SAY WHAT? Marina Sirtis Almost Fired!

That's an interesting thought that the reason for the 2:1 ratio of male to female in Trek was firstly a hold over from TOS where they had that official split and secondly because they had fewer costumes made. That never occurred to me. I've always assumed it was casual, careless sexism but a decision to have fewer uniforms made could be deliberate and calculated.

For all that its depiction of women was sexist, at least TOS had its fair share of middle aged women among the background crew. Against that climate, I do understand why Mulgrew fought back against the whole mindset that led to Lien being replaced by a Barbie Borg who was dating a producer. As it turned out, the Borg stories gave an incredible vein of stories to mine but it's frustrating that Lien was sacrificed.

It's also easy to see why they should have employed a lot more female writers and directors a long time ago.

I think Troi's progression as a character and as an officer was an unnecessarily slow progression and taking her out of a standard uniform to show off her tits more really hampered our ability to view her as a trained astronaut who can shoot, fight, and maintain equipment.

 

But Wang getting the chop from Voyager has his own fault and had nothing to do with being male (or female). You don't show up for work on time, don't do what's expected then there's only person to blame when they show you the door.

It's also the reason he was knocked back when he applied for director's training.

 

That's a bit unfair to Jeri Ryan. I believe she got the role a couple of years before she and Braga started dating.

 

Possibly, I'm disrespectful only because that was how Mulgrew felt at the time. I think that it was unfair to give Jeri a hard time for decisions taken by men. It might actually have been the decision to date Braga that reduced the level of open animosity. The mindset is very much the same one that gave Troi her plunging neck line though.

 

TNG was heavily influenced by D.C Fontana behind the scenes at its start wasn’t it?
Jeri Ryan started dating Braga after she got the job.
Denise Crosby wasn’t fired...Lien was let go later on Voy, replaced by another actress, though the original plan was to lose Wang. There’s other background on that floating around. McFadden was a...complex (there was an asshole behind the scenes...) situation, but they made the right call in getting her back.
One of the best and most influential episodes of those early seasons was by Melinda Snodgrass.

Tróia uniform etc in the terms you discuss it leans into the is Starfleet a military question....and when you look at say Wesley’s wardrobe also, there is a different picture worth considering too (TNG leans into no, Starfleet isn’t a military, and Troi’s whole position is about that. A counsellor on the bridge.)

Now, I do t disagree with most of your underlying point, but the actually situations at the time in front of and behind the camera, and in society, are very different to how you paint them here.
It was 1987. Aliens was the year before, with Ripley front and centre. It was the beginning of change, not the end of it...and taking VOY as it’s end point, we had our own Ripley moments in Trek. ENT was a mahooosive backward step, but you have to to look at the whole of it. If Denise Crosby hadn’t left, and if Worf hadn’t grown in stature (in short, if TNG had followed its intentions more, though it couldn’t because of decisions made.) you would have had the military action role basically fulfilled by a woman many many years pre Buffy.
Let’s also not ignore Kira, Jadzia, B’Ellana et al, all of whom are not stereotypes, all of whom are strong female characters, and all of whom are well served and well loved nineties Trek characters. Janeway could flounce through a gothic novel on the holodeck one week, and be in a sweaty vest pulling a Bruce Willis with a phaser rifle the next. The ‘traditional’ roles for women are all filled by men...Bashir, Quark, EMH, Tom Paris, Neelix...and the women are in command, engineering. (Edit..had to go afk mid post lol) science. It’s not really accurate to cherry pick.

I’m glad Sirtis stayed, because she helps open the door for those later characters.

 

There was definitely a clear progression, building towards more and more equality and Sirtis paved the way for that, it's true. Ripley in Alien was great, and even Lambert, despite being a scared mess in the later stages, was an officer, a navigator, and clearly well trained in the first half.

It's remarkable how often the actresses in real life are far more accomplished than their futuristic characters in many ways. Even back in TOS the actresses would have loved to get in on the action but we're instead portrayed as space waitresses. Let's not forget Picard's merry men...

 

Deanna is very accomplished (and didn’t wear her cleavage top for half as long as people seem to think. Let’s not forget her grey outfit, maroon outfit etc in all this. An honourable mention to the ridiculous male outfits too, with muscles padding and spandex cling to the parts other beers cannot reach. Oh. And Wesley.) and actually does a lot in TNG, even before she ends up in Duty Regs. I think it’s also a mistake to downplay the ‘female’ aspect in female characters. What makes so many of those later characters work so well, is that they are allowed to be television females as well as the more ‘progressive’ aspects. B’Ellanas pregnancy and relationship with Tom is a beautiful example of that, especially with the lampshading of fifties sitcom stuff with those two. Troi is absolutely the beginning of that, in here relations ships with Crusher, Yar, Riker and Chocolate. She wasn’t portrayed as shakey in command stuff because she was a woman...that was because it suited the character at that time (you can also looks at something like Disaster, and contrast her character with Ensign Ro.) Her mother is also an interesting creation in relation to that...we are so used to seeing Data in the Spock role for TNG, but actually, it’s Deanna. Ambassador parent? Half human? Outsider looking in? Struggling with emotional control...well yes, except they flipped it. Deanna is in no way a sexist caricature, because, thank god, Trek never really does that with its lead characters. Sit her next to her most logical opposite number...Will Riker...now examine how the two are treated or objectified as characters. It’s pretty even.
Sirtis puts in a lot of work, particularly early on, and I think too much is made of ‘That Dress’ when thinking about the character. Troi wasn’t nearly ditched because she was female, I think, but because they had accidentally created too complex a character to easily write for, week in week out. We see exactly the same thing happen with Jadzia Dax, and (in a much much weaker way) Kes later on. I was never Deannas greatest fan, particularly when I first watched TNG...but I think it’s a disservice to lots of people to characterise fandoms or the writers issues with the character to come down to gender, especially in the context of the time and audience. Let’s not forget, ‘teenage boys’ were probably Treks golden market for a very long time, for good or ill...but Trek fans were the secondary market, and the most prominent of those were often women. (Not to mention the biggest names in written Trek in those days too.) Trek then was, if anything, more progressive than it is now. Because back then, 45 minutes focussing on a female lead in Treks target demographic was unbelievably unlikely, particularly for an SF or action show (due exceptions to stuff like Wonder Woman in a vaguely related field) in those days, yet we can all point to the Troi episode, or the Crusher episode. (Apart from the usual Hollywood racism, what’s wrong with Sub Rosa anyway? Anne Rice, you may not respond.)
This is the era of Knight Rider, Streethawk, The A-Team.....and here’s TNG.....it’s night and day, even with Berman having to toe the company line in a very different environment to now (back when you really didn’t piss off the Bible Belt too much, and small c conservatism was the order of the day to keep your show on the air.) where we can have DSC making it’s great proclamations of envelope pushing...even though everyone else is on email. (Gay ensemble character? Sorry DSC, Killjoys did that last week, Buffy last millennia. Female lead? African American lead? You may have heard of DS9 and Voyager.)
It’s fun a and exciting having Trek back on air, but Marina Sirtis here was part of the vanguard for this stuff, way back when they genuinely didn’t know what to do with this stuff, and the audience for it was barely there. Fired? Nah. But she nearly didn’t get her contract picked up. That changed, and I think the producers of Trek at that time, and Sirtis, and the character, all deserve a little more credit for doing what they did back then. *shrug*
Once upon a time, SF fans didn’t give much of a monkeys, as long as something cool or interesting was going on. But the discussions these days...I sometimes wonder if I dreamed characters like Aeryn Sun, or indeed Deanna Troi, heir to the chalice of Riix etc etc.

 

Forgive me for getting all 14 year old schoolboy in a thread with a lot of very interesting thoughts and opinions, but I felt compelled to decontextualize this quote for purile amusement. Simple things pleasing simple minds and all that

Okay folks, carry on.

 

Yeah I guess I guess the sexism aspect was not Troi but the fact that there were insufficient women with whom to contrast Troi.

 

To be fair, it is hard to give substantial screen time for 7 characters on a show like TNG, and the female characters definitely suffered because of that. TNG was less character driven in its first season, the adventure was emphasized more, and so I can see why Troi missed a lot of first season shows, like Hide and Q, Datalore, and 11001001. Does anyone have a list of all the shows where she doesn't appear?

 

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/TNG_main_character_non-appearances

I find this list interesting mainly not because of the season one non-appearances, but where characters apparently don't appear in later episodes. It seems according to that list that only Picard and Riker appeared in every episode.

 

Plus no chief engineer in season one due to Bundy's unavailability when they needed her.

 

I love these Memory Alpha character non-appearances lists, though I'm usually looking at the DS9 one. I never realized before Troi was missing from "The Inner Light"! No one called the empathic counselor to the bridge for the captain getting attacked by an alien mind probe?

Was "Hide & Q" the only Troi non-appearance to hang a lantern on her absence? I remember that ridiculous opening log entry from Picard. "Counselor Troi is off to visit her mother..." or whatever.

Everytime I see "Yesterday's Enterprise", I get a chuckle out of the fact that Troi has no lines. She's sitting in the wide-shot of the bridge at the beginning, then the timeline shifts and she's gone and that's it for Troi for the week. I wonder if Whoopi hadn't been available, if it would have swung the other way and become a Troi showpiece ep -- I don't know who else could have sensed the altered timeline.

 

Yeah Inquisitor Troi assigned to security could have been a great addition , and great fun to play.

 

Yeah, it wasn't that they found her character "too limited", but rather the exact opposite: the writers nicknamed her "Troi: destroyer of plots", and countless episodes ad them contriving a reason why she didn't short-circuit the story (often they just made her absent).
I've seen videos of Sirtis talking about pretty much knowing she would be fired at the end of the season. And that she was only kept because it was felt an attractive woman brought in teenage male viewers and the loss if Denise Crosby and replacing Gates McFadden with Diana Muldaur left her as the only cast member appealing to that demographic in that way. And the ugly catsuit was replaced with a leotard with a low neckline and a skirt, and her character got dumber.

 

I think what they were trying to do with Troi in the first season, ...
As they were creating the show, they wanted a character to be on ombudsman, to represent the collective voice of the crew. They thought that could be what Geordi did.
It's pretty clear they tried to make that what Troi did, then gave that job to Guinan, and eventually scrapped that idea.

 

To be fair - Given the character's primary role was "Ship's Councilor" (IE a Psychologist/Psychiatrist) - WHY would she be trained on how to actually command a Starship, or to operate its systems? the fact that is the 7th Season the Ship's CMO (Beverly Crusher) was Commanding the ship during the 'night shift' was IMO ridiculous.

In TOS when did Dr. McCoy ever do more than treat patients? Hell, in "The Menagerie" when after stealing the ship, Spock turned himself over to McCoy for arrest (because technically McCoy was the most senior officer present) - McCoy couldn't figure out whether to have him put in the Brig or under house arrest.

The fact that TNG often had everyone being an expert or suddenly VERY knowledgeable on things outside their normal scope of duties sometimes went to ludicrous levels.

 

I think this approach overlooks what Starfleet OFFICERS represent. They all have leadership, command, diplomacy, engineering, scientific, weapons, and self defence training in addition to their specialist degrees. There are non-commissioned crew who have more basic training. Troi is not one of those.

The mistake is viewing Troi as a psychologist; that's her specialism but she is also a trained officer and a senior officer at that. If you want your ship's counsellor to be primarily a counsellor then make her a civilian. If she's an officer then make sure there are stories that also address that.

Troi was only on the bridge as a lie detector. Even as an officer, she has no place on that bridge week in week out. I think they should have limited her empathic abilities, broadened her remit to diplomatic missions, including some where she was the lead, and featured her more prominently but in about a third of the episodes per season.

That said, I agree that it was frustrating for them to use Data in place of every other specialist and I would also have preferred the slack to be taken up by other recurring characters - a science officer, an exobiologist, a geologist, some supporting engineers and security guards, etc. They were winging it though and it's easy to suggest improvements in the light of more recent shows with wider supporting casts.

 

Respectfully disagree. To me that's a cop out. Make the woman a schoolmarm is taking the "Wagon Train to the stars" metaphor to the extreme. All the woman in the series, because of their potential to be role models, should be used to stretch and break boundaries. Not reinforce the boxes women were relegated to in the past. That is the insidiousness of misogynistic thinking. Superficially it sounds good and reasonable when in fact it is limiting. Want interesting? Make her go into neuro-sciences, partner up with Data and have her make the breakthrough that would allow him the emotional balance and stability he desires. Let her be the link that helps Data realize his dream and allow her go into the history books as having made a tremendous contribution to humanity's future. Forgot Data-Prime croaked in Nemesis … so substitute Data-lite instead. Let Deanna help elevate his neural pathways and functionality.