Agency of Female Characters

In "Bread and Circuses", Uhura had the gumption to tell the big three -- Kirk, Spock, McCoy -- that they were all wrong in their interpretation of the planet's sun worship. "It's not the sun up in the sky. It's the son of god."

If Spock and McCoy had a further in-depth philosophical discussion about the matter, it might have been fascinating to hear it.

 

Womanhood aside, they all outranked her as well. I imagine she was excited enough by her discovery to temporarily break protocol.

 

I thought this method was how Sarek convinced Amanda to walk two paces behind him?

It obviously doesn't work well with Vulcan females, say, T'Pring. Might be the very secret behind Sarek's scoring on Earth, though. Not to mention an important tool in his trade.

Timo Saloniemi

 

If you compare Uhura's interactions with senior officers to, say, Rand, the yeoman behaves extremely deferentially, whereas Uhura is not afraid to challenge them. She's certainly a better command officer than she's ever given credit for. She's streets ahead of Chekov and he becomes a first officer. Uhura's lack of ambition and advancement in the movies is a great injustice to her character and black women in general IMO.

Today's episode was the Enterprise Incident. The Romulan Commander must take the award for female agency for the whole series but it's annoying that we have no other women at all in her crew. Her game of cat and mouse with Spock is a joy. I love the suppressed eroticism of their finger fondling. Spock's brow is REALLY furrowed at this point. He was into it. I was very annoyed when NuTrek replaced an intriguing alien custom with boring snogging on the transporter pad in the reboot. What a waste of a great concept.

Again, Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy dominated, with the full cast in minor support. What lets it down are the massive plot holes. In its anxiousness to milk Shatner, the story quickly loses all credibility. Why don't the vessels have their shields up? Why can't the Romulans detect a transporter beam when they can detect communications? Why do they only trace Spock's call? Why don't they detect Kirk's later call to the Enterprise?

I suppose I can see that the Romulans don't try to disable the ship because that increases the chance of the crew destroying it but surely they'd have weapons trained on it for the moment it tried to flee or have one cloaked vessel ready and waiting to pounce unseen?

In some ways using a shuttle for prisoner exchange would make more sense albeit that to avoid placing technology in the hands of the enemy they might need a transporter exchange! That said, two of the ships can have shields up while the third transports I suppose.

This would have been a good episode to feature Yeoman Rand to highlight Kirk's odd behaviour early on. In fact, Rand, dressed as a Romulan, squeezing out of a shielded compartment in an impounded shuttle to stalk the Romulan ship would have made a far more convincing spy IMO. Kirk's plan is entirely foiled if the Romulans raise shields, and why wouldn't they? I would require them to cover off the obvious in their plot to satisfy me e.g. Rand setting off a device, maybe even blowing the shuttle, to destabilise the shield generators etc.

Go Janice.

 

There are two angles from which to cover the apparent blunders.

One is to blame it all on the female Commander (and perhaps on her femininity, if one wants to consider this thread-appropriate). She has an agenda of her own, one supposedly in conflict with the greater good of the Star Empire: she wants to be the one who bags the Enterprise. Even though starships under her command have achieved most of the feat already, her plan to exploit Spock for ultimately securing the prize is key to personal glory. A certain degree of relaxed security must accompany her seduction attempts (both sexual and political) or there will be mixed messages. Also, her personal attention is diverted at key moments because of her hands-in (or at least fingers-on) approach.

A male Commander would face the same problems inherent in a plan of personal ambition, but only if he attempted to seduce a female (or male homosexual) Enterprise key officer, so we wouldn't see that sort of a plot in TOS. Chiefly because there are no female Enterprise key officers.

The second is to blame it all on techno-continuity. In TOS, Romulans were never indicated to possess the secret of forcefield shielding: "Balance of Terror" and "The Deadly Years" are devoid of references just like "The Enterprise Incident" is. On the other hand, transporting out through raised shields has always been possible in Trek, starting with "A Taste of Armageddon". Finally, the cloaking device is hooked up to the shielding systems of the Enterprise, even if only in the sense of drawing from the same power socket: the Romulan ship might be similarly configured, precluding the use of shields.

Why the Romulans only intercept about half of the hero activity may simply be indicative of a rat race between stealth communications/transport and methods of exposing said...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Spock's exploring his Human side. Maybe they'll do the finger touching in film XIV.

 

Interesting options. I'd prefer not to adopt the one that suggests she was blinded by emotion and Vulcan snoo snoo or it devalues one of the most potent female characters in TOS, next to perhaps Edith. I do like the idea that Romulan technology doesn't have to be on par with Federation tech and we do know that they mount kamikaze missions with massively powerful weapons but we must also bear in mind that they were in Klingon ships too. It only stretches so far and an inability to raise shields to prevent transporting puts them at too much of a disadvantage on the broader galactic stage. Your enemies could destroy you at range with transported mines or even space debris, or mount boarding actions at great range. It just smacks of sloppy writing.

 

Yeah but that's the point - we have six other characters with (often annoying) human sides. I'd prefer it if the only alien was allowed to be a bit alien! :-p

 

Watched the Paradise Syndrome plus And Children Shall Lead. Neither one is a favourite of mine but I don't hate the latter as much as some do.

Miramanee is a bit dull but I realise that she was meant to represent an idyllic existence free of command responsibility so she had to be rather vapid I suppose. At least Chapel got to beam down without being kidnapped for a change.

Again the A&A officer gets bumped to allow Spock and McCoy landing party duty. Nepotism is very ugly in Starfleet.

The second episode could be retooled as a half decent horror episode but perhaps too many shades of Charlie X might creep in. It would have been a fair episode to feature Yeoman Rand again, helping Kirk snap out of his funk.

Chapel for once displays considerable insight in this one but instead of probing the children gently for info or offering any opinions, she gives them ice cream and lets Kirk do all the work.

Sulu might have been more convincing if he'd seen an illusion of an asteroid field on the viewscreen and, while it's nice to know that it isn't just Rand who can kill crewmen on the transporter pad, one has to wonder why the system doesn't have any safeguards to prevent human errors.

Gorgon never seemed like a credible threat though. They should have used Pennywise.

 

Miramanee was lovely and what a beautiful planet in which to live out your life! Plus it was one of the only stories to take place over a series of months while the Enterprise without warp drive limped back to the planet just a few hours in front of the asteroid!
JB

 

It is one of the rare episodes that turns the vastness of space into a plot point but its maths might be a bit dodgy since they travel to the meteor at warp 9.

It's one of those episodes where Spock's logic is faulty. Since the meteor will take months to arrive, there is no reason why the Enterprise's departure should be delayed. A search party could remain and be picked up later even if efforts to divert the meteor fail.

The obsession with the troika stealing all the agency of every other character hurts the story logic considerably. If a search party had been left but zapped or captured the story would have seemed more sensible. However, having to explore the presence of more Starfleet crew on the planet could have blurred the divide between the burden of a command crisis on the ship, and the idyllic existence on the planet, I suppose.

It is nice to see the Enterprise struggle with something mundane yet life threatening though. In NuTrek, Kirk would have just rammed it out of the way and patted himself on the back for his ingenuity before jumping on his road bike to steal the chief's daughter.

I also prefer the notion of alternate Earths being Preserver experiments rather than random. A plot thread tracing the origins, motivations, and fate of the Preservers would have been very interesting., if a bit sciency for the sixties.

 

If Gorgan's magic can make the helm think that the ship is still in orbit, then it can fool the transporter operator into thinking that it's safe to beam down. I just think like in "The Menagerie"/"The Cage": "With illusion they can make your crew work the wrong controls or push any button it takes to destroy your ship."

Agreed about the asteroids.

 

Oh yeah - duh! Just like how Pike imagined the Talosians could destroy the ship. Even so, surely the operator would have to disable safeguards to beam someone into space.

Charlie Evans had his weird eye twitch but that was far less annoying than the kids fist pumping. I suppose they felt that this pointless, time-consuming window dressing would require less writing, less acting, and no special effects.

 

Part and parcel of the illusion is convincing the operator to disable the safeguards.

And Sulu seeing swords is illogical, but is also illusory. He sees what he fears most, not what makes the most sense in his job.

 

Watched Is There Truth in No Beauty today. I've always liked Miranda. I would have liked Troi far more if this was the version of telepathy that she had possessed.

While I think Miranda is great, my jaw always hits the floor at the patronising tone the other characters adopt around her. She clearly enjoys blanking their pathetic overtures but her relationship with Marvick shows us what's really going on: she just finds the presence of other humans to be annoying and she's very protective of her way of achieving fulfilment without them.

Kirk's lunatic rant at her towards the end of the episode looks superficially like reverse psychology but then he comes out and tells Bones that she couldn't stand to hear 'the truth'. It's baffling that not one of the male characters has any inkling about what makes this woman tick.

The other annoyance is where Spock goes to the engineering console to try and sever the power and calls Chekov, the guy who should be trying to track where they are going, to assist, instead of the female engineer SITTING RIGHT AT THE ENGINEERING CONTROLS! Sigh.

 

But that's not Spock logic. That's McCoy illogic, which Spock accommodates to a point.

It's a Prime Directive issue as well, though. The more people down there, the greater the risk of things going wrong. Without the resources of the orbiting starship (chiefly, the transporter as a quick getaway vehicle, but also the sensors), the search would be both riskily hands-on and lacking in bailout options.

Like "The Enemy Within" and "The Galileo Seven", this particular disaster relies in escalation. A fairly mundane setback snowballs into a disaster at each as such sensible step taken, because the person in charge doesn't understand to take three steps at a time to get ahead in the game (half a Kirk is too wussy, Spock is too methodical). No amount of support from an ensemble cast or an army of sidekicks would help with this issue.

Similarly, Uhura need not actually be alarmed at showing signs of aging (even if regular 23rd century science can't help there, she has already been through "The Deadly Years" and knows there's a cure to sudden and unnatural wrinkling) - what the mirror illusion addresses is some sort of an underlying fear of aging, with the actual signs largely irrelevant to the issue.

The attitudes of those around her should logically follow, then, given what we know of their personalities, right?

Spock should be a soulmate, but he isn't involved much. And when he is, he's Kollos...

In his interactions, Kirk is always manipulative first and foremost; if he scores, this verifies his chosen line of manipulation (and even though another line might have worked better, Kirk is a practical man and doesn't get stuck with "if"). He should be pretty satisfied with himself at having defeated yet another opponent here, and blinded to the fact that this could have gone better still.

...Perhaps she's already doing valuable work there, work she should not be distracted from, while Chekov is free for use as a means of net gain in efficiency?

Timo Saloniemi

 

In regards to Kirk's rant, if he hadn't spoken to Miranda wouldn't Spock be dead?
I agree that Kirk is interested in results. He's already wasted time going through Miranda's psychology and it hasn't worked and Spock was dying.
I don't see what Kirk said that was wrong. I assume that Miranda did get Spock to forget to put on the visor subconsciously.
To me "the truth" is that Kollos wasn't going to connect with her because she was not chill. Spock could meld with him because he was. I think Kirk did see what made Miranda tick. Spock couldn't understand her but Kirk saw she was jealous and troubled and maybe justifiably so. So when Miranda risked everything to save Spock finally Kollos could connect with her. Everyone was happy at the end and no harm done.
Except To Marvick I suppose and maybe Kirk went mad at the end when he didn't have a visor on when Kollos beamed way.

 

Some interesting points! The search parties could be disguised as natives though. This has been used repeatedly in previous missions and McCoy can remain to take charge of them. He's no use to an asteroid.

It's not so much Kirk's approach to Miranda - provoking emotions to spur her to try harder - but more the fact that he seems to genuinely believe that she is motivated by jealousy and wants Spock to die unless he confronts that and guilt trips her into helping. if he'd been a bit more insightful about her motivation I'd be fine but the audience is encouraged to judge Miranda through the protagonist's eyes and when he isn't patronising her, he's accusing her of being a spiteful man hater. Can't the woman just be a loner?

The female engineer was hard at work until Spock interrupted her. After that, she just stands there. Possibly another example of Spock being lecherous?

 

It may simply be that Chekov has done this many times before and can do it quicker, a known variable rather than an unknown.

 

Sure, you can make up excuses but an engineer would not be on the crew, let alone the bridge if she wasn't qualified to assist someone with some electronics and as I said, Chekov should really have been occupied at the time monitoring navigation as they sped out of the galaxy! Even Uhura would have made more sense. At least she's a technician.

In the graphic novel of the city on the edge of forever, Rand jury rigs a damaged transporter. I can't see the writers of the episodes giving one of the women such a task. The best they can hope for is to hand one of the men the tools to do the job for them and in this case, not even that!