Agency of Female Characters

[Commishsleer]

Not sure who you're addressing, but there are clearly at least two of us who don't think she was shot.

If she had been, don't you think Rodrigues would have reported it to the Captain and there would have been a great big fuss about people dying before McCoy got run through? Nobody told Kirk that Angela got shot. Shot at, yeah. But shot dead?

Nope.

She was shot dead. And returned from the "dead" like McCoy.
Would Rodriguez have just abandoned an unconscious person to the strafing, tigers etc?

TWOK was a soft reboot that ignored TMP instead of building on it..

Kor

I thought so too.In the movie series you could have just ignore TMP and watch the rest fine, Kirk an Admiral, Spock a Captain, you could jump straight from the end of TOS/TAS and find that credible after a number of years.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

She was shot dead. And returned from the "dead" like McCoy.
Would Rodriguez have just abandoned an unconscious person to the strafing, tigers etc?

This, exactly.

Q: Where is Angela in these screengabs?

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=16&page=23

A: Nowhere.


Plus, she and McCoy are the only two of the landing party not addressed by the Caretaker at all; everyone else is addressed by name. They aren't addressed, and Angela wasn't present after the strafing run until after the Caretaker appears, because she and McCoy are off being healed.

CARETAKER: I'm the caretaker of this place, Captain Kirk.
KIRK: You know my name?
CARETAKER: But of course. Lieutenant Rodriguez, Lieutenant Sulu, Yeoman Barrows and Mister Spock. We've just discovered you don't understand all this. These experiences were intended to amuse you.​

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/17.htm


She reappears after McCoy does. She was off getting healed, just like him. QED.

Sometimes the adventures of minor characters fall by the wayside.

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x15hd/shoreleavehd747.jpg

 

[Timewalker]

She was shot dead. And returned from the "dead" like McCoy.
Would Rodriguez have just abandoned an unconscious person to the strafing, tigers etc?

Then why didn't he report her death? You'd think he would have promptly pulled out his communicator and reported to the Captain, or at least hollered for medical help. He did neither.

Once they stopped thinking about the planes and tiger, those would have disappeared.

I thought so too.In the movie series you could have just ignore TMP and watch the rest fine, Kirk an Admiral, Spock a Captain, you could jump straight from the end of TOS/TAS and find that credible after a number of years.

It was established in TMP that everyone had gone up in rank at least one step (other than Spock, who had retired to return to Vulcan). During TMP Spock's rank of Commander was restored.

If you pretend that Spock's growth as a character - a Vulcan/Human hybrid much more comfortable with his hybrid nature - never happened in TMP, then where did it come from?

And what about Kirk's frustration with being relegated to a desk job as an Admiral? It's made clear in TMP just how much he hates it. The scenes in TWOK don't mean as much without the scenes in TMP.

 

[plynch]

I have never, ever thought she got shot. She runs into a tree.

Maybe I'm wrong. It never seemed like slapstick though. People get hurt.

What would NBC standards and practices have been re. showing a woman getting hit in the back with bullets? I would have thought that'd be a no-no.

 

[FormerLurker]

It's entirely plausible that she needed medical assistance after running face-first into a tree. It makes sense that the Caretaker or his staff saw to it she received said assistance, as they would have seen it as their responsibility because she was injured while experiencing their amusement park.

But never have I thought she got shot. There's nothing to support it. Even the mere handful of stills at Trekcore show her running headlong into a tree, and getting knocked out. The oddity is that Rodriguez seems to have no memory of her being taken.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There's nothing to support it.

If you ignore the fact that she got strafed, you're right.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Then why didn't he report her death? You'd think he would have promptly pulled out his communicator and reported to the Captain, or at least hollered for medical help. He did neither.

If she were still alive, why didn't he report her injury, her having been incapacitated, and the fact that she had to be left behind amid known dangers? If she were still alive, it only increases the incongruity of the story not involving direct mention of her condition, since in that case there is someone left behind who needs assistance and protection.

Once they stopped thinking about the planes and tiger, those would have disappeared.

But they didn't know that then, did they? At that point in the story, they were all still very confused about what was happening. There was no reason at all for Rodriguez to suppose that Angela would somehow be perfectly safe, if left behind.

 

[Timewalker]

Okay... I decided to look up the script. This is what it says about Angela:

TELLER: What is it?
RODRIGUEZ: Of all the crazy things. Remember what I was telling you a while ago, about the early wars and funny air vehicles they used? That's one of them.
TELLER: Can it hurt us?
RODRIGUEZ: Not unless it makes a strafing run.
TELLER: A what?
RODRIGUEZ: The way they used to attack people on the ground. (the plane descends) Come on.
(They run along the path, as a second plane joins the first, straight into a clump of trees. Angela falls to the ground having hit the tree.)
RODRIGUEZ: Angela.

Bolding mine.

Source.

Note that after running into the tree, Angela is neither shown nor mentioned for the rest of the episode. She is not shown to have been shot, Rodriguez never mentions to anyone else that she was shot, or even hurt. The only thing he talks about are seeing birds when there shouldn't be any on that planet, and he tells McCoy about the tiger. That's before the plane showed up.

I think it's safe to say that Angela's injury wasn't too serious. If she'd vanished, wouldn't Rodriguez have mentioned that? Since he doesn't mention it, I should think that Angela was knocked out for a brief time but ultimately not seriously hurt.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Okay... I decided to look up the script. This is what it says about Angela:


Bolding mine.

Source.

Note that after running into the tree, Angela is neither shown nor mentioned for the rest of the episode. She is not shown to have been shot, Rodriguez never mentions to anyone else that she was shot, or even hurt. The only thing he talks about are seeing birds when there shouldn't be any on that planet, and he tells McCoy about the tiger. That's before the plane showed up.

I think it's safe to say that Angela's injury wasn't too serious. If she'd vanished, wouldn't Rodriguez have mentioned that? Since he doesn't mention it, I should think that Angela was knocked out for a brief time but ultimately not seriously hurt.

That's not the script, or even a script. It's a transcript.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

The script intended for Angela/Mary Teller to be dead. Here is a synopsis I wrote years ago for Orion Press. http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/shore_leave.htm

Sir Rhosis

 

[Timewalker]

The script intended for Angela/Mary Teller to be dead. Here is a synopsis I wrote years ago for Orion Press. http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/shore_leave.htm

What was intended is irrelevant. What I saw on the screen was that she ran into a tree, knocked herself out, and fell down. Rodriguez bent over her, calling her "Angela!" and then everyone just seemed to forget about her.

The material on chakoteya.net doesn't support your position. It is in NO way stated that she was killed.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The script intended for Angela/Mary Teller to be dead. Here is a synopsis I wrote years ago for Orion Press. http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/shore_leave.htm

Sir Rhosis

Thanks a lot. That settles it. She was killed.

Any idea whether those scenes stating unequivocally that she was killed and healed --- as we've surmised --- were filmed and cut, or not filmed, say due to chaos from all the rewriting? @Harvey?

The material on chakoteya.net doesn't support your position. It is in NO way stated that she was killed.

Again, that's just a transcript. It's one person's interpretation of what happened in the episode. It's in no way authoritative.

 

[Kor]

Chakoteya.net has transcripts that somebody made from watching the episodes. They are not original shooting scripts.

I thought so too.In the movie series you could have just ignore TMP and watch the rest fine, Kirk an Admiral, Spock a Captain, you could jump straight from the end of TOS/TAS and find that credible after a number of years.

Yes, and TWOK rehashes the same business from TMP about Kirk not liking his Admiral job. TWOK was definitely a case of "let's do this all over again from scratch."

Kor

 

[Timewalker]

Chakoteya.net has transcripts that somebody made from watching the episodes. They are not original shooting scripts.

The point is that Angela was not shot. Rodriguez did not report her being shot, dead, dying, or anything else. She ran into a tree, knocked herself out, fell down, and seems to have been forgotten for the rest of the episode, at least as far as being injured is concerned.

This whole argument could be cleared up if someone could find a video clip of this scene. I've looked and can't find anything.

 

[Timewalker]

There's no actual blood in the moments (which are imprinted in my brain and others' brains), though that's true for the majority of TOS casualties. When they did bleed, rarely, like Joe Tormolen , it was purplish-blue. Strafing victims in PIECE OF THE ACTION were pretty bloodless, for instance.

The lack of dialogue as well as blood leaves us two ways to interpret the scene.

However.....when James Blish or J.K. Lawrence adapted SHORE LEAVE in STAR TREK 12, he or she implied a general lifelessness about Teller after the strafing. Rodriguez might have even wept, though Kirk was not informed of this incident. And when she returned, she told Esteban ''I've been looking all over for you.''

Maybe Blish or Lawrence based his/her treatment on an older draft.

The Blish adaptations were often based on drafts that only slightly resembled the actual televised episodes in some respects.

All I can say is that if Rodriguez wept over Angela's dead body, it was pretty damn careless of him not to bother reporting her death.

 

[Harvey]

Any idea whether those scenes stating unequivocally that she was killed and healed --- as we've surmised --- were filmed and cut, or not filmed, say due to chaos from all the rewriting? @Harvey?

The daily production reports exist for this episode at UCLA, although I don't have copies that I can check at the moment.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The daily production reports exist for this episode at UCLA, although I don't have copies that I can check at the moment.

Thanks!

 

[johnnybear]

I've always assumed that Angela was hit in the strafing run too! Esteban looks very pained at her afterwards and she sure ain't moving...and the way she appears at the end of the episode would indicate that she was 'repaired' as such by the underground team. Maybe her and Esteban were taken below and that's why he never called in her death?
JB

 

[Timewalker]

People who get knocked out don't tend to move.

Why would he get taken below? He wasn't hurt.

 

[Commishsleer]

SF Debris says (of this episode) that Sturgeon wrote it, Gene R says that will cost too much to film, then he got Gene L C to rewrite it and Gene R said that that would cost even more to film. So Gene R rewrote it on the fly and thus a lot of it got messed up re: Mary Teller.
However I never had any doubt Angela got strafed because of the way Rodriguez acted, the music and direction. While I can't see him leaving an unconscious woman on the ground, I suppose I've seen stranger things happen in Star Trek. The Blish adaption supports this but the Chakotay transcript doesn't .