No female starship captains in the 2250s-60s?
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I know that's wrong, just because of All Good Things...
While both the long blue dress and the "bunny suit" cover her down to her shoes, after Captain Jellico instructed Deanna to wear a standard uniform quite a few of the fan have stated that she looked more professional and they took her more seriously.
If the suit makes the man, wouldn't the same apply to a woman?
If Kirk routinely appeared on the bridge without a shirt (not just ripped, but absent) yes I would have taken him less seriously as a professional officer. I like the short mini as a fashion choice, and it would have been an advantage in unarmed combat, but if the hem were down to the female character's knees, she would have looked more professional.
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=8919550&postcount=32
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Here's an interesting comparison between Areel Shaw's long skirt uniform and the Personnel Officer's standard miniskirt uniform. I see nothing wrong with Areel Shaw's version even by today's standards. The shade of red she is wearing is even nicer but, of course, that might be a trick of the light due to the differnt fabric.
If TOS had opted for the longer version or we had seen it more often (particularly among officer rank personnel) the women would have looked generally more professional and maybe fewer would be harping on about the miniskirt. I could even see a female Captain wearing that longer dress (in gold) at least aboard ship as an alternate to the tunic and trousers much as Kirk had his alternate green tunic.
If TOS had opted for the longer version or we had seen it more often (particularly among officer rank personnel) the women would have looked generally more professional and maybe fewer would be harping on about the miniskirt. I could even see a female Captain wearing that longer dress (in gold) at least aboard ship as an alternate to the tunic and trousers much as Kirk had his alternate green tunic.
See, I learned that saying as "Clothes do not make the man." I think it's utterly ridiculous to judge a person's merit and ability as an individual based on the shape and color of the cloth on the outside of that person's body -- something that isn't even a part of them. They're still the same person whether they're wearing a burqa or totally naked. It's just societal convention that creates the fiction that one type of attire is more or less appropriate than another, but those conventions are ephemeral and change greatly over time and between different cultures. There's no intrinsic value to them; it's just another of the stupid excuses we make up to pretend some people are better than others.
That manskirt photo isn't so bad. There's a posed photo of an actor in a gold one that used to make me laugh hysterically when people posted it.
Because of the gold piping, I always assumed that was the female dress uniform, especially since all the other court officers were wearing dress uniforms too. Presumably if a situation had come up in an episode where Uhura needed a dress uniform, she would have worn this.
But yeah, they could have made the regular uniform skirt length the same as that one.
From the shadow on the record officers chair, the principal lighting would seem to be behind Shaw. Also, if the costume she is wearing was special made just for this episode, it might not be faded from repeated washings.
That should be the title of the next movie.
Star Trek Thirteen: The Man in the Gold Minidress.
The way I've come to look at this line of dialogue is this:
In Kirk's time, there were no female Starship captains, for whatever reasons. Since humans on Earth had had gender equality (at least on paper) for a long time, I conclude that Starfleet had had female captains in the past - possibly for most of its history - probably close to parity with the men captains. This disparity mentioned by Janice "Loco" Lester could be blown out of proportion due to her questionable mental state. But look at the thought process that could have led her to where she was:
SF has had female captains in the past (and would again later with Janeway, etc) and Lester could have very well gone through SF Academy believing full-well that she stood a shot at getting her own command when she was done. When her review or whatever came up and she was denied command, she interpreted it as gender bias in SF. She never once thought it was because she was a nutjob (although we see by the time of the ep that she was).
Which leads my mind to another question - Why didn't SF have her treated? They must have spotted the signs of her condition early. How far ahead of Lester was Kirk? 1 year? 5? She very well could have gone through a deteriorating mental state for 10-15 years since the Academy! Out of SF, probably.
Borgboy, you don't have any solid basis for that notion. For all we know Number One from "The Cage" could well be commanding her own ship (or beyond) by the time of TOS. And how do we know Lester wasn't in sciences back at the Academy. It has been amply pointed out that what we saw onscreen was but a very small percentage of Starfleet personnel and can't really be taken as a large enough sample. Absence of evidence isn't evidence particularly when the circumstantial evidence to the contrary is stronger.
That is a good point about Lester not getting treatment, though. "Whom Gods Destroy" alleged that mental illness had been all but wiped out in the Federation aside from the few incurable cases at Elba II. Having an insane human villain just eight episodes later is a continuity glitch I never thought about before.
Her condition might not have been so obvious back when she knew Kirk previously. If she did try for a command path her temperament and erratic behaviour mightn't have been enough to raise any flags back then, but enough to show she wasn't suitable for command. After that her resentment, bitterness and neurosis festered and grew. She might have internalized a lot of it so it mightn't have been obvious to all but those who knew her better. She might still have been able to function at least on the face of it. But it was enough to drive Kirk away as well as keep her out of any Starfleet paths she might have wanted.
But she evidently had a victim mentality where her faulures were always somehow someone else's fault.
But she evidently had a victim mentality where her faulures were always somehow someone else's fault.
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There's also Lester's boy-toy Dr. Coleman to consider. Maybe he used his connections to shield Lester from any treatment that she didn't want. Or perhaps she did get treatment, and it just didn't work on her.
Then again: Before Lester swapped with Kirk, had she been convicted of any crimes at that point? Obviously she killed the rest of her team, but nobody knew about it at that point. She can't get treatment for a crime that the Federation doesn't even know about, let alone actually convict her for.
Then again: Before Lester swapped with Kirk, had she been convicted of any crimes at that point? Obviously she killed the rest of her team, but nobody knew about it at that point. She can't get treatment for a crime that the Federation doesn't even know about, let alone actually convict her for.
Yes, the gold piping and the satiny material, similar to the men's jackets, point toward it being a dress uniform. It has standard rank stripes, though, unlike the male dress uniforms.
True, but the various piping schemes on the male dress uniforms do seem to indicate rank, at least for ranks higher than lieutenant commander*. Perhaps there was nowhere to put extra piping on the female uniforms, so SF decided just to put the standard stripes on them. It's hard to tell, since we only ever saw that uniform once, AFAIK, and it was worn by a lieutenant.
* Commander, Captain and Commodore all had distinct schemes. I'm trying to recall if the court reporter in Court Martial was identified as an ensign, but I'm drawing a blank. I believe he was wearing the same piping scheme as Scotty and McCoy do, so if he *is* an ensign, that would seem to point to the piping scheme being the same for lieutenant commander and below. If he's never referred to by rank, then maybe we can just assume he's a lieutenant commander...
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