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Anomalies in fandom

And the two that I mentioned not by name we're Lieutenant Radha at the helm in season 3 and Ensign Haines at the Science Station in season 2. So those were good roles for those two episodes. Too bad they couldn't have had more speaking parts for crew members in season 2 and 3 as they had in season 1
 
Did any female crewmembers take up arms in "Day of the Dove" -- I don't mean fight but just even hold a sword? And although a yeoman, Marta Landon did "karate kick" a dude in the "Apple"
I'm a big comic book fan and I don't think females heroes were even allowed to throw punches in the 1960s comics. I remember once Sue Richards "karate kicking" a guy in one issue.
 
Lt. Carolyn Palamas
Lt. Marlena Moreau
Lt. Com. Dr. Ann Mulhall
Lt. Mira Romaine
All of these have a romantic sub plot though. Only the bridge officers delivering generic dialogue don't have a romantic sub plot come to think of it. And Doris Atkins.

Season one isn't much better. Masters was also going to have a romantic sub plot and it was only removed because it was too similar to to McGivers' plot. Other than that, I think it's just the last three yeomen.
 
All of these have a romantic sub plot though. Only the bridge officers delivering generic dialogue don't have a romantic sub plot come to think of it. And Doris Atkins.

Season one isn't much better. Masters was also going to have a romantic sub plot and it was only removed because it was too similar to to McGivers' plot. Other than that, I think it's just the last three yeomen.
Mulhall's romantic subplot existed only because a female alien in love with and married to another alien inhabited her body. Granted, Muldaur still had act out the subplot.
 
Lt. Marlena Moreau = "Captain's woman" in a mirror universe is hardly a "specialist", and her our-universe counterpart is only identified as a Lieutenant in blue who handed over a clipboard.
The Prime Universe Marlena is presumably a chemist like her Mirror Universe counterpart. Mirror Marlena mentions having to clean up in the chem lab after the ion storm.
I'm a big comic book fan and I don't think females heroes were even allowed to throw punches in the 1960s comics. I remember once Sue Richards "karate kicking" a guy in one issue.
I think it was less a question of "allowed" and more just a reflection of the prejudices of the times. Women throwing punches the same way that men did just wasn't considered "feminine" in the 1960s. Notice that characters like Saturn Girl, Dream Girl, Princess Projectra, Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Shadow Lass, the Wasp, the Invisible Girl, and Marvel Girl all tended to have more passive powers than their male teammates. But I think it was probably more just unconscious sexism/chavanism than intentionally playing them down.

You saw the same thing on American TV in the 60s. Over in England, Kathy Gale and Emma Peel regularly performed judo against the bad guys in The Avengers, while over the U.S., Batgirl was limited to just kicking the occassional bad guy on Batman.
 
Mulhall's romantic subplot existed only because a female alien in love with and married to another alien inhabited her body. Granted, Muldaur still had act out the subplot.
True but how cool is being an astrobiologist. Now for the rest of the episode you will be possessed by a housewife...

Ok, admittedly, she was a housewife who was good at robotics. ;-p
 
Problem was that's almost the female guest crew members got was is romantic roles. Which is fine but virtually every single one of them was paired up with a male instead of just showing them doing their job. Marlena Moreau, Marla MacGyver's, Carolyn Palomas, dr. Ann Mulhall, Yeoman Marta Landon, Lieutenant Romaine, Angela Martine, and as somebody mentioned engineer McMasters was written as a romantic interest for Lazarus. And of course Rand herself. The Yeoman from Shore leave as well the Yeoman from Squire of gothos.
If a female Starfleet crew member had more than three lines she was basically she was basically somebody's romantic interest.
 
Batgirl was limited to just kicking the occasional bad guy on Batman.
Occasional? It seems to me she fought in every episode of Season 3, usually saving Batman and Robin’s butts. In fact I would go as far as to say she was the main focus of her season, sidelining Robin, if not Batman himself (and elevating both Alfred and the Commissioner through her relationships with them). I love her character, and Yvonne Craig’s performance, and my kids much prefer Season 3 over the other seasons, because of her. But if we watch it too much, I start to miss the classic Batman & Robin format. Because Batgirl absolutely dominates.

Anyway, yeah, she kicked instead of punching, but, that’s okay. Kirk liked to kick, too. We just watched “Spectre on the Gun” last night, and I have been grinning all day because of the way after the gunfight he runs up and kicks Wyatt in the chest!
 
Occasional? It seems to me she fought in every episode of Season 3, usually saving Batman and Robin’s butts. In fact I would go as far as to say she was the main focus of her season, sidelining Robin, if not Batman himself (and elevating both Alfred and the Commissioner through her relationships with them). I love her character, and Yvonne Craig’s performance, and my kids much prefer Season 3 over the other seasons, because of her. But if we watch it too much, I start to miss the classic Batman & Robin format. Because Batgirl absolutely dominates.

Anyway, yeah, she kicked instead of punching, but, that’s okay. Kirk liked to kick, too. We just watched “Spectre on the Gun” last night, and I have been grinning all day because of the way after the gunfight he runs up and kicks Wyatt in the chest!
I watched them out of order as a kid and I waited with baited breath to see if Batgirl's bike was in the credits. I had no idea she was only in season three.
 
Occasional? It seems to me she fought in every episode of Season 3, usually saving Batman and Robin’s butts. In fact I would go as far as to say she was the main focus of her season, sidelining Robin, if not Batman himself (and elevating both Alfred and the Commissioner through her relationships with them). I love her character, and Yvonne Craig’s performance, and my kids much prefer Season 3 over the other seasons, because of her. But if we watch it too much, I start to miss the classic Batman & Robin format. Because Batgirl absolutely dominates.

She is pretty cool, and Austin Powers would have loved her theme song ("Batgirl, Batgirl! Batgirl, Batgirl!..."). That kind of thing is my bag, Baby. The only trouble was, they cut the third season budget so low that surreal, no-set sets became the norm. I remember a trial scene in which the courtroom had three pieces of furniture and no walls, just a blacked out stage like "The Empath." OTOH, I also recall never noticing a problem with it when I was little. My imagination filled in all the blanks, unbidden, so I was never even aware of it. Good times.
 
I think this would have been interesting (from the Writer’s Guide): “In a future story we will bring McCoy’s daughter Joanna aboard. She will be a lovely girl, and Captain Kirk, of course, is going to be involved with her. Dr. McCoy is suddenly going to discover he is a father viewing Kirk from a father’s perspective. An interesting and sometimes angry new McCoy-Kirk relationship will be seen.”

Does it sound like she would have been a recurring character, or a one-shot?

Don’t you love the “of course”? :D
 
I think this would have been interesting (from the Writer’s Guide): “In a future story we will bring McCoy’s daughter Joanna aboard. She will be a lovely girl, and Captain Kirk, of course, is going to be involved with her. Dr. McCoy is suddenly going to discover he is a father viewing Kirk from a father’s perspective. An interesting and sometimes angry new McCoy-Kirk relationship will be seen.”

Does it sound like she would have been a recurring character, or a one-shot?

Don’t you love the “of course”? :D
This would have been D.C. Fontana's story outline, which ended up getting mangled beyond recognition into "The Way to Eden." Memory Alpha says the character of Joanna would have appeared again in Season 4, but there doesn't seem to be a source on that statement.

Kor
 
This would have been D.C. Fontana's story outline, which ended up getting mangled beyond recognition into "The Way to Eden." Memory Alpha says the character of Joanna would have appeared again in Season 4, but there doesn't seem to be a source on that statement.
Since Fontana's original story was changed so much, I suppose she could've been planning to still get Joanna into the show in a variation of her original story. And indeed, Joanna does get a passing mention in TAS, which Fontana story edited.
 
I guess Crisis on Centaurus finally did something with this.
And The Better Man, and an issue of Marvel's 1980 comic series (where Joanna's engaged to a Vulcan!), and an issue of Marvel's The Untold Voyages miniseries... There are a fair amount of Joanna stories out there at this point.
 
And The Better Man, and an issue of Marvel's 1980 comic series (where Joanna's engaged to a Vulcan!), and an issue of Marvel's The Untold Voyages miniseries... There are a fair amount of Joanna stories out there at this point.
I wish they didn't contradict each other so much!
 
In 1. you left out Scotty. The 'fab four' became more loved because they tended to do more Star Trek Conventions that Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly in the old days. It's also when the first stories of "Evil/Bad Shatner..." started making the rounds too. (Personally, I tought that was probably more due to they wanted interesting stories for their convention stage appearances. I have no doubt Shatner did things on set to make sure Kirk was the center of attention, but he WAS the lead/star of the show and in practically every scene in most scripts. Th other four were cast extras (much in the same vein of similar contemporary shows in the 60ies like "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" who also had recurring crew extras.)

My point? Shatener was probably on the set for a 5-6 days of filming a week, where most times any of those 4 were probably working 1 - 2 days at most a week, They're all actors, and ANY actor would love more to do - but again, the (at the start) two stars were:

William Shatner (Lead)
Leonard Nimoy (Co-Star)
and about half way through Season One
DeForrest Kelly (Co-Star)

The other 4 were window dressing, who after the show becaume more popular, made a living of going to conventionns and playing up their roles in the show.

I say 'playing up' because hey: does anyone hate "The Doomsday Machine" because Lt. Uhuar isn't the Comm officer on the Bridge for that episode? No. It's still one of the top TOS fan favorite episodes despite Nichelle Nichols not being in a single frame.

So, yeah, I thionk they became more loved by the fans because they (through conventions) cultivated a relationship with and did make money from fans (with autograph signings, etc.) by going to conventions regularly.

BOTH Shatner and Nimoy (and post Star Trek Nimoy with more visible success at first) tried to keep their actual acting film and TV careers going. Nimoy took a supporting role on Mission Impossible, while Shatner would do anything he could get from small documentaries to TV commercials and made for TV movies, etc.

As for the Klingons (and Romulans) - it doesn't matter if it's TOS or the TNG era. There were ALWAYS a small hardcore group of fandom who identified with and felt these species and characters got a bad/undeserved 'rap'; and were more interested in having stories about them and building out their respective cultures more.

I've been a fan since 1969 (at age 6) - started getting more directly invoved in fandom in the late 1970ies and early 1980ies when the feature films hit - and I would say what you dewscribe above was any more or less prevalent then it has been through the 90ies and early 2000's as it is today.

The only difference with the TNG era was that - from the start they decided to play up the "It's a ensemble cast..." aspect because they didn't have a bigger name star in the lead (Example - for TNG I'd say in many eyes Lavar Burton (from ROOTS) was a bigger name in the U.S. audiences eyes then say Patrick Stewart back in 1987. Same with all the Berman era series - the ensemble of small A to B list and genre actors was made the 'draw' - along with the fact that it was Star Trek <--- which was (and still in now) a draw for some folks regardless of who is cast.

I was nine, and knew Burton from Reading Rainbow, and if anything, it made it more difficult for me to buy his character, and made me take him less seriously. I didn't see him as an old actor in the vein of the TOS cast, but as the host of a children's show, well out of his element.
 
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