Context-free.

[kutsuwamushi]

I decided to watch Star Trek a few days ago. I haven't watched much of it since I was a kid, and if there's one thing that makes me giggle madly, it's science fiction writers who can imagine faster-than-light travel but not women holding a higher position than secretary.

It's been great fun.



No comment on this, though.

(Icon strangely appropriate both for Star Trek and Doctor Who! Oh man, Haruka needs a space ship.)

Comments

[leora]

That was executive meddling. In the pilot, a female was second-in-command. However, they were forced to not have women in good positions if they wanted to actually be on the air. So, it wasn't really the story writers who had the issues.

[kutsuwamushi]

I saw the pilot.

Captain Pike's female yeoman comes onto the bridge and he scolds her until she interrupts and points out that she's bringing a report he explicitly asked for. Right after she leaves, he says, "I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge," as if he's trying to explain why he reacted that way to her presence.

His second-in-command looks a bit startled and annoyed at that statement, so he adds, "No offense, lieutenant. You're... different, of course." Which she doesn't seem to like, although given what happens later in the episode this could be because she has a thing for Pike and not because Pike is being a sexist douchebag.

So the writers could imagine a single woman on the bridge, but not a world where this was normal. It makes her not really a woman, at least in Pike's eyes. If the writers wanted to create a world where women in positions of authority was normal, they could have just left out that scene.

The rest of the show demonstrates pretty clearly, at least to me, that the writers had just as much a problem as the executives. I'm sure there were things that they were banned from doing, but they also included things that they probably didn't have to.

[leora]

Ah, good points. It's been ages for me, and I didn't recall that scene. I'm sure the writers had issues too, but I did know that the show did try to push for things to be a bit better than the norm for the time. Such as, while Uhuru's job is pretty stupid and well-described as a glorified telephone operator (I do like how the new Star Trek movie actually took efforts to show how she does sophisticated things and it's a real job which requires real abilities), it was still remarkable for a black woman to have a role like that. It was an improvement.

It just looks awful from a modern perspective, because we have improved a fair bit more, which is good. We still have a long way to go, but I do like that looking back a few decades looks so bad, because it gives me hope for a few decades into the future.

[kutsuwamushi]

I don't really think that Star Trek is awful in this regard. It just suffers from the same blind spot that nearly all science fiction does - people can easily imagine robots and space travel, but have a much, much harder time imagining a different society. It's only especially incongruous in Star Trek because of the distance (making this stuff super obvious to anyone watching today), and because the writers were trying to portray an enlightened society.

It's fun to see them try to explain the changing attitudes between the series. (And changing ideas of what's "modern"!) The first few episodes of TNG showed some men in the background wearing the same miniskirt ensemble that the women in TOS wore. Of course none of the main male characters could wear a miniskirt, and I think it lasted only an episode or two... but the writers tried.

[leora]

That is neat. And yes, social change is harder to predict. Plus, if you do a good job of it, it isn't generally what that many people want to watch.

If they had portrayed 2010 culture in the 23rd century at that time period, it wouldn't have been acceptable television, nor would it have been popular.

They had enough issues over a mixed-race kiss, which wasn't even within the context of a mixed-race relationship, but was forced on the characters. I think same-sex relationships would not have made it anywhere near the show.

And it is hard to guess what things will be like in a few more decades.

[lady_ganesh]

It's interesting, because Number Two is somewhat legendary in Trek fandom now, because she was shown in flashback (actually snippets of the pilot getting re-used) in "The Menagerie" without the offensive stuff. Roddenberry actually made sure Uhura was shown Doing Stuff sometimes in the background just to try to give her character greater presence/identity, and people grabbed onto that too-- there's one scene where she's in overalls taking the comm apart for maintenance or something. It's an interesting dance between good intentions, problematic and sometimes damaging execution, and then the fans taking things further.

[kutsuwamushi]

Uhura gets more attention than you would expect, but it's still not enough. I need to watch the movie, because I hear she gets to do a lot more there--that she actually gets to be a valuable expert, not just a space receptionist. I bet in forty years, people will be looking at our Star Treks and shaking their heads. (Not that the most recent series have been as progressive for their time as the original was.)

I don't remember the overalls scene, but once I see it I'm sure I'll squee. When they give you so little, even a crumb can seem awesome.

[leora]

Next Generation definitely had problems, but it did have good intentions. And it did sometimes do very good things. Sometimes it tried to deal with a tough issue, and it didn't handle it well enough to actually make a good point, just as Star Trek did. But sometimes you get episodes like Measure of a Man, which while I haven't rewatched it in a while, I do think make a very good point fairly well. There's so much Star Trek that you can find some awful things and some wonderful things.

[lady_ganesh]

I definitely remember her doing more stuff in the movies, plus she got a romance, which I found incredibly sweet-- but I was probably 14-15 when I watched the last one I watched so I am not a reliable witness!

I do enjoy trying to figure out what people will find backward about our visions of the future. (It will be a long list.)

Yeah.

[randombees]

Hahahaha "This image or video violated our terms of use. Love, Photobucket."

[kutsuwamushi]

Seriously, they're going to get their panties in a twist over a screenshot from an episode of Star Trek?

Photobucket deletions seem really random to me.

[randombees]

Yeah, they delete about half of the life drawings that I upload, but leave the other half. All of the poses are equally nude.

[kutsuwamushi]

I've had stuff deleted that I had no idea why they would touch it. Sometimes I think they just have some kid watching a feed of recently uploaded images and clicking "delete" on random ones, like it's a game of whack-a-mole or something.