ENT established that there were female Starship captains long before Kirk's time. Janice Lester was just nuts.
Women and positons of power in TOS
- Thread starter borgboy
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We see but one female Starfleet ship captain before Star Trek IV, and she commands a vessel not in the UFP's combined service, but instead the Terran version of Starfleet—pre-Federation. In addition, insofar as I know we never see any female starship commander, Starfleet or otherwise (other than Hernandez), during Enterprise's entire run, from which we might well infer that other spacefaring races were even more chauvinistic than Earth, and that the Old Boys' Club is interstellar in scope, broken only sometime in the latter-23rd century.
Lester could well have simply been loopy ... but there are other plausible explanations.
Lester could well have simply been loopy ... but there are other plausible explanations.
Only in the novelization: Vice Admiral Lori Ciana, Kirk's wife for one term. She took a rank reduction to keep an eye on him for Nogura - and was killed with Sonak in the transporter accident. But the script says absolutely nothing about her identity.
If Pike had been killed on duty during a deep space assignment, it's a bit stupid if Number One wasn't even permitted to captain the ship home? Don't believe a word of what loopy Janice Lester says!
Yep ... the non-canonical novelization.
No assumption of that sort is necessary.
Remember, Enterprise had seven wounded and three dead from an encounter at Rigel VII as "The Cage" opened. Number One is a title given to an X-O, granted ... but it's quite possible that she was merely acting X-O, standing capably in for the dead or horribly wounded first officer struck down on Rigel. [The latter seems much more likely, in that Pike would have said, "including my own first officer and yeoman" when speaking about the deceased to Boyce early on if the X-O had been killed.]
In addition, the lady's called not only "Number One" during the episode, but "Lieutenant" at least once as well. If so, it's highly unlikely that a mere lieutenant would be permanent executive officer on a capital starship—especially when Enterprise is clearly meant to be one of Earth's best ships-of-the-line. Are we to accept that not a single commander or lieutenant commander in the entire fleet is available to hold that X-O slot?
Well, considering that Kirk essentially agreed with her on that point, and that the tone of the ep supported "no females in command," well ....
We never saw a female Starfleet officer over the rank of lieutenant, or one wearing command gold (other than the eps where ops was wearing gold, too), during The Original Series. Inferring that they pervaded the command structure at its highest levels is an entirely unnecessary attempt to impose political correctness and modern sensibilities on a series written in the sixties.
It's also possible women commanded on tugs, freighters, corvettes, frigates, etc. ... just not starships.
Again, Lester might simply have been crazy ... but the alternative is not only reasonable, it's plausible.
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This much is wrong. We did see women wearing gold once the familiar red, gold, and blue color scheme came in. Uhura, for one, was seen wearing gold for an episode or two into that scheme, IIRC. And I distinctly remember at least one other, a navigator or helmswoman in "That Which Survives", IIRC.
The gold-wearing crewwoman is a little confusing, as she somewhat resembles the death-touch lady from that ep. Over and over again, TOS hints that women don't belong in command, either by showing women as incompetent (the Romulan commander is just one example.) or by depicting women as loopy: J. Lester. I have noticed, too, the tendency for the scripwriters to illustrate tension in a scene by having Kirk or some other male character snap at a female character. It is tedious. It gives one the impression that the writers were so nervous about having woment present in space at all that they needed to issue put-downs every now and then just to restore "order."
I have no idea about the former point, but on the latter you are right. I stand corrected.
As for Uhura's switch, though, it's easily accounted for: She realized there was no future for a chick in command, and so ...
Wow, I'm gettin' old. I forgot a Trek fact.
Please regard "never" as "very rarely"—which supports this take almost as well.
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actually the most plausible thing is that janet was fruit nut crazy because it wasnt the only nutty thing she said.
and at times the thing you dont want to do is to start argueing with a person like that . especially if you know they are ill which is what kirk was told.
you placate them till help arrives for them to try and calm them down.
let us look at some of the other stuff janet said..
so lets see , we are supposed to take seriously that kirk wanted to really to kill janet and was just to afraid to do so...
i dont think so.
for all we know janet tried to become a starship like merik in bread and circuses and like him couldnt cut it.
perhaps because psych tests showed she was a looney and couldnt be trusted with a starship.
so her personal failure in her looney mind becomes a failure of her sex.
and starfleet certainly trusted women enough for one to be the prosecuting jag in court martialing kirk.
and we saw female officer in the command gold both at helm and navigation during tos,
'
I was answering borgboy 's comment, "... there was a female admiral in the first ST movie unless I'm remebereing wrongly."
I wasn't disputing canonicity.
What rank was she again?
I wouldn't go trumpeting her as an example of female competence, pookha. She went to Kirk and informed him of her strategy—which is not exactly going about your job with professionalism and impartiality, now is it? We won't bother dwelling on her relative ineptitude in court.
And their rank was ... ?
This is not a question of whether women could do the job—obviously they can—but rather whether they were commanding starships in this period. I'm not endorsing the Old Boys' Club, but rather pointing out that it's quite possible it existed ... and that the evidence, when not put through an eisegetical wringer, indicates it likely to some extent did.
Other than Hernandez almost forty years after the fact [and 100 years before] commanding a pre-Federation Starfleet ship, we got nothin' until Star Trek IV. [Heck, insofar as I recall, we didn't see Number One in the center seat for even an instant during "The Cage." Instead, they put everyone around the briefing room. Interesting choice.]
We never even see a female Vulcan commanding a combat cruiser, do we? How about an Andorian ship? Xindi?
Tellarite?
Klingon?
[Crickets chirping.]
The assertion that Janice Lester's insanity automatically invalidates everything she said is attractive to your position, but ultimately specious and unsubstantiated.
cbp44189 said:
We saw more than enough to notice there were no women, else this topic wouldn't exist. We saw no female admirals ... no commodores ... captains ... commanders ... even lieutenant commanders—just a handful of yeomans, ensigns, and the occasional lieutenant other than Uhura, who also never sat the center seat or was left in command insofar as I know (setting aside TAS' "The Lorelai Signal" as non-canon). We don't hear about any, either.
My comment wasn't meant as an attack. I was simply noting that it had no real weight as relates to this discussion.
Sorry if my tone seemed harsh.
AFAIK, Gene's original idea was to have very little use of rank AT ALL in the show. Notice how nobody else on the ship is ever referred to by rank (in "The Cage") except those two? Also, the rank insignia, such as it is, is very basic: Officers such as Pike and Number One wear one rank stripe, everyone else wears none.
As for women in Starfleet: I find it absolutely impossible to believe that in Gene's picture-perfect utopia he intended to create for TOS, that he would hew to such a ridiculously sexist idea that *women couldn't be captains*. A society that eliminated poverty, war, crime, etc. would not be sexist.
Correct, and they were gold-painted, wide elastic bands, retrieved from the Desilu mail room.
Respectfully, "original idea" is entirely trumped by canon. For the purposes of this discussion, I have no concern about Gene's intent, only what we saw and what we must make of that.
That's an excellent point: Gene, I believe, spent time in the police force. I wonder if it's possible that he thought lieutenant ranked directly beneath captain in such a situation because of either that experience or other exposure to non-naval military rank structure.
Since Spock, too, wears a rank stripe, as does at least one of the other bridge officers, that means it can't just be about captain and X-O being set above the others. It's perhaps a simple distinction between officers and enlisted, or alternately midshipmen/ensigns and higher-ranked officers. We can draw nothing more definitive that that from it ... and it certainly doesn't challenge the theory that the permanent X-O might have been dead or injured.
Enterprise itself showed us a full (or lieutenant) commander: Trip holds one of those two ranks. It's a stretch to think said rank was subsequently dropped, then reinstated, so that a mere lieutenant conveniently had permanent X-O status aboard a ship-of-the-line ... and if one side is gonna ride Erika Hernandez's command of a starship so hard—no vulgar pun intended—then the other can ride "pre-Federation" and "lieutenant as permanent X-O? no way" just as determinedly.
Again, my points take into account neither intention, which can be argued, nor the niceties of current societal perceptions, which are invariably in flux, but rather what we see on screen and what we may reasonably extrapolate from that.
Gene was a notorious womanizer, which is arguably at least obliquely related to sexism via the objectification of women at a carnal level. Clearly some of both that and a 60's mentality over which he had no control made it onto the screen. People seem to think speculating that there was a last bastion of an Old Boys' Club as related to starship command equates to widespread sexism ... but that's not what I'm saying.
TOS (unlike TNG, which was largely portrayed at having arrived there) was still progressing towards utopia—which means that lingering vestiges of chauvinism might well still exist in a society that hadn't quite polished itself to the absurdist sheen of a century later.
I don't require that you agree with me. I'm simply saying that this possible take has substantial on screen and inferential support—certainly as much as if not more than "that's ridiculous; Janice was nuts" has. You're reasoning towards the conclusion you find most palatable. I'm trying to reconcile various canonical sources into a coherent and consistent whole.
I also think there's something elegant in drawing parallels between the eras in which the various series were made and how that affected the centuries they chronicled. To simply whitewash or ignore that seems wrong, somehow.
Defending a position in a discussion is not synonymous with unreservedly espousing it.
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actually we didnt see male andorian or tellarite captains on tos.
so your point was.
and yes we only saw a very small percentage of the captains of the all the ships that are mentioned during tos.
that is just the ships that are mentioned not all the ships out there.
and as for the women wearing the gold.
their rank dosnt matter as much as that gold was recognized as being on the command path like sulu who later got his own ship.
notice not everyone who sat at the helm wore the gold.
My point was concerning Enterprise, not TOS. We do see Andorian and Tellarite commanders there ... but strangely enough, no women.
Perhaps an Enterprise expert could help us, here: Do we see any female starship commanders, human or alien, besides Erika Hernandez during that series' run?
Some posters here were using Hernandez as evidence, and I refuted that as conclusive by pointing out that pre-Federation command shown in a series made 35+ years after the fact does not equate to command of a Federation starship in the TOS period. Is it at least somewhat reasonable? Sure; I've never denied that. Is it more palatable to modern sensibilities and political correctness? Of course; that's in large measure why you're arguing so vehemently. Is it definitive, though? Not ... even ... close.
Sulu, if I'm not mistaken, was a male, so thank you for supporting my point. In addition, he got his own ship with Star Trek VI, which is a little after Star Trek IV, isn't it? We're discussing the era between "The Cage" and Star Trek IV.
The only example we have of gold-clad females advancing in rank is Uhura: She starts out in the command track ... switches to operations ... and is then promoted.
Thus, you're assuming facts not in evidence.
Their rank certainly does matter.
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Another theory about Number One's rank:
Perhaps she was a Lieutenant Commander, and Pike simply screwed up in calling her 'lieutenant'? He is clearly somewhat less than comfortable around her, so he may have gotten nervous that one time and flubbed her rank.
Perhaps she was a Lieutenant Commander, and Pike simply screwed up in calling her 'lieutenant'? He is clearly somewhat less than comfortable around her, so he may have gotten nervous that one time and flubbed her rank.
in the novels, they've pretty much ignored Lester's line as her being batass crazy. in Vanguard: Harbinger, Kirk even muses that some matriachal societies think MEN are unsuited to command, even as some patriachal ones think women aren't, but he disagrees. this musing comes after he meets Hallie Gannon, female captain of the USS Bombay.
We only saw a couple of other Starship captains in Enterprise simply because there weren't that many other Starships around.
Lester's line about Kirk's world of Starship captains just refers to Kirk - he's married to his ship and doesn't have room for a woman in his life. I don't think a show where you've got a woman pulling communications equipment to bits and putting it back together again really devalued women that much.
As for other races, I think the imperious leader of this very board might have a word with you about alien female commanders in TOS.
Lester's line about Kirk's world of Starship captains just refers to Kirk - he's married to his ship and doesn't have room for a woman in his life. I don't think a show where you've got a woman pulling communications equipment to bits and putting it back together again really devalued women that much.
As for other races, I think the imperious leader of this very board might have a word with you about alien female commanders in TOS.
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