STC Ep. 7: "Embrace The Winds" speculation and discussion....

[dmac]

Not to belabor the point but there comes a time when even a good production studios attempts something different, then produce it and pull the trigger. STC is a good production team, I doubt the next production will include anything near:
Hail, hail, fire and snow.
Call the angel, we will go.
Far away, for to see,
friendly Angel come to me.
Hail, hail, fire and snow.
Call the angel, we will go.
Far away, for to see,
friendly Angel come to me.
Hail, hail ...........

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Not to belabor the point but there comes a time when even a good production studios attempts something different, then produce it and pull the trigger. STC is a good production team, I doubt the next production will include anything near:
Hail, hail, fire and snow.
Call the angel, we will go.
Far away, for to see,
friendly Angel come to me.
Hail, hail, fire and snow.
Call the angel, we will go.
Far away, for to see,
friendly Angel come to me.
Hail, hail ...........

Sure it will! And then Erin Ranahan will appear on the bridge.

 

[asurob]

The episode was probably too heavy handed in the point it was trying to make. Eye of the beholder and all that.

One minor quibble for me. And maybe I missed the explanation somewhere...but the Vulcan Admiral who was clearly older then Spock...my understanding was Spock was always the first Vulcan in Star Fleet. That being said it threw me to see a Vulcan in uniform who outranked him and was considerably older.

 

[dmac]

Sure it will! And then Erin Ranahan will appear on the bridge.

Pro Bono, I'm sure

 

[Warped9]

One minor quibble for me. And maybe I missed the explanation somewhere...but the Vulcan Admiral who was clearly older then Spock...my understanding was Spock was always the first Vulcan in Star Fleet. That being said it threw me to see a Vulcan in uniform who outranked him and was considerably older.

Nowhere in all of TOS was it ever stated that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet. Even D.C. Fontana's novel Vulcan's Glory never made that assertion, and she would know given she was there when TOS was being produced.

 

[dmac]

Then there was that whole Intrepid mishap

 

[asurob]

Nowhere in all of TOS was it ever stated that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet. Even D.C. Fontana's novel Vulcan's Glory never made that assertion, and she would know given she was there when TOS was being produced.

Hmm okay, maybe I just picked up bad info at someplace when I was a kid. I swear in TOS it was said he was the "first" vulcan (not the only as he opened the flood gates thus the Intrepid) in star fleet, which is why it was such a big deal. I'll do some research on it.

 

[Warped9]

What is interesting is how a prominent Vulcan representative, Sarek, managed to keep the identity of his son, Spock, unknown so that Kirk and the rest have no idea Sarek married a human and fathered a mixed race son.

That Kirk and the rest had no inkling the Vulcan ambassador and his human wife could be Spock's parents suggests Vulcan/Human pairings are not that all unknown.

 

[Warped9]

Hmm okay, maybe I just picked up bad info at someplace when I was a kid. I swear in TOS it was said he was the "first" vulcan (not the only as he opened the flood gates thus the Intrepid) in star fleet, which is why it was such a big deal. I'll do some research on it.

A big deal is made of Spock defying his father's wishes to attend the Vulcan Science Academy (or whatever) and chose to join Starfleet instead. But that might have more to do with Sarek being a prominent Vulcan official rather than some average Vulcan civilian. There could be any number of less illustrious Vulcans who had no problem with some of their own joining Starfleet.

That being the case then it's highly unlikely Spock could be the first Vulcan to join Starfleet.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

They seem to have been developing this Chekov character arc since Episode 4, when he was seen dabbling in cryptography. Then we got the lingering shot of him scowling over his research assignment in 5, and his disappointment in 6 at being left out of the whole Usdi business (along with Sulu's "stripes" comment).

 

[Warped9]

Maybe it's me, but the Enterprise and Hood in this episode don't look the same as before. They don't look like Doug Drexler's model.

 

[YJAGG]

I'd like to thank ST:C for their work, but I do have to agree there were too many "inside jokes/ references" not even connecting the dots, but (for me) look at how clever we are... and here is a little joke we threw in, but I'd rather a joke go over my head than land in my lap. Sadly before the cold open was done, it was already a 6 at best, and got up to an 8 fell back at the end for a number of reasons. Mind you there were some good moments by Vic, where for a moment or two he seem to be Captain Kirk (not Shatner, mind you but in the moment).

Over all it is a TNG style two story with one water dropping about something that will happen soon....

Spoiler: things detailed in the episode.

I was waiting for Garret to say "What difference at this point does it make?", ala Hilary as she played the defensive victim to scrutiny (or just tired of telling folks the same thing over and over again. I admit I am not familair with Clair Kramer, but found here ok.

I agree in '67 they would of made up the details about the eventl, as opposed to dancing around it. As I said Vic had good moments, but again Grant is still doing George, and it put me off. and for the love of God why was the counselor there, I could see McCoy on the shuttle simply saying any chance to not get beamed someplace to get some real air is fine with him, as opposed to her comment. And with with respect to Michelle Specht, I do not feel the character is needed, the exchange she had with Spock, felt forced almost as if ST:C was saying why she was on the show period.

As for Checkov he was a jack of all trades on TOS, so his triple duty was fine, but I felt that the promotion should of come from Kirk when he got back, not Scotty.

As for the tension of will they live, first as cynics we know they we not kill off a 3rd of the bridge crew, second we saw them all in TMP, so again we know that they will not die.

Again just one fan boy's opinion.

 

[mos6507]

They seem to have been developing this Chekov character arc since Episode 4, when he was seen dabbling in cryptography. Then we got the lingering shot of him scowling over his research assignment in 5, and his disappointment in 6 at being left out of the whole Usdi business (along with Sulu's "stripes" comment).

On a purely geek level I'm glad that we'll get a prominent example of Lt. Junior grade (single dashed line). There's very little visual evidence of that in TOS otherwise.

 

[Mark 2000]

I think the thing that hurts the most in this episode is Kirk's asking Garrett if she's ok with gender or species being part of the consideration for captaincy, as if picking a woman would be some kind of act of special treatment. This is a real world "meritocracy" argument that people use all the time to exclude women and people of color from all kinds of leadership positions. The obvious response is if there is currently only one kind of person getting the job - and in the case of both space ship captains and and real life it's white human men - then isn't that a kind of preferential treatment? Because unless you believe that white guys really are superior they can't possibly be the best person for the job 100 percent of the time. It's impossible without bias. No one says this. No one has any answer, in fact. And that can make it seem like the hero just made a point against inclusion. So I'd say this show just, probably unwittingly, made a very clear point and it's regressive. That's the problem with sloppy writing and loaded issues. You need to be clear or risk propping up the wrong side.

 

[mos6507]

They also don't bring up the fact that Spock is an alien and the Federation is, at its heart, human-centric. So the analog would be that Garrett is a white female (blonde at that) and Spock is symbolic of a minority male.

 

[Mark 2000]

They also don't bring up the fact that Spock is an alien and the Federation is, at its heart, human-centric. So the analog would be that Garrett is a white female (blonde at that) and Spock is symbolic of a minority male.

That's the pecking order in a nutshell. If a minority is to succeed he has to be male. If a woman is going to succeed she has to be white. Women of color are generally invisible because we as a culture place white guys as a standard and only allow one degree of deviation.

Its a discussion like this that would have made they're script so much more interesting, but I don't think the Continues people are open to that kind of input.

 

[Warped9]

In "Court Martial" Commodore Stone says, "Not one man in a million can do what you and I have done, Jim--command a starship." In that statement they were stating that a Black male could indeed command a starship. That was a powerful statement of equality on 1966/67 television. And in the same episode we saw an Indian male who was a starship Captain sitting in on the board of Kirk's inquiry.

We didn't actually see them commanding a ship, but the implication was clearly there that such a command was possible for men of different races other than White.

This is all it would have taken in TOS to send the same message for women. Indeed, in "The Cage/The Menagerie" we actually do see a woman in command--Number One--in the Captain's absence. As such it strongly infers she can command her own atarship as so can other women. And nowhere in TOS does it say definitively a woman cannot command.

It is only Janice Lester's bitter ranting that says Kirk's world of starship Captains excludes women. And hence a decades long debate.

But then near fifty years later STC does what TOS could have done back in the day and finally shows us a women--Commodore Gray--as a command officer and all that implies. Perfect.

But sadly they chicken out in "Embracing The Wind" and undermine the whole thing with this sloppy story and disappointing rationalization: a woman can't command a Constitution-class ship because the Tellerites don't like it.

Note, though, that this doesn't say a woman cannot command other classes of ships.

As has been pointed out by others there was a far better and potentially more interesting story to be told revolving around Diana Garrett than the one that was told. A damned shame STC elected to not tell that story.

Like "The White Iris" this episode tries to fix/rationalize something that doesn't need to be rationalized and wastes a lot of valuable screen time to no end. At least "The White Iris" didn't wallow in nearly as excessive fanwank.

If this episode were more conventional fan fare in terms of overall production you might excuse the writing more, but given so much else in the episode is above average the disappointing writing becomes evermore apparent.


Another note on this. I think it would have served the prominent female characters in this story--Gray and Garrett--if they had been wearing a good variation of the men's standard tunic/trousers uniform than the women's dress style uniform. If Uhura and such can sport Engineering fatigues on a boarding party than there shoukd have been an alternate service uniform for women particulatly of command rank.

 

[DarKush]

That's the pecking order in a nutshell. If a minority is to succeed he has to be male. If a woman is going to succeed she has to be white. Women of color are generally invisible because we as a culture place white guys as a standard and only allow one degree of deviation.

Its a discussion like this that would have made they're script so much more interesting, but I don't think the Continues people are open to that kind of input.

One thing I would note here though is that Spock is a fair-skinned alien. Even on some boards on this website you might find people still debating the existence of Tuvok (i.e. dark skinned Vulcans) and how that's not or should be possible, and what they have to really base that on is the depictions of Vulcans in TOS and TNG. So Spock can be a 'stand-in' for non-white people/non-white males, but at the same time it's a weak stand-in, and one that would reinforce the human-centric and white male hierarchy, since Spock is half-human and his mother is a white human female, and throw in his fair-skinned Vulcan dad as well. It puts white people as the default people and reinforces the idea that something only matters if it is happening to a white character. That's like a signal in our brain to now care or get outraged.

So I don't think the one degree of deviation thing works here. And in real world terms, within the United States at least, I don't think it works either. Back to TOS, we did see Commodore Stone in TOS but as far as I recall we never saw a black male (and definitely not female) starship captain, or any non-white starship captains on the original series. The films did correct that oversight, though not enough to my satisfaction. Looking at you too TNG.

Though I will say that just having black males in positions of authority (Stone) and respect (Daystrom) on the original series was pretty groundbreaking on the original series. So its not like going from white male to black male or non-white male was a natural, automatic process. That also took effort, vision, and some gumption to do. As well as having a black person-a black woman no less-on the bridge of the Enterprise. No doubt the show could've done more with all of those characters, particularly Uhura since she was a major supporting character, but the show rested on its laurels.

The STC episode muddies the waters quite a bit with the inclusion of Commodore Gray but also Admiral Stomm. And it felt purposeful that Stomm seemed to go after Spock, and was a bit too preferential-emotional?-regarding Garrett. I imagine some of this was done on purpose to highlight how discussions and policies regarding anti-discrimination efforts can be complicated and multi-faceted, and maybe even pointing out that institutional discrimination can still exist even in an environment where certain individuals of discriminated groups can hold high office or have some modicum of success.

 

[Warped9]

^^ See my post above yours. TOS did in fact state Stone and another non-White character had commanded starships.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

In "Court Martial" Commodore Stone says, "Not one man in a million can do what you and I have done, Jim--command a starship." In that statement they were stating that a Black male could indeed command a starship. That was a powerful statement of equality on 1966/67 television. And in the same episode we saw an Indian male who was a starship Captain sitting in on the board of Kirk's inquiry.

We didn't actually see them commanding a ship, but the implication was clearly there that such a command was possible for men of different races other than White.

This is all it would have taken in TOS to send the same message for women. Indeed, in "The Cage/The Menagerie" we actually do see a woman in command--Number One--in the Captain's absence. As such it strongly infers she can command her own atarship as so can other women. And nowhere in TOS does it say definitively a woman cannot command.

It is only Janice Lester's bitter ranting that says Kirk's world of starship Captains excludes women. And hence a decades long debate.

But then near fifty years later STC does what TOS could have done back in the day and finally shows us a women--Commodore Gray--as a command officer and all that implies. Perfect.

But sadly they chicken out in "Embracing The Wind" and undermine the whole thing with this sloppy story and disappointing rationalization: a woman can't command a Constitution-class ship because the Tellerites don't like it.

Note, though, that this doesn't say a woman cannot command other classes of ships.

As has been pointed out by others there was a far better and potentially more interesting story to be told revolving around Diana Garrett than the one that was told. A damned shame STC elected to not tell that story.

Like "The White Iris" this episode tries to fix/rationalize something that doesn't need to be rationalized and wastes a lot of valuable screen time to no end. At least "The White Iris" didn't wallow in nearly as excessive fanwank.

If this episode were more conventional fan fare in terms of overall production you might excuse the writing more, but given so much else in the episode is above average the disappointing writing becomes evermore apparent.


Another note on this. I think it would have served the prominent female characters in this story--Gray and Garrett--if they had been wearing a good variation of the men's standard tunic/trousers uniform than the women's dress style uniform. If Uhura and such can sport Engineering fatigues on a boarding party than there shoukd have been an alternate service uniform for women particulatly of command rank.

I still have to ask how you deal with Kirk's remark in "You've Got the Conn." Without explaining that away, your interpretation of "Lolani" can only be wishful thinking.