Star Trek's Series Finale Was Horrible (And Sexist) (Turnabout Intruder)
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- Remember that time Kirk got body swapped because Starfleet wouldn't let women be captains?
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I feel this episode could have been salvaged at least somewhat if someone had said, "No Janice, it's not because you're a woman. It's because you failed your Academy psych evaluation twelve times and you keep setting the replicator on fire."
The last time she wrote "I am a fish" 400 times, did a funny little dance and fainted.
@@dupersuper1938 Spock: (standing over her unconscious body) Illogical. She has no gills.
McCoy holding the defibrillator: DAMN IT SPOCK!!!
"Also, you drew this clock on your exam paper, but the numbers are all on one side and they're in reverse order. We didn't even tell you to draw a clock. Frankly, we're very concerned."
Now you just want Philippa Georgiou and Micheal Burnham to look at Janice Lester and Jim Kirk, shaking their heads: "Did anybody ever tell YOU women were unfit for command, Captain?", as Georgiou grins wolfishly and said, "That pig Kirk is welcome to TRY...!"
@@timeliebe Pig? Let's not drink the pop culture cool-aid on Kirk: that's how you get fratboy Kirk in 2009.
Gene Roddenbery claimed the network refused to let there be a female first officer. Others suggest they refused to let him make his known mistress a lead actor on the show. The truth is probably a bit of both.
it is def both-- the reason Lucy (yes, THAT Lucy) advocated to NBC for them to give the show a chance was because of Number One, because she was so impressed that he would put a woman in that role-- but at the same time, by making it his partner, he handed sexist studio executives an easy way to say "AHA here's the real reason" and nix it, so ultimately he was being very selfish in casting her
@@prismpyre7653 oooo dang 😅
Without denying that Roddenberry had issues, I tend to blame the network here. I don't think it's a coincidence that Uhura never once sits in the captain's chair in TOS, despite being 5th in the chain of command. There's even an episode that invents a never-seen-again Lt. Cmdr who outranks her, just to avoid having her take the conn.
To me that screams "studio mandate." Especially when the Animated Series - which had far less oversight - happily let her take the conn a few times, and no one objected.
@@jasonblalock4429Nichelle Nichols said that she complained to Roddenberry about a scene where she took command being cut out of one of the scripts, and *Roddenberry* told her that you couldn't have a woman running the ship, so he's not blameless in this. He did change his mind later, which is probably why the women get more to do in the animated series, but Roddenberry's attitudes towards gender were generally of his time. He thought big regarding equality and tolerance, but he was still a white guy in the sixties with a lot of unexamined assumptions, so his view of what an egalitarian future would actually look like could be a bit skewed.
female first officer in the pilot.
I am just glad Janeway was allowed to show a Captain CAN be crazy and murder their own crewmen and still succeed.
Amen, wish tho they continued her delusion of being a Captain and into Admiral in Destiny as well as the Novels. Watching the world Janeway's view is funny and surreal that it feels like you got assassinated with narcotic overdose.
She had a way of rationalizing some questionable decisions; like when she capped TuPac, I was all like "not cool, Lady" at the TV
Easy - just have a really, rally irritating voice, resulting in everyone you encounter wishing you'd just shut up and GO AWAY!
@@sageoz9886 Janeway murdered Tupac? was there a time travel episode that i was unaware of?? 😂
Let's also remember to credit Enterprise and Jonathan Archer for showing that straight white male captains can be completely insane and incompetent.
.... granted TOS also demonstrated this with every captain that wasn't Kirk. But series leading captain at least!
Maybe ''space work'' would have sounded less awkward if it was someone outside of Starfleet saying it. Like a friend or relative who always stays on Earth and doesn't entirely understand what the job is about. I can maybe see Sisko's dad talking like that, not a starship captain like Kirk.
"So Geordi, your mother tells me you work with...space? What's that like?"
Yes. Your “xenobiological studies off world” would have made more sense.
Man, Groppler Zorn would have never allowed this to happen.
Gene Roddenberry had a peculiar attitude about women. I think this episode has since been retconned so that Janice Lester was just crazier than an outhouse fly, but if you want to see William Shatner absolutely devouring the scenery this is the episode for you. The hamminess is GLORIOUS.
True. Gene Roddenberry wasn't as progressive as trekkies always make him out to be.
And Janice Lester is clearly insane and her saying women couldn't be starship captains was her being hyperbolic. The fact that she couldn't pretend to be Kirk for one day without completely losing control proves she was unfit to be a captain. It's actually a really well written script in that regard.
And William Shatner is great in this episode.
@@joerogers9413 True true, but then again it was the 60s, and Roddenberry was still considered white progressive for his time. I always found the insanity angle make more sense, Janice had to have known she couldn't fool the crew for long. She knows very little about the relationships and clearly doesn't know the person Kirk became (despite what her inner monologues say, she clearly doesn't)
The story goes that the quality of Shatner's acting was directly linked to how much he liked the script. He was on good behavior for the good episodes, and hammed shamelessly in the bad ones. Which does mostly track.
@@joerogers9413
If you want to believe that spin, go ahead. The original series was pretty consistent with portraying women as illogical and emotionally vulnerable, and it requires a lot of imagination to insist that no women were qualified to be command officers in any of the three seasons.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 True, but no other woman was ever portrayed as stark raving mad like Janice Lester.
Also I'm sure there were women starship captains.
EDIT Except for Kodos' daughter from Conscience of the King. She was crazy too. : )
The episode gave us Shatner as Janice as Kirk. But this vid gave us Allison as Shatner as Janice as Kirk. Amazing!
Showing my dynamic voice acting range!!!
@@AllisonPregler fuggin icon
@@AllisonPregler you should think about going into voice acting. You have such a wide vocal range and deliver hilarious lines so well. You could make it a second line of work!
@@AllisonPregler you have a great voice😊
Hate him or loath him, gotta love it when Shatner goes FSM (FULL Shatner Mode). i still think he officially became cool when he did the cover version of Common People with Joe Jackson (who was always awesome)....
ua-cam.com/video/nk3TDHkhycA/v-deo.html
7 year old me didn't understand why I wanted a Turnabout machine so badly!
neither did Dr. Lester, methinks 😆....🙄😒😬
@@prismpyre7653 The episode feels like a Transperson screaming out loud.
YES I've found who I was looking for! I got about 10 mins in and thought hmmmm....
Gene Roddenberry did blame misogyny for why Number One was cut for the show, but other people who have worked on the show said that the studio just didn't like that Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett were in a relationship
He was cheating on his wife with her.
And that Majel Barrett at that point wasn't that great of an actress. She was fun as Lwaxana on TNG and DS9 and did give some good more serious performances as the character too, but back in the 60s, as Nurse Chapel...oh boy...
I see it as down to both of those things. The studio was mysognyistic, its hard to deny that, and Barrett being Roddenberrys mistress gave them the perfect excuse to refuse to let number one be on the show. Roddenberry really should have seen that coming and cast someone else though.
@@JeffreyPiatt He was also boinking Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) on the side!
@@garthst.claire3459 I think she was in an episode of Babylon five as well. Which always sticks in the mind because I remember reading an interview with the director in an issue of tv zone magazine, and he said 'it was hard working with Majel because she's not a very good actress.' Nothing if not forthright.
Props to Nimoy, who pretty much FORCED Gene to admit this was a sexist episode, and Gene would later admit this was HORRIBLY wrong and attempt to change things.
Doesn't save this episode at all, but at least Gene did admit he was wrong and good on Nimoy for making him admit this was a sexist episode.
Didn't Gene Roddenberry leave the show after season 2?
@@joerogers9413 He still wrote some episodes, this being one of em.
@@BronzeBoy520 I didn't know that. Thanks for the intel.👍
Ironically, this is one of my favorite Nimoy performances out of all TOS episodes.
Shame he took a dump on it by back talking to Gene.
@@CaptainHindsight-xt9ydtook a dump on it by standing up for ethical standards?
Apparently, Roddenberry had just gone through a pretty nasty divorce when he came up with this episode, which would explain a lot about Janice's portrayal.
There are women out there who are egotistical crazy morons...guess women are just humans after all.
I noticed recently that Indiana Jones punches a girl in the face (by accident) in the beginning of _Temple of Doom._ They say Lucas was going through a divorce....
Let’s not forget that Janice-as-Kirk also records a Captain’s Log about switching bodies. Not a Personal Log, mind you, but a regular one, which is public record.
What a shame that "All Our Yesterdays" wasn't the series finale.
Not in broadcast order but doesn’t the stardate for this episode predate that one iirc?
@@darman12able Trying to order Stardates...that way lies madness...
@@dupersuper1938 oh I'm not the one who did that madness I just remembered it from the copy of nitpickickers guide to star trek I own lol
"She could have had a life as fulfilling as... any Woman" as the final line really is the poop topping on this episode.
Final line of the series 🫤
I just want to congratulate Allison on her excellent Earth work.
XD
Good one!! 😂
As opposed to her mediocre space work?
@@optillian4182 hard to do space work in an audio format
@@optillian4182 Well she's a woman - so no space work allowed!
I remember the Network Execs also wanted the infamous interracial kiss to be downgraded to a 'hug' so Shatner intentionally botched every take where it wasn't a kiss, making them unusable. (I think the story went that he'd just stare STRAIGHT down the camera and grin like a lunatic).
That might be apocryphal, but I'd like to think he had a similar, "If they're gonna force dumb shit, I'm gonna DO dumb shit" mentality here for deciding to take over craft services and piling on the ham.
I remember hearing that they also tried to swap partners, thinking that Spock kissing her might be an easier pill for people to swallow.
No way they still exist but I'd make great sacrifices to see the outtakes of Shatner hugging Nichols while staring into the camera and mugging like a lunatic.
@@the_exegete I recall Nichols saying that he crossed his eyes.
Imagine if Janice in Kirk's body kissed the guy, or vice versa?
"What'd he say?"
"Oh, I think the Captain's just possessed by some alien or something, they'll handle it."
The quintessential lower decks day.
Can we talk about the fact that Kirk, in a woman's body, looked at himself and went 'yeah, I'll tap that'
Everyone hates this episode and I love it. It has some great character moments and it is 100% Kirk going full Shatner.
"Full Shatner-" 😂😂
FULL SHATNER!!! HOW HAS THIS NEVER BEEN A THING?!?!?
@@56postoffice FULL SHATNER!!! 😂😂😂
It's one of my favorites of season 3.
Yes, it’s actually my favorite TOS episode.
Janice/Kirk filing his nails has me laughing every time.
Lmao that IMDB trivia was definitely written by somebody who had done the research expecting something meaningful, and falling short thought "well, I'm not going to have wasted my time, I'll submit the fact anyway"
It’s always a good day when I hear Allison’s Shatner impression.
Agreed on that, the 'Spock!' delivery is always on point.
It really is.
I totally love it. In my head I always hear her saying "Not now Arex!" from the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode.
I mean if you don't like it,
well then,
"CONSIDER THIS MUTINYYYY!!!"
XDXDXDXD
Wait a second... Shatner had an infectious respiratory illness and breathed and slobbered all over a man who had a big part of one of his lungs removed not that long ago???
What the hell?
The 60s were a different time, that guy was probably smoking moments after his surgery
@@herbertwestmd6017 why not smoke during the surgery? I’m sure the doctor and all the hospital staff were!
@@russellharrell2747 you're right, the doctors probably needed for him to smoke during the procedure to test if the lungs were getting all the nicotine
I seem to remember hearing Shatner made a joke when in his sickness he had trouble lifting the actress that she needed to do something about her fat ass.
I enjoy what you do, thank you for all your space work, Allison.
Thank you!!
"His (Rodenberry) goal was to prove, quote, 'That women, although they claim equality, cannot really do things as well, under certain circumstances, as a man' - like the command function, for example... What he set out to prove was that this lady, given command of the ship, would blow it. That's really what the script was about. Just that simple." - Leonard Nimoy
Well, seeing our first female captain in _Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home_ lose her ship to the whale probe supports this idea. If the Hispanic captain trying to make a solar sail lost his ship first, then it's doubly bad that she let her ship get too close, since she should have known better.
Woooow
Damn, thank god for Leonard Nimoy. What the fuck, Roddenberry?
"Had a Russian main character in the middle of the Cold War..." And only three years after The Man From UNCLE!
Men get to "boldly go where no man has gone before", while Women get to do "Space Work" :).
At least the women aren't splitting their infinitives though
So does that mean that Crazy Janice Lester is still out there, plotting her revenge against Starfleet like a female Khan? The Wrath of Janice
Despite the junk McCoy says to spare Kirk's feelings, she was probably sent to an asylum like in "Whom Gods Destroy" then on to a penal colony for the crimes she committed; same with the incompetent and now co-conspirator Dr. Arthur Coleman. Same for the murderer in "The Conscience of the King."
It is pretty hilarious that this entire episode was thoroughly retconned it was so bad
They even went back and had female captains around this time.
Space work sounds like something you say to someone when you don’t know exactly the focus of their studies and don’t really care enough to ask in depth questions. Like saying that to someone who works at NASA. Totally just some good old space work.
as a wise rich evans once said,
"Gene Roddenberry's approach to sex was... yes please."
Hey what do you expect from a guy named Rod n’ Bury?
My understanding is that All Our Yesterdays was supposed to be the final episode, but they aired it earlier than planned. A shame to, because that's one of the 3rd season eps that's acctually pretty good.
It's funny, whenever I think of the Star Trek "series finale," I think of that SNL skit where the crew gets visited by a space Cadillac that contains an NBC exec who informs them they've been cancelled.
After watching this? Yeah. I might just keep thinking of that as their last episode.
Wait, so William Shatner was playing a woman in Captain Kirk's body, who couldn't kill Kirk because she was so much in love with him? I wonder what Mr. Shatner thought of that.
I’m so confused but alright
"I can't believe I kissed you!"
"It must have been your lifelong ambition!"
Oh my God. I almost died laughing at the Garth Marenghi credit, perfection
ua-cam.com/video/mgK2CEdvd_E/v-deo.html yep, sure seems like an episode he *could* have written 😁
The freeze frame with the writer's credit, took my breath away. I grew up watching reruns of Star Trek in the Philly broadcast market for years, I think I saw them air this episode...ONCE. It's up there with "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden." Thanks for spoiling us once again with some classic Trek analysis and a lot of laughs. :)
Shatner's 'woman' acting in truly incredible.
Who *didn't* Kirk date at the Academy?
The answer is no one.
Kirk was inside a woman's body today.
Darkplace fan confirmed! Would love to see you talk about that series - you would ironically probably have to take it more seriously than you take your ST reviews >
In the very first episode Captain Pike didn't even like a woman being a cadet on the flight deck
I love having videos like this to play in the background while I get on with my space work.
Even as a kid in the early seventies I thought the whole “women can’t be starfleet captains” sounded off-brand. However, Shatner chewed ALL the scenery in this episode.
Thanks for the Garth Marenghi callout! I personally like to think that "Lester" is short for "molester." As regrettable a finale as this is, I give it points for being super-Shatnerian. Shatner has never Shatnered harder than he has Shatnered here. Now I will return to my personal fantasy in which the series finale was "All Our Yesterdays."
The most Shatnering I've seen since Shatnering came to Shatnertown.
We all knew this episode was coming. My head cannon is that Doctor Lester failed a raft of psychological exams and was denied entry into Star Fleet so then started telling everyone it was because they didn't accept women. It seems legit.
Either way. There's only 12 starships and who decides whether someone gets promoted to Captain? The commodores and admirals on the recommendations of captains. They could have had lesser "courier" or "scout class" ships captained by a woman but chose not to show that. Even the merchant vessel in "Charlie X" is all male.
Something cool about his episode is the small callbacks to previous episodes that are included in the scene where Spock interrogates Kirk as Janice to determine if he really is Kirk. I forget which episodes were referenced, but I distinctly remember that previous adventures were mentioned.
I remember Tholian Web coming up, off the top of my head.
"The Empath" is the other one.
Kudos on episode, Allison. It is so true, bad final episode made much better with your analysis.
I am not saying that the network was fully to blame but this was not the only show at the time that they nixed storylines in which women took control or were in charge. The only way a woman was allowed to be empowered was for her to be evil and\or consulting with an evil entity. No, Gene was not blameless.
When I was watching this episode in later syndication (even though I saw the series when it first aired) I even thought that Janice's idea that women could not be captains was part of her psychosis, I mean her behavior (putting herself in a fatal position, outright killing her fellow archeologist, emotionally manipulating Coleman, not reporting dangerous artifacts, accessing classified Starfleet information with malicious intent) was what kept her from being a captain, she should have been immediately appointed an admiral.
Honestly, like Jessie Gender did a video on it, but this episode was probably around or after the divorce. Yeah, that changed Roddenberry a bit.
You have outdone yourself, Mrs. Pregler-Porteous. This episode was a MAJOR stinker. You tore it apart as only you can, and you got me to shriek a few times. I love when you tackle Star Trek. Thank you.
The funny thing is that for years, people actually assumed that Starfleet didn't let women be Captains thanks to this episode.
only people who held the same attitudes and wanted a reason to perpetuate sexism into future centuries-- the sort of people who have been ranting and raving against Disco ever since they found it it would have a black woman lead
You can’t be serious…..right?😅
@@gracekim25 Nope, sadly not.
Meanwhile, I'm imagining Starfleet Captain Donna Summer, and it's awesome.
I mean, is it really an assumption if that's the way it's stated to be in the episode?...
Yes, it was dumb, probably wouldn't have made it into the script in any season other than three, and was retconned promptly but for awhile at least that was The Lore.
So SNL was a little inaccurate to how the show ended. Oh well, live long and prosper. Promise.
I think I burst a ventricle in my lungs from that mind meld gag, I laughed so hard. I really wasn't expecting that audio clip
Can I ask, what was that from anyway? I know it's William Shatner saying, "Fuck off", but was it from a movie or an interview or...?
@@Ripper2509 It was in an interview (I think on radio) with Shatner. They were asking him about why Takei hates him so much, and he answered pretty simply. Shatner even said on air something like "Whatever it is I did 50 years ago, I'm sorry!"
But they kept asking and asking, and the longer it went on, the more he got annoyed.
Shatner basically wanted Takei to just stop badgering and obsessing over him (as he has for over 50 years).
This is how it ends:
Interviewer: "So, what's your message to George?"
Shatner: "FUCK OFF!!"
You can find the entire clip on UA-cam.
@@Ripper2509 Found it!
ua-cam.com/video/FEcN-hODBCk/v-deo.html
There was a reason this season was also called "the turd season." I love the TOS silliness-- especially the scenery chewing-- but I try to forget this episode exists.
Yelling "This is mutiny!!" when the servers bring me the wrong flavor of hot wings
I always assumed that line ("Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women") meant that *Kirk's* own conception of a starship captain's duty (his world of starship captains) doesn't allow for having (relationships with) women. I wouldn't have assumed this, but it was a theme of a lot of earlier episodes that he was vexed that he couldn't pursue a relationship (e.g., "The Naked Time"). Honestly, I wasn't reaching to defend Star Trek, it just sounded that way to me on first viewing.
Yeah I think this is actually what it meant by the line and it fits in perfectly with Kirk's character. He often regrets the what if he didn't pursue this life and instead pursued a meaningful long term relationship. I view Lester as being insane and jealous of Kirk's success, and she thought she could live vicariously through Kirk because she didn't have the aptitude to be a Captain herself. (Not because she's a woman, but because she herself is not capable).
That explains why Kirk has so many "close encounters" with aliens, but no actual relationship.
Saying the line refers to their relationship is one of three interpretations on Memory Alpha for "Turnabout Intruder." Interesting that that's how they wrote Kirk (no relationship) and removed Janice Rand, IMHO the heart of the ship, because she's infatuated with him. I like to imagine her as "the Captain's woman" in "Mirror, Mirror," if they kept her.
I see Janice and James having a relationship because they are both driven to succeed in Starfleet, but something went wrong for her and she failed her psychosimulator test. Then, like Finney in "Court Martial," she hated him once he became captain. Even those in his graduation class turned a cold shoulder to him when Finney was declared dead. They couldn't have known the details at that point. Kirk did seem to get along with the other captains, who probably recommended him for promotion in the first place.
But Star Trek does set limitations for women, or values their beauty too much. It was said that Vina from "The Menagerie" had to stay behind, not because her injuries required life support or she was too crippled to leave, but because she was ugly. It would have been interesting if Captain Pike had taken her with him in one of the remakes.
The way that Phelous and you edit is always on point!
Imagine if Kirk had the foreknowledge of nearly 60+ years of trek trivia to confront Janice with
JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
KIRK: What about Philippa Georgiou?
Janice: She doesn't count...that woman can be everything, everywhere, all at once
Kirk: What about Erika Hernandez, who was the commanding officer of NX-02 a century ago
Janice: Silence. You will be silent! A recess has been declared. There will be no cross-discussion.
You forgot one of my absolute favorite captains, Janeway!
Oh man, the large ham is being sizzled into hot crispy bacon for this episode 🤤
To be very charitable, they tried to make a progressive episode on how gender discrimination can bring a person to do terrible things, and at the time there wasn't the awareness about re-enacting stereotypes. The character was meant to be sympathetic and that was good enough.
When "The Cage" pilot was shown to a test audience in 1964, Robbenberry was surprised that many women in the audience rejected Majel as Number One with a "who does she think she is?" attitude. It was a different time.
This is one of my favorite behind the scenes stories from TOS era.
I'd read that too.
Amazing to think that the very next live-action TV episode would give us the eternal perfection that is Groppler Zorn.
I thought “no woman allowed” was more likely not a Starfleet rule but just a statement about the glass-ceiling in the culture - something taken for granted in the 1960’s and assumed into the future.
I like the story producer Bob Justman tells in his book - Shatner getting into a fight with a tired film editor who complained: “Bill do you have to telescope your reactions so much? we have a hard time cutting around them”.
Thank you Allison - yet again your perspective, overview & delivery made me both laugh (a lot) and think - must be my simple little (male) Irish brain - hah! Nice one!
Well, the animated series is more like a continuation of season 1 because I'm pretty sure it started up almost immediately after the live action series ended just to save money with budget cuts and stuff
I lost it at "Trek Court", god hearing that theme song unearthed some long dormant memories...as for the episode, hoooooooooo boy. Not one of Trek's finer moments to be sure, but I'll still take it over most of "Enterprise"
You know who could have saved this episode?
The one. The only. Groppler Zorn.
All Our Yesterdays would've been the better story to finish on. Seemed like it should've been so easy to swap them in running order.
I'm just glad the movies allowed the original cast to go out on a better final note in the end.
It's mad to know the studio didn't even want to allow the idea of the pilot having a female second in command. I guess in that light it's commendable that the show even managed to be as progressive as it was, though this was a big step back to finish on. It'd be nice if they could've rewritten it just a bit to make out that Janice was deluded about the Captain's role being forbidden to women, and it just being some crank conspiracy theory she believed in.
I had forgotten how truly dreadful this episode is, but it does have some hilarious lines.
It’s an episode where the characters are firmly holds the idiot ball for dear life just so the plot can happen.
Spock’s Brain was daft but at least the plot wasn’t hinged on the cast being morons like this steaming turd where they literally see their own captain act out of character in front of them including McCoy and doesn’t think anything’s out of the norm until the plot allowed them to use their brains. Actually, the way the episode is laid out and how it happens might make it a dreaded idiot plot episode; the type of episode that would be over in five minutes when the characters who should be intelligent aren’t suffering severe drops in IQ because of plot.
The BBC banned 4 episodes: Miri, Plato's Stepchildren, The Empath and Whom gods destroy. Meanwhile, this naff episode got passed by the Blue Pencil hungry Board at Broadcasting House. Bloody-madness. "To boldly go where no woman is capable of going" was OK to the Beeb, but an unwilling, enforced kiss was too much to handle.
Didn’t they later retcon this to include that Lester failed several psych evaluations while in Starfleet Academy
dunno who "they" is but in MY mind that's always how I've thought of it because the character as written and performed is an OBVIOUS psychopath
@@prismpyre7653 I would hope that is the more accepted conclusion today. Though considering this aired in the 1960s, I fear most of its original audience took it at face value.
@@prismpyre7653 um probably referring to the writers of later shows
They also retconned the whole "women can't be captains in Starfleet" nonsense when ENT came around.
@@Nergalsama01they retconned it as early as the animated series, with Uhura taking command (though not holding the captain rank) twice and then TNG had outright female captains, including Geordi’s mother, as support characters at several points as well as admirals above Picard who were women, then DS9 continued along the same lines and Voyager is obvious
Star Trek's earliest fans/adopters were, in fact, women and girls - my mom and my aunt (her sister) being among them. I believe one of their friends (another teen girl) took them to a convention in the 60s. Kirk/Spock and many of the tropes used in today's fan fiction were innovated by women writing Trek fics. As ridiculous as he can be on the show, Kirk is playing a sort of heart-throb character.
What I'm saying is, Roddenberry not only missed the mark concerning sexism and treatment of women, he missed a marketing opportunity, and so did those complete butt [male] TV executives.
I think most of us just write this off as Lester being nuts and trying to justify why she didn't succeed
Clearly murder is a sign of insanity in the Star Trek universe. They do have penal colonies for the sane criminals which is where Dr. Coleman needs to go.
I remember watching this and just assuming the tv station did not buy the last season or something. Such a weird last episode.
They should have followed up these episodes in syndication with two of the animated episodes filling the hour.
I just fuckin' lost it at the "Trek Court" title card. I would watch the hell out a mini series like that. Because I'm a nerd.
I love the story of why the Captains chair is often left empty on the Enterprise. Because Gene wanted Uhurah to sit in the chair and hold a watch and the execs freaked out. So he couldnt put her in there but he could not show someone else taking command and it was assumed she was filling in even if they couldnt show it.
She did finally take the chair onscreen in The Animated Series.
William Shatner display his UNHOLY....ACT-ING TALENT!
I am vibrating rapidly. YES! I have been wanting to see you take on this hilarious turd since you started doing Trek videos. So excited. Can't wait to watch this tonight after work.
8:02 "I think it was very nice of you to give that dead woman another chance."
You make this flawed episode more fun than the original
I need more shatner hoff crossover voices. 🙏🏾
"Radiation poisoning is not gonna stop [me] from looking fabulous!" ✨💅 A bumper sticker if I ever saw one.
I somehow suspect that Strange New Worlds will ignore the whole No Girls Allowed thing and just act as though it never happened (as they should). Speaking of season 3 and TOS sexism, the episode "The Enterprise Incident" had a female Romulan officer who just couldn't wait to jump Spock's bones and felt betrayed by him not really siding with her despite having only really known him for 24 hours max.
Discovery, the first two seasons of which are set just a year or two before Strange New Worlds if I’m not mistaken, already ignores the “no female captains” thing right out the gate and the woman Pike is dating from the first episode is a Captain
So you’re absolutely right 😊
SNW definitely completely ignored it. Pike’s girlfriend in episode 1 (and who pops back up in the finale) was also a starship captain.
Given Discovery and SNW have already shown contemporary women captains I'd say they will continue to ignore that.
Kinda funny to think that if we were to take this episode at face value though that the Romulans are more progressive, even if their woman captains are poorly written.
They had a woman captain in Star Trek: Enterprise, so yeah... canonically her line is wrong. Thus... the only CORRECT interpretation is the "reaching" one. Which is that she's nuttier than a fruit bat and is simply blaming her lack of promotion on her being a woman. When really it's because she's massively incompetent.
@@Swiftbow internalized misogyny and gender Dysphoria could conceivably also contribute to Lester’s state of mind given what we see in the episode, not to in any way suggest that trans people are crazy, Lester in particular likely has some kind of underlying condition. Frankly I genuinely hope she got treatment after the episode’s end
It's a shame that they had to be the series finale. The body possession story was good, but it made the woman taking over Kirk seem petty.
that was her archetype. Its obvious she was driven mad by her desires.
Well people can be petty in real life.
If I recall correctly this was written by a fan, a woman whose name I don't recall.
It would explain why Janice is angry about not being captain, since it's not even an allegory it's just the straight up text.
I was thinking the whole time that the perfect ending would be for Janice to suddenly meet a bunch of female Star-fleet captains and find out that they always allowed women to become captain. They just told her they don't let women be captains because she's batshit crazy and they didn't want her trying to become one.
I think it's consistent with "Bread and Circuses" where R.M. Merik was let go from Starfleet for failing his psychosimulator test, but then continued "space work" becoming captain of a merchant ship. Then it's found he's a coward who betrayed his oath and his crew.
There's only 12 ships in the fleet like the _Enterprise_ so it's easy to imagine none of them are women and that Pike's "Number One" got passed over for promotion and either left the service (for marriage and family?) or is serving a desk assignment at a Starbase like the admiral wanted Kirk to do in "Court Martial."
The first female captain we see lost her ship to the whale probe in Star Trek IV and her navigator just looks at her disbelievingly or contemptuously. Either she or the Latino captain talking about a "solar sail" was dumb enough to get too close after the other ship had been neutralized.
The perfect follow-up would have been for _Star Trek: The Motion Picture_ to be about female equality (a.k.a. feminism), sex roles and misogyny. Instead we got an enhanced remake of "The Changeling." Wasted opportunity for social commentary.
F*ck off!
That clip always kills me, fantastic episode!
I mean Allison's work, not the Trek episode, lol.
Seriously, the critique, editing, and deep lore references are excellent!
If Shatner Shatnered any harder during the trial scene he would have opened a portal to a new Shatner-esque dimension. lol.
That's what the rainbow vortex at the end of the episode was
There's going out with a bang...
There's going out with a whimper...
And then there's going out with a confused awkward goodbye...
And the last episode of OG Star Trek... certainly was such a thing...
It was probably Roddenberry. He divorced his first wife around this time (I have a feeling that might have been a factor) and apparently, the original script was even more misogynistic.
This was just as funny and lovely as I expected. I will add one thing (that you are probably aware of, given the amount of research you clearly do, but just in case someone else reads through the comments): for a fun added dose of 1960s casual sexism, Mark Cushman notes in his "These are the Voyages" book for season three that the reviews for this episode raved about how amazingly well Shatner portrayed a woman. They also talked about how lousy a job that Sandra Smith did portraying Kirk. I have a special place in my heart for this episode because it's so dumb and over-the-top, but even I draw the line at those reviews.
😂 what? I thought she did a far better job being Kirk then he did being ‘woman’. As funny as it was, it was so much man playing generic woman with no character thought in it. Where as Smith was playing Kirk.
I don't remember editing that episode's IMDB trivia entry but that's basically me every time someone in Quebec says they have a flu (grippe) instead of a cold (rhume), so I must've edited it while sleepwalking in outrage over calling a rhume a grippe.
This is new to me but there we go.
Also I've never seen or heard of this ep before now, so that's even more confusing.
The intensity of flu varies a LOT, though. You can definitely still force yourself to work depending on how bad it is and how far through the illness you are.
This was wonderful. I love your Trek reviews. Please don't let Trek's last episode be your last episode.
Just some comparison ...Spacepatrol Orion aired on german TV at the same time as Star Trek with a quite similar premise. I cant remember a female captain there either..but ADMIRAL Lydia van Dyke , who saved the "main" captain of the series several times from either some aliens or an dishonorable discharge.
It's uncanny! Just when I feel like it's been a while since I've seen an Allison video and finish watching an old Baywatching or Radu Reviews I see that she's just uploaded a new one.
The best possible interpretation of the line is that being a starship captain doesn’t leave much room for a family or a personal life, but yeah it’s kind of a stretch
I love your Star Trek and Quantum leap episodes, thank you for the hours of entertainment you provide.
Thank you!!
It's too bad the last episode was such a clunker. Susan Oliver was great as the original 'Green Girl' in the pilot episode and she broke a lot of ground in her real life--she became an expert pilot in the '60s and later a director. She was ahead of her time, but the finale was way behind the time.
President Eisenhower died in order to make this not air during the original run. His sacrifice will be remembered.
🤣🤣🤣12:44 Your _Comic Book Guy_ impression is spot on! Love it!
I remember seeing this episode for the first time and just being gobsmacked by the sheer misogyny on display. Granted, Star Trek was no stranger to sexist plot points before this episode... but yiiiiiikes... this one was like the "Vulcan nerve pinch" of misogyny 😅
This is one of those things that was quickly retconed and forgotten.