not derail it with preachiness.

Same with Elaan of Troyus. It would have been fun to see the races featured in that episode crop up again.

 

[Kegg]

Riker is aggressively pursued by numerous women throughout the series, Ro Laren being another example. Yet, he is criticised for his "womanizing" ways.

So, here's the question, how would Star Trek fans have reacted to a one-off episode where we see a kind of anti-Angel One,

What is the point of that? Angel One is a deliberate inverse of patriarchal gender relations. An inverse of an inverse seems redundant.

 

[Hermiod]

^It was a hypothetical situation. A better idea would have been showing the Ferengi as I suggested.

 

[DevilEyes]

I think it had more to do with the cliche that what a woman ultimately needs is the love of a big strong manly man. So while those women may be successful historians or archeologists, they would, naturally, forget everything else and start swooning the moment when the hunky villain of the week would appear.

Not just that - we could figure out that the reason why they were interested in their fields was because of certain men. A woman historian? She's of course always been obsessed with a dictator from 300 years ago! And a female archeologist/anthropologist, she must have always had a crush on some of the Greek gods. That's the most obvious reason why a woman would pursue such a career... Right? Right?

It's funny that in some way everything a woman does wrong on this show somehow boils down to it being a man's fault.

Yeah, it's the fault of the writer, so if the writer was male, it's a man's fault. Your point?

If Kira knew the weak spots on cardassians then she might be able to take them out.

She punches them in the face! That's the least weak spot on their entire body! What do you think all those bumps on their heads are, day old Weetabix ?

Um... no.

The first thing they teach you in self-defense classes (which I have been taking), is that the head is the most vulnerable spot on the entire body; the most important thing is to always protect your head. A blow to the head might knock you unconscious, cause a concussion/brain damage, or even kill you. It's always better to receive a blow to your arm, leg, shoulder, side, anything but your head. At best, it distracts you and makes you incapable of defending yourself for a moment. And when you're punching your opponent, their head is what you're first targeting, if you can: a short thrust in the eyes to distract them, then a punch into the face, a slap on the face, or a kick in the chin. Other spots you can target are the knees, the neck, the shin-bone, the belly... but the head is always the primary target, as even a weak punch to the head distracts an opponent for just enough time for you to either run, or punch them more strongly a couple of more times and then run... and, as I said, a blow to the head might also knock them down or out, if one can and has to do it.

To this day, Riker gets bashed for having sex with the female leader from "Angel One". Nobody seems able to see what really happened there. Riker is taller, stronger and more
So, here's the question, how would Star Trek fans have reacted to a one-off episode where we see a kind of anti-Angel One, an alien race where all the women are slow witted and generally not very useful for anything except sex and doing what they're told and are treated as such ?

Don't get me started on "Angel One". It's an embarrassing example of TNG season 1 clumsy writing and idiocy. The writers thought that the best way to portray a society where women are the dominant gender is to flip flop everything 180 degrees - and make women bigger, stronger, and the ones who go hunting, while the men are smaller, weaker and androgynous. So what does that tell us? That apparently physical (muscular) strength is the most important thing that determines the balance of power in a society? That people who go hunting will always be the dominant ones? That's just stupid. If that were the case, then the most powerful men in the world would all be athletes, musclemen, and young fit men, rather than less than fit, middle-aged or elderly men who sit and make decisions. And what it also implies is that women are naturally, by their biology, destined to be the "inferior", 'weaker" sex, just because they are physically smaller and weaker. Well done, Trek writers.

 

[Captrek]

^Since when does James Kirk need a bodyguard ?

Since he refused to annihilate the Halkans?

 

[T'Girl]

She punches them in the face! That's the least weak spot on their entire body! What do you think all those bumps on their heads are, day old Weetabix ?

The first thing they teach you in self-defense classes (which I have been taking), is that the head is the most vulnerable spot on the entire body

The first three things on the standard "target list" are jaw, throat and eyes, in that order. If you've ever seen a woman fighting a man for real, especially a small femme like myself, she moves her elbows almost straight out from her shoulders before she strikes. That's because she'll be striking upwards to her opponents head. Not level outwards like a man fighting another man. When I punch the average man in the face, my elbow has to actual be above my head as I throw.

 

[Hermiod]

Yeah, it's the fault of the writer, so if the writer was male, it's a man's fault. Your point?

My point is simple: Man does something wrong, he's evil. Woman does something wrong, somehow it's a man's fault and she's excused.

Marla McGivers, anyone ? She betrayed her shipmates, but that's Khan's fault, isn't it ?

The first thing they teach you in self-defense classes (which I have been taking), is that the head is the most vulnerable spot on the entire body; the most important thing is to always protect your head. A blow to the head might knock you unconscious, cause a concussion/brain damage, or even kill you. It's always better to receive a blow to your arm, leg, shoulder, side, anything but your head. At best, it distracts you and makes you incapable of defending yourself for a moment. And when you're punching your opponent, their head is what you're first targeting, if you can: a short thrust in the eyes to distract them, then a punch into the face, a slap on the face, or a kick in the chin. Other spots you can target are the knees, the neck, the shin-bone, the belly... but the head is always the primary target, as even a weak punch to the head distracts an opponent for just enough time for you to either run, or punch them more strongly a couple of more times and then run... and, as I said, a blow to the head might also knock them down or out, if one can and has to do it.

On a human. We weren't talking about humans.

Seska: Thank goodness he doesn't look too Human. You all have such weak foreheads.

 

[Pauln6]

Yeah, it's the fault of the writer, so if the writer was male, it's a man's fault. Your point?

My point is simple: Man does something wrong, he's evil. Woman does something wrong, somehow it's a man's fault and she's excused.

Marla McGivers, anyone ? She betrayed her shipmates, but that's Khan's fault, isn't it ?

Lol - it's a man's fault if a man wrote her character as a weak-willed dumb ass. Having said that, not every poorly-written female character was written by a man and vice-versa (to return to your point about the emasculation of male characters in modern Hollywood). The problem that I have with McGyvers is more that her conversion and reconversion are just so rapid. I think she suffered for the sixties style of episodic televsion.

Similarly, Angel One's childishly simplistic political model is another victim of this type of storytelling that we see far less often these days.

Generally, we should be aiming for more equal characters and, if reflecting against a TOS background, that would mean toning down machismo for the men and dialing up confidence, competence, and just plain numbers for the women.

Certainly, the implication from NuTrek is that NuKirk is something of a throwback - a macho, overconfident jerk with a knack for making either the right decision, or the wrong decision but able to pull it out of the fire due to sheer luck and a decent body count. However, he will be the bar below which everybody else (except maybe Khan) will be measured.

 

[Hermiod]

Lol - it's a man's fault if a man wrote her character as a weak-willed dumb ass. Having said that, not every poorly-written female character was written by a man and vice-versa (to return to your point about the emasculation of male characters in modern Hollywood). The problem that I have with McGyvers is more that her conversion and reconversion are just so rapid. I think she suffered for the sixties style of episodic televsion.

That's just a symptom of having 45 minutes to tell a story, really. These days you'd introduce her as a background character in earlier episodes and slowly build her up.

She was, effectively, a mutineer, however. Khan's influence over her cannot excuse her betrayal. Anyone who suggests otherwise has been watching too many movies of the week where some woman murders her husband because "he deserved it".

Generally, we should be aiming for more equal characters and, if reflecting against a TOS background, that would mean toning down machismo for the men and dialing up confidence, competence, and just plain numbers for the women.

The second one sure, the other no. None of Star Trek's characters are macho stereotypes. They're just male. From what I've seen over the last couple of decades, the general principle is that in order to make women look good you have to make men look bad. Women's strength and competence is reflected in the weakness and incompetence of their useless male colleagues.

Certainly, the implication from NuTrek is that NuKirk is something of a throwback - a macho, overconfident jerk with a knack for making either the right decision, or the wrong decision but able to pull it out of the fire due to sheer luck and a decent body count. However, he will be the bar below which everybody else (except maybe Khan) will be measured.

The new film doesn't do anything of the sort. Kirk is portrayed as having significant intelligence, with test scores higher than any of the cadets he got in to a fight with early in the film. He's not 'macho', he's an intelligent, capable commander who has a certain lack of respect for the chain of command when he believes he's right, which he was throughout the film.