By Any Other Name

[CorporalCaptain]

Dr. Elizabeth Dehner died in Where No Man Has Gone Before, second pilot.

Heck, Vina was wounded in the crash of the Columbia, as discussed in The Cage, right up front, first pilot.

 

[ToddPence]

Also, although it wasn't a violent death, Lt. Galway succumbed to the aging virus in "The Deadly Years".

 

[skylark14]

Oh, yes. There are lots of examples of other women being killed on the show. Clearly I was talking out of my butt. I'm going to have to think things through more carefully here before I hit that "Submit Reply" button. But I still have to ask myself, given that I've seen all the original shows so many times, why for that moment did it seem to me like she was the only one. Why did her death seem so unique to me? I can only go back to the fact that it seemed so random and throwaway and meaningless. She was gone before the show even really got started. It was kind of like Tasha Yar's death by "oil slick" or whatever it was

 

[CorporalCaptain]

My money says that it's simply an extremely dramatic death, highly unique and shocking. Therefore, it can overshadow everything else.

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

Oh, and doesn't Kirk's sister-in-law die after being attacked by the flying pancakes of doom?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yes, quite dramatically, too. Aurelan Kirk in Operation -- Annihilate!

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I don't understand why the victim being female is an issue. She wears a uniform, she knows the risks associated with it (especially a red one), she does her duty up until her untimely death.

Now if it had been Spock and McCoy reduced to hexagons (or whatever the 3D shape is called), which death would have had more impact?

Trying to make a death more "dramatic" by making it a woman doesn't work on me, after all they are all in Starfleet and it has been said time and again that a Starfleet officer is ready and willing to give their lives in the line of duty.

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

Just because they're willing doesn't mean we aren't shaken up when they do die.

Now about Kirk's sister-in-law, she wasn't SF, was she? But then that entire colony was almost completely destroyed I think.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Civilians are different, though colonists are sort of in the same boat. They are willing to go out to a new world and make a home for themselves and others.

If the death was of a main or recurring character, it would carry more gravitas. If it had been Rand for example, if would have been a little more 'shocking'.

 

[Warped9]

It isn't as dramatic today, but in the '60s and '70s it would have been seen as quite dramatic. It's a matter of context.

 

[Pauln6]

Even so, I suspect that far more male characters have died than female, partly due to the fact that 90% of security guards have been male.

 

[Myko]

There are no female security guards at all in TOS. TAS on the other hand...

 

[Pauln6]

There are no female security guards at all in TOS. TAS on the other hand...

Well, I suppose some of the yeomen might have been assigned to security since it's an adminstrative role that is not division specific.

In fact apart from one or two women in TAS and Tasha Yar, it wasn't until season 4 of TNG that we started to see female security guards regularly.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Red-headed security babe!

 

[Myko]

There are no female security guards at all in TOS. TAS on the other hand...

Well, I suppose some of the yeomen might have been assigned to security since it's an adminstrative role that is not division specific.

Indeed, but then they're not guards are they?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

I liked in TAS (Survivor) when Lieutenant Anne Nored was a high-ranking security officer. In another episode (Lorelei Signal) Uhura takes command of the Enterprise and beams down to Taurus II with a contingent of women security guards.

You've come a long way, baby...

 

[Pauln6]

There are no female security guards at all in TOS. TAS on the other hand...

Well, I suppose some of the yeomen might have been assigned to security since it's an adminstrative role that is not division specific.

Indeed, but then they're not guards are they?

Well it isn't clear how many security personnel are simply security 'guards'. It seems to be a role assigned to a particular mission or posting. A tactical officer isn't a guard, a weapons officer isn't a guard, security chiefs are not guards etc. It's actually quite strange that male redshirts are thought of as guards while female redshirts were almost always yeomen. If none of the women had been referred to as yeomen in dialogue, we'd just have assumed that they were security guards. It was a rather sexist division of labour and TAS, which wasn't that many years later, showed that it was perfectly acceptable to have female security officers (if there were no men available they could pull the women off catering duty presumably).

 

[scotpens]

. . . It's actually quite strange that male redshirts are thought of as guards while female redshirts were almost always yeomen. If none of the women had been referred to as yeomen in dialogue, we'd just have assumed that they were security guards.

Or they could have been engineering officers. The TOS uniform colors were green-gold for command, blue for sciences, and red for engineering and "ship's services" -- which presumably included security, clerical personnel, and everyone who didn't come under the other two divisions.

 

[Warped9]

They could have had female security personnel in TOS IF they had done two things. Firstly, the women would have needed an alternate uniform such as that seen in "The Cage" and WNMHGB, and secondly they only needed to take their example from Emma Peel in The Avengers.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Yeoman Tamura did a fine job of kicking ass in "A Taste of Armageddon."