Allow me to quote something of mine from another thread where I was discussing revisiting The X-Files through all nine seasons in succession. It could have some bearing on the women of TOS.
Launching Galileo - Poor Decision?
- Thread starter maryh
- Start date
Yeah I think perhaps characters in sci fi often work well if written as gender neutral and let the actor/actress masculinise/feminise them. Too many characters are written with a frisson between the leads, which defines them straight away. Scully wasn't always envisaged as a woman at the concept stage and the decision not to make them lust after each other was a good one. He was the kooky believer, she was the scientific skeptic and that was what defined them rather than their gender.
You see it far less often in modern sci fi (post DS9) as far as women are concerned but think male characters do still suffer a bit from stereotyping.
You see it far less often in modern sci fi (post DS9) as far as women are concerned but think male characters do still suffer a bit from stereotyping.
^^ And throughout the series we saw Scully laugh, cry, joke, be sarcastic, angry, show fear, cry, play the science professional and do run-and-jump action. Not a miniskirt or catsuit or deep cleavage in sight and yet she was unquestionably a woman. If we'd gotten a Trek main character on par with Scully we would have thought we were in heaven.
The thing in TOS the female characters were rarely prominent. Uhura was the closest and she was a secondary character . Yet despite having relatively little to do (series wise) I think Nichelle Nichols telegraphed a great deal with what little she was given. Uhura was smart and capable and we even saw a smattering of her being physically capable. She competed in the Triskelion games and even put off a potential rape in the same episode. Uhura did express fear, but that never got in the way of her getting the job done.
Perhaps the most prominent female character could be the Romulan commander of "The Enterprise Incident." She was definately in command and yet in private with Spock we saw her feminine side.
When men are fearful we rarely see them get shaky or cry. Rather we tend to see them express their fear as more resembling anger. I think everyone in "The Galileo Seven" are afraid. Kirk was afraid for his friends and the people he sent out on the mission and it expressed itself as impatience and anger that he couldn't do more to find them. Everyone aboard the shuttlecraft were afraid and expressed it as irritability and frustration and impatience and anger with each other.
The thing in TOS the female characters were rarely prominent. Uhura was the closest and she was a secondary character . Yet despite having relatively little to do (series wise) I think Nichelle Nichols telegraphed a great deal with what little she was given. Uhura was smart and capable and we even saw a smattering of her being physically capable. She competed in the Triskelion games and even put off a potential rape in the same episode. Uhura did express fear, but that never got in the way of her getting the job done.
Perhaps the most prominent female character could be the Romulan commander of "The Enterprise Incident." She was definately in command and yet in private with Spock we saw her feminine side.
When men are fearful we rarely see them get shaky or cry. Rather we tend to see them express their fear as more resembling anger. I think everyone in "The Galileo Seven" are afraid. Kirk was afraid for his friends and the people he sent out on the mission and it expressed itself as impatience and anger that he couldn't do more to find them. Everyone aboard the shuttlecraft were afraid and expressed it as irritability and frustration and impatience and anger with each other.
Well, I seem to recall a quick cutaway in the premiere episode where Scully was shown in a skimpy nightgown that made it clear she had a killer body! However, I agree that one of the appealing things about X-Files was Chris Carter's determination to steer away from certain stereotypes and the way the two lead characters were drawn definitely was different from the usual stereotypes. (Even further OT, I really liked the way X Files supporting characters were shown sympathetically. In "Fluke Man" the nebbish sewer systems supervisor was heroically hanging right in there with Mulder while the shit was hitting the fan. Much better than the usual "scream and die a terrible death" role).
Back to Uhura. If we assume that she is a line officer I can't see why it's such a stretch to thank that she is quite qualified to take over the science officer's station. Why would she not have that training? Having everyone cross trained could be critical when you can slide somebody over to a different work station instead of rounding up a junior replacement, who might not be anymore experienced than she was. Certainly no one seemed to think anything of it when Chekov (who was a much less experienced officer) took over the science station in later episodes.
I agree that she would be trained but I'm not overly in favour of too much cross-pollenation. Sulu and Chekov seem like scientists trained in command while Uhura and Rand (retconned) are engineers trained in command (latterly for Rand as a CPO and later still as an officer). Spock is annoyingly trained in everything.
It may be well to keep in mind that you have limited personnel to deal with. Ship's complement is only 435 or so. That means a pretty thin bench when you think about all the different departments on a ship. You send out three department heads on a mission and you may not have many ways to fill those various roles.
For sensors and comms you have a lot of crewmen and a few junior officers/NCOs below decks who man the sensor bay and comms bay any of whom could be drafted in if an officer of off the ship. Similarly, these departments (unlike say the science labs) have to be manned throughout all duty shifts so it wouldn't take much juggling to get a repalcement. Sulu and Chekov as astrophycisists would be competent enough with sensors too. Uhura's fortes seem to be maths, computers, and electronics.
I think you guys may be judging this episode with hindsight. Galileo Seven was pretty early on in Season One. "Errors" will be made until the writers strike the formula that will make the series work.
Not to mention there may have been issues on what Uhura could and could not say. Remember, this series was made in during tremendously difficult social and political time in the United States.
Still a really good episode that was far ahead of it's time. The way those crew members behaved towards Spock and how he dealt with the bigotry that was thrown at him. This was one of Nimoy's best performances.
Not to mention there may have been issues on what Uhura could and could not say. Remember, this series was made in during tremendously difficult social and political time in the United States.
Still a really good episode that was far ahead of it's time. The way those crew members behaved towards Spock and how he dealt with the bigotry that was thrown at him. This was one of Nimoy's best performances.
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Although I liked the basic premise, I didn't care for the episode. There were just a few glaring problems that I had trouble accepting.
As Timo pointed out earlier, what on Earth is Kirk thinking sending an away party like that? Three key senior officers all together? Big mistake. Now, I know they had to do it for more "story", as some key characters were needed for material on the away mission, but it was way too risky. I could see Kirk sending out a shuttle for investigation, but not with so many key officers. Spock I can understand, because of his command capability, intelligence, and experience. But let the others be junior officers.
The indigenous creatures seemed way too conveniently nearby to cause them trouble. Plus, given their intelligence, you'd expect them to be scared enough to stay away for much longer. Those phaser beams would be frightening, unlike anything they'd ever seen. Their tenacity to keep attacking as they did was just a bit beyond belief. But then it gave enough story material for the scenes on the planet...
The other thing is the effect of the hand phasers. I'm sorry, but based on what we know about phaser technology, I can't expect a shield made of natural materials would resist a phaser beam. Plus, tricorders should be perfectly capable of detecting lifesigns before they are "right on top" of them. The crew would have had a much easier time defending themselves.
However, Spock was right about the using the fuel for a flare. And it was logical, despite him saying it wasn't. Knowing Kirk, the Enterprise would stay even up to the point of being late for the rendezvous. On the planet, the away team would run out of water and food before long and die. This was the only way.
As Timo pointed out earlier, what on Earth is Kirk thinking sending an away party like that? Three key senior officers all together? Big mistake. Now, I know they had to do it for more "story", as some key characters were needed for material on the away mission, but it was way too risky. I could see Kirk sending out a shuttle for investigation, but not with so many key officers. Spock I can understand, because of his command capability, intelligence, and experience. But let the others be junior officers.
The indigenous creatures seemed way too conveniently nearby to cause them trouble. Plus, given their intelligence, you'd expect them to be scared enough to stay away for much longer. Those phaser beams would be frightening, unlike anything they'd ever seen. Their tenacity to keep attacking as they did was just a bit beyond belief. But then it gave enough story material for the scenes on the planet...
The other thing is the effect of the hand phasers. I'm sorry, but based on what we know about phaser technology, I can't expect a shield made of natural materials would resist a phaser beam. Plus, tricorders should be perfectly capable of detecting lifesigns before they are "right on top" of them. The crew would have had a much easier time defending themselves.
However, Spock was right about the using the fuel for a flare. And it was logical, despite him saying it wasn't. Knowing Kirk, the Enterprise would stay even up to the point of being late for the rendezvous. On the planet, the away team would run out of water and food before long and die. This was the only way.
Spock was the science officer and it was a science mission. In regards to his "command capability," honestly Spock didn't really have much.
McCoy was there because they wanted a medical doctor along and except for rare occasions the Enterprise carried only one medical doctor.
Scotty was there because it is apparently Starfleet policy during TOS, to send the most qualified or skilled personnel on missions regardless of their rank and position, lets face it Scotty's good at everything, personally I think he's a better commander than Spock.
Well there was the time she went running into Mulder's motel room, dressed only in skimpy panties and bra, insisting that Mulder examine her skin. Lots of close up camera work there. What episode was that?
Oh yeah, the first one.
I don't really see this being a problem. The cavemen were everywhere: a random landing party from the Enterprise found them on another random location, too. We could assume that Spock landed the shuttle in an area where humanoid survival odds were the highest, and that the rescue party landed in such an area as well; hardly a surprise, then, that natives would also frequent such an area.
Also, what would be scary about the phasers? They didn't hurt anybody, as far as the locals knew. For all we know, they looked attractive, in a vaguely familiar way - perhaps like glittering streams of water in these relatively dry highlands...
Ah, I didn't remember this happening? It's far-fetched but not impossible, I think. Remember that a phaser hit only vaporizes a specific target, and the effect terminates at the edges of that target, not jumping to the structures or materials beyond the target. By suitable (if accidental) choice of materials, a shield might offer sacrificial protection: the phaser would successfully destroy a layer of it, then stop, thinking the job was done because a clump of organic material had been destroyed - but there still remained further layers, including the actual mass of the humanoid him- or herself.
Not if we consider the premise of this episode: the loss of sensor capabilities that prevented timely rescue of our castaways in the first place.
Of all the emergency signals the castaways could use, this one was probably optimal: it was detectable by Mk I Eyeball, so not subject to the sensor-jamming qualities of the quasarlet. Perhaps Spock even optimized the emission spectrum by adjusting the ignition parameters, so that they got a flare that contrasted against the greenness of the anomaly?
However, odds of the signal being seen by Mk I Eyeballs would indeed be very low, even if all 2x423 of those were being efficiently utilized. Perhaps it might have been more logical to utilize the available resources for creating a happier death for the surviving five?
Timo Saloniemi
What he says is that there was no chance — that he was facing a no-win scenario. Ironically, it’s on another escape from Mutara that he says he has never faced it before.
I wonder if TG7 inspired TWOK’s writers to create the KM. Another connection is that TWOK quotes Spock’s line from TG7, “There are always possibilities.”
Personally I think tricorders should be far less efficient at detecting 'life signs'. Has anybody ever postulated what 'life signs' actually are? I can understand tricorders detecting radiation, electromagnetic energy, etc. I can understand them tracking a moving heat source and assuming that it is life signs but life signs more generally is just wierd. Insects, bacteria, viruses, plants, and all manner of animals are life forms. Exactly what is it that the tricorder is trying to measure?
In a mountainous area surely the tricorder would be monitoring heat sources, sound, and movement, which would be blocked by surrounding terrain.
Somewhat alleviating those problems, let's remember the definition of "life" as used in TOS. If our heroes scanned for "life signs", it wasn't in search of obscure bacteria. It was to determine the presence of reasonably traditional warm-blooded animals such as fellow humanoids, sometimes in the middle of lush vegetation that no doubt was teeming with smaller animal forms.
Whether terrain masking would be an issue with tricorders is debatable. In "The Enemy", LaForge's VISOR is able to pick up a neutrino stream from the side, even though supposedly such a stream would have zero scattering. Essentially, Trek technology can detect non-incident radiation! Line of sight need not be a problem, then: a tricorder could pick up the signs "from the side", not receiving them on an antenna or sensor head built into the little handheld black box, but instead using a virtual reception device projected somewhere far off the box.
There's nothing theoretically impossible about such a setup - a tricorder could well have a sensory head that extends across several cubic kilometers, created by an application of Starfleet's mastery of the structure of space (gravity, subspace). There could be practical limitations to this, but naturally the sensors and their analysis programs would be designed to make the best of the available possibilities, giving us very user-friendly if not quite infinitely accurate output such as "lifesigns".
Timo Saloniemi
Whether terrain masking would be an issue with tricorders is debatable. In "The Enemy", LaForge's VISOR is able to pick up a neutrino stream from the side, even though supposedly such a stream would have zero scattering. Essentially, Trek technology can detect non-incident radiation! Line of sight need not be a problem, then: a tricorder could pick up the signs "from the side", not receiving them on an antenna or sensor head built into the little handheld black box, but instead using a virtual reception device projected somewhere far off the box.
There's nothing theoretically impossible about such a setup - a tricorder could well have a sensory head that extends across several cubic kilometers, created by an application of Starfleet's mastery of the structure of space (gravity, subspace). There could be practical limitations to this, but naturally the sensors and their analysis programs would be designed to make the best of the available possibilities, giving us very user-friendly if not quite infinitely accurate output such as "lifesigns".
Timo Saloniemi
Yes and I suppose we have to distinguish types of radiation that can pass through solid objects, which would be unhindered by terrain. I think I'd prefer if it if they defined life signs as a strong infra-red signal but there is scope for confusion, since many life forms are cold-blooded and many non-life forms have strong infra-red signals. I suppose it's easier to communicate the issue to your audience if you just talk about 'life signs' and don't worry about it. I'd prefer 'possible life signs' if allthey're using is infra-red. How good are modern infra-red scanners at penetrating buildings and solid objects? I suppose tricorders should conceivably be better than those.
Of course, we did see many away missions with the top 3 or 4 XO's going. And although this was brought up only once in a very straightforward manner, when in "The Ultimate Computer" the M5 system proposed an away team without the captain, it wasn't until TNG that we started to see the captain staying behind a bit more often.
I agree with you that Scotty is probably a better commander, in that he's more fluent on the operational end of things and a bit more diplomatic with the crew (Spock will often force logic over everything).
I don't fully agree. In this case, it was more of landing in an area that would pose minimal damage risk to the shuttle. Given how quickly everything happened, there wouldn't be time to do much else, like looking for areas best suited to supporting human life. The first and foremost concern is preventing the shuttle from being damaged, so that they may launch again. Of course, we end up seeing a place choked with high rocks... so, I guess they didn't come in "out of control". A wide open expanse would have been the best chance to be spotted. Anyway, on second thought, there are so many uncertainties as to why they landed where they did... seems more of a scripting choice for making it easy to have hostile creatures lurking about.
As for the phasers, we've seen so many cases where a nice little burst complete vaporizes an object. Why not one of the creature's shields? I haven't watched the episode in a long time. Maybe they had the phasers on stun to conserve power...
The tricorder problems shouldn't be affected by the Murasaki effect, as the planet's atmosphere would shield them from it. Communications off planet would of course be impaired. We've seen in so many other episodes where the tricorder sensitivity is very precise on detecting life forms.
Personally, I'd have preferred they encounter a subterranean creature that suddenly pops out of the ground and takes its victim (akin to the creatures of Tremors). This would certainly give tricorders a difficult time pinpointing them. And then in the final moments, one tries to swallow the shuttle as its taking off.
Or we can simply wave our hands and assume that 23rd-century life scan scanners work on a technology that wouldn’t occur to a 20th-century lay audience.
We don’t know what those scanners are picking up or how they use that information to determine the presence or absence of life forms. That alone doesn’t make it implausible or put it beyond suspension of disbelief — does it?
I rather enjoy it when they put a bit of effort in to explain Trek tech though. How dull would warp drive be if they'd never bothered to try and explain it?
But in the context of the thread you'd have to wave your hands frantically as the earlier post was suggesting that the vague pulp sci fi tricorders have much greater range than shown in the G7 episode. If they narrowed it down and said that the tricorder measures both infra-red and magnetic disturbances created by living organisms we could start to envisage the circumstances in which the equipment would work optimally and when it would be hindered instead of it being totally random depending on the plot.
In this case, it was more of landing in an area that would pose minimal damage risk to the shuttle. [..]Anyway, on second thought, there are so many uncertainties as to why they landed where they did... seems more of a scripting choice for making it easy to have hostile creatures lurking about.
Yup - although hiding the matte-painted horizon was also supremely important and probably saved us from lots of agony...
One might argue that Spock had full control of the craft and could settle down wherever he wanted, with precision - but since sensors were down, he was flying blind in a cloud, and happened upon mountainous terrain, where he sought out the first suitable bit of level ground and dropped the shuttle there before all fuel was gone.
Would it? I don't see any evidence for that in the episode. The only related piece of dialogue seems to be that the planet was "just about dead center of the Murasaki effect" according to Uhura; her tone of voice suggested this was a bad thing, not that there was "eye of the storm" type relief available there.
Personally, I'd have preferred they encounter a subterranean creature that suddenly pops out of the ground and takes its victim (akin to the creatures of Tremors). This would certainly give tricorders a difficult time pinpointing them. And then in the final moments, one tries to swallow the shuttle as its taking off.
They did land on sand... So, an interesting possibility!
A few arguments in defense of the choice of TPTB, though... Discounting the problems of VFX cost (or of having to endure yet another round of Prohaska suits), such creatures would probably require sizeable prey wandering about, a whole ecosystem TPTB would have to reproduce for plausibility. In contrast, intelligent humanoids would be a threat we might arguably find even in the most hostile of environments, far away from their comfort zone. And they'd hate to see competitors to the scarce local resources, and would thus be automatically aggressive if our heroes sought safe haven in the vicinity of such resources. Plus the natives would already be venturing to territory somewhat alien to them, so they wouldn't be easily deterred by meeting alien life and technologies. They'd simply think that this is what one finds on the mountains, and that bringing back a few skulls and thundersticks would make their trip worth the while.
Timo Saloniemi
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