I remember the DS9 episode "Rejoined" when Dax was conflicted over her ex. Kira asked "why can't they just get married again?", with no regard for the fact that they were 2 women. I remember that being SO progressive!
"Rejoined", much like TNG's "The Outcast" had problems for sure, but were both super progressive and ahead of their time. I still rewatch "Rejoined" with fondness
I watched it as a young teenager in the 90s, and I was so wrapped up in the trill taboos that I never even registered that they were both women (or rather I never even registered that there was anything unusual about that) And I love it for that. It makes the relationship look so natural and straightforwardly wonderful, that it's hard to see why anyone would have a problem with it
@@BigNoseDog They complained about it at the time, too. I had the misfortune of being in a church run private school at the time, and my English Teacher used to go on long rants about how immoral TNG was.
Oh that episode. I'm conflicted about that from the first time I saw it at the time to this day. It was kinda bold at the time and I remember it being a big deal, the first same-sex kiss in ST and all. I was excited at the time as a gay teen in an era when that was an exception on TV I didn't even understand yet I needed. At the same time though - as with just about every of the small number of occurences of anything non-hetero or non-binary in the TNG era - they only ever dared to show it as some quirky sci-fi accident of something that is fundamentally hetero at its core (TNG: The Outcast comes to mind). The social norms of the Trill are clearly meant to be an analogy here that worked fine, which makes this episode a standout for that era even besides the kissing on TV. But still, it's so refreshing to see in Disco a show to finally boldly go where others already went for years, but no Trek show has ever gone before: Actually acknowledging that queer love obviously exists.
Yep! Also, it hasn't ever been officially confirmed who assaulted her. Whitney only stated it was an executive, and not one of the other actors. But, there is a LOT of evidence that it was Roddenberry himself. The assaulter later gave her an "apology gift" of a polished stone, which was something Roddenberry was known to do. Also, the assaulter's girlfriend was stated to be on the show, later married him, and gave him an alibi. This could only be Majel Barret and Roddenberry.
I don't remember much of TOS, but every scene I recall of Rand had her being objectified by somebody in the episode. Evil Kirk attacked her, Charlie X came damn close, in some early episode Kirk complained about having an attractive assistant - I'm sure I'm missing a couple more. It made me wonder if being sexually harassed or assaulted on the regular was in the character's production notes.
Unconscious biases are like walking around with parsley in your teeth. If someone points it out it’s not because they are trying to insult you by doing so. You should want to know it’s there so you can fix it
Let's not forget the late great Madge Sinclair, who, as her role as the captain of USS Saratoga in 'the one with the whales', fully retconned the Turnabout Intruder error of women couldn't captain a starship.
One silver lining of Profit and Lace is that Quark's change is handled on a drop-in basis, offscreen. Given Rick Berman's refusal to acknowledge the existence of queer people in Star Trek except as a joke, this was definitely not the intent, but it does nevertheless imply that humanity's utopian future is one where barriers to medical care for trans people are so nonexistent that it can all be handled in the space of an ad break.
Something that makes Quark's played-for-laughs "feminine" emotional outbursts at the end of the episode feel slightly less cringeworthy to me is being a trans person, and knowing a lot of actual trans people. Because when a dose of hormones is missed, mood swings and the like can be the result to the point that my BFF calls it her "trans PMS". I'm sure that such a big biological change so quickly would have some profound and lingering hormonal effects on Quark, let's just not attribute it to misogynist causes!
@@thing_under_the_stairs Something I would point out, and one of the reasons that scene didn't bother me is that, at least in my personal experience, Estrogen makes your emotions MUCH more intense. Like, even years into HRT, my emotions were a lot more powerful than they were before I started. It took time to learn how to deal with the difference, and given that Quark was only a woman for a day or two, I can see him having issues regulating.
@@thing_under_the_stairsIn the same vein, my husband doesn’t produce his own testosterone naturally so he needs HRT to keep his levels up. If he misses it for too long, he becomes pretty emotionally vulnerable, and even cries at the drop of a hat. I don’t see those as “feminine” qualities, but as a hormonal imbalance issue. So I can easily see Quark having emotional issues as well, especially if he’s suddenly hit up with the Ferengi equivalent of estrogen.
I'm Team Kira Nerys, all the way! I just went to IMDB to confirm I was spelling her name correctly and, oh my... I was reminded of how amazing that cast was. So many great characters portrayed by equally great people.
The two saving graces with Profit & Lace are that it was clearly intended as a riff on Tootsie, and that it implies that gender confirmation is a totally reversible outpatient surgery that a general practice doctor can knock out on his lunch break, as if lancing a boil. Hey, I'll take my progressive bones where I can find them.
Indeed, the point of "Profit & Lace" was to show a sexist man what it's like to be a woman; there's very little question about that. People reading trans messaging into it IMHO are interpreting the episode wrong. It's not just a "different" take on it, but it's deliberately misreading the episode, trying to fault it for something it never intended to be. You shouldn't order a burger and then complain "this is the worst milkshake I've ever tasted!" It wasn't even the first TV show to do something of the sort. "Tootsie", as you observed, spends a lot of time there. I also remember a couple episodes of "Quantum Leap" where Sam leapt into a woman's life and had to deal with all the crap women did. "Due South" had a little bit of it once ("Some Like It Red") though IIRC sexism was only a tiny theme. This was almost a stock thing in TV shows in the 80s and 90s when they wanted to show how much men would hate enduring what women have to. Now, it is totally fair to fault "Profit & Lace" for playing it too much for laughs; it's indulging in sexism even while it's railing against it. That's a valid complaint. But the complaints that it's a slight against the trans community, I don't side with.
... to anyone saying "nuh-uh, all readings of an episode are equally valid", let's just take a look at the opening and closing scenes. The opening scene has Quark hiring a new Dahbo girl but telling her that part of the deal would be sleazy shenanigans of his choosing. Then the episode happens and Quark has to pose as a woman and he gets harassed, and at the end he tells the girl from the beginning that she doesn't have to do any sleazy stuff but just do her job. Could it be any clearer that the point of the episode was for Quark to see how much it stinks to put up with men-folks' predations, and learning to not do that to women any more? It's one thing to wrestle with ambiguity, it's another to pretend the episode wasn't blatantly structured as it was to teach a specific point. If anything can mean anything, then nothing means anything.
@@kingbeauregard I think Quark's series arc was generally moving towards better treatment of women. Initially, he took after his traditionalist father, at least culturally. Through the seasons with his "radical" mother and his diverse staff, Quark clearly embraced some Federation ideas about equality and mutual respect, albeit reluctantly at times. This episode was very "on the nose" but contributed to the overall theme.
@@kingbeauregard Fair to say it has some unintentional negative implications in some ways. But yes, definitely not meant to be "Code of Honor" level screwed up.
@@TheFranchiseCA Neither was "Code of Honor." It was not originally written for the actors to be black, or let alone the "tribal" costuming and sets. But I agree that, when comparing the results, "Code of Honor" is far more racist than "Profit and Lace" is sexist.
Janeway is (and always been) a role model for me, wildly inconsistent writing (and differing magnitude of character flaws) aside. Taken on the whole, she gives me something to aspire to as a woman, as a working professional in a male-dominated field, as a human in general. She's the captain I'd most like to serve under or at the very least be friends with. More than once, an imagined pep talk from her in my head has helped me through a few mental and emotional slumps.
Can I share my head canon about Janeway? Remember how, in the pilot episode, she sat with the Caretaker for a while just before he died? I like to think he saw some glimpses of the future and told Janeway some of what he saw, to help her avoid trouble. So any time Janeway seems inordinately willing to listen to input from others, just assume she's thinking, "this is one of those incidents the Caretaker warned me about, but I can't possibly tell anyone that we shouldn't visit that comet because a banjo-playing alien said not to." The big one ... ? The Caretaker said to Janeway, "Lieutenant Kim will never make it home alive. Ensign Kim may, but Lieutenant Kim will not." And that's why she never promoted him. I admit, this is a BIG reach as head canon goes. But it makes the series play SO much smoother.
I feel like I wrote this. I love Janeway. I even love her when they call her Insaneway. She's just a badass they can't handle, and she doesn't care if you can't handle it, you better just hold onto your butts. We're taking this ship into the deadly anomaly because you've made me miss my coffee break, and we're comin' out the other side stronger!
The ICE plot in PIcard S2 was absolutely underused. But the funny thing is that just by showing the reality of Ice on the USA-Mexico border got the anti-immigration mob so riled up.
Kinda sums up my relationship to all of Voyager: love the concept, love the potential it had, even enjoyed watching it multiple times, yet - I strongly agree with Steve on that - it always makes me sad how much of its potential has been wasted. Same with Janeway really.
I will at least say in Profit and Lace's defense that it's actually unfathomably based that the Federation offers free, out-patient gender confirmation procedures no questions asked. That one part of Profit and Lace was actually really cool
You said favourite female character but im gonna have to go with the whole of DS9 for that, so many great female characters like Kira, Jadzia, Ezri, Ishka, Kai Winn, Grilka, Kasidy etc, even a more traditional female character like Leeta is written well. Its such a breath of fresh air from TNG’s limited portrayal of its female characters (mainly troi). EDIT: i cant believe i forgot Kasidy Yates
As someone who, for a long time, had a childhood dream of becoming an archaeologist, I think it’s really cool that you can trace the history of American progressivism through 6 decades of a silly sci-fi show. Plus, it gives me hope that future generations will have come so far that they can look back on our current trek and cringe at our own progressive blind spots and shortcomings.
I straight up never saw the original episode and only experienced it via your review recently. When my sister started showing me TNG, she was literally like "Yeah, we're skipping this one. You're welcome." and so I've never seen it lol
Star Trek was pitched by Gene Roddenberry as Wagon Train to the Stars. At it's heart, Star Trek is a western set in space. Star Trek was started in the 1960s, and a lot of the societal mores and morals bleed through on the screen. It's a 1960s man (Kirk/Shatner) reacting to situations with the norms of 1960s people. It's not always good - Roddenberry actually auditioned women and cast them based on their physical attributes. In some ways, Roddenberry reminds me of the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Roddenberry was alleged to have an affair with Nichelle Nicolas, and the actress who played Janice Rand , Grace Lee Whitney, was allegedly assaulted by a producer on the show. There is a history of women who acted or worked behind the scenes on Trek were second class citizens, and that's a shame. Even in the 1960s sexual assault was bad. I believe that ST in all it's incarnations has tried to do the best, but has also often fallen short. Give Star Trek credit for trying to be it's best, but also acknowledge the failures. True knowledge only comes from experience, and when we f*$k it up, we have to acknowledge the error, promise to change the action and attitude, and go forth and make new mistakes. Nobody is perfect. However, that doesn't mean we should not try to be better.
Great video. I would also say though, even if someone is accusing you or attacking you in bad faith, if they make a valid point concerning some unconscious bias you have then you can still hear that and improve. Just because someone is an asshole, it doesn't always make them wrong.
It does make it harder to hear, though. As someone who was bullied a lot as a kid, I find it hard to hear assholes. It took me a long time to stand up to them and to reject their accusations, words and actions as unworthy of “taking on.” I was constantly called on to “be understanding” and to “be the bigger person.” What you are suggesting isn’t wrong, but it does come perilously close to asking the traumatized person to be ok with their own traumatization “for the greater good.” I think the best way to deliver a good point is to not be an asshole about it … and to not to be an asshole in general. If I can hear that point without it damaging me or compromising my mental health, then yeah, great. But I should in no way be under an obligation to do so.
Pretty much all of S1 of TNG sucked. If they had kept the Lizard People concept (or just had different costumes with white or diverse extras) for the Ligonians, "Code of Honor" would be remembered as just one of the bad S1 episodes. I can imagine the producers saying "lizard people prosthetics are too expensive, let's just go with human-looking aliens," but the it was the director's choice of casting an all AA cast for the Ligonians that made this the worst ST episode of all time. (And the series finale of _Enterprise_ tried to beat it in badness, but failed.)
Riker's guilt-trip, holoprogram episode wasn't the series finale of "Enterprise." It was a leftover fantasy episode of TNG, using a once-again malfunctioning holodeck. The program was flawed and Trip certainly didn't die.
Her character is so well written! She's competent and confident in her abilities, but we're allowed to see her fears and insecurities, too. We get to see her struggle to deal with her trauma in a way that doesn't demean or belittle her.
I have always loved Star Trek. And when I was old enough to see how it showed that all of us are so alike and can live together in harmony as long as we value each other's differences, it became my favorite science fiction franchise ever made.
I just started a rewatch of TOS (partially due to your channel putting me in a Trek mood) and I got to "The Enemy Within" and yeeeeeeeah...I'd forgotten how really uncomfortable the scenes with Rand were and how really not good that whole situation was handled. A shame because the resolution, with Evil Kirk not "defeated" by violence but rather by Good Kirk appealing to him was surprisingly well written and well done. Still a pretty good episode but definitely could have been better.
One character I would really like to see again is Gillian Tsylor. Not only did she see through Kirk, then eventually help him out; she proved to be strong and committed to her cause of finding a better place for the whales to live.
Its subtle but I like the ending of the movie, she realized what type of person Kirk was and wasn't expecting a relationship with him. She clearly started building a life of her own.
Dr. Taylor does NOT get enough credit. This woman dropped everything and *traveled through time* because she knew there wasn't anyone else who could make sure the transplanted whales would be looked after as well as she could. Granted, she could see that folks in the future seemed to be good people--hell, they even put the mission on hold to save one of their own--and technology was pretty advanced and all that, but she was still taking a HUGE leap (pun intended) of faith. And I love her cheeky little "No, I'll find *you*." (-:
If you address things like sensitive social issues or marginalized groups it is easy, so very easy to get things wrong. The lesson is that it is often better to platform discriminated people than to try to speak for them. But it would be worse, far worse when you would not dare to discuss such things at all. Better to try and sometimes fail than never to try at all.
I was expecting to jump in to defend "Profit and Lace" but you summarized the nuance really well. What I think you got wrong was Rios and Picard S02-Rios didn't stay _in spite_ of the racist immigration policies but *_because_* of them-since his introduction he was portrayed as a hero looking for a just cause. In 21st century Earth, he found one (timeline contamination be darned).
I watched Profit and Lace for the first time a few months back when I finally sat down and watched all of DS9, and I was amazed at just how *not* transphobic the final product was. Like, there are definitely some cringy bits, but it could have been SO much worse.
@@themollyjay7974 Yeah Profit & Lace isn't transphobic, but it's a bit reductive about the gender binary. It's a bit simplistic in terms of what a woman is like and what a man is like, and Quark is written to be a bit simplistic in terms of his sexism... though he was usually fairly superficial before so it's not a huge stretch. Of course, the overall message of the episode is that sexism is bad, so it's more of a details and nuance thing.
Steve, I always (even as a kid) finished Kirk's "If Only..." line with "... she wasn't a freaking nut job." Nothing to do with her gender, she just didn't have all the marbles needed to be a captain. Of course you could say the same about Ron Tracy, or Merrick or any of the other Captain's that weren't Kirk.
That's the way I see it, all the way back to 1968 when I watched the original broadcast of the episode. Janice wasn't cut out to be a Starfleet officer. Obviously, she had issues....
What we can learn if Star Trek is capable of taking accountability and recognizing its flaws and become a better version of its self and we can that too what a beautiful to say it Steve
10 years ago I was posting on Facebook that I didn't get why trans people cared if we called them by their preferred pronouns or not and today I use their preferred (I know a few trans people) without giving it a second thought. Life is a journey.
I want to love people bitching about modern Star Trek being woke, but then I realise those are the same people who back in the day would have flipped their fucking shit over Uhura kissing Kirk.
They did complain, Nichelle Nichols talked about how people wrote in letters saying how they didn't mind having a black woman on the show but to have the kiss between her and Kirk "crossed the line".
@@caihah.1404To be fair, I believe it's the right choice to show that Kirk is resisting and not enjoying being forced to kiss his coworker against her will.
I really liked Odan (both of them). I think it would have been better if Beverly had told Odan that she - Beverly - was not interested in a same-sex relationship.
Captain Rachel Garret in command of the Enterprise NCC-1701C was tough as nails, brave, confident, and determined to do the right thing, even though it essentially guaranteed her death and the destruction of her ship. She was a model Starfleet officer.
statistics about rape actually show that victims are more likely to be too afraid to report it then to lie about it, and i can't blame them.....as a man, i can only imagine how terrifying it is to be a victim of that crime
I can't say how many of my friends or family members have been victims of SA, but I can tell you how many have reported it: exactly 0. Women know that they can't trust the police to actually investigate or even believe them without investigating their lives in humiliating detail, minimising their trauma, and outright disbelieving them. Why anyone would make a false accusation and put themselves through that hell is beyond me.
Steve this was one of the best Ted Talks ive seen in recent memory alot of difficult subject matter covered you really do spoil us overhere big Hair janeways gonna fart on your toothbrush if you keep talking smack about her spinoff she does lean towards the extreme thats why she gets shit done silver medal goes to Obrains wife who can be extremely compelling if its her episode 😮
When boys or men are sexually, abused/assaulted/raped, too many others still have a disbelieving approach when a victim relays that experience. The emotional fallout doesn't care what identity, socio-economic status, or anything else about that makes you who you are. People who are victimized must cope with significant trauma that is not easily worked through.
I like to think that the writer of the episode thought that they were showcasing a culture, or something like that. I tend to err on the side of incompetence versus willful evil. That doesn't make the product any better, of course.
I liked original Philippa Georgiou, the Malaysian captain of the the USS Shenzhou, first human to study at the Laikan Military academy on Andoria. I would have wanted to see more of her.
She had to die so that the main character (Mary Sue) could more easily surpass her. It's a classic trope to kill off the mentor to let the mantee grow and surpass the former mentor, but many did it better, Gurren Lagann for example.
As much as I appreciate the stories Discovery did decide to tell, I’m a little bit sad we didn’t get the Shenzhou series the trailer and the first part of the pilot offered as a departure point.
Retrospect is absolutely horrible and cathartic to hear you call it out. Profit and Lace, which you gave rightly less of a beating, Quark is forced to live the stereotype of "a women" just like women are forced to live that stereotype. He is also forced to endure the piggishness of men. This was my mom's take, who grew up experiencing things like "girls can't do math, therefore you are just stupid at math", and for her it was fun to see the tables turned in this case.
Having seven of nine wearing the tightest outfit imaginable was clearly just objectifying her for the whole series. 30 years after TOS, you would have thought that they wouldn't resort to that anymore, but they did.
I remember when Code of Honor first aired. Even as a young kid in the 80s i was like, "huh. This seems wrong." It's almost painful to see now. I'm glad they learned.
Ensign Ro was excellent - and of course was the prototype for Major Kira. (istr they wanted Ro to be the Bajoran character in DS9 but the actor wasn't available so they wrote Kira instead)
What's really odd about 'Code of Honor' is that it's fundamentally a casting choice that leads to the episode looking racist. If the Ligonians had been lizard people (which was apparently what the original script called for!), or white people with rubber foreheads, the problem would not have arisen. All of which raises the question of exactly who thought it a good idea to have them all Black people!
Not having them all black, and better costume design choices (WHY are they dressed like Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves? WHY?) would have gone a long way. I feel like the episode would still be considered mid at best but at least it wouldn't be Franchise Worst prize winning levels of bad and uncomfortable.
This is representative of a lot of classic sci fi. Trying to set up a quick "exotic" culture by cloning a classic Earth stereotype is lazy writing and copies the racism of the portrayals.
I think the abducting Tasha point would have been problematic regardless, given scifi's long and storied history of monsters and aliens being stand-ins for "undesirable ethnicities." The original _King Kong_ comes to mind as about as subtle as, well, a giant gorilla.
@@Canoby Was it Hurley, or was it Roddenberry? I'd love to hear more about what other bad decisions Hurley made just to expand my knowledge. Season 1 is fascinating to me with simply how horrible many of the episodes were, yet I kept watching and made it through still a fan. In addition to Code of Honor, which I absolutely can't watch in reruns, there's Justice, Too Short a Season, and When the Bough Breaks -- all so bad that I can't even watch them to make fun of them.
Excellent video. I was born in 1945 and thus grew up in the era of Original Trek. I was in college during the Civil Rights era of the 60's and the Gay Liberation era of the 1970's and 80's. I will say that while I never had any sympathy for segregation or the racist attitude toward non-white people in principle, most of the people around me growing up were white. I was also a Lesbian in a time when LGBTQ issues were just beginning to have some consideration in popular culture in the US ( remember there was a strong gay rights movement in Europe in the 1920's, which I researched. ) But it was Trek and the character of Spock who first made me aware of racism on an emotional level. I think that was an important thing for many of us at that time.
I have a tip on lighting: I think the addition of one single light would greatly enhance the quality. You need a "hair light" or a "rim light". A light above you, and off to the side. Look at the image of the man with his arms wide open at 3:40, he has a hair/rim light that's purple, TNG was really well lit for its time, and they made prolific use of hair/rim lights throughout the 7 seasons.
Steve made some great points again. All can say in Star Trek's defense is when you have a long franchise with so many different writers not all of thier views are going to be the same.
In the case of Maurice Hurley and Rick Berman, going by statements from various actresses, at least one bias wasn't exactly unconscious and they weren't particularly striving to do better.
The part about ICE in Picard Season 2. As a non-American, the assumption is that it's something made up to enforce the "Dystopian future" phase of the world, similar to the episode where Sisco and Bashir are locked in the sanctuary in that DS9 episode. When somebody tells me it's actually based on reality, it makes me question how America can consider itself part of the Civilised world. The worst part is that this isn't the only thing that makes me question it. The predatory American healthcare system, almost no time off from work, and the fact that an employer barely has to pay waiters peanuts because tips are a thing. They all make me question how America can consider itself civilised.
Pro-Tip from an American: a lot of us don't think this country is very civilized and are trying to change it for the better, but these past 8 years or so really feel like trying to hammer a nail with a ripe orange.
A lot of the examples you gave can be interpreted as cautionary tales about 'trying to be open-minded' when one still has a lot of 'closed-minded' traits.
Good video Steve! I appreciate you addressing Turnabout Intruder as well. Hard to pick a favorite female ST character - I'm partial to both Jadzia Dax and Major Kira. Nana Visitor has a book coming out this fall: Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman's Trek.
12:00 I feel this is the big weakness of Disco, too: in their attempt to represent more people's struggles and oppression, it often veers into trauma porn rather than storytelling. Good intentions, but pretty hard to watch.
You completely glossed over a MAJOR factor: The sheer amount of drugs the writers, directors, and producers were on. The only explanation for Code of Honor is that everyone was too stoned to notice.
It has been quite a trudge for me to cope with my implicit and explicit biases. I have no pride in any of them (more like deep embarrassment). I sometimes get disheartened at how deeply flawed I am all the while finding what appears to be a never-ending parade of faults I had not previously been aware of. In some ways, I can easily relate to being a clumsy oaf the way Star Trek has been at times. Other times, I take comfort in getting things right. Dealing with my shortcomings is not easy. One way I was spared some of these stereotypes is that I had never experienced women in my life as portrayed by insulting caricatures. I could not watch something stupid about women and find it echoed in my life, anywhere. One small transient, easy step, and many more of picking myself up after faceplanting on the concrete for the twelve billionth time. Ugh. Humanity is not always pretty.
When you were discussing Profit and Lace, I really wish you had mentioned the (most likely accidental) transphobic message it holds as well. We've never seen an actual trans person in Trek at this point (I'm sorry--Jadzia is an icon and I even named myself after her when I came out as trans myself, but her iconic transness seems to be a happy accident and not a deliberate allegory so she doesn't count). So, when Quark is turned into a woman in order to trick a man into doing something that furthers Quark's own agenda, that's a bad look as well, especially now in 2024, where trans people have to deal with the constant threat of "bathroom bills" and all kinds of accusations of duplicity. You were spot on about the sexism, Steve, but man, the entire narrative of the episode is also implicitly transphobic.
One of the harder lessons I have had to learn in the past few years is this: in the vast majority of circumstances, the intended message matters less than how that message is received.
I was a 13 y.o. "liberated" girl in 1968 when I watched "Turnabout Intruder." I considered Janice Lester to be nuts. I never considered that women couldn't be captains of starships. She was obsessed, jealous, and determined to punish Kirk for dumping her. The reason she couldn't become an officer in Starfleet is because she flunked the tests! When Kirk does say something about women not becoming captains, I figured he was just humoring her. That's the way I saw it back then, anyway.
Steve, just because Star Trek has always been a progressive franchise doesn't mean the people who run it were all progressive. Roddenberry himself had a history of not being kind to feminism as shown when one of the first episodes he wrote for the original series was "Mudd's Women" and the episode before this "The Naked Now" reduced all the female characters to being relentlessly horny.
I love how casually, yet fiercely, your discussion of any given topic is politically grounded. Most creators who would talk about the kinds of topics you do wouldn't go anywhere near politics for fear of losing half their audience. Much respect.
Another great video, Steve. You speak a lot of sense. ALL of us have some kind of unconscious bias. Even those of us who would regard ourselves as "woke", anti-racist and LGBTQI-allies will have some kind of bias. We can't un-learn a *lifetime* of the drip-drip, subtle (and not subtle) effect of what we have seen, heard and read on television, MSM, from our family, schooling and if we have a religion. We all have to *acknowledge* that we have this unconscious bias, be aware of it and actively *think* before we act or make an assumption about someone based on the colour or their skin, their name, their gender or their sexuality. This extends to other things, such as their hair, if they have tattooes, how they are dressed, etc etc. It's easy to spot the racist idiot in the KKK outfit, or the right-wing rally. It's the subtle workplace and society inequalities, the racist police and the assumptions and biases. The death by a thousand cuts.
Even in the 80's as a young kid, I knew Code of Honor was a racist af. I later came to refer to it as the "black episode"....there are so many 50s stereotypes, heck even some vaudevillian ones. Its just so bad.
LeVar Burton is one of the nicest people on this earth and he perfectly summed up this episode, and the entire first season: “Just a big piece of sh*t!” Except for “Conspiracy”, it’s hard to argue with that statement.
There's some material in beta canon and fan productions that retroactively suggests the implication in "Turnabout Intruder" that women can't be assigned as starship captains was in deference to the Tellarites... as apparently some of them found the idea of female captains unacceptable. However, it's suggested that this is primarily in reference to top-line first-rate heavy cruisers, such as Constitution class vessels... smaller support vessels might still have had female commanding officers even in the TOS era... and by a few decades later, in the late 23rd century, things had apparently changed enough in Tellarite society that this was no longer objectionable.
Thanks for this. It’s so encouraging to hear someone speak out for both progressive values and graciousness towards people (aka all of us) who are still working on perfecting those principles within ourselves.
I really enjoy most of your videos; but the message you present in this episode is spot on! You’re right, despite our best efforts & intentions, we all make mistakes or missteps sometimes. Admitting those and making an effort to do better is what is most important.
A lesson that can be taken from this episode (and excellent review) is that the best of us or in this case a tv show can get it wrong sometimes badly. However given the opportunity redemption can achieved
In the "What We Left Behind" documentary about DS9, Ira Steven Behr was reflective about the progressive topics that they tackled on the show. He thought they were pretty good, for their time, about race, gender and inequality issues, but felt like they could have done better on LGBTQ+ issues. His main issue was implied to be that they could only get away with women kissing each other on the show, but for men the best they could do was imply queer relationships. I understand that, but it was the 90s, and mainstream TV in the 90s... well, Friends was the biggest show of the era and was far from great on that front.
I felt inspired by Janeway when I was a kid. Even considering some of the inconsistencies in her character and some things that she does that are honestly mistakes, she still stands out to me as an example of a strong, competent woman.
I always considered Janice Rand's comment about women not being allowed to be captains the rantings of a lunatic and Kirk's lack of pushback just being him not wanting to argue with an irrational person.
So well said, Steve. I do my best every day to get away from the upbringing I had (which wasn't a *bad* one, per see - but I was the product of a pretty traditional Irish-descended Australian Catholic, working class life; all-boys school, stay-at-home mother, etc. etc.), and I sometimes horrify myself at the occasional thought that pops into my head. Fortunately, too, I have a daughter who is so smart, so open-minded, and so thoughtful that she puts me to shame - and she keeps me in line. Sometimes I'll say something without thinking, and she will pull me up: "Dad? Think that through for a minute." Avoiding the products of unconscious biases isn't a one-time deal. You don't just decide "I'm going to be progressive." It is a work in progress, and requires vigilance and the careful examination of one's own thoughts and behaviours.
One episode that I always thought was kind of strange in a way that fits today's topic was in Voyager's "Future's End." For some reason, the episode had an appearance from a white-supremacist militia group, and then they're never mentioned again. It's almost like the writers were saying, "oh, by the way, these people exist," but then didn't really say anything else about them.
10:06 i felt that the "emotional woman" part was still played as a joke. Like. Its so over the top that i think the point was to say "this is what people think women are like, how dumb is that!" And to be a bit soap opera-y.... But text vs subtext is a tricky business
"Treating our experience as the default experience." That's the kicker right there. Empathy is crucial. So many times I hear a variation on "I haven't personally experienced X, therefore X is not a serious or pervasive issue." Dare to believe that you are not the main character of the universe. That when people tell you of the injustices and oppression they experience, regardless of whether or not you've personally witnessed it, believe them. Star Trek does its best to present things in that way, and it can be jarring when they goof up, but like you, I still believe in the messages of Star Trek and applaud the work they did and do to call attention to these important issues. That being said, that line from Spock at the end of The Enemy Within is astounding. I talk about this in my review of that episode, but I'm shocked not only that it was included at all (since we see how traumatized Rand was by the experience), but also that Leonard Nimoy, a guy who has proven himself to be a very upstanding and gracious person, didn't raise a stink himself about the line. Not dinging Nimoy on that, I don't think any worse of him because of this, but you'd think out of everyone who could have been given that line, that he would be the one to say, "No, this is not something Spock would say or condone." That very episode he introduced the nerve pinch precisely because whacking somebody with the butt of a phaser isn't something Spock would do, in his opinion, so it wouldn't have been unheard of for him to do that.
I like the "Star Trek can fuck up," so can all of us, sentiment. I hope if and when I do fuck up people will continue to point it out so I can grow. Thanks for all you do, Steve.
While Kira is one of my all-time favorite characters, I have to say that ST: Discovery has so many women who are so much more than just decorative. They're powerful, they have important jobs to do, they have depth and many layers; and they kick ass. Philippa Giorgiou is one of my faves now!
Due to a quirk in television distribution in South Africa, we only got TNG Seasons 1 and 2 in the early 90's and then the Generations movie. Seasons 3 onward only aired to general audiences almost 10 years later. Same thing for the later seasons of DS9 with season 2 being skipped entirely. Only Voyager has a semi consistent airing run from 1996 to the end.
Fun fact: the writer of Code of Honor, Katharyn Powers, also wrote the script for Emancipation for Stargate SG-1, an episode with a similar plot, more or less the same message, and just as much controversy and poor reception.
Beautiful video, excellent lesson. Those little nuggets of bias creep in to us all and we have to fight them actively. At first it takes conscious effort, but like any other talent, devoted practice makes it easier and easier until it's just second nature. The bias doesn't actually go away, though, at least not always, so you do still have to fight it. It'll just be mostly subconscious. For me I discovered I had unjustified preferential treatment towards women. Sort of a small-scale "women are just naturally better at everything" mentality, thankfully kept to a minimum. But still there. So whenever I felt it rear its ugly head, I fought it back. When I felt bad about how such a high percentage of my closest friends were male, I forced myself to think of everything awesome about them that MADE them my friends, to make sure I wasn't punishing them for stupid reasons beyond their control. And they ARE awesome :D But there's also a fascinating little bonus to this that I think people need to hear and consider: There are times I intentionally let the bias stay. When I get a message and I check who it's from, and it's from my best friend (who is female), I get a thrill because it's specifically her, and...I just let that one sit. It wasn't making me think badly of anyone else, it was making me happy to talk to a close friend. The idea is that whenever I have a positive thought based on the bias, I keep it, and whenever I have a negative thought, I fight it. Which tends to amount to "let my sexism make me happier around women, but refuse to let it make me less happy around men". Likewise with how I actually treat them when talking to them or thinking about them. This does of course have to be done VERY carefully. If I give too much sway to women, I may end up trusting someone who doesn't deserve it. I'm already aware of and careful about this in my behavior, and it's fairly well into the second-nature realm at this point, but when talking to others it VERY much needs to be said. Being trusting of or loyal to people who would abuse that can be every bit as dangerous as being suspicious of or hateful towards decent, well-meaning people. Often because the former tends to lead into the latter, in incredibly sneaky ways. Just remember: Keep fighting the bias, day after day. You should judge people based on their actions and motivations, on what they DO, not on what they ARE. If there's a part of yourself you can't change, you shouldn't judge others based on it.
One of the most unfortunate parts of Code of Honor is the fight Lt. Yar has with the wife of the leader of the planet. A rare opportunity to show off Yar's hand to hand combat skills
Code of Honor is an interesting case.. because the writer was trying to criticize the inherent sexism of the planetary society.. but I wonder how much of the blame for the clear 'badness' of the episode can be laid at the feet of the direction, casting, and costume/character design side of the equation. How would the episode change if all the Ligonians were all white? If their costumes were just.. random fashionable clothes. The story bears some strong resemblance to another (admittedly problematic in it's own right) story told by Stargarte SG1.. s01e03 Emancipation. Where Carter is put through the 'you have to dress like a native member of the society' ringer, and ends up getting kidnapped and shoved into a powerplay of similar stakes. In that episode, it's "Mongols".. and still pretty cringe because of it. But I think the problem is, any time you want to lean in on a story about 'a sexist society' the tendency is to lean back on the 'old tropes'.. that tend to be problematic for today's audiences.. not to say that Code of Honor was good at the time.. but it definitely had that 'leftover scripts for Phase II' vibe. Written for a 70's audience perhaps.
When it comes to woman captains one of my favorites will always be the first one, the captain of the Saratoga in Star Trek 4. Not only is she a woman, not only is she also a black woman, but the actor and the movie pull it off almost perfectly. She feels like someone who would be captain. The script has her doing what any good captain would, and best of all, the movie shows her being captain as just a normal routine thing. There's no 'hey, look at this progressive thing we're doing'. It's just a normal captain with a normal bridge crew on a normal Starfleet ship. My only complaint might be the bit pleading "come in please" at the end, as if she might be on the edge of losing her composure. Not sure if they'd have had a male captain say it quite that way, but, hey, it was a huge first step.
The first-season TNG episode Justice sticks with me because I interpreted the moral as, "respect other cultures, but only if those other cultures don't suck."
I was a TNG fan when it first aired and I remember the initial controversy. Apparently, GR made the episode as a commentary against such racist stereotypes and the already fading blacksploitation trend of the 70s and 80s. It was initially supposed to be some rubber forehead aliens, but he wanted it to be more blatant. If I remember and understand correctly, Gene was both sexist and racist and things like CoH and the one where Kirk was possessed by a woman were a product of his being a racist and sexist while fighting both. Both internally and in society as a whole. The result is a facepalming cringe fest where everyone but GR tries to distance themselves from it. 🤦 Kinda like the racist uncle trying to fight racial slurs by using them in normal, non insulting ways. Not even the intent makes it even remotely acceptable, and the whole thing is reinforcing what you're wanting to tear down. "I appreciate the intentions, but you're making it worse. Seriously, just stop."
The one thing Star Trek completely dropped the ball on was queer representation. It's absolutely shocking how long it took for proper representation to appear. Even Enterprise had literally zero, and that ended in 2005. Sitcoms had better representation a decade earlier than that.
Yeah can't think of anything in ENT either. Only that one episode (Cogenitor) that has a non-binary species with a third gender comes to mind. And that was arguably worse than rare previous attempts in the TNG-era at mildly touching any non-hetero/non-binary related subject. It ended with the message "yeah sux to be reduced to a breeding chamber for you, but we need your guys tech and more importantly: it's part of the culture you were born into to not consider you a person, so you gotta live with it - or, well, not. Sorry, we're only in the business of considering individuals and their rights when we tell the Borg how much better we are - oh oopsi, wrong timeframe. Anyhow, how dare you, Tucker, rob those -slave owners- honorable aspiring parents of their chance of a child?"
My personal headcanon for Turnabout Intruder has always been "she's too mentally unbalanced and the psych tests picked up on it." And then, as part of her particular brand of insanity, she called out sexism as the reason she wasn't promoted. I mean, it makes no real sense to me that there would be a woman as #1, if you cannot have a woman as a Captain. However, that is indulging in death of the author, and from what I've read of Gene it is very likely that it was his intention in the original script.
Whilst Kira and Dax are teo of my favourite characters, I always love seeing Grilka being smart, resourseful and tough in a very cut-throat culture, and learning to appreciate the strengths not traditionally appreciated by Klingons.
What's wild, especially Rios case is that it looks like Paramount could have been pressure to leave it be or tried too many stories and didn't wrap them all up in a 13 episode season. Seeing the history of Trek, Rios is the most confusing
Alex, I’ll take “videos I really needed to see today for reasons that go beyond their original intention” for $800. Cheers. I needed that message at the end.
I remember the DS9 episode "Rejoined" when Dax was conflicted over her ex. Kira asked "why can't they just get married again?", with no regard for the fact that they were 2 women. I remember that being SO progressive!
"Rejoined", much like TNG's "The Outcast" had problems for sure, but were both super progressive and ahead of their time. I still rewatch "Rejoined" with fondness
I watched it as a young teenager in the 90s, and I was so wrapped up in the trill taboos that I never even registered that they were both women (or rather I never even registered that there was anything unusual about that)
And I love it for that. It makes the relationship look so natural and straightforwardly wonderful, that it's hard to see why anyone would have a problem with it
Today, conservatives would complain that TNG and DS9 are woke
@@BigNoseDog They complained about it at the time, too. I had the misfortune of being in a church run private school at the time, and my English Teacher used to go on long rants about how immoral TNG was.
Oh that episode. I'm conflicted about that from the first time I saw it at the time to this day. It was kinda bold at the time and I remember it being a big deal, the first same-sex kiss in ST and all. I was excited at the time as a gay teen in an era when that was an exception on TV I didn't even understand yet I needed. At the same time though - as with just about every of the small number of occurences of anything non-hetero or non-binary in the TNG era - they only ever dared to show it as some quirky sci-fi accident of something that is fundamentally hetero at its core (TNG: The Outcast comes to mind). The social norms of the Trill are clearly meant to be an analogy here that worked fine, which makes this episode a standout for that era even besides the kissing on TV. But still, it's so refreshing to see in Disco a show to finally boldly go where others already went for years, but no Trek show has ever gone before: Actually acknowledging that queer love obviously exists.
The assault on Yeoman Rand is even harsher in hindsight when you consider that it happened to Grace Lee Whitney in real life.
Yep! Also, it hasn't ever been officially confirmed who assaulted her. Whitney only stated it was an executive, and not one of the other actors. But, there is a LOT of evidence that it was Roddenberry himself. The assaulter later gave her an "apology gift" of a polished stone, which was something Roddenberry was known to do. Also, the assaulter's girlfriend was stated to be on the show, later married him, and gave him an alibi. This could only be Majel Barret and Roddenberry.
I don't remember much of TOS, but every scene I recall of Rand had her being objectified by somebody in the episode. Evil Kirk attacked her, Charlie X came damn close, in some early episode Kirk complained about having an attractive assistant - I'm sure I'm missing a couple more. It made me wonder if being sexually harassed or assaulted on the regular was in the character's production notes.
Unconscious biases are like walking around with parsley in your teeth.
If someone points it out it’s not because they are trying to insult you by doing so.
You should want to know it’s there so you can fix it
Let's not forget the late great Madge Sinclair, who, as her role as the captain of USS Saratoga in 'the one with the whales', fully retconned the Turnabout Intruder error of women couldn't captain a starship.
One silver lining of Profit and Lace is that Quark's change is handled on a drop-in basis, offscreen. Given Rick Berman's refusal to acknowledge the existence of queer people in Star Trek except as a joke, this was definitely not the intent, but it does nevertheless imply that humanity's utopian future is one where barriers to medical care for trans people are so nonexistent that it can all be handled in the space of an ad break.
Something that makes Quark's played-for-laughs "feminine" emotional outbursts at the end of the episode feel slightly less cringeworthy to me is being a trans person, and knowing a lot of actual trans people. Because when a dose of hormones is missed, mood swings and the like can be the result to the point that my BFF calls it her "trans PMS". I'm sure that such a big biological change so quickly would have some profound and lingering hormonal effects on Quark, let's just not attribute it to misogynist causes!
@@thing_under_the_stairs Something I would point out, and one of the reasons that scene didn't bother me is that, at least in my personal experience, Estrogen makes your emotions MUCH more intense. Like, even years into HRT, my emotions were a lot more powerful than they were before I started. It took time to learn how to deal with the difference, and given that Quark was only a woman for a day or two, I can see him having issues regulating.
@@thing_under_the_stairsIn the same vein, my husband doesn’t produce his own testosterone naturally so he needs HRT to keep his levels up. If he misses it for too long, he becomes pretty emotionally vulnerable, and even cries at the drop of a hat.
I don’t see those as “feminine” qualities, but as a hormonal imbalance issue. So I can easily see Quark having emotional issues as well, especially if he’s suddenly hit up with the Ferengi equivalent of estrogen.
I'm Team Kira Nerys, all the way! I just went to IMDB to confirm I was spelling her name correctly and, oh my... I was reminded of how amazing that cast was. So many great characters portrayed by equally great people.
They knocked it out of the park in their choice of Avery Brooks.
The two saving graces with Profit & Lace are that it was clearly intended as a riff on Tootsie, and that it implies that gender confirmation is a totally reversible outpatient surgery that a general practice doctor can knock out on his lunch break, as if lancing a boil.
Hey, I'll take my progressive bones where I can find them.
Indeed, the point of "Profit & Lace" was to show a sexist man what it's like to be a woman; there's very little question about that. People reading trans messaging into it IMHO are interpreting the episode wrong. It's not just a "different" take on it, but it's deliberately misreading the episode, trying to fault it for something it never intended to be.
You shouldn't order a burger and then complain "this is the worst milkshake I've ever tasted!"
It wasn't even the first TV show to do something of the sort. "Tootsie", as you observed, spends a lot of time there. I also remember a couple episodes of "Quantum Leap" where Sam leapt into a woman's life and had to deal with all the crap women did. "Due South" had a little bit of it once ("Some Like It Red") though IIRC sexism was only a tiny theme. This was almost a stock thing in TV shows in the 80s and 90s when they wanted to show how much men would hate enduring what women have to.
Now, it is totally fair to fault "Profit & Lace" for playing it too much for laughs; it's indulging in sexism even while it's railing against it. That's a valid complaint. But the complaints that it's a slight against the trans community, I don't side with.
... to anyone saying "nuh-uh, all readings of an episode are equally valid", let's just take a look at the opening and closing scenes. The opening scene has Quark hiring a new Dahbo girl but telling her that part of the deal would be sleazy shenanigans of his choosing. Then the episode happens and Quark has to pose as a woman and he gets harassed, and at the end he tells the girl from the beginning that she doesn't have to do any sleazy stuff but just do her job. Could it be any clearer that the point of the episode was for Quark to see how much it stinks to put up with men-folks' predations, and learning to not do that to women any more? It's one thing to wrestle with ambiguity, it's another to pretend the episode wasn't blatantly structured as it was to teach a specific point. If anything can mean anything, then nothing means anything.
@@kingbeauregard I think Quark's series arc was generally moving towards better treatment of women. Initially, he took after his traditionalist father, at least culturally. Through the seasons with his "radical" mother and his diverse staff, Quark clearly embraced some Federation ideas about equality and mutual respect, albeit reluctantly at times. This episode was very "on the nose" but contributed to the overall theme.
@@kingbeauregard Fair to say it has some unintentional negative implications in some ways. But yes, definitely not meant to be "Code of Honor" level screwed up.
@@TheFranchiseCA Neither was "Code of Honor." It was not originally written for the actors to be black, or let alone the "tribal" costuming and sets.
But I agree that, when comparing the results, "Code of Honor" is far more racist than "Profit and Lace" is sexist.
Janeway is (and always been) a role model for me, wildly inconsistent writing (and differing magnitude of character flaws) aside. Taken on the whole, she gives me something to aspire to as a woman, as a working professional in a male-dominated field, as a human in general. She's the captain I'd most like to serve under or at the very least be friends with. More than once, an imagined pep talk from her in my head has helped me through a few mental and emotional slumps.
Big hair Janeway will put a boot 👢 up yer arse she's one of the scariest captains no doubt about it 😮
Can I share my head canon about Janeway? Remember how, in the pilot episode, she sat with the Caretaker for a while just before he died? I like to think he saw some glimpses of the future and told Janeway some of what he saw, to help her avoid trouble. So any time Janeway seems inordinately willing to listen to input from others, just assume she's thinking, "this is one of those incidents the Caretaker warned me about, but I can't possibly tell anyone that we shouldn't visit that comet because a banjo-playing alien said not to."
The big one ... ? The Caretaker said to Janeway, "Lieutenant Kim will never make it home alive. Ensign Kim may, but Lieutenant Kim will not." And that's why she never promoted him.
I admit, this is a BIG reach as head canon goes. But it makes the series play SO much smoother.
I feel like I wrote this. I love Janeway. I even love her when they call her Insaneway. She's just a badass they can't handle, and she doesn't care if you can't handle it, you better just hold onto your butts. We're taking this ship into the deadly anomaly because you've made me miss my coffee break, and we're comin' out the other side stronger!
@@kingbeauregard ooooh I effing love that. Now it's part of my head canon too!
@@kingbeauregardI dig it.
The ICE plot in PIcard S2 was absolutely underused. But the funny thing is that just by showing the reality of Ice on the USA-Mexico border got the anti-immigration mob so riled up.
I love captain Janeway, my beef is with her writers.
Kinda sums up my relationship to all of Voyager: love the concept, love the potential it had, even enjoyed watching it multiple times, yet - I strongly agree with Steve on that - it always makes me sad how much of its potential has been wasted. Same with Janeway really.
I will at least say in Profit and Lace's defense that it's actually unfathomably based that the Federation offers free, out-patient gender confirmation procedures no questions asked. That one part of Profit and Lace was actually really cool
Another day, another Shives video that once again reaffirms how much of a role model he is.
You said favourite female character but im gonna have to go with the whole of DS9 for that, so many great female characters like Kira, Jadzia, Ezri, Ishka, Kai Winn, Grilka, Kasidy etc, even a more traditional female character like Leeta is written well. Its such a breath of fresh air from TNG’s limited portrayal of its female characters (mainly troi).
EDIT: i cant believe i forgot Kasidy Yates
Kai opaka>Kai Winn
As someone who, for a long time, had a childhood dream of becoming an archaeologist, I think it’s really cool that you can trace the history of American progressivism through 6 decades of a silly sci-fi show.
Plus, it gives me hope that future generations will have come so far that they can look back on our current trek and cringe at our own progressive blind spots and shortcomings.
To paraphrase Proudhon, we will have done well if we are condemned as reactionaries by future generations.
I love that as well, although it does make TOS difficult for me to watch at times.
I straight up never saw the original episode and only experienced it via your review recently. When my sister started showing me TNG, she was literally like "Yeah, we're skipping this one. You're welcome." and so I've never seen it lol
Your sister was determined to save you from the suck, there!
Star Trek was pitched by Gene Roddenberry as Wagon Train to the Stars. At it's heart, Star Trek is a western set in space.
Star Trek was started in the 1960s, and a lot of the societal mores and morals bleed through on the screen. It's a 1960s man (Kirk/Shatner) reacting to situations with the norms of 1960s people. It's not always good - Roddenberry actually auditioned women and cast them based on their physical attributes. In some ways, Roddenberry reminds me of the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Roddenberry was alleged to have an affair with Nichelle Nicolas, and the actress who played Janice Rand , Grace Lee Whitney, was allegedly assaulted by a producer on the show. There is a history of women who acted or worked behind the scenes on Trek were second class citizens, and that's a shame. Even in the 1960s sexual assault was bad.
I believe that ST in all it's incarnations has tried to do the best, but has also often fallen short.
Give Star Trek credit for trying to be it's best, but also acknowledge the failures. True knowledge only comes from experience, and when we f*$k it up, we have to acknowledge the error, promise to change the action and attitude, and go forth and make new mistakes.
Nobody is perfect. However, that doesn't mean we should not try to be better.
Great video. I would also say though, even if someone is accusing you or attacking you in bad faith, if they make a valid point concerning some unconscious bias you have then you can still hear that and improve. Just because someone is an asshole, it doesn't always make them wrong.
It does make it harder to hear, though. As someone who was bullied a lot as a kid, I find it hard to hear assholes. It took me a long time to stand up to them and to reject their accusations, words and actions as unworthy of “taking on.” I was constantly called on to “be understanding” and to “be the bigger person.” What you are suggesting isn’t wrong, but it does come perilously close to asking the traumatized person to be ok with their own traumatization “for the greater good.” I think the best way to deliver a good point is to not be an asshole about it … and to not to be an asshole in general. If I can hear that point without it damaging me or compromising my mental health, then yeah, great. But I should in no way be under an obligation to do so.
Pretty much all of S1 of TNG sucked. If they had kept the Lizard People concept (or just had different costumes with white or diverse extras) for the Ligonians, "Code of Honor" would be remembered as just one of the bad S1 episodes. I can imagine the producers saying "lizard people prosthetics are too expensive, let's just go with human-looking aliens," but the it was the director's choice of casting an all AA cast for the Ligonians that made this the worst ST episode of all time. (And the series finale of _Enterprise_ tried to beat it in badness, but failed.)
Riker's guilt-trip, holoprogram episode wasn't the series finale of "Enterprise." It was a leftover fantasy episode of TNG, using a once-again malfunctioning holodeck. The program was flawed and Trip certainly didn't die.
La' ann (Christina Chong) is such a badass!! Love her!
Her character is so well written! She's competent and confident in her abilities, but we're allowed to see her fears and insecurities, too. We get to see her struggle to deal with her trauma in a way that doesn't demean or belittle her.
I have always loved Star Trek. And when I was old enough to see how it showed that all of us are so alike and can live together in harmony as long as we value each other's differences, it became my favorite science fiction franchise ever made.
I just started a rewatch of TOS (partially due to your channel putting me in a Trek mood) and I got to "The Enemy Within" and yeeeeeeeah...I'd forgotten how really uncomfortable the scenes with Rand were and how really not good that whole situation was handled. A shame because the resolution, with Evil Kirk not "defeated" by violence but rather by Good Kirk appealing to him was surprisingly well written and well done. Still a pretty good episode but definitely could have been better.
One character I would really like to see again is Gillian Tsylor. Not only did she see through Kirk, then eventually help him out; she proved to be strong and committed to her cause of finding a better place for the whales to live.
Its subtle but I like the ending of the movie, she realized what type of person Kirk was and wasn't expecting a relationship with him. She clearly started building a life of her own.
Dr. Taylor does NOT get enough credit. This woman dropped everything and *traveled through time* because she knew there wasn't anyone else who could make sure the transplanted whales would be looked after as well as she could. Granted, she could see that folks in the future seemed to be good people--hell, they even put the mission on hold to save one of their own--and technology was pretty advanced and all that, but she was still taking a HUGE leap (pun intended) of faith. And I love her cheeky little "No, I'll find *you*." (-:
If you address things like sensitive social issues or marginalized groups it is easy, so very easy to get things wrong. The lesson is that it is often better to platform discriminated people than to try to speak for them. But it would be worse, far worse when you would not dare to discuss such things at all.
Better to try and sometimes fail than never to try at all.
I was expecting to jump in to defend "Profit and Lace" but you summarized the nuance really well. What I think you got wrong was Rios and Picard S02-Rios didn't stay _in spite_ of the racist immigration policies but *_because_* of them-since his introduction he was portrayed as a hero looking for a just cause. In 21st century Earth, he found one (timeline contamination be darned).
That was my take on Rios as well. He was cool, I would have loved to see more stories with him.
I watched Profit and Lace for the first time a few months back when I finally sat down and watched all of DS9, and I was amazed at just how *not* transphobic the final product was. Like, there are definitely some cringy bits, but it could have been SO much worse.
That hadn't occurred to me. Thank you for pointing that out.
@@themollyjay7974 Yeah Profit & Lace isn't transphobic, but it's a bit reductive about the gender binary. It's a bit simplistic in terms of what a woman is like and what a man is like, and Quark is written to be a bit simplistic in terms of his sexism... though he was usually fairly superficial before so it's not a huge stretch.
Of course, the overall message of the episode is that sexism is bad, so it's more of a details and nuance thing.
Steve, I always (even as a kid) finished Kirk's "If Only..." line with "... she wasn't a freaking nut job." Nothing to do with her gender, she just didn't have all the marbles needed to be a captain. Of course you could say the same about Ron Tracy, or Merrick or any of the other Captain's that weren't Kirk.
That's the way I see it, all the way back to 1968 when I watched the original broadcast of the episode. Janice wasn't cut out to be a Starfleet officer. Obviously, she had issues....
I was up early this morning and decided to watch some of your older videos while doing my chores, thanks for dropping a new one for me to watch
What we can learn if Star Trek is capable of taking accountability and recognizing its flaws and become a better version of its self and we can that too what a beautiful to say it Steve
10 years ago I was posting on Facebook that I didn't get why trans people cared if we called them by their preferred pronouns or not and today I use their preferred (I know a few trans people) without giving it a second thought. Life is a journey.
I want to love people bitching about modern Star Trek being woke, but then I realise those are the same people who back in the day would have flipped their fucking shit over Uhura kissing Kirk.
They did complain, Nichelle Nichols talked about how people wrote in letters saying how they didn't mind having a black woman on the show but to have the kiss between her and Kirk "crossed the line".
@@--Animal-- Despite Shatner putting way more effort into showing he wasn't enjoying it than necessary...
@@caihah.1404To be fair, I believe it's the right choice to show that Kirk is resisting and not enjoying being forced to kiss his coworker against her will.
Star Trek has always been “woke.” It’s built into the concept.
The episode in TNG where we saw the debut of Trill. Beverly tells Odan (woman Trill) humanity is not ready for same sex relationship
I really liked Odan (both of them). I think it would have been better if Beverly had told Odan that she - Beverly - was not interested in a same-sex relationship.
Captain Garret is the one i pick, she knows what's going to happen and does it anyway for the sake of the future.
Captain Rachel Garret in command of the Enterprise NCC-1701C was tough as nails, brave, confident, and determined to do the right thing, even though it essentially guaranteed her death and the destruction of her ship. She was a model Starfleet officer.
statistics about rape actually show that victims are more likely to be too afraid to report it then to lie about it, and i can't blame them.....as a man, i can only imagine how terrifying it is to be a victim of that crime
I can't say how many of my friends or family members have been victims of SA, but I can tell you how many have reported it: exactly 0. Women know that they can't trust the police to actually investigate or even believe them without investigating their lives in humiliating detail, minimising their trauma, and outright disbelieving them. Why anyone would make a false accusation and put themselves through that hell is beyond me.
Steve this was one of the best Ted Talks ive seen in recent memory alot of difficult subject matter covered you really do spoil us overhere big Hair janeways gonna fart on your toothbrush if you keep talking smack about her spinoff she does lean towards the extreme thats why she gets shit done silver medal goes to Obrains wife who can be extremely compelling if its her episode 😮
When boys or men are sexually, abused/assaulted/raped, too many others still have a disbelieving approach when a victim relays that experience. The emotional fallout doesn't care what identity, socio-economic status, or anything else about that makes you who you are. People who are victimized must cope with significant trauma that is not easily worked through.
I feel like claiming being a man makes you safe from rape misses part of the lessons about rape we keep trying to teach in media and stuff.
I like to think that the writer of the episode thought that they were showcasing a culture, or something like that.
I tend to err on the side of incompetence versus willful evil.
That doesn't make the product any better, of course.
The director of Code of Honor was the reason why it came off as racist. The original script had the Ligonians as Japanese-inspired reptilians.
Apparently the script originally had them as lizard people, and thus lacked the unfortunate implications of the episode as filmed.
@@wesleystreet sounds like someone wanted to save money on prosthetic foreheads and makeup.
@@wesleystreetThey would have looked way better with scales and tails!
Hanlon’s Razor: never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I liked original Philippa Georgiou, the Malaysian captain of the the USS Shenzhou, first human to study at the Laikan Military academy on Andoria. I would have wanted to see more of her.
She had to die so that the main character (Mary Sue) could more easily surpass her. It's a classic trope to kill off the mentor to let the mantee grow and surpass the former mentor, but many did it better, Gurren Lagann for example.
As much as I appreciate the stories Discovery did decide to tell, I’m a little bit sad we didn’t get the Shenzhou series the trailer and the first part of the pilot offered as a departure point.
Retrospect is absolutely horrible and cathartic to hear you call it out. Profit and Lace, which you gave rightly less of a beating, Quark is forced to live the stereotype of "a women" just like women are forced to live that stereotype. He is also forced to endure the piggishness of men. This was my mom's take, who grew up experiencing things like "girls can't do math, therefore you are just stupid at math", and for her it was fun to see the tables turned in this case.
Having seven of nine wearing the tightest outfit imaginable was clearly just objectifying her for the whole series. 30 years after TOS, you would have thought that they wouldn't resort to that anymore, but they did.
I remember when Code of Honor first aired. Even as a young kid in the 80s i was like, "huh. This seems wrong." It's almost painful to see now. I'm glad they learned.
I really liked Ro Laren (probably didn't spell that right) from TNG. She didn't get too many episodes, but i remember liking her.
Ensign Ro was a cool character that didn't have enough screen time.
Ensign Ro was excellent - and of course was the prototype for Major Kira. (istr they wanted Ro to be the Bajoran character in DS9 but the actor wasn't available so they wrote Kira instead)
The writer of Code of Honor also wrote Stargate SG-1 season 1 episode Emancipation.
What's really odd about 'Code of Honor' is that it's fundamentally a casting choice that leads to the episode looking racist. If the Ligonians had been lizard people (which was apparently what the original script called for!), or white people with rubber foreheads, the problem would not have arisen. All of which raises the question of exactly who thought it a good idea to have them all Black people!
Not having them all black, and better costume design choices (WHY are they dressed like Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves? WHY?) would have gone a long way. I feel like the episode would still be considered mid at best but at least it wouldn't be Franchise Worst prize winning levels of bad and uncomfortable.
I blame Maurice Hurley. Granted that's a rather safe thing to do, he was responsible for much of early TNG shittyness.
This is representative of a lot of classic sci fi. Trying to set up a quick "exotic" culture by cloning a classic Earth stereotype is lazy writing and copies the racism of the portrayals.
I think the abducting Tasha point would have been problematic regardless, given scifi's long and storied history of monsters and aliens being stand-ins for "undesirable ethnicities." The original _King Kong_ comes to mind as about as subtle as, well, a giant gorilla.
@@Canoby Was it Hurley, or was it Roddenberry? I'd love to hear more about what other bad decisions Hurley made just to expand my knowledge.
Season 1 is fascinating to me with simply how horrible many of the episodes were, yet I kept watching and made it through still a fan. In addition to Code of Honor, which I absolutely can't watch in reruns, there's Justice, Too Short a Season, and When the Bough Breaks -- all so bad that I can't even watch them to make fun of them.
Excellent video. I was born in 1945 and thus grew up in the era of Original Trek. I was in college during the Civil Rights era of the 60's and the Gay Liberation era of the 1970's and 80's. I will say that while I never had any sympathy for segregation or the racist attitude toward non-white people in principle, most of the people around me growing up were white. I was also a Lesbian in a time when LGBTQ issues were just beginning to have some consideration in popular culture in the US ( remember there was a strong gay rights movement in Europe in the 1920's, which I researched. ) But it was Trek and the character of Spock who first made me aware of racism on an emotional level. I think that was an important thing for many of us at that time.
"We need a good welcome gift for the Ligonians. What should we offer from our culture?"
"Well they are black so why not something from Africa?"
But they made a point of not doing that, so they seem to have been aware of the issue.
😂 I’m surprised they didn’t greet them with “what up dawg *crossed arms*”
The way I cringed through that episode!!
The gift was something from Chinese history.
I have a tip on lighting: I think the addition of one single light would greatly enhance the quality. You need a "hair light" or a "rim light". A light above you, and off to the side. Look at the image of the man with his arms wide open at 3:40, he has a hair/rim light that's purple, TNG was really well lit for its time, and they made prolific use of hair/rim lights throughout the 7 seasons.
In TV production we called them key and fill lights.
Steve made some great points again. All can say in Star Trek's defense is when you have a long franchise with so many different writers not all of thier views are going to be the same.
In the case of Maurice Hurley and Rick Berman, going by statements from various actresses, at least one bias wasn't exactly unconscious and they weren't particularly striving to do better.
The part about ICE in Picard Season 2. As a non-American, the assumption is that it's something made up to enforce the "Dystopian future" phase of the world, similar to the episode where Sisco and Bashir are locked in the sanctuary in that DS9 episode.
When somebody tells me it's actually based on reality, it makes me question how America can consider itself part of the Civilised world.
The worst part is that this isn't the only thing that makes me question it. The predatory American healthcare system, almost no time off from work, and the fact that an employer barely has to pay waiters peanuts because tips are a thing. They all make me question how America can consider itself civilised.
Pro-Tip from an American: a lot of us don't think this country is very civilized and are trying to change it for the better, but these past 8 years or so really feel like trying to hammer a nail with a ripe orange.
A lot of the examples you gave can be interpreted as cautionary tales about 'trying to be open-minded' when one still has a lot of 'closed-minded' traits.
I may not love voyager but i love Janeway. She is incredibly resolute and gets shit done. Second favourite captain by far.
Good video Steve! I appreciate you addressing Turnabout Intruder as well. Hard to pick a favorite female ST character - I'm partial to both Jadzia Dax and Major Kira. Nana Visitor has a book coming out this fall: Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman's Trek.
12:00 I feel this is the big weakness of Disco, too: in their attempt to represent more people's struggles and oppression, it often veers into trauma porn rather than storytelling. Good intentions, but pretty hard to watch.
the only good thing about turnabout Intruder is it connects my birthday to Star Trek
You completely glossed over a MAJOR factor: The sheer amount of drugs the writers, directors, and producers were on. The only explanation for Code of Honor is that everyone was too stoned to notice.
It has been quite a trudge for me to cope with my implicit and explicit biases. I have no pride in any of them (more like deep embarrassment). I sometimes get disheartened at how deeply flawed I am all the while finding what appears to be a never-ending parade of faults I had not previously been aware of. In some ways, I can easily relate to being a clumsy oaf the way Star Trek has been at times. Other times, I take comfort in getting things right.
Dealing with my shortcomings is not easy. One way I was spared some of these stereotypes is that I had never experienced women in my life as portrayed by insulting caricatures. I could not watch something stupid about women and find it echoed in my life, anywhere. One small transient, easy step, and many more of picking myself up after faceplanting on the concrete for the twelve billionth time. Ugh. Humanity is not always pretty.
When you were discussing Profit and Lace, I really wish you had mentioned the (most likely accidental) transphobic message it holds as well. We've never seen an actual trans person in Trek at this point (I'm sorry--Jadzia is an icon and I even named myself after her when I came out as trans myself, but her iconic transness seems to be a happy accident and not a deliberate allegory so she doesn't count). So, when Quark is turned into a woman in order to trick a man into doing something that furthers Quark's own agenda, that's a bad look as well, especially now in 2024, where trans people have to deal with the constant threat of "bathroom bills" and all kinds of accusations of duplicity. You were spot on about the sexism, Steve, but man, the entire narrative of the episode is also implicitly transphobic.
One of the harder lessons I have had to learn in the past few years is this: in the vast majority of circumstances, the intended message matters less than how that message is received.
Also the queer main cast of Disco is all played by actually queer actors which is a major win
I was a 13 y.o. "liberated" girl in 1968 when I watched "Turnabout Intruder." I considered Janice Lester to be nuts. I never considered that women couldn't be captains of starships. She was obsessed, jealous, and determined to punish Kirk for dumping her. The reason she couldn't become an officer in Starfleet is because she flunked the tests! When Kirk does say something about women not becoming captains, I figured he was just humoring her. That's the way I saw it back then, anyway.
Steve, just because Star Trek has always been a progressive franchise doesn't mean the people who run it were all progressive. Roddenberry himself had a history of not being kind to feminism as shown when one of the first episodes he wrote for the original series was "Mudd's Women" and the episode before this "The Naked Now" reduced all the female characters to being relentlessly horny.
Not to mention that I’m fairly sure Roddenberry wanted 3-breasted women in Star Trek, and famously said that bras don’t exist in space.
@@tgs7515i remember Lucas being the one credited for the "no bras" in Space via Carrie Fischer
I love how casually, yet fiercely, your discussion of any given topic is politically grounded. Most creators who would talk about the kinds of topics you do wouldn't go anywhere near politics for fear of losing half their audience. Much respect.
Thank you for mentioning Jamake Highwater.
Another great video, Steve.
You speak a lot of sense. ALL of us have some kind of unconscious bias. Even those of us who would regard ourselves as "woke", anti-racist and LGBTQI-allies will have some kind of bias. We can't un-learn a *lifetime* of the drip-drip, subtle (and not subtle) effect of what we have seen, heard and read on television, MSM, from our family, schooling and if we have a religion.
We all have to *acknowledge* that we have this unconscious bias, be aware of it and actively *think* before we act or make an assumption about someone based on the colour or their skin, their name, their gender or their sexuality. This extends to other things, such as their hair, if they have tattooes, how they are dressed, etc etc.
It's easy to spot the racist idiot in the KKK outfit, or the right-wing rally. It's the subtle workplace and society inequalities, the racist police and the assumptions and biases. The death by a thousand cuts.
Even in the 80's as a young kid, I knew Code of Honor was a racist af. I later came to refer to it as the "black episode"....there are so many 50s stereotypes, heck even some vaudevillian ones. Its just so bad.
LeVar Burton is one of the nicest people on this earth and he perfectly summed up this episode, and the entire first season: “Just a big piece of sh*t!” Except for “Conspiracy”, it’s hard to argue with that statement.
There's some material in beta canon and fan productions that retroactively suggests the implication in "Turnabout Intruder" that women can't be assigned as starship captains was in deference to the Tellarites... as apparently some of them found the idea of female captains unacceptable. However, it's suggested that this is primarily in reference to top-line first-rate heavy cruisers, such as Constitution class vessels... smaller support vessels might still have had female commanding officers even in the TOS era... and by a few decades later, in the late 23rd century, things had apparently changed enough in Tellarite society that this was no longer objectionable.
Or one could argue that Dr Lester is making excuses because she didn't pass the tests.
Thanks for this. It’s so encouraging to hear someone speak out for both progressive values and graciousness towards people (aka all of us) who are still working on perfecting those principles within ourselves.
Very articulate analysis and a powerful, uplifting message. Thanks for this!
I really enjoy most of your videos; but the message you present in this episode is spot on! You’re right, despite our best efforts & intentions, we all make mistakes or missteps sometimes. Admitting those and making an effort to do better is what is most important.
A lesson that can be taken from this episode (and excellent review) is that the best of us or in this case a tv show can get it wrong sometimes badly. However given the opportunity redemption can achieved
In the "What We Left Behind" documentary about DS9, Ira Steven Behr was reflective about the progressive topics that they tackled on the show. He thought they were pretty good, for their time, about race, gender and inequality issues, but felt like they could have done better on LGBTQ+ issues. His main issue was implied to be that they could only get away with women kissing each other on the show, but for men the best they could do was imply queer relationships.
I understand that, but it was the 90s, and mainstream TV in the 90s... well, Friends was the biggest show of the era and was far from great on that front.
I felt inspired by Janeway when I was a kid. Even considering some of the inconsistencies in her character and some things that she does that are honestly mistakes, she still stands out to me as an example of a strong, competent woman.
I always considered Janice Rand's comment about women not being allowed to be captains the rantings of a lunatic and Kirk's lack of pushback just being him not wanting to argue with an irrational person.
So well said, Steve. I do my best every day to get away from the upbringing I had (which wasn't a *bad* one, per see - but I was the product of a pretty traditional Irish-descended Australian Catholic, working class life; all-boys school, stay-at-home mother, etc. etc.), and I sometimes horrify myself at the occasional thought that pops into my head.
Fortunately, too, I have a daughter who is so smart, so open-minded, and so thoughtful that she puts me to shame - and she keeps me in line. Sometimes I'll say something without thinking, and she will pull me up: "Dad? Think that through for a minute."
Avoiding the products of unconscious biases isn't a one-time deal. You don't just decide "I'm going to be progressive." It is a work in progress, and requires vigilance and the careful examination of one's own thoughts and behaviours.
God even as a kid not aware of racism Code of Honor felt wrong.
One episode that I always thought was kind of strange in a way that fits today's topic was in Voyager's "Future's End." For some reason, the episode had an appearance from a white-supremacist militia group, and then they're never mentioned again. It's almost like the writers were saying, "oh, by the way, these people exist," but then didn't really say anything else about them.
10:06 i felt that the "emotional woman" part was still played as a joke. Like. Its so over the top that i think the point was to say "this is what people think women are like, how dumb is that!" And to be a bit soap opera-y.... But text vs subtext is a tricky business
"Treating our experience as the default experience." That's the kicker right there. Empathy is crucial. So many times I hear a variation on "I haven't personally experienced X, therefore X is not a serious or pervasive issue." Dare to believe that you are not the main character of the universe. That when people tell you of the injustices and oppression they experience, regardless of whether or not you've personally witnessed it, believe them. Star Trek does its best to present things in that way, and it can be jarring when they goof up, but like you, I still believe in the messages of Star Trek and applaud the work they did and do to call attention to these important issues.
That being said, that line from Spock at the end of The Enemy Within is astounding. I talk about this in my review of that episode, but I'm shocked not only that it was included at all (since we see how traumatized Rand was by the experience), but also that Leonard Nimoy, a guy who has proven himself to be a very upstanding and gracious person, didn't raise a stink himself about the line. Not dinging Nimoy on that, I don't think any worse of him because of this, but you'd think out of everyone who could have been given that line, that he would be the one to say, "No, this is not something Spock would say or condone." That very episode he introduced the nerve pinch precisely because whacking somebody with the butt of a phaser isn't something Spock would do, in his opinion, so it wouldn't have been unheard of for him to do that.
I gotta say I’m really digging this background and setup !
I like the "Star Trek can fuck up," so can all of us, sentiment. I hope if and when I do fuck up people will continue to point it out so I can grow. Thanks for all you do, Steve.
Fantastic follow up to the Code of Honor review, great stand alone video too
While Kira is one of my all-time favorite characters, I have to say that ST: Discovery has so many women who are so much more than just decorative. They're powerful, they have important jobs to do, they have depth and many layers; and they kick ass. Philippa Giorgiou is one of my faves now!
I love your content
Due to a quirk in television distribution in South Africa, we only got TNG Seasons 1 and 2 in the early 90's and then the Generations movie. Seasons 3 onward only aired to general audiences almost 10 years later. Same thing for the later seasons of DS9 with season 2 being skipped entirely. Only Voyager has a semi consistent airing run from 1996 to the end.
So you all thought that TNG was mediocre until the 00's? That's so sad!
Wow. Glorious episode. Thanks🎉
Fun fact: the writer of Code of Honor, Katharyn Powers, also wrote the script for Emancipation for Stargate SG-1, an episode with a similar plot, more or less the same message, and just as much controversy and poor reception.
Beautiful video, excellent lesson. Those little nuggets of bias creep in to us all and we have to fight them actively. At first it takes conscious effort, but like any other talent, devoted practice makes it easier and easier until it's just second nature. The bias doesn't actually go away, though, at least not always, so you do still have to fight it. It'll just be mostly subconscious.
For me I discovered I had unjustified preferential treatment towards women. Sort of a small-scale "women are just naturally better at everything" mentality, thankfully kept to a minimum. But still there. So whenever I felt it rear its ugly head, I fought it back. When I felt bad about how such a high percentage of my closest friends were male, I forced myself to think of everything awesome about them that MADE them my friends, to make sure I wasn't punishing them for stupid reasons beyond their control. And they ARE awesome :D
But there's also a fascinating little bonus to this that I think people need to hear and consider: There are times I intentionally let the bias stay. When I get a message and I check who it's from, and it's from my best friend (who is female), I get a thrill because it's specifically her, and...I just let that one sit. It wasn't making me think badly of anyone else, it was making me happy to talk to a close friend.
The idea is that whenever I have a positive thought based on the bias, I keep it, and whenever I have a negative thought, I fight it. Which tends to amount to "let my sexism make me happier around women, but refuse to let it make me less happy around men". Likewise with how I actually treat them when talking to them or thinking about them.
This does of course have to be done VERY carefully. If I give too much sway to women, I may end up trusting someone who doesn't deserve it. I'm already aware of and careful about this in my behavior, and it's fairly well into the second-nature realm at this point, but when talking to others it VERY much needs to be said. Being trusting of or loyal to people who would abuse that can be every bit as dangerous as being suspicious of or hateful towards decent, well-meaning people. Often because the former tends to lead into the latter, in incredibly sneaky ways.
Just remember: Keep fighting the bias, day after day. You should judge people based on their actions and motivations, on what they DO, not on what they ARE. If there's a part of yourself you can't change, you shouldn't judge others based on it.
One of the most unfortunate parts of Code of Honor is the fight Lt. Yar has with the wife of the leader of the planet. A rare opportunity to show off Yar's hand to hand combat skills
2:38 - Those 'tiny blinking lights' are referred to in Nerd Culture as "BLINKENLIGHTS":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights
Personally, I prefer the tiny blinking lights. Nothing beats a good blinking light.For me, that's what carried Enterprise (2001).
Code of Honor is an interesting case.. because the writer was trying to criticize the inherent sexism of the planetary society.. but I wonder how much of the blame for the clear 'badness' of the episode can be laid at the feet of the direction, casting, and costume/character design side of the equation. How would the episode change if all the Ligonians were all white? If their costumes were just.. random fashionable clothes.
The story bears some strong resemblance to another (admittedly problematic in it's own right) story told by Stargarte SG1.. s01e03 Emancipation. Where Carter is put through the 'you have to dress like a native member of the society' ringer, and ends up getting kidnapped and shoved into a powerplay of similar stakes. In that episode, it's "Mongols".. and still pretty cringe because of it.
But I think the problem is, any time you want to lean in on a story about 'a sexist society' the tendency is to lean back on the 'old tropes'.. that tend to be problematic for today's audiences.. not to say that Code of Honor was good at the time.. but it definitely had that 'leftover scripts for Phase II' vibe. Written for a 70's audience perhaps.
The same writer wrote both of those episodes.
@@marykateharmon Holy crap, you're right!
When it comes to woman captains one of my favorites will always be the first one, the captain of the Saratoga in Star Trek 4. Not only is she a woman, not only is she also a black woman, but the actor and the movie pull it off almost perfectly. She feels like someone who would be captain. The script has her doing what any good captain would, and best of all, the movie shows her being captain as just a normal routine thing. There's no 'hey, look at this progressive thing we're doing'. It's just a normal captain with a normal bridge crew on a normal Starfleet ship. My only complaint might be the bit pleading "come in please" at the end, as if she might be on the edge of losing her composure. Not sure if they'd have had a male captain say it quite that way, but, hey, it was a huge first step.
May we all live long and prosper
And help folk who aren’t prospering live long lives
That second part should be canon.
It's being reported Rachel Garrett, will be appearing in Section 31. Yesterday's Enterprise, is definitely my favorite single episode.
The first-season TNG episode Justice sticks with me because I interpreted the moral as, "respect other cultures, but only if those other cultures don't suck."
I was a TNG fan when it first aired and I remember the initial controversy. Apparently, GR made the episode as a commentary against such racist stereotypes and the already fading blacksploitation trend of the 70s and 80s. It was initially supposed to be some rubber forehead aliens, but he wanted it to be more blatant. If I remember and understand correctly, Gene was both sexist and racist and things like CoH and the one where Kirk was possessed by a woman were a product of his being a racist and sexist while fighting both. Both internally and in society as a whole. The result is a facepalming cringe fest where everyone but GR tries to distance themselves from it. 🤦
Kinda like the racist uncle trying to fight racial slurs by using them in normal, non insulting ways. Not even the intent makes it even remotely acceptable, and the whole thing is reinforcing what you're wanting to tear down. "I appreciate the intentions, but you're making it worse. Seriously, just stop."
The one thing Star Trek completely dropped the ball on was queer representation. It's absolutely shocking how long it took for proper representation to appear. Even Enterprise had literally zero, and that ended in 2005. Sitcoms had better representation a decade earlier than that.
Yeah can't think of anything in ENT either. Only that one episode (Cogenitor) that has a non-binary species with a third gender comes to mind. And that was arguably worse than rare previous attempts in the TNG-era at mildly touching any non-hetero/non-binary related subject. It ended with the message "yeah sux to be reduced to a breeding chamber for you, but we need your guys tech and more importantly: it's part of the culture you were born into to not consider you a person, so you gotta live with it - or, well, not. Sorry, we're only in the business of considering individuals and their rights when we tell the Borg how much better we are - oh oopsi, wrong timeframe. Anyhow, how dare you, Tucker, rob those -slave owners- honorable aspiring parents of their chance of a child?"
My personal headcanon for Turnabout Intruder has always been "she's too mentally unbalanced and the psych tests picked up on it."
And then, as part of her particular brand of insanity, she called out sexism as the reason she wasn't promoted.
I mean, it makes no real sense to me that there would be a woman as #1, if you cannot have a woman as a Captain.
However, that is indulging in death of the author, and from what I've read of Gene it is very likely that it was his intention in the original script.
I've looked at this episode as a case of examine the source and draw your own conclusions.
Whilst Kira and Dax are teo of my favourite characters, I always love seeing Grilka being smart, resourseful and tough in a very cut-throat culture, and learning to appreciate the strengths not traditionally appreciated by Klingons.
What's wild, especially Rios case is that it looks like Paramount could have been pressure to leave it be or tried too many stories and didn't wrap them all up in a 13 episode season.
Seeing the history of Trek, Rios is the most confusing
Alex, I’ll take “videos I really needed to see today for reasons that go beyond their original intention” for $800.
Cheers.
I needed that message at the end.