A friend’s Facebook status:
I just finished re-watching Star Trek (The Original Series).
WOW… every single episode is uncomfortably misogynistic.
EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE.
He then amplified this for a friend who questioned the above statement:
in this case misogynistic does not mean “hate” so much as objectification and dismissal — In the first few episodes of the first season we hear that women are prone to more emotional outbursts than men, that they are all searching for a man to care for them, that they need a man to be self actualized.
That women can be coaxed from their command duties (commit mutiny or traitorous activity) when a man shows interest.
Even the first episode which had a female officer as second in command (With Command Pike) the female officer was shown to be lustful toward Pike at one point and catty when compared (by the butthead aliens) to the younger ensign.
Me, always trying to be helpful on social media:
You could create a new series: Woke Trek. All officers of the Starship Safe Space have PhDs in Comparative Victimhood.
Readers: What would be the ideal science fiction series for our woke time?
> What would be the ideal science fiction series for our woke time?
The one we are all living in, every single day. And you can’t turn it off.
Well, Star Trek was a 1960’s series for space hippies – why is anyone surprised? It also wasn’t a very popular show when it first aired. Everyone remembers how under-budget sets and so forth made a lot of the episodes seem very slapdash and more like a local theater troupe production. Apotheosis of this was Spectre of the Gun which looks like it was thrown together for $50 and after some dumpster diving through the studio props and costumes castoffs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_of_the_Gun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddRSbDK226Q
Why is anyone surprised that Star Trek reflects the vernacular and cast of the times? Remember Grace Slick in Rolling Stone? Women were “chicks!” Crazy Miranda was the “Women’s Liberation freak.”
“Paul: I have a song “To Diana,” the chick who got blown up in New York with the Weathermen. For the woman Diana. “Crazy Miranda” is the Women’s Liberation freak.
Grace: It’s more or less pathetic. The whole song is actually the second line, which is, “She believes in anything she reads.” And the rest of it’s more or less superfluous. There’s a lot of information coming in, it’s the inability to make up your mind as to what part of that information applies to you. And I think a lot of chicks who are into that are having trouble figuring it out. What they’re supposed to be doing. Well, should I sit back and let it happen or go out there and grab that guy by the balls? And they sort of do a little bit of each of it and look and sound confused.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/grace-slick-with-paul-kantner-the-rolling-stone-interview-163402/
A fun story from academe in 2014, inre: Richard Feynman at Caltech (retold in “What do you care what other people think?”:
“I was accused of being anti-woman because of two stories: the first was a discussion of the subtleties of velocity, and involved a woman driver being stopped by a cop. There’s a discussion about how fast she was going, and I had her raise valid objections to the cop’s definitions of velocity. The letter said I was making the woman look stupid.”
https://www.organizingcreativity.com/2014/09/feynman-sexist-pig/
But do read the rest…it’s worth it.
Finally, one of the most beloved episodes of ST-TOS is “Amok Time” featuring T’Pau (female leader of Vulcan) “…who led the Syrranite rebellion against the Vulcan High Command, later presided over the Koon-ut-kal-if-fee ceremony in which Spock is forced to fight Captain Kirk after Spock was rejected by his bride-to-be, T’Pring.
Remember, T’Pring had a “backdoor man” deal going on with Stonn and rejected a pon-farr-addled Spock (her betrothed by Vulcan tradition) but to everyone’s utter surprise, she chose Kirk as her “champion” thus forcing them to fight to the death, leaving Stonn untouched. That evil two-timing ****h!
“The kal-if-fee or challenge is an ancient Vulcan tradition. If a woman does not wish to wed the man to whom she is betrothed she can request the kal-if-fee so two men will have to fight to the death for her.” Maybe we should substitute that for a lot of divorce litigation now, it would be a lot less expensive.
2:11: McCoy: “Is this Vulcan chivalry? The air is too hot and thin for Kirk. He’s not used to it.”
Then McCoy cheats with a fake “Tri-Ox compound” injection and saves them both!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQL9U-fCQ64
Anyway, your Facebook friend is going to be triggered by every episode of ST-TOS, for one reason or another, but the show itself was one of the most, if not *the* most progressive on TV at the time, science fiction or not. Too many people have become insufferable but well-trained idiots who can’t look at anything without their identity politics intersectional alarm bells going off, and that’s really sad, because ST-TOS was a landmark show.
Black Kisses Matter: It’s interesting to read the story of the famous interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura in “Plato’s Stepchildren” (S3, E10). Gene Roddenberry and Bill Shatner were determined to air the scene with the kiss as the script was written, but the NBC execs. were worried about reactions to it from the “Deep South.” It’s a great story, the kiss aired, and, well, read the rest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss
“There were, however, few contemporary records of any complaints commenting on the scene…”
When I was a kid, I watched “Star Trek: Voyager” on tv at friend’s house. His traditional Indian mother scoffed at us for watching it, said it so unrealistic. I asked, “what’s wrong with science fiction?” She replied, “the captain of the spaceship is a woman, nobody would believe that!”
Star Trek TOS plot summary, any episode, any season.
Ambition + Rationality = Dominion.
Three words you can’t say anymore in polite company.
Your new series would have to feature
Material Appetites + Unearned Self Regard = Regression.
I recommend watching 2001: A Space Odyssey backwards. That captures the story arc.
Just about the best Kirk ever did:
Gene Roddenberry did a series after STar Trek called Genesis II
one episode I recall
“Poodle Shop” — Dylan Hunt is captured and put on sale by the females in a strange society where men are treated as domestic pets and often traded back and forth for breeding purposes. This story idea would later turn into the second pilot, Planet Earth.
“What would be the ideal science fiction series for our woke time?”
That’s pretty much *The Orville*.