And she fell for Spock immediately. And if one follows the track that she didn't fall for him, she just used her "woman qualities" to trick him into betraying his peers - that is even worse.
And then, as I mentioned, the woman who was a leader of her people - and got threatened with a squaling SPANKING by Kirk, which led to her crying which then turned on Kirk due to magic woman hormones in her tears.
What the oink.
EDIT: That opens the gate to a lot of other sexist examples in Trek, many as recent as for example the rewrite of the Orions in ENT which on the surface tried to "free" the 'Orion animal women' (ugh) by stating that they are actually matriarchs, controlling everyone with their sex. I wonder if many people realise that this is not an improvement.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
> @angrytarg said:
> (Quote)
>
> I just wanted to comment on that, it's not the clothing which was indeed rooted in the women's liberation movement. But a lot of people, mostly men, pint at that and claim TOS wasn't sexist because they had miniskirts, that's not the whole story. The actual women characters throughout TOS, with possibly the only exception being Number One who had little actual screentime however, never had really substantial roles. They were used as eyecandy in many instances, were damsels in distress or little bimbos that required a man's perspective to see clear. Having Number One and Lt. Uhura were big steps at the time and no doubt did a lot good for a lot of people, however overall - call it because of Roddenberry's own sexism or systemic sexism through the network - the women weren't as strongly portrayed as we're led to believe a lot of times this topic comes up. Even the Romulan Commander ultimately was there to fall for Spock. Hell, Kirk threatened a woman who was the leader of a planet/civilization with a spanking. A spanking. (Image)
>
TRIBBLE they had no substancial roles, that was far from true. Just one example was the female Romulan Commander, a role of great authority.
Hell, Tamura was given the role of guarding May-3 in Taste of Armageddon, and carrying a phaser.
The spanking bit was more of a "shut the hell up!" sorta thing. She was a TRIBBLE, after all.
> @smokebailey said:
> (Quote)
>
> Yes, and in tos, we DID see several women of the crew in pants variants, so it's not like they had no choices.
>
>
> The Victorian era is long over, folks.
The woke brought it back.
Discovery left that after taste in my mouth, as did Picard.
And she fell for Spock immediately. And if one follows the track that she didn't fall for him, she just used her "woman qualities" to trick him into betraying his peers - that is even worse.
And then, as I mentioned, the woman who was a leader of her people - and got threatened with a squaling SPANKING by Kirk, which led to her crying which then turned on Kirk due to magic woman hormones in her tears.
What the oink.
EDIT: That opens the gate to a lot of other sexist examples in Trek, many as recent as for example the rewrite of the Orions in ENT which on the surface tried to "free" the 'Orion animal women' (ugh) by stating that they are actually matriarchs, controlling everyone with their sex. I wonder if many people realise that this is not an improvement.
The Enterprise Incident was one of the ones that could have easily turned into a two-parter if it was done in one of the later treks instead of TOS, it just required covering too much plot ground to set things up properly in just fifty to fifty three minutes of runtime (there were fewer commercials then). D.C. Fontana had to resort to old Hollywood shorthand like the instant fall even though she would have rather done it more subtly. Instead of a trite, rushed thing, the unexpected attraction was supposed to be a dilemma for Linville's character that got away from her, which is why they cast Linville for the part in the first place, she had a track record of doing parts like that well.
As for the "spanking", "Elaan of Troyius" was another of the episodes loosely based on Shakespeare, in this case "The Taming of the Shrew", and in something like that some anachronism is pretty much a given. And notice that he didn't actually do it, it was a form of bantering to get her to open the door and come out into the main room so the "lesson in curtesy" could begin.
It also points out problems that Roddenberry had with NBC and their antiquated ideas of gender roles. The scene were Uhura intercepts Kryton's tight beam transmission was originally scripted for her to take care of completely on her own, but NBC insisted that "one of the main characters" handle it so the compromise was Uhura and Spock working together to pinpoint exactly where on the ship it was coming from.
In fact, they also insisted on her being quiet in battle scenes except for ship-to-ship communication despite the fact that she was the ship's talker as well as "radio" officer, and therefor the damage control coordinator. As usual Roddenberry complied in a deliberately obtuse way and had her speak quietly and look busy at her station with only occasionally louder damage reports to Kirk (though sometimes the directors would have her facing forward instead).
Another little-known fact was that whenever you see some random male extra in the captain's chair it was Uhura who was originally scripted to be there but NBC always made them go back and reshoot it when they tried to sneak it past them. Unfortunately most of the cut out and reshot scenes don't exist anymore because like a lot of other "scrap" pieces the originals were cut up and used to make slides as part of merchandising. I have one of those slides somewhere (unless it got lost in a move) with Uhura in the captains chair looking like she is probably talking to someone on the main screen.
The Orion stuff in ENT was rather messed up, but that is about par for the series when they tried to go back and "explain" things from earlier series. The original idea for the "green animal women" was that the Orions were using an old myth to distract the customers of the merchant they were associated with to give the merchant an advantage. And they show that it was a myth later on in "Whom Gods Destroy", where Marta was just as intelligent as anyone else (well, except Spock anyway) even though she was off her rocker.
And in TOS they showed most of the sexist stuff as not being the norm in the Federation. Star Trek explored a lot of the issues of the day, and that was a major one they touched on in a number of episodes.
Unfortunately Freiberger had a rather ham-handed style compared to Coon and tended to cave in to pressure from NBC easier than Coon or Roddenberry so the most ambitious of those stories, "Turnabout Intruder", ended up rather muddled. Among other problems it gave the impression that Lester's line about women not being allowed in as Starship captains meant that women were not being allowed to command any ships at all instead of the intended meaning of a clique of admirals placing their (inevitably male) protégés in the coveted heavy cruiser command slots.
Note that "Starship" is capitalized, NBC insisted that they stop referring to the ship as a heavy cruiser (or battleship as Roddenberry often did) and call it something "less military" so someone came up with the screwy idea to call starships that were capital ships "Starships" with a capital 'S'.
It is ironic that Seven of Nine was named as a nod to AF-709, Julie Newmar's android character in "My Living Doll", known to people outside of the project as Rhoda Miller. The series was a "battle of the sexes" style comedy where air force psychiatrist Dr. Bob McDonald is tapped to acclimate AF-709/Rhoda to normal society without revealing what she is.
The comedy is mostly a clash between his own idea to turn her into "the perfect woman", which he defines as doing as she is told and not talking back, and her adaptive infiltration systems picking up real women's behavior, and the odd situations that come about as she works though the incongruity, combined with an often Data-like naivety. The show was one of the most sexist ones on TV at the time since they played it up for laughs.
The Orion stuff in ENT was rather messed up, but that is about par for the series when they tried to go back and "explain" things from earlier series. The original idea for the "green animal women" was that the Orions were using an old myth to distract the customers of the merchant they were associated with to give the merchant an advantage. And they show that it was a myth later on in "Whom Gods Destroy", where Marta was just as intelligent as anyone else (well, except Spock anyway) even though she was off her rocker.
Honestly that sounds about like how the Orions turned out in ENT. The women were smart, and sometimes the most dangerous threat... is the one you don't see coming. The males were showcased as in charge, and were big strong guys. But the real brains of the operation were the females, letting themselves get "sold off", then hitting their marks when their guard is down.
Pretty clever scam... until someone catches on.
But we also have to consider that there's like 100 years or so between ENT and TOS. So maybe that first encounter between Enterprise and the Orions tipped off Starfleet to the scam, making it harder for the Orions to pull that on humans, and they changed tactics.
Honestly that sounds about like how the Orions turned out in ENT. The women were smart, and sometimes the most dangerous threat... is the one you don't see coming. The males were showcased as in charge, and were big strong guys. But the real brains of the operation were the females, letting themselves get "sold off", then hitting their marks when their guard is down.
Pretty clever scam... until someone catches on.
But we also have to consider that there's like 100 years or so between ENT and TOS. So maybe that first encounter between Enterprise and the Orions tipped off Starfleet to the scam, making it harder for the Orions to pull that on humans, and they changed tactics.
Which is terrible, just wanted to mention this again. The only way they were in charge is by using their sex/pheromones to control men (and it only works on men). And then pose as sexy servants to get what they want. This is not a empowering scenario, at all, which shows that we find questionable stereotypes throughout all installments of Trek, old and recent.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
We're also applying human standards to a fictional alien race.
Not every species is going to have the same view on things as humans, modern or in Trek.
To the Orions, that was probably business as usual, and the Syndicate got richer for it. But think about it. Do we hear about this sort of thing in the TNG era? Not really no. Apparently a couple really high profile schools are heard about though in Orion territory. And I mean comparable to Harvard or any of the other big name impressive collages that exist today.
Orions in the 22nd Century used piracy, deception, and infiltration to get what they wanted. They used EVERY weapon in their arsenal. EVERY. Weapon. Including female hormones they were well aware of having an effect on males of most other humanoid species. As a species that mostly lived on being pirates, slavers, and merchants, I guess it made sense to them to take every advantage they could get. Especially since there was no real law in space. It was literally the wild west at the time. A free for all.
In the 23rd Century, it seems that's been toned down a bit, but they still are known as pirates, and even used infiltration at least once.
In the 24th, we hear virturally nothing of pirate activity.
What's the one thing that may have had a major impact on the change in Orion society?
The United Federation of Planets.
The formation of an interplanetary coalition that lead to the formation of a new interplanetary superpower meant that criminal activity took a hit. You had species working together that didn't before. Suddenly you have laws being enforced dang near universally by multiple species. The Orion Syndicate was now faced with something it was unfamiliar with, right in its own backyard. People working together. The Syndicate lost power the moment humans became aware of their scheme, which in turn was shared with neighboring allied powers, and subsequently shared later with members of the Federation.
Ignoring the sexist thing, and looking at it from a Criminal Empire standpoint... it made sense to use every advantage you had. And the subsequent drop in Syndicate activity can be tied to the rise of the Federation. It drove the Syndicate underground, splitting Orion culture between Criminal and non criminal. And guess which one became more promenant as time went on?
Honestly that sounds about like how the Orions turned out in ENT. The women were smart, and sometimes the most dangerous threat... is the one you don't see coming. The males were showcased as in charge, and were big strong guys. But the real brains of the operation were the females, letting themselves get "sold off", then hitting their marks when their guard is down.
Pretty clever scam... until someone catches on.
But we also have to consider that there's like 100 years or so between ENT and TOS. So maybe that first encounter between Enterprise and the Orions tipped off Starfleet to the scam, making it harder for the Orions to pull that on humans, and they changed tactics.
Which is terrible, just wanted to mention this again. The only way they were in charge is by using their sex/pheromones to control men (and it only works on men). And then pose as sexy servants to get what they want. This is not a empowering scenario, at all, which shows that we find questionable stereotypes throughout all installments of Trek, old and recent.
Not quite all. The pheromones thing came later than TOS (the only thing similar in TOS was Elasian tears), the Orion dancers used a blend of a very high level of soft skills and allure as part of a professional business arrangement somewhat like a cross between Japanese Geisha and the belly dancers that the wealthier Arab merchants used to employ for that same distraction trick long ago.
It wasn't meant to be empowering or disempowering as such, rather it referenced a different (and rather grim under the glitter) culture vaguely similar in some ways to some ancient middle eastern and far eastern ones, and in this case highly tiered and with a vast gap between the rich powerful elite and the often starvation-level common citizenry, where the needs of business came way before the needs of the people.
The later version is interesting in its own way, (though personally I think ENT did it in a way that is a bit too simplistic from a worldbuilding point of view), and Rattler2's analysis seems right on.
Comments
And then, as I mentioned, the woman who was a leader of her people - and got threatened with a squaling SPANKING by Kirk, which led to her crying which then turned on Kirk due to magic woman hormones in her tears.
What the oink.
EDIT: That opens the gate to a lot of other sexist examples in Trek, many as recent as for example the rewrite of the Orions in ENT which on the surface tried to "free" the 'Orion animal women' (ugh) by stating that they are actually matriarchs, controlling everyone with their sex. I wonder if many people realise that this is not an improvement.
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Hell, Tamura was given the role of guarding May-3 in Taste of Armageddon, and carrying a phaser.
The spanking bit was more of a "shut the hell up!" sorta thing. She was a TRIBBLE, after all.
Discovery left that after taste in my mouth, as did Picard.
The Enterprise Incident was one of the ones that could have easily turned into a two-parter if it was done in one of the later treks instead of TOS, it just required covering too much plot ground to set things up properly in just fifty to fifty three minutes of runtime (there were fewer commercials then). D.C. Fontana had to resort to old Hollywood shorthand like the instant fall even though she would have rather done it more subtly. Instead of a trite, rushed thing, the unexpected attraction was supposed to be a dilemma for Linville's character that got away from her, which is why they cast Linville for the part in the first place, she had a track record of doing parts like that well.
As for the "spanking", "Elaan of Troyius" was another of the episodes loosely based on Shakespeare, in this case "The Taming of the Shrew", and in something like that some anachronism is pretty much a given. And notice that he didn't actually do it, it was a form of bantering to get her to open the door and come out into the main room so the "lesson in curtesy" could begin.
It also points out problems that Roddenberry had with NBC and their antiquated ideas of gender roles. The scene were Uhura intercepts Kryton's tight beam transmission was originally scripted for her to take care of completely on her own, but NBC insisted that "one of the main characters" handle it so the compromise was Uhura and Spock working together to pinpoint exactly where on the ship it was coming from.
In fact, they also insisted on her being quiet in battle scenes except for ship-to-ship communication despite the fact that she was the ship's talker as well as "radio" officer, and therefor the damage control coordinator. As usual Roddenberry complied in a deliberately obtuse way and had her speak quietly and look busy at her station with only occasionally louder damage reports to Kirk (though sometimes the directors would have her facing forward instead).
Another little-known fact was that whenever you see some random male extra in the captain's chair it was Uhura who was originally scripted to be there but NBC always made them go back and reshoot it when they tried to sneak it past them. Unfortunately most of the cut out and reshot scenes don't exist anymore because like a lot of other "scrap" pieces the originals were cut up and used to make slides as part of merchandising. I have one of those slides somewhere (unless it got lost in a move) with Uhura in the captains chair looking like she is probably talking to someone on the main screen.
The Orion stuff in ENT was rather messed up, but that is about par for the series when they tried to go back and "explain" things from earlier series. The original idea for the "green animal women" was that the Orions were using an old myth to distract the customers of the merchant they were associated with to give the merchant an advantage. And they show that it was a myth later on in "Whom Gods Destroy", where Marta was just as intelligent as anyone else (well, except Spock anyway) even though she was off her rocker.
And in TOS they showed most of the sexist stuff as not being the norm in the Federation. Star Trek explored a lot of the issues of the day, and that was a major one they touched on in a number of episodes.
Unfortunately Freiberger had a rather ham-handed style compared to Coon and tended to cave in to pressure from NBC easier than Coon or Roddenberry so the most ambitious of those stories, "Turnabout Intruder", ended up rather muddled. Among other problems it gave the impression that Lester's line about women not being allowed in as Starship captains meant that women were not being allowed to command any ships at all instead of the intended meaning of a clique of admirals placing their (inevitably male) protégés in the coveted heavy cruiser command slots.
Note that "Starship" is capitalized, NBC insisted that they stop referring to the ship as a heavy cruiser (or battleship as Roddenberry often did) and call it something "less military" so someone came up with the screwy idea to call starships that were capital ships "Starships" with a capital 'S'.
It is ironic that Seven of Nine was named as a nod to AF-709, Julie Newmar's android character in "My Living Doll", known to people outside of the project as Rhoda Miller. The series was a "battle of the sexes" style comedy where air force psychiatrist Dr. Bob McDonald is tapped to acclimate AF-709/Rhoda to normal society without revealing what she is.
The comedy is mostly a clash between his own idea to turn her into "the perfect woman", which he defines as doing as she is told and not talking back, and her adaptive infiltration systems picking up real women's behavior, and the odd situations that come about as she works though the incongruity, combined with an often Data-like naivety. The show was one of the most sexist ones on TV at the time since they played it up for laughs.
Honestly that sounds about like how the Orions turned out in ENT. The women were smart, and sometimes the most dangerous threat... is the one you don't see coming. The males were showcased as in charge, and were big strong guys. But the real brains of the operation were the females, letting themselves get "sold off", then hitting their marks when their guard is down.
Pretty clever scam... until someone catches on.
But we also have to consider that there's like 100 years or so between ENT and TOS. So maybe that first encounter between Enterprise and the Orions tipped off Starfleet to the scam, making it harder for the Orions to pull that on humans, and they changed tactics.
Which is terrible, just wanted to mention this again. The only way they were in charge is by using their sex/pheromones to control men (and it only works on men). And then pose as sexy servants to get what they want. This is not a empowering scenario, at all, which shows that we find questionable stereotypes throughout all installments of Trek, old and recent.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Not every species is going to have the same view on things as humans, modern or in Trek.
To the Orions, that was probably business as usual, and the Syndicate got richer for it. But think about it. Do we hear about this sort of thing in the TNG era? Not really no. Apparently a couple really high profile schools are heard about though in Orion territory. And I mean comparable to Harvard or any of the other big name impressive collages that exist today.
Orions in the 22nd Century used piracy, deception, and infiltration to get what they wanted. They used EVERY weapon in their arsenal. EVERY. Weapon. Including female hormones they were well aware of having an effect on males of most other humanoid species. As a species that mostly lived on being pirates, slavers, and merchants, I guess it made sense to them to take every advantage they could get. Especially since there was no real law in space. It was literally the wild west at the time. A free for all.
In the 23rd Century, it seems that's been toned down a bit, but they still are known as pirates, and even used infiltration at least once.
In the 24th, we hear virturally nothing of pirate activity.
What's the one thing that may have had a major impact on the change in Orion society?
The United Federation of Planets.
The formation of an interplanetary coalition that lead to the formation of a new interplanetary superpower meant that criminal activity took a hit. You had species working together that didn't before. Suddenly you have laws being enforced dang near universally by multiple species. The Orion Syndicate was now faced with something it was unfamiliar with, right in its own backyard. People working together. The Syndicate lost power the moment humans became aware of their scheme, which in turn was shared with neighboring allied powers, and subsequently shared later with members of the Federation.
Ignoring the sexist thing, and looking at it from a Criminal Empire standpoint... it made sense to use every advantage you had. And the subsequent drop in Syndicate activity can be tied to the rise of the Federation. It drove the Syndicate underground, splitting Orion culture between Criminal and non criminal. And guess which one became more promenant as time went on?
Not quite all. The pheromones thing came later than TOS (the only thing similar in TOS was Elasian tears), the Orion dancers used a blend of a very high level of soft skills and allure as part of a professional business arrangement somewhat like a cross between Japanese Geisha and the belly dancers that the wealthier Arab merchants used to employ for that same distraction trick long ago.
It wasn't meant to be empowering or disempowering as such, rather it referenced a different (and rather grim under the glitter) culture vaguely similar in some ways to some ancient middle eastern and far eastern ones, and in this case highly tiered and with a vast gap between the rich powerful elite and the often starvation-level common citizenry, where the needs of business came way before the needs of the people.
The later version is interesting in its own way, (though personally I think ENT did it in a way that is a bit too simplistic from a worldbuilding point of view), and Rattler2's analysis seems right on.