Turnabout Intruder. Yes, it was a 3rd season episode; yes, the series had a proud tradition of featuring embarrassingly vapid women; but still… STILL! How in the blue hell did they ever approve of the notion that women couldn’t be starship captains in the future? Honestly. The series was so progressive in other ways. Even the sexism was not hugely overstated for its time, in that it mostly relegated the profoundly retarded females to alien cultures.
Sure, it would have been nice to give Uhura a few ass-kicking, super-competent Emma Peel moments; but mostly Roddenberry’s vision proposed that women would dress a lot more flimsily in the future. I could support that vision.
Then to end the series on such a sour note… “Doctor Janice Lester goes crazy because it’s the 23rd century and women still aren’t allowed to drive!” Yeah, I would too.
Oh sure, the Romulans have no problem with the idea. It’s just Starfleet that breaks out in cooties, apparently.
I’m pretty sure the episode established clearly that there had never been a female captain in Starfleet. Dr. Lester believed that was the reason why she couldn’t earn a command, and why she later conspired to steal Kirk’s nards. She may have been crazy, but it’s not as though her paranoia were totally baseless.
You’re right though, I forgot about the Romulan commander. Rrrowwr! (Even though they never bothered to give her a NAME!)
Which hasn’t stopped others from providing one. From Memory Alpha:
*
[The] Romulan commander was played by actress Joanne Linville. The character whispers her name into Spock’s ear, and he comments how “rare and beautiful” it is, but it is never spoken aloud. Some non-canon sources, such as authors Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, as well as the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, list the character’s name as “Charvanek.” Authors Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath list her as “Dion Charvon” in The Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of the Phoenix. Author Della Van Hise lists her as “Praetor Thea” in Killing Time. *
I believed the Praetor to be the Romulan emperor. Silly me.
While I’ve got you all here. Mrs. Plant and I have disagreed over her asking Spock why he made the decision to continue with the Federation plan; he responds, “It was the only one you would respect.” I take that to mean he had a serious, logical thing about her. Mrs. Plant believes otherwise.
Eh, blame NBC for that. Majel Barrett was the Enterprise’s First Officer under Captain Pike in the original pilot, but the NBC coneheads didn’t think the audience was ready for a woman in such a position of authority. So she got demoted to head nurse, a “more appropriate” role for a woman :rolleyes:
Technically I believe the Praetor is the head of the Romulan Senate?* However… that doesn’t necessarily preclude the term’s use in different contexts; so maybe the military rank of commander is also formally referred to as “Praetor.” Apparently the term “Praetor” also did double duty in Roman life, as both a civic and military designation, so it makes sense.
…Actually it does make sense! How about that?
Or maybe “Praetor” just happens to also be a popular girl’s name on Romulus? Sort of analogous to “Regina” or “Daryl?”
So, to sum up: according to non-canonical sources, the Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident may or may not answer to the name “Praetor Thea Dion Charvon Charvanek.” (Or, to address her by her full name and title, “Praetor Praetor Thea Dion Charvon Charvanek.”)
Though possibly “rare,” it doesn’t immediately strike the ear as “beautiful.” Then again, that was a Vulcan assessment; and they’re the ones with unpronounceable first names, so it may be a cultural thing. Maybe it’s how you say it.
*In fairness, many offworlders make this error: the Praetor is the most visible authority figure of the Romulan Star Empire. Modern Romulans prefer not to call attention to the Emperor; due to generations of hereditary inbreeding, he spends most of his time wearing only metallic green undergarments, leaping in and out of the fish ponds in the Imperial Gardens while screaming “Imperius Rex!”
Yeah, that’s pretty lame. Still, the series managed to run for three seasons without explicitly confronting the issue one way or the other. So up until Turnabout Intruder, one could reasonably assume that there were female captains in Starfleet, even though we never actually saw any of them onscreen.
Actually saying, “there have never been any female starship captains in Starfleet” represents a whole other level of wrongness. It undercut a major theme of the show.
Theres a lot of things that annoy me about all STs but the main ones are the way relatively junior members of the crew quite casually question the efficacy of their orders with the captain and have a nice little chat about it before carying them out and extremely senior officers who with a huge crew of highly trained troops abandon their vital command position that probably only they and maybe one or two others are competent to carry out to go planetside to do jobs that any numpty could do.
I always had a problem with the TOS episode “Ultimate Computer”. Brilliant Federation scientist builds great computer that malfunctions, fires upon unshielded Federation vessels killing who-knows-how many before Kirk stops it, scientist goes insane and everyone is overjoyed at the end.
Reicher (or is it Riker?) of Generation bugs me because he is so full of himself. In theory I should be attracted to him, but he turns me off so much with his pushy, self important personality.
What really bugs me is when there is some sort of crisis in the engineering room, and one of engineering staff technobabbles something like " There is one thing I can try to keep the ship from exploding. I can truncate the bypass laso-nevenualtor directly through the symbytic neurolizer. It’s a long shot but if we don’t try, this ship will be blown to dust in ten munutes, tops."
Whereupon Reicher puts on his “I’m important” frown and says: “Okay, give it a try.” And then he ads in an angry tone: “And hurry”.
Now I don’t know about you my friends, but if I were the guy in the engine room, I would put on my best mocking voice (kind of like Stewie Griffin, when he launches into sustained sarcasm) and I would say:
" Oh, you want me to HURRY?
"I just told you we have 10 minutes until our fucking asses are space dust, I have just told you that I am going to try a very unusual manoeuvre in a desperate attempt to save us from certain death, but it NEVER occurred to me to hurry. No, no, you see, I was planning to take a nap for an hour, then maybe read my copy of War and Peace and then play ping-pong with the rest of the crew.
“But now that you, Commander Reicher, have told me to hurry, I realize that time is pressing. I never would have thought of that myself. No wonder Starfleet pays you officers so much and keeps your fat ass in those stretch jumpsuits. Who else but an officer would have known that this is an urgent situation that requires me to HURRY???”
I hate to bring up the insanity defense again, but Dr, Daystrom was insane to begin with. He implanted his own ingrams-whatever those are-on the M-5 unit and of course it went Rambo with his paranoia. Everyone was overjoyed at the victory of man over computer; we won’t be replaced, we’ll just be creating lots of spreadsheets.
Obviously, I would not really go into that long monologue in such a situation. If I were the guy in the engine room who was told to “Hurry” I would probably say: “duh, gee, d’yu think. . . . . .” in my most sarcastic voice before I got busy on the proposed fix on the engine, if we really have 10 minutes.
But then, what is the real reason Reicher says “Hurry” in a loud, authoritative voice to a guy who has just told him that they have 10 minutes to save the ship?
Here are your options:
1.) Reicher believes that the engine room guy does not understand what 10 minutes is, or
2)Reicher thinks that he is so irresponsible or stupid that he would declare that they have 10 minutes to try a very uncertain, last-ditch manoeuvre to prevent certain death and then would goof off and waste time, or
Reicher is a dickhead who just likes yelling orders at people even when they are perfectly obvious.
If you choose options 1 or 2, you must explain why such a patently stupid or irresponsible person is working in the engine room of the Enterprise.