Janice Lester grievance....

[Commishsleer]

Shatner's "Where No Man" novel in the interviews talks about it a bit but it also got discussed at conventions and by other folk who followed up on it.

http://www.beyondspock.de/interviews/print/shatner_where_no_man.php

He also stated that Roddenberry was quite serious about the fact it was a slam against women captains, though that was circumstances of the very specific time.

'In the last script - the last episode ever filmed, Turnabout Intruder, Kirk was in the body of Janice Lester. A lot of stories have spun off of that. What would happen if a person really could be of the opposite sex? - and so forth. What do you think would have happened if Kirk couldn't get back to his own body? How would Spock feel about that?'

Leonard chuckles. "Well, I haven't fantasized about it." He sobers.

"What is easier for me to deal with on that particular script is the knowledge that the writer was making a script in which his goal was to prove, quote, 'That women, although they claim equality, cannot really do things as well as, under certain circumstances, as a man - like the command function, for example. And it was a rather chauvinistic, clumsy handling of an interesting question. What he set out to prove was that this lady, given command of the ship, would blow it. That's really what the script was about. Just that simple. You see."

"Yeah," Bill agrees. "The problems were solved without really -"

Leonard cuts in, nodding "That's, what I was dealing with when we were shooting that show - the knowledge that that was the concept. And I rebelled against the concept. I was uncomfortable doing the whole show because I didn't believe in the concept.

"It's a very interesting question. But I think that the script didn't really deal with the question. The script set out to prove a preconceived personal prejudice. Didn't deal with - pretended to deal with the question, but didn't, you see. That's what I was pre-concerned with, primarily concerned with in doing that particular script."

For Nimoy to have been aware of that aspect at that time is extremely unusual. It's the same script - a Roddenberry story - that we ask Gene about and which he now sees as reflecting his errors of the time. The episode is criticized especially now for exactly what Nimoy names: not only does it set out to prove a point, but it does so with loaded dice. The woman who makes the switch is not a woman of Kirk's stature, but a resentful, crazed mass-murderer who steals Kirk's body. What she does can't prove much about the female of the species - unless one takes a very dim view of the nature of the female. Nor is it a test of how a normal female would command. A more interesting story could have been written around that question, and some have been.

What is still more interesting, however, is that Nimoy, Shatner, Roddenberry had to try to grapple with those questions then. And still do.

Wow
There's no denying the real intent of the script unless Nimoy and Shatner are lying.
At least one thing - Nimoy was against the intended message of the script.

I'm not sure that GRs intended bitter message came through though. Lester seemed to handle Kirk's job quite well - in reality too well to be realistic as someone who'd never worked on a Starship to actually know what to do as Captain, know everyone's name and what they're supposed to do enough to fool everyone.
It was only when she had to deal with Kirk that the insanity came out. Even then she was able to hold it together enough for security to consider executing all senior staff on board.

I think I'm going to go with the majority and gloss over this episode as Lester's mad ravings.

 

[johnnybear]

She'd probably planned for this eventuality for years or somehow some of Kirk's personality and memories seeped through into her! The same way that The Gideonites were able to get the blu-prints of The Enterprise and copy it down to it's last nut and bolt!
JB

 

[MAGolding]

How about this interpretaion of Janice's "doesn't admit women" line: At the time of TOS, there were only 12 Constellation class starships (minus those destroyed during previous episodes). Let's assume that all of those ships happened to have male captains at that particular time. While many lesser vessels may have had female captains, it was a Conny that Janice wanted to command, and in her paranoid/delusional state, she ranted that "the world of STARSHIP (Constellation Class) captains doesn't admit women."

I think it is illogical to equate 12 ships like the Enterprise in the fleet with 12 Constitution class starships and to equate Constitution class starships with all starships. Each of those is an assumption. Thus the Federation may have many more than 12 starship captains.

The Federation needs many warships with the firepower of Consitituion class starships (though not necessarily counted as starships) for defense of its widespread planets. Or else it mainly replies on super powerful planetary defense systems instead of defense fleets.

Thus there may be many more than 12 starship captains, though perhaps so many of them are aliens that Janice does not count the female starship captains as "women".

I believe that in E.E. Smith's novel First Lensman Virgil Samms is recruiting aliens as Lensmen and is communicating with a female Palainian (Palainians are very, very alien) and the narrator comments that Samms was able with effort to think beyond human ways of thinking and think of the Palainian not as a female, nor as a woman, but as a lady. And I don't think that Janice Lester was up to the Virgil Samms level.

Earth has many species of apes, proboscideans, and cetaceans that might possibly - repeat might possibly - be of roughly human intelligence levels and thus people, and yet I believe that very few humans have ever thought of any females of those species as women, though they are much more human like than Palainians.

 

[MAGolding]

Pike's statement about not beiny used to having a women on the bridge is so odd because there are exactly three women on the bridge when he says that.

Pike was probably used to Number One on the bridge. So I guess the other two were probably recently assigned to the ship and just recently assigned to the bridge as replacements for killed or wounded personnel. Yeoman Colt seems to have been his first female personal yeoman.

One might suppose that female recruiting was discontinued or decreased some time after Number One joined and resumed or increased recently.

 

[Charles Phipps]

In the Christopher Bennett Rise of the Federation novels, he did a neat little retcon where it's stated the Federation goes through a sort of reverse "Space Sixties" where many of the human colonies founded by Boomers and wildcats ended up becoming very sexist due to the harshness of life there. This ended up affecting the overall culture of the Federation's humans for a time.

@Christopher

 

[ZapBrannigan]

In the Christopher Bennett Rise of the Federation novels, he did a neat little retcon where it's stated the Federation goes through a sort of reverse "Space Sixties" where many of the human colonies founded by Boomers and wildcats ended up becoming very sexist due to the harshness of life there. This ended up affecting the overall culture of the Federation's humans for a time.

@Christopher

Sounds like Firefly. Which by the way was a gor'am good show.

 

[Mytran]

In the Christopher Bennett Rise of the Federation novels, he did a neat little retcon where it's stated the Federation goes through a sort of reverse "Space Sixties" where many of the human colonies founded by Boomers and wildcats ended up becoming very sexist due to the harshness of life there. This ended up affecting the overall culture of the Federation's humans for a time.

@Christopher

I've wondered a similar thing myself in my head canon. I'm glad Christopher did something with this concept and incorporated in into his work. Now I need to read yet more of his novels! ;-)