In that aspect, it was less progressive.
And while it did well in cast non-whites in guest-starring roles, it's use of it's non white "regulars" was spotty at best.
Was TNG less progressive than TOS?
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And while it did well in cast non-whites in guest-starring roles, it's use of it's non white "regulars" was spotty at best.
TOS actually goes out of its way to be actively sexist in nearly every episode. People bring up Turnabout Intruder a lot, but there's almost worse stuff in the rest of the series. Besides the main cast being nurses and secretaries, the guest stars were almost entirely damsels, vamps, and succubi.
And always shot in that bloody soft focus. Always
I originally gave it points because it was the 60s and a lot of TV was like that back then (at least from what I've seen/heard/read)
I mean shows like Bonanza resulted in the term "Cartwright curse" to describe their disposable love interests of the week.
But, as I thought about it more, then even in the 1960s there were examples of shows were women got more of a central role, like the Avengers show I mentioned.
Different backgrounds for their creation... there has always been a difference between Brit TV and American TV.
We did have Honey West
I ‘erased’ nothing. Honestly, sometimes language evolves, other times people just mangle the shite out of it.
Tasha has *already* appeared in essays and critical theory writing on the subject. I am surprised I remember Mokey’s name, and I still remember being sat on the bed eagerly awaiting that first episode of Fraggle Rock.
You are doing a fandango on the head of a pin with with your Aliens nonsense. You said Aliens. The 1986 films. Not Alien. TNG started in 87, so worrying about really daft action figures from half a decade later as an example of The Joy of Ripley isn’t really going to work when talking about TNG next to its peers at the time.
The Aliens franchise was not its peer, there was a bigger gulf between cinema and TV back then. You could say it was close to being peers with Trek in general...there was the cinema franchise, though at this point the Alien films were the baby and Trek the grown up (four films versus 2, and lots of interesting DNA between the two) but explicitly talking about TNG? No. There was of course the booming straight to video market, which on an international level certainly was a peer of TNG in video rental stalls. But then we would be talking about Brigitte Nielsen flicks and what have you, not Saturday morning cartoons which are not in the same zone as 1m per episode live action syndicated series. Even then, it’s not that same family crossover drama that TNG was courting out of the gate.
It could be strongly argued that the ‘Aliens’ figures only exist as a result of TNGs popularity in the toy market with playmates around that same time (not to mention the rather mental robocop and terminator 2 figures...your target audience in those days for figures weren’t old enough to legally see those films in some territories. But...the success of Real Ghostbusters led to all sorts of plastic fantástica.) but again, that’s not really about representation or progressiveness, it’s about marketing. Tasha was in the first wave anyway, skin tight spandex all round, even on the chaps, and made by galloob. Which *is* interesting, and about representation and TNG, because here is a ‘boys market’ thing, explicitly also having three women front and centre. And three men. (Worf is a late game addition to the character cast ‘Klingon marine’ and Wesley too is side cast...though that’s not how things develop once writing happens and the shows on screen, and there they are full cast.)
Oh, and while I am at it, you over estimate Metroid. It was never a ‘big’ franchise until much much later (arguably still isn’t really) and pre TNG most of the world didn’t even know who Samus Aran was, let alone got to see her little blonde pixel pony tail in person. It’s nanas to sit it in the same arena, and this was an era before video games were anything like the cultural significance basket they are today.
In terms of my little anecdote, my point is that for my corner of the world, seeing a woman in charge, or with a ‘gun’ or as a lead etc would seem unremarkable. I have to put myself in other people’s shoes to find it remarkable in either a good or bad way.
Now, if I erased anything this time, I hope it was with a nice electric eraser, because they are fun to use.
Edit;
Knew I forgot something. A few probably. Firstly... the lutan conversation. Two women talking about sexual interest, basically perking on the guy. Not a lot of conversations like that in TV. They are also ‘good’ women, not the femme fatale stereotypes...their sexuality was not marking them out as ‘bad girls’ etc. Again, put that in context of the time.
The other thing...well, we may as well not discuss TNG in reference to TOS if we are gonna be using Tesla as any kind of example over in He-Man...the shield maiden love interest was done in the fifties by Tolkien, and Lois Lane had been around so long the stereotype was pensionable.
The usual female lead at the time was the sexually inert (because family TV) Secretary/mother/unrequited love stereotype. The Momeypenny was everywhere in TV in those days...knight rider, air wolf, street hawk...to hop into your favourite genre, we see the same thing over in Centurions etc. I have long been of a similar opinion to yourself in the terms that genre TV has always been way ahead of the progressive curve (to the point that all the modern hoo hah around it is just offensively reinventing the wheel....apart from gender/sexuality, Trek had all the bases covered before the turn of the Millenium by DS9 and Voyager. Babylon 5 and some of the late nineties boom will cover sexuality too.And that’s just TV.) A lot of your examples are t as golden as you recall. (Did you mention Transformers? For some reason it sticks in my head as really bad example....we got R.C in the movie, she’s pink, a ‘caregiver’ stereotype of the negative kind, and basically naffs off.) That’s why there’s that line between ‘caregiver’ as the TV stereotype as was, and what Crusher and Troi were, which was professionals.
TNG was a part of that revolution. Pretending otherwise is historical revision. (And it’s probably for the best Lesley became Wesley...heck, it wouldn’t be hard to convince me it was done by someone savvy enough not to stick a teenage girl around Rodenberry and some of the other execs.) Knocking down achievements of the past doesn’t make the present trends look better, it looks clumsy and a bit ‘year zero’ which is something that pissed a lot of people in the Trek community off when DSC tried it.
Oh..and Ilia was not particularly hypersexualised as a character. Quite the opposite, intentionally so. Wardrobe choices notwithstanding, but hey, Nimoy got to flash almost as much in TMP. Also, you appear to have...ahem...erased...Saavik and Carol Marcus, and of course Gillian.
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You're becoming increasingly belligerent and baiting and I've said all that needs to be said on the subject. I would just be repeating myself and I refuse to do that kind of dance. Your history of action figures isn't based on fact at all. I've already given examples that predate everything you've noted.
LOL. Maude 1972. Cagney and Lacey 1982. Kate and Alley 1984. Golden Girls 1985. Designing Women 1986. TNG wasn't part of any revolution. It was barely being relevant. And you called it ground breaking. Being part of a revolution already in progress is not breaking ground.
LOL. Maude 1972. Cagney and Lacey 1982. Kate and Alley 1984. Golden Girls 1985. Designing Women 1986. TNG wasn't part of any revolution. It was barely being relevant. And you called it ground breaking. Being part of a revolution already in progress is not breaking ground.
But being part of a revolution, progressing change, especially when we are talking about it in reference to TOS, is exactly what we are talking about.
In terms of the action figures...TNG had them out even before the show aired in some territories. I reference them as a way of showing it’s target audience. Aliens etc did not have action figures because they were targeting a wide age range, they had them to try to cash in on a market. (Aside from which, until Alien Res it would be very hard to argue it had any ‘star’ roles for a woman other than Ripley herself.) The exception is the Alien itself, because when that first figure was made we were still in ‘its an SF film, like Star Wars, ergo it’s for kids and we can make money on figures’ but that’s not what the film was. TMP had action figures for that same reason, but even though it also aimed for a broader age range I wouldn’t argue it was intending to fully target a wide age range as part of its marketing. (If anything TMP was the first and last time Trek was made as a serious ‘art’ film and piece of cinema.) It’s in those films, TNGs direct parents as it were that we do see the prominence of women and actors of colour increase in Trek and TNG continues pushing that. It wasn’t a ‘men’s and boys series’ as was common for genre TV at the time, and it wasn’t a ‘women and girls’ series...like the examples you mention...either. It was a show aiming for a much wider audience, with a foot in both camps, perhaps a little more firmly in ‘boys and men’ because of the perceptions of SF and action drama at the time. That growth is something we see throughout the era, with DS9 and VOY as it’s successors blowing the door wide open. Enterprise is a retrograde step, but TV trends were changing again.
You also appear to ignore the very point I made about the process including Saavik, Marcus et al. Basically, I would give TNG more credit when stacked next to trends at the time and leading up to it. It wasn’t a sit-com like good old Mork and Mindy, it was high budget SF, itself an unusual thing in the TV landscape at the time. The reaction to that at the time can be seen. I always remeber ‘the one with LeVar’ line over in NYPD blue. Which resonates, because Burton was probably the closest thing to big casting TNG had at the time. Oddly enough, so was Crosby, because Hollywood dynasties are still a thing..we see that even now with Peck.
As a step in the process, I don’t thing TNG can be downplayed, especially when it opens the door for DS9 and Avery Brooks. Which in turns leads to VOY and Mulgrew et al.
I bet a black person did not write that script.....
I wouldn't call Maude a particularly sexual character.
But you might wanna add Mary Tyler Moore (1970)to that list, if I'm not mistaken. She was a sexually active, unmarried career woman who was completely portrayed as a positive character.
Of course Morticia Addams (1964) predates them all, she and Gomez were the first married couple in an American sitcom depicted with on-screen sensuality (buckets of it), sleeping in the same bed, and Morticia was Gomez' equal in the merriage.
No.
Troi was, at least until the fourth season, mostly the telephone operator, just of the telepathic variety. She'd tell you what people are feeling.
In "Encounter at Farpoint," that's pretty much all she does. The pilot begins and ends with Troi relaying what she senses telepathically, from "Captain, I'm sensing a powerful mind" to the embarrassing "A feeling of great joy. And gratitude. Great joy and gratitude, from both of them." What else does she do? Not much, besides relay more of the same ("Pain. Such pain! Pain!") and be an info-dumper ("He's frozen," "this is real," etc.), oh, and she literally transmits the surrender to Q as the actual space phone operator.
She's not much help at all in "The Naked Now," but she does offer telepathic sex.
Moving on in the first season, when we get an actual Troi-centered episode with "Haven," what does Troi do? Nothing. It turns out that it's Wyatt's story. The story culminates in his decision to run off with the plague ship and leave Troi proverbially standing at the altar. With the exception of knocking over a chime and storming out in one scene, Troi is completely without agency of any kind in "Haven."
I don't think that Troi emerges as independent, multi-dimensional character until "The Loss" in season 4, which unfortunately for the character was midway through the series' run, when she has her telepathic powers suppressed. In other words, it takes hanging up the telepathic space telephone and having to face consequential challenges on her own. She's not a Bones-type figure at all. She solves the problem that the ship faces by creative application of her intellect, when she literally outthinks Data.
There were some minor deviations from the telepathic space phone operator (even Uhura didn't answer the space phone all the time). For instance, she might remind people that they can't beam some place because of their rank, give them a pep talk, or simply listen while they discuss their own problems or at most offer inconsequential advice. One notable exception to the early tendency was "The Child." This was an adaptation of a Phase II story in which Ilia is the mother of the space child. Here Troi's not an info-delivery system, but rather a baby-delivery system, and little else. Whatever maternal aspects are brought to the character are inconsequential, as the alien child is gone by the end, and everything is back to normal for next week's episode. I think her motherhood was probably name-checked here and there later, but I can't remember the exact episode(s)/film(s) at the moment when it was.
Other than doing a nice job with racial equality and a few other briefly observed aspects, the show was pretty much mid-late 1960's standard fair. It wasn't really particularly advanced for it's day.
It certainly was not as "progressive" as Roddenberry later tried to convince people it was.
My impression was that while not clearly a virgin, she wasn't sexual active at all during the course of the series, if anything she came off as being fairly sexual repressed.
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Erm...the captain goes to her for advice, she advises on the mental state of the crew; even all her ‘such pain’ stuff is literally the kind of stuff given to Bones throughout TOS. She’s literally an extrapolation of that. As to most of the other points you raise (a) yes, but again I am comparing her to McCoy here and (b) it’s not like everyone else was up to their ears in the kind of character development you describe either. In the last season there’s a mad rush of family stories for those who hadn’t had one (Deanna has more than anyone because of Lwxana) and I think in some of the things you describe here it’s difficult to seperate character building from world building... Deanna’s stories have to do both, because of the Betazoid thing. In this sense she also inherits from Spock. (Or was he left at the altar in Amok Time?) As I repeatedly say, a lot of this very much how you can choose or cherry pick certain things and ignore others.
No way. Bones was a close friend and confidant of Kirk. See "The Ultimate Computer" and "A Private Little War" for two examples. See also "Balance of Terror" for another. Troi was not a close friend and confidant of Picard's. Troi is not an extrapolation of McCoy. That's absurd.
You can only get to the idea that Troi is an iteration of McCoy by cherry picking, as you said. If anything, Troi is an iteration of Ilia, who was written as a crewmate of McCoy's.
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By the way, one follow-up about "The Child." I'm not accusing the TNG and/or Phase II authors of stealing "The Child," but it's really very much like a season one Space: 1999 episode called "Alpha Child" that aired in 1975 and that was produced in 1974. This is simply to make the point that here's at least one TNG episode that wasn't a remake of a TOS episode that's just matching a benchmark set over a decade before.
Most of the TNG cast are very much splitting traits that existed in the big three of TOS. Half the reason we talk about Trois role being diminished by Guinans is because Guinan too fits that McCoy ‘here’s the empathy viewpoint’ role. We also know every one of Picards bridge staff is hand picked, and Riker is the only one he didn’t meet prior to the Enterprise. (We just aren’t ever told why or how he chose Deanna. They could have been friends, she could have just applied for the job and unlike Riker had a face to face interview.)
Simply because she doesn’t share *all* the traits of McCoy doesn’t mean that *the character* isn’t inheriting his position. When that gets too obvious we end up Pulaski. Though it’s obvious she is also an iteration of Ilia, that really only goes as far as her relationship with Riker and some of the Betazoid stuff. She also has Spocks ‘half human’ struggle, complete with ‘royal family’ connections, difficult relationships with family, and the balancing act between her two cultures. (Something we later see shifted in part onto Worf.) It’s not as simple as ‘she’s not Picards buddy’ or ‘she isn’t the ships doctor’.
A lot of that was very underutilised for the first half of the series, though, or was permanently left unexplored (we have no freaking idea what a being "Daughter of the Fifth House" means and outside of The Loss there was no struggle between for Deanna between her Betazoid and Human heritages)
But I agree that there seemed to be some sort of bond between Picard and Deanna and on ocassion they had things like Troi accompanying Picard to his horse riding holodeck program and they were just chatting about their relationship with animals.
And Picard valued Troi's advice enough to ask her to stay on board as Conselor, even when she lost her ESP abilities in the Loss.
Interesting early on in TNG's development Troi and Picard were supposed to have an even closer (and quite odd) relationship; the man Deanna was bonded to and supposed to marry in the earliest versions of Haven was Picards godson and Deanna was particularly interested in joining the crew of the Enterprise in order to serve under her future husband's "legendary" godfather.
But I agree that there seemed to be some sort of bond between Picard and Deanna and on ocassion they had things like Troi accompanying Picard to his horse riding holodeck program and they were just chatting about their relationship with animals.
And Picard valued Troi's advice enough to ask her to stay on board as Conselor, even when she lost her ESP abilities in the Loss.
Interesting early on in TNG's development Troi and Picard were supposed to have an even closer (and quite odd) relationship; the man Deanna was bonded to and supposed to marry in the earliest versions of Haven was Picards godson and Deanna was particularly interested in joining the crew of the Enterprise in order to serve under her future husband's "legendary" godfather.
This always sounded weird to me.
I’m trying to imagine this conversation in Lincoln’s times, even taking race out of it. I’m imaging Lincoln visiting a law firm run by Kirk in a some advanced country
Ada: Excuse me, Mr. Kirk.
Kirk: Yes, Ada.
Ada: Regarding the cotton gin case, the technical expert is...
Lincoln: What a charming brunette. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know in some places that makes it sound like you’re property.
Ada: But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, here in Atlantis we’ve learned not to fear words.
Lincoln: The foolishness of my Kentucky origin had be apologizing where no offense was given.
Kirk: We’ve each learned to be delighted with what we are.
Or imagining Lincoln has a young man talking to his boss. I'm imagining Hillary Clinton going back in time. (Why not? It's not any more absurd than this episode.)
Lincoln: Excuse me, Mr. Offutt.
Offutt: Yes, Lincoln.
Lincoln: The delivery wagon is...
Hillary: What a handsome giant you have. Oh, forgive me, sweety. I know some in my century consider it rude to talk about staff that way.
Lincoln: But what should I object to that term, ma'am? You see, here in Illinois we are not afraid of words.
Hillary: The foolishness of my century had be apologizing where no offense was given.
Offutt: Here in Illinois, we're all delighted with what we are.
No matter how I re-imagine it, it sounds weird.
And what ever happened to Trois ability to talk to Riker via telepathy like in Farpoint
It only worked when her knees were uncovered.
Really they just rolled it back when they realised how overpowered it was. It’s kind of hinted at in places, and the books still used it on occasion. I think it was a cool thing.
I might have to re-watch, but iirc there was no indication that Riker could hear her. However apparently there was a time when he could.
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