The only other male bridge officer I can remember off hand is Spock, right? What a massive drift. “Can’t get used to it so therefore WOMEN EVERYWHERE”
Another reason to love SNW. As if one was needed.
It’s hilarious that they were more accepting of men of different species over women. Like what if she starts baking or decides to get pregnant while we are fighting the Klingons. They truly saw women as the inferior gender back then.
For real. Sometimes I wonder if I was around in the 60s if I’d hear more people bitch about her being a woman or her being black. It’s so fucking stupid. But way for humanity to ‘keep the tradition going’ I guess considering they’ve now moved it from cisgendered folks to transgendered folks.
woo. /s
I would like to (probably) answer for you. There is a news paper article from around the same time as TOS asking if men should spank their wife’s for misbehaving. Every man that was in the article said yes.
Unfortunately while that’s true, and this was an era when single women often couldn’t have a bank account, this era was also just mind bogglingly racist. Like “I understand that racism and hate don’t make sense but what the actual fuck is wrong with you” racist. Martin Luther King Jr was a Trekkie while being openly demonized for peaceful marches.
Fair enough, also Love v. Virginia was also in the courts at the same time as TOS. Frankly I don’t think it matters which was more pronounced at the time, because neither should exist. But that’s one of the pluses of TOS. It almost certainly played a role in changing such beliefs
Sometimes I wonder if I was around in the 60s if I’d hear more people bitch about her being a woman or her being black.
Not really important in the broader context, but I think Pike was talking about Una here.
He is.
The funny thing about all this is … what are we getting wrong today?
There are practices, beliefs, sayings and actions that we completely normalize in our current time. Future generations may look at us strangely for the things we portray today without us knowing.
I’ve been thinking about this.
Eating meat will be the big one. You look at history and meat was a rare treat, now it’s the main part of almost every meal.
People will watch media where the characters grab a hotdog on the street corner and it will seem both barbaric and decadent.
There’s probably something we are doing with children too that will seem odd. It takes a village to raise them after all and we isolate them with two parents that also have to work full time jobs. Can’t be good for either.
Nah, soon there will be synthetic meat and eating it will be better than ever.
Common adoption of synthetic meat would make the act of eating real animals seem even more fucked up.
Yeah it would be reserved for the fucked-up decadent 1%.
Memes are a good example of a snapshot in time that doesn’t make sense 10, 20 years after.
People will look at a dancing baby and wonder why we thought it was worth sharing.
Probably the first viral meme I ever saw on the internet … but back then it was the size of a postage stamp on a 12" CRT monitor and it made us feel like it was the year 2050 … funny enough, the first GIF (or animated image file, I didn’t know what I was looking at) I ever saw was porn on a wealthy friend’s 386 PC and we all thought he was the coolest person alive.
I feel like it’s not nearly as hard as people make it out to be, very conveniently excusing their carelessness by insisting that nobody else is paying attention either and sometimes even lashing out at anyone who points out (let alone calls out) a problem, or simply something that could be stated better. Can we stop throwing around “crazy” and “insane” whist people are still being called those terms as an attack based on mental illness? You know, that thing that seemingly everyone has because mental health isn’t taken seriously enough? Nah, “words change.” How about “savage?” That one “changed” too. Some still think “gay” is a term for anything they dislike. I remember people insisting that word had changed, too. It hadn’t, of course. Seems like many (most?) just want to act however pops into their heads without ever thinking about it :-\ Few want to hear they’ve done anything wrong, even when they clearly very much have; fewer still will bother to self-examine.
I suppose my point is, I think that taking some actual care in how we act and especially _inter_act can reveal these issues before they become “oh wow, tee hee we were so silly back before someone told us that women were people!”
“Turnabout Intruder” has also been effectively retconned all the way to hell.
I’m not a huge fan of retcons, at least ones that noticeably change lore, but I have no problems in retconing out some bigotry.
They did that with Doctor Who and then they wanted to do an episode about racism and it just didn’t work. You have to accept the decision once you make it.
Good, that episode sucked. All Our Yesterdays is a much more fitting final episode anyway.
Why does this sound like an Ace Attorney chapter?
It’s the word turnabout. I’m 95% sure that every case in all the mainline games starts with turnabout.
Well, it does have a court scene…
I think throughout the show, they were gonna develop Pike more so he would overcome his prejudice, but they replaced him with Kirk instead.
That was the sense I got. When he says “oh not you, you’re not like other women” the look she gives him makes it clear we’re supposed to realize that was a fucked up thing to say.
Looking back at that, I think Roddenberry was lampshading the expected social discomfort expected in the audience when those words were put in Pike’s mouth. Regrettably, the rest audience reportedly still wasn’t willing to accept Number One.
It’s odd though given the prominent women characters in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea which was very popular a few years before.
Not just that, but the chicks are fucking straight badass.
For real. Una, Ortegas, Uhura, La’an… All fucking incredible. Honestly even in Discovery that sort of continues. His security officer originally wasn’t La’An, it was a Barzan named Nahn. She proved her own on multiple occasions. The breathing apparatus is an obvious weakness but still manages to fucking own it.
Pike did not make any fucking missteps in choosing his crew. Well, with the exception of that idiot who took over for Spock in S2E1, got way too arrogant, and proved that blue shirts are just as susceptible to red shirts when it comes to being fuckin annihilated.
And Chapel. I know she’s not a bridge officer but still, a great character. Casting and writing is on point.
She’s a great character but I only liked Chapel until she did Spock wrong in the musical episode. He pretty much (spoiler) left his fiancee for her (end spoiler) then she basically spaces him a few episodes later.
It’s awkward writing a relationship you know can’t work out. Like, do you let it go on, letting the audience get attached even though you (and they) know you have to pull the plug? Or finish it quick and dirty? Not a laudable position to be in, making that decision.
True, but I think the context of her being a big influence on his decision to call off the marriage was a big mistake. Making it a musical number was salt in the wound. If they downplayed the former and did the latter in a different episode I don’t think it would be so bad.
Man… I always forget one thing and that one thing ends up being embarrassing as hell. Yes. Chapel. Of COURSE Chapel. I’m such a fucking moron.
Interestingly, this scene technically isn’t part of continuity because “The Cage” as a whole technically isn’t part of continuity, only the parts that made it into later episodes, like “The Menagerie,” are. Remember, “The Cage” was a rejected pilot that only got released later on as a bonus, like a collection of deleted scenes. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was the show’s accepted pilot.
That is incorrect. The entire episode was made fully canonical with a Season 2 Discovery episode. The episode opens with a flashback including various scenes from that episode. The entire episode revolves heavily around the events of that episode as well.
But I like having a reason to pretend sexist Pike didn’t happen.
Fair lol I just pretend that he was misunderstood and the camera added 10lbs of sexism
“No offense, Lieutenant. You’re different, of course.”
What he meant was he can’t get used to having only one woman on the bridge. It was basically a sausage party up in there.
