Launching Galileo - Poor Decision?

[Captrek]

It is kind of offensive if you think about it, being a nurse just isn't good enough, we need to make Chapel a full doctor.

Come on, they weren’t putting down nursing. Remember the political context. Especially in the 70’s, feminism was a headline-grabbing political movement, and the Roddenberrys were enthusiastic supporters of it. One of the movement’s major goals was doing away with gender stereotypes like “doctors are men, nurses are women.” Making Chapel a doctor expressed support for this movement and gave the finger to network executives who said the Enterprise couldn’t have a female first officer. It is kind of twisted, if you think about it, to interpret that as an insult to nursing.

 

[maryh]

I thought they bent over backwards in TOS to show us that Chapel was much more than "just" a nurse. They let us know early on that she "gave up a career in bio-research to sign onto a Starship". She was obviously well educated and had picked out a career for herself - which was not male or female oriented. But she wanted to find Roger Korby so she picked up some training that would enable her to do this. I imagine her job was multifaceted and that she did do lots of bio-research while aboard the Enterprise.

 

[Timo]

...Or then she simply emptied the bedpans, cursed under her breath and waited for her contract to run out, now that it had become meaningless to her because Korby was dead. Difficult to tell, but neither interpretation necessarily reflects badly upon the 23rd century society or its level of emancipation. Even in the most egalitarian society possible, someone might end up sacrificing one's dream career to a higher goal, and end up stuck in somebody else's dream job for a while.

I agree that a land search on foot would be a poor use of resources unless you had debris to indicate a crash site.

Most certainly. But the missions to the surface were useful in getting "the lay of the land", in establishing some odds on the survival of the shuttle crew. Sensors weren't working too well yet: a landing party could tell if the surface was full of man-eating plants, poisonous geysirs or hostile natives - or a lush paradise waiting for human settlers. The truth turned out to be more like the former, giving Kirk less hope and perhaps less reason to fight his orders and harm his own career.

I also think it would have been more sensible plotwise for the shuttle to be fitted with a remote-controlled probe to examine the stellar phenomenon from a safe distance and for some other disaster to have swept the shuttle into danger.

For all we know, the shuttle was distressed at a "safe distance", as defined by Spock. Boma's definition apparently was different from the get-go.

It would have helped, though, if we had learned a bit more about the intended role of the shuttle and each of the crew members. What were they trying to accomplish there? What were the strengths of each of the experts? What were the inherent weaknesses? We knew something about Spock, McCoy and Scotty going in, but only learned a little about Boma and virtually nothing about the others.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

I agree that a land search on foot would be a poor use of resources unless you had debris to indicate a crash site.

Sensors weren't working too well yet

Which might be why the landing parties were beamed down where they were and why they were so quickly attacked.

The partially functional sensors detected life signs. The Enterprise's sensors have the ability to differentiate between animal life and sentient life. The landing parties, going off the best information the sensors could give them, beamed into a population of indigenous natives. The sensors in their "damaged" condition could not tell the difference between natives and Starfleet personnel.

 

[Captrek]

I agree that a land search on foot would be a poor use of resources unless you had debris to indicate a crash site.

Sensors weren't working too well yet

Which might be why the landing parties were beamed down where they were and why they were so quickly attacked.

The partially functional sensors detected life signs. The Enterprise's sensors have the ability to differentiate between animal life and sentient life. The landing parties, going off the best information the sensors could give them, beamed into a population of indigenous natives. The sensors in their "damaged" condition could not tell the difference between natives and Starfleet personnel.

They could have found them in no time with Google Earth.

Um, Google Taurus Two. Whatever.

 

[Forbin]

There must have been a psychic Trekkie memo - I watched this episode the same day!

Gotta say I didn't like the new effects much. The shuttlecraft lifting off the hangar deck like a helicopter looked ridiculous, and is probably a lot more dangerous than the classic catapult-looking-launch sequence.

 

[scotpens]

Chapel... (inexplicably) worked as a nurse while simultaneously training to be a medical doctor.

Not inexplicable at all. The explanation is developments in feminism in the years between the TV series and TMP.

They should have made her head of Life Sciences instead of another medical doctor. At least that would have given her a niche of her own.

Still, I only meant it was inexplicable because it takes 7 years to fully qualify as a doctor the last few of which you spend training on the job. Since TMP takes place less than 3 years after TOS (a total of less than 8 years), and Chapel is fully qualified, she should really have been a junior doctor working under McCoy at least during the latter stages of TOS.

In “The Changeling,” after Nomad drains Uhura's brain, leaving her with the vacant expression of a San Fernando Valley teenager, the Enterprise crew sets about re-educating her. Apparently it only takes a couple of weeks to get her back up to speed on everything she's learned from kindergarten through Starfleet technical school. So it should be possible to qualify for a medical degree in, say, a month or two!

 

[Timo]

...Of course, that does make us wonder what they waste those four to five years in Starfleet Academy for.

"The Changeling" could be explained in a number of ways, including the fact that only Nomad itself ever diagnoses Uhura as "having her knowledge banks wiped clean". Why should we trust that bucket of bolts on anything medical, especially since Uhura's state was the result of its medical incompetence in the first place?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Myk]

Jackson Roykirk: "My son, the doctor."

 

[Forbin]

I always wondered why, if they had to re-educate Uhura from tabula rasa, did she lapse into Swahili while trying to learn English. For that to happen they would have had to teach her Swahili first!

 

[Pauln6]

I thought they bent over backwards in TOS to show us that Chapel was much more than "just" a nurse. They let us know early on that she "gave up a career in bio-research to sign onto a Starship". She was obviously well educated and had picked out a career for herself - which was not male or female oriented. But she wanted to find Roger Korby so she picked up some training that would enable her to do this. I imagine her job was multifaceted and that she did do lots of bio-research while aboard the Enterprise.

They didn't bend over backwards, they did what they did with a lot of the women: tell us that they were highly qualified and then totally fail to reflect that on screen as the women turn into jelly in a crisis (Uhura, Masterson, Mulhall, and a few of the yeomen fare ok). Chapel was shown ASSISTING McCoy in bio-research rather than taking the lead and as you say, we have to 'imagine that she did lots of bio-reseach'. She goes gaga for Korby and fails to make a single scientific observation at all in that episode as well.

I like the thought of her being the technically-minded one vs McCoy's 'country doctor' but even so, I'd have preferred her to be elevated as a PhD rather than an MD. I'm doing an 'alternate universe' comic strip and I'm torn between leaving her as a doctor and making her head of life sciences. I can certainly use the character more effectively if I shift her.

Good theories on the landing parties though. TOS and TNG budgetary restraints did leave crew woefully underequipped for away missions. Most of them didn't carry jackets or water let alone environmental suits.

 

[Timo]

...To be sure, given the existence of transporters, these off-ship forays could seldom be considered "missions" as such. They were more like the heroes stepping off their space-traveling house to catch some fresh air on the patio, or perhaps receive some guests there, or have a look at the flower bench and the butterflies there. It just so happened that their patio was a different planet on different days! Barring disasters, they were never more than one step away from their very own water tap, kitchen, bed or water closet. It just happened to be a step hundreds of kilometers long...

Now, in theory, they should have prepared for the eventuality of being stranded, being incapable of taking that single step back to the house. But would we really do that, if the step was so easy to take, if the odds of the house suddenly being somewhere else out of reach were so low?

Certain off-ship missions did begin with our heroes fully well knowing that they might not be able to reach their ship again any time soon. For those, the objection is valid. But for most of the missions, we could be talking about a significant cultural difference where our intuition fails us.

If we fly to a friend half a continent away, we don't pack a tent in case we get stranded somewhere halfway, no matter how much the caveman in us might be objected to the idea of seeming cross-continental travel without such security measures... If we phone that friend, it wouldn't occur to us to even wear shoes for the "trip", let alone pack that tent! Going to places via transporter might be as different from conventional travel as using a telephone is.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

...To be sure, given the existence of transporters, these off-ship forays could seldom be considered "missions" as such. They were more like the heroes stepping off their space-traveling house to catch some fresh air on the patio, or perhaps receive some guests there, or have a look at the flower bench and the butterflies there. It just so happened that their patio was a different planet on different days! Barring disasters, they were never more than one step away from their very own water tap, kitchen, bed or water closet. It just happened to be a step hundreds of kilometers long...

Now, in theory, they should have prepared for the eventuality of being stranded, being incapable of taking that single step back to the house. But would we really do that, if the step was so easy to take, if the odds of the house suddenly being somewhere else out of reach were so low?

Certain off-ship missions did begin with our heroes fully well knowing that they might not be able to reach their ship again any time soon. For those, the objection is valid. But for most of the missions, we could be talking about a significant cultural difference where our intuition fails us.

If we fly to a friend half a continent away, we don't pack a tent in case we get stranded somewhere halfway, no matter how much the caveman in us might be objected to the idea of seeming cross-continental travel without such security measures... If we phone that friend, it wouldn't occur to us to even wear shoes for the "trip", let alone pack that tent! Going to places via transporter might be as different from conventional travel as using a telephone is.

Timo Saloniemi

So are you saying that Yeoman Barrows didn't have a change of underwear?

 

[kkozoriz1]

I always wondered why, if they had to re-educate Uhura from tabula rasa, did she lapse into Swahili while trying to learn English. For that to happen they would have had to teach her Swahili first!

In my mind Nomad didn't actually wipe her mind clean, he severed the connections between words and concepts. Uhura could see a blue ball but had to reestablish the connection between blue and ball. Once it was started it would be self healing. Sort of like aphasia. The encyclopedia was still there but the index was all scrambled. Once you re-learn the alphabet you can put everything back in alphabetical order. Makes a lot more sense than her mind being wiped clean. YMMV.

 

[Timo]

So are you saying that Yeoman Barrows didn't have a change of underwear?

Of what?

Makes a lot more sense than her mind being wiped clean. YMMV.

MMDNV. That's more elegant than assuming that people in the 23rd century can be taught a profession in a week. Or that Uhura's job was so menial that it could be taught in a week, even if Kirk's required four years of study.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kkozoriz1]

Or NuKirk's in three

 

[maryh]

They didn't bend over backwards, they did what they did with a lot of the women: tell us that they were highly qualified and then totally fail to reflect that on screen as the women turn into jelly in a crisis (Uhura, Masterson, Mulhall, and a few of the yeomen fare ok). Chapel was shown ASSISTING McCoy in bio-research rather than taking the lead and as you say, we have to 'imagine that she did lots of bio-reseach'. She goes gaga for Korby and fails to make a single scientific observation at all in that episode as well.

I like the thought of her being the technically-minded one vs McCoy's 'country doctor' but even so, I'd have preferred her to be elevated as a PhD rather than an MD. I'm doing an 'alternate universe' comic strip and I'm torn between leaving her as a doctor and making her head of life sciences. I can certainly use the character more effectively if I shift her.

Good theories on the landing parties though. TOS and TNG budgetary restraints did leave crew woefully underequipped for away missions. Most of them didn't carry jackets or water let alone environmental suits.

There are problems with having labs and researching for scenes in any show because labs just aren't good for action, drama, or conflict scenes. We didn't see anyone, even Spock & McCoy doing much bio-research because its boring to watch. TOS did seem to achieve the balance of cerebral/action/drama very well. Many of its recurring characters were used as vehicles for the drama and action that drove the plot whereas the cerebralness usually came from the plot itself. I agree that Chapel should have been shown to be participating more in the few times they actually did some research, but her character was more often used for drama which her nursing duties would more likely encounter. I didn't think any less of her for it and it was probably more interesting to watch than watching her do research.

As for women turning to jelly, this very episode showed that emotional was just as good as logical or stoic is. I'm not talking about the crewman who "looses it" when in danger (Bailey in Corbomite Maneuver) and compromises the safety of the ship, but is emotional repression better than emotional expression? This episode seems to show both sides as having value. Perhaps women of the future won't be less emotional but men of the future may be more emotional. Afterall Spock being the Vulcan professor didn't go over very well but when he did something emotional he achieved success. Who is to judge that women going to jelly is so very bad? Uhura saying the occasional "I'm frightened" isn't so bad if it doesn't compromise her efficiency. Perhaps the stoic ones need to say "I'm frightened" more. By comparison, Spock makes everyone, both men and women look like jelly. Sometimes his way is better, at times it was not. TOS was the most "open-minded" of the series.

 

[Pauln6]

As for women turning to jelly, this very episode showed that emotional was just as good as logical or stoic is. I'm not talking about the crewman who "looses it" when in danger (Bailey in Corbomite Maneuver) and compromises the safety of the ship, but is emotional repression better than emotional expression? This episode seems to show both sides as having value. Perhaps women of the future won't be less emotional but men of the future may be more emotional. Afterall Spock being the Vulcan professor didn't go over very well but when he did something emotional he achieved success. Who is to judge that women going to jelly is so very bad? Uhura saying the occasional "I'm frightened" isn't so bad if it doesn't compromise her efficiency. Perhaps the stoic ones need to say "I'm frightened" more. By comparison, Spock makes everyone, both men and women look like jelly. Sometimes his way is better, at times it was not. TOS was the most "open-minded" of the series.

True enough but I tend to think that many Starfleet officers lack the degree of professionalism they'd need to operate in such dangerous conditions of space throughout all its incarnations - maybe we British demand higher standards. TOS' flaw was simply that too often there was a clear gender divide in the way the crew reacted instead of a character divide. I rather liked Ann Mulhall but her professionalism was a bit squandered by having her possessed by a much girlier alien. Mears in G7 was quite good compared to some of the men in fairness. The problem is that as a yeoman she is probably a petty officer at best and therefore not in any position to throw any weight around.

 

[Captrek]

Mears in G7 was quite good compared to some of the men in fairness.

Mears? She’s part of the scenery. She serves no apparent purpose other than providing Ric Olie-style narration and asking dumb questions to provide others with opportunities to Ric Olie.

 

[Pauln6]

Mears in G7 was quite good compared to some of the men in fairness.

Mears? She’s part of the scenery. She serves no apparent purpose other than providing Ric Olie-style narration and asking dumb questions to provide others with opportunities to Ric Olie.

The general purpose of the yeoman is to ask stupid questions so that somebody brainier can explain the plot to the audience. It's part of their charm. The worst example is Troi asking Ro what happens to a ship if there is a warp core breach...

At least Mears doesn't go all hysterical and need to be slapped about to bring her to her senses like in the scene from Airplane. I would still have preferred Rand though. She's used to being slapped about and fondled poor thing but at least she had quite a bit of screen presence - or at least her beehive did. The crew could have used it for cover while they fought off the creatures - I bet that thing was phsaer-proof.