Holy hell, the miniskirts. I know it was progressive for its time, women’s lib, etc. But: Female officers bending over console, butt swell hanging out. Almost every episode, over sexualized women needlessly emotional, constantly falling into male arms. Barely clothed, wisps of fabric. Spock saying that Kirk’s alter ego trying to rape his female officer made him interesting.
I’m at episode 14, 1st season. Is the rest of the series like this?
That said, there’s a hard, pure science to it I haven’t seen in later star treks. Can see how people then would find it fascinating. Also gets deep, in a weighty, high drama way.
Miniskirts were empowering for women in the 60s. It showed they didn’t have to be demure and prudish and have sex for the first time with their husband on their wedding night. This is 1950s clothing for women:
Miniskirts said “I am a sexual being. I am allowed to enjoy myself without a husband.”
Yes, they also had the effect of letting men ogle them, but it was overall meant to be empowering.
The pearl clutching with younger folks today, good lord. “My heavens! Those poor women were sexualized!” Yeah, they choose to be sexy as a middle finger to gender roles at the time. Ya know, the exact opposite of conservative Arab culture. “Oh no! Society is forcing them to wear too many clothes!” LOL, FFS y’all, get a grip.
And yes, you nailed it. That sort of attire was verboten in the 50s, simply wasn’t done. Woman started breaking free in the 60s and the miniskirt is a solid example of that. Next people will be wringing their hands over bikinis. Same thing.
SOURCE: My mom was one of those women.
I can honestly see why someone who grew up in an era when women can get away with wearing virtually anything they want but also an era where men viewing women as pieces of meat are rightfully frowned upon would have trouble understanding the Sexual Revolution and its effects on women’s clothing.
Of course, in the context of the show, the miniskirts are more perceived as forced sexuality, since they are the general outfit required of female Federation members. So the idea of choice and self-actualization isn’t really that obvious to see in the setting the show gives off.
To be fair, this was one of the reasons they had male extras wear skirts in TNG. Not TOS, but in I believe the very first episode of TNG we see male extras in skirts.
Those are skants. That’s what the fans call them.
If we saw there were more options, this would not be a concern. But with the 2 more prominent characters they definitely wanted to sex up the show, so there was no chance they would choose to let them have a choice.
Been reading articles on it, while working thru 1st season. You are spot on. The oversexualizing of TOS women is cringe worthy in retrospect. But at the time, Hayes code, puritan morality: women told they can be sexual, was groundbreaking, revolutionary back then. I was born in the 70s, much has changed since then.
The pearl clutching
This is a good thing. If society is progressing, then every generation should look back and be kinda horrified. Yes it’s because they don’t understand the context, but they will if we teach them.
If they weren’t clutching their pearls to I’d be worried that nothing was changing for the better. If you think the past is great, you’re in a decline.
While you aren’t wrong, it is worth mentioning that miniskirts weren’t just about sexual empowerment. In the context of Star Trek and from an overall societal perspective, yes, but plenty of women and girls of all ages just wore them, because it was a massive trend that swept across the globe - and because they looked good. In my mother’s case, it was primary school peer pressure that motivated her to beg her parents for such a skirt. Same as with flattering and revealing fashion in the coming decades, including today.
So bound to their gender roles that one lady is wearing dishwashing gloves as a fashion statement.
Always funny when you talk to someone that has a more old school feminist attitude and they start going about women dressing sexy as a way to please men and they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for that… Just ask “Are your saying that these women are unable to choose for themselves what they want to wear? Because that sounds very reductive to me…”
In TNG they retconned the miniskirt as a unisex uniform, the skant. It got a fun callout in the episode of Lower Decks where they were trying to go to the big Starfleet party.
Absolutely a product of its time. Wouldn’t pass muster by today’s standards, but viewed as a window into the past’s vision of the future makes it worthwhile. They still pushed boundaries and tried to get away with plenty, but yeah, lots of underbutt and fainty-dainty female characters.
I’m gonna stick with it, keep watching. Have watched all other star treks repeatedly most of my life. Seeing TOS for the 1st time, definitely a window into the past, but I’m liking the positive aspects of it. Can understand now how it’s been so long lasting, all the different versions, where it all started.
Glad to know it hasn’t disheartened your outlook. I started out with TNG, then rolled back to TOS. Definitely a stark contrast, but great in its own way.
TNG was my 1st trek too. Having watched all star treks over the decades, it’s fascinating, the diversity, different approaches, how it’s evolved as society has evolved.
There are some really really great episodes, and some seriously terrible ones. For me the high points far outweigh the low points and the bad stuff you can usually laugh with due to its age.
And these days it’s hottub streams and a plethora of other even worse lewd content. It’s most certainly accepted by today’s standards they just have to ‘choose’ to do it instead of some executive dictating it.
It definitely has to be viewed through the lens of its time, just like our current media will be viewed in another 60 years. At its time, it was relentlessly progressive. You can often pick up on the things that they wanted to do, but couldn’t, or things that they still had a blindspot for. My family and I will be watching it and every so often laugh at something so over-the-top and remember “oh right, it was the 60s”.
All that aside, it still competes with TNG for my #1 Trek. The characters and their chemistry is top notch, and it’s so much fun to watch them play off each other. TOS has had a long-lasting cultural impact and it’s the reason that we’re all here talking in this small fan community nearly 60 years later. I love it.
What if in a thousand years “Measure of a Man” is used as justification for cancelling TNG for daring to imply an artificial life form isn’t sentient.
A thousand? At the rate AI is improving, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this start to change in my lifetime!
I bet the big one is going to be something like younger audiences being uncomfortable with any classic shows/movies that show meat-eating. Whatever our blindspot is, it’ll have to be something that largely flies under our radar right now.
I recently watched Travelers, which is about people coming back from the future, and one of the things most of them couldn’t handle was eating meat.
(Pretty decent show, picks up in the second season You’d like it if you like sci fi that focuses on characters and has cameos from other shows shot in British Columbia. 6.5/10)
(No, Richard Dean Anderson does not make an appearance)
I loved Travelers. It’s a really good show and actually has a satisfying finale, unlike so many other sci-fi shows. And it also had a lot fewer “wait, this doesn’t make sense” moments than other time travel shows.
The first episode is a little too touchy feely for me so I didn’t watch until my GF recommended it to me. I’m glad I did, but it’s still too many emotions and not enough reversing polarity to be one of my favorites. But I really like the concept and you’re right that it was great to have an actual ending for the show.
Oh interesting, I’ll have to remember this one.
At the rate AI is improving
What today is touted as AI is actually nothing of the sort. And it’s not modeling a mind, so there’s no risk of the Singularity happening.
It is very much AI, it’s just not AGI.
The need to invent the AGI was due to decades of misuse of “AI”.
Those boots are 🔥
this is a product of its era. theres not much else you can say about it.
Roddenberry was very progressive and big on equal rights. But his attitude toward sexy woman was yes please.
William Ware Theiss was the costume designer for tos. Here is what he thought of the costumes.
Theiss Titillation Theory:
The attractiveness of clothing on women is not really dependent on the amount of skin shown - rather, it depends on the degree to which the outfit appears to be on the verge of falling off.
As far as the sci-fi concepts tos had a lot of big name scifi writers doing one off scripts. The later shows kept to in house writing teams. So tos is a lot more varied in both ideas and tone than any other Star Trek.
This leads to a lot of wierd inconstancies that you wouldn’t see in any other trek. Like the Greek gods were absolutely real gods who just left to go to another planet. There is another planet that worships Jesus.
It’s also fun to try to guess what episodes were done simply because they has access to the costumes from other productions at the studio. Nazi, gangster, native American, etc.
The episodes get better (I’m more than halfway through season 2), but the miniskirts are still there. Not that I’m complaining too much.
Season 3 is where I noticed in my last rewatch that they really dial it up like they were desperate to keep the audience interested. So many love interests, fight scenes, and experimental camera-work. Apparently they also had their budget slashed and one less day to finish each episode.
There are some great episodes in S3, but there are also a few that I wonder what the hell they were thinking, lol.
I’m doing a rewatch and just finished The Paradise Syndrome when my wife came in. Next up, And The Children Shall Lead, with a picture of the girl crying near the end of the episode. My wife isn’t really a fan of Star Trek, so I said, “Uh that one is pretty rough… Let’s watch something else.”
I know season 3 gets dragged, but there are great episodes in it, too. Enterprise Incident is right before Paradise, for example.
The one after that is a classic too! “Is There No Truth In Beauty?”
It’s the 2nd episode guest starring Diana Muldaur (a fan favorite, and Dr. Pulaski in TNG), as Dr. Miranda Jones this time.
DATA. 😤
She’s so mean to him. Lol
They were clearly going for a McCoy/Spock dynamic, but they forgot to also make it clear that they care about each other and just don’t want to admit it.
We recently watched that TOS animated series. There was one really funny bit related to this:
The crew goes to a planet with either only women or maybe it was the men and women lived separately.
They meet with the leader of the community there and one of the first things they ask is “where is your leader? Your doctors and scientists?”
Another episode with a similar premise (there was a lot of repetition my god) the leader introduced herself as “Head Female.”
The show sure was mixed in that regard.
And TOS itself had Turnabout Intruder, where Janice Lester switches minds with Kirk because women can’t be captains.
“Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women. It isn’t fair.”
Plus The Cage/The Menagerie, where Pike says he can’t get used to women on the bridge.
I thought that Pike line was written to start a story arc of a misogynist who learns to be better. He says the “can’t get used to women on the bridge” line after pretty clearly being a cock to his yeoman who is just doing her job. The look that Majel Barrett’s character gives him when he says the next line: “No offense Lieutenant, you’re not like other women” drives it home that what he just said was really inappropriate. But that’s me watching it for the first time just a few years ago, after having grown up watching '90s Trek and having certain expectations of Starfleet captains. The way Kirk was written in the following episodes kind of crushes that theory.
I used to watch ToS on TV when I was a kid. It’s strange to me that none of what you mentioned was even noticeable back then, because it reflected the world as it was. I re-watched it a couple years ago and everything you mentioned stood out like a sore thumb. Society has changed a lot just in my lifetime. Possibly more in the last 10 years than all of the previous years.
If you think that’s bad you should see me in a mini skirt. Completely dehumanizing and unnecessary.
So, one of the things one needs to realize about Star Trek is that while it’s (mostly) focused on lofty ideals and egalitarianism, the shows and movies are entertainment products made by humans from within the entertainment industry, and there’s just a lot of scummy people in that industry.
To wit: Brannon Braga was a notorious shitheel to a lot of people in various series. He was the one who pushed for the weird “sexy catsuits” for several prominent characters (Seven; T’pol), was notoriously licentious, and apparently also a homophobe (apparently he told Dominic Keating his character was gay “to get a rise out of him”, in addition to other more writing-oriented things).
There are a lot of rumors that Roddenberry humped all the guest actresses, which is why so many of them are hotties with big breasts. He definitely had a type.
In the TOS universe the easiest way to get some alien strange is to just slap a woman across the face. In the future men are always gentleman and bitches love to be treated with respect when they speak out of line. Chivalry will not die on Kirk’s watch. Plus there’s the whole going where no man has gone before thing… That’s why you got to tap that alien ass every chance you get. Plus, you don’t have to worry about venereal disease since the transporter removes any foreign bodies when you beam back to the ship.
The man liked sex! What can be said? :p
The objectification and in some EPS degredation of women is at times difficult to look over. It’s one show where knowing how it helped progress some ideals of womans rights makes it a bit easier to watch.
I will also add that I do like the sex aspect of star trek, or at least the idea of it, and it’s been a bit lost over the shows. People in the future wanna fuck, and there’s value in leaning into that.
Spot on. You don’t need to see the rest.
It should be noted Roddenbarry wanted a woman to be first officer.
