J.J. has never said anything to that affect.

“lets see how much money this film makes with just non fans watching the movie once.”

Which won’t happen, but I bet it would make more with non-fans to be honest.

More technobbable does not make a show more cerebral, just more jargonistic. TOS had true science fiction literati writing scripts for it, which none of the spinoffs ever had.

TNG may have had more viewers; I don’t know the numbers to verify. But that is probably merely a case of a much larger world population and more TV sets than in the ’60s. Box office receipts would confirm that TOS is still the more popular incarnation of the Trek universe between the two.

The success the spinoffs have had is owed, without question, to the equally cerebral and more imaginative original. Don’t mistake the success of Beatlemania as happening without the earlier and ultimately more influential success of the Beatles. The same formula applies to TOS and its spinoffs. Period. Exclamation point. End of sentence. End of story.

“A pet theory of mine is that Number One got her own command of a Constitution Class starship as soon as Pike was relieved by Kirk.”

An interesting theory, and a strong possible source of new stories!

A pet theory of mine is that Number One got her own command of a Constitution Class starship as soon as Pike was relieved by Kirk.

Shameful? Considering the context of the time period in which the show was produced, it was far from shameful. In fact, it was bold and unprecedented!

Uhura was depicted as a skilled technician, in a time when technical prowess was still very much considered the domain of males in contemporary society.

“I can think of no one better equipped to handle the repairs.”—Spock (”Who Mourns For Adonais”)

As far as having to wear short-skirts in TOS, Nichelle Nichols is quick to point out that such attire was not viewed as “demeaning” in that time by women, but empowering, if not a bit rebellious to the 1950’s-early 60’s mentality about female sexuality forced upon them by a male-dominant society. I think you may benefit from reading up a bit on the “Sexual Revolution” of the mid-late 60’s and 70’s. These types of things are seen now from a completely different perspective from the one taken by women of the period.

I won’t deny that gender equality had a long way to go, even as depicted in futuristic society such as Star Trek’s United Federation Of Planets, but TOS was always on the “cutting edge” of social progress during its time (TNG was never in the forefront during its time).

In “Turnabout Intruder”, Janice Lester asserts that “Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women”, but this is not legitimized by any “sane” person in Starfleet. I have always took this to mean that this is merely her perception of being persecuted, when she is obviously mentally unqualified for such a role anyway. It is a way of casting blame somewhere else, away from her own shortcomings. This is the opinion of a person with irrational paranoid delusions and emotional instabilities, not Starfleet doctrine. Star Trek ‘canon’ confirms this view. Erika Hernandez commands the ‘Columbia’ over a century before the time period depicted in TOS, and “Number One” is second in command of the Enterprise during the events depicted in “The Menagerie”, and a heartbeat away from the Captain’s chair. “Number One” is a command level officer, and her existence in canon is unquestioned since the events on Talos IV are not only depicted in the original pilot, but in a first season episode as well!

Fair enough! But I’d like to remind you that you started off with the quite general statement that short dresses are demeaning and objectifying women. And my personal experience, while not being universally valid, of course, at least demonstrates that your initial statement is not universally valid either. There are counterexamples to it.

“Or it could be an indication of what happened when a network exec saw the pilot and basically said ‘no, I do not want women to be strong and intelligent ever, you need to dumb them down and make them wear sexually provokative outfits and basically say nothing other than ‘hailing frequencies opened’.”

Here again you seem to imply some general connection between dumbness, exploitation and sexy clothes. I simply don’t see this general connection. I certainly don’t deny there was and is sexual exploitation in the world. I only deny that sexy clothes entails sexual exploitation!

As for Uhura’s impact in TOS: The impact of Sulu and Chekov wasn’t any bigger, and not even Scotty said much more than “I’ll see to it, sir!” for the most time.

As for the career situation of American women, I admit I can’t evaluate that, I’m European.

Sorry.

That’s not what I was referring to when I said late-80’s-early 90’s conservative social values.

Where TOS was bold, TNG was restrained. Once again—boring.

“Basically The Outcast was the closest trek ever came to dealing with a socio-sexual issue like this. You’d have never seen it in TOS.”

I would argue that the socio-sexual relevance of “The Outcast” is hardly significant.

In fact, DS9 (some years later) did a more effective job in dealing with socio-sexual issues, simply by way of approaching homosexuality as a non-issue. When Jadzia Dax started up again with the wife of her former host, the only issue for anyone was that those kinds of relationships were taboo in Trill society. The fact that both parties were female wasn’t an issue to anyone. No one thought twice about a lesbian affair being of any significance whatsoever. I think that was the closest Star Trek ever came to being proactive in addressing that type of socio-sexual issue.

But, of course, TNG and Berman-era Trek were always late-comers to the party when it came to bold social statements. By the time that episode aired, addressing homosexuality on television was already commonplace.

Both shows are products of their time. The bold efforts in TOS are relative to its time, as are TNG’s efforts decades later. And in those terms, TNG falls short. TOS pioneered television in many ways with regard to social progress, while TNG failed to do so as compared to many of its contemporary brethren.

“Stop acting like an adolescent.”

Don’t do that. It isn’t ‘adolescent’ to appreciate that the virality of James Kirk as being part of who he is. You talk as if it wasn’t already there…that Kirk being depicted as sexually pursuing attractive females is a new concept. It’s over 40 years old.

“Their portrayal of that aspect of it was tasteful, not obvious, which made it more enticing actually. If you overtly show a startrek character having sex it is just a waste of time and space.”

I suppose that “obvious” is a relative term. Showing Kirk putting his boots back on was quite ‘racy’ over 40 years ago. Even as a kid, I knew exactly what had just happened. Depicting him in bed with an alien female (like in the trailer) isn’t exactly groundbreaking today.

When Procounsel Claudius tells Kirk that he wanted to “allow him a few more hours as a man” (”Bread And Circuses”), what are we supposed to believe was the point?

Is that not obvious? It sure was to me!

‘I personally know a number of strong, self-sufficient and successful women who choose to wear short skirts and to look sexy (among them university professors, lawyers and businesswomen) – nobody forces them to, they simply like it.’

Always the anectodal ‘i personally know’ statement. Okay, let’s play that line of reasoning for a moment. I personally now several females who feel they must dress this way to succeed in a still largely male dominated business world, they feel it is one of the many ways to accelerate them forward in a community hostile toward females for being anything other than sexual objects. They say they pretend it is their own choice to offset the fact that they feel embarrassed and uncomfortable for having to dress this way, they say they wish men would stop treating them like meat on a meat hook. But they proceed with it because it is the only way they can manipulate themselves through american society. Of course this is merely what ‘I personally know’. So until someone conducts a vast study on this what anyone personally knows might not be adequate to state a valid argument.

‘On the other hand, seen from an in-universe perspective, it seems believable to me that women officers in the 23rd century would wear short dresses simply because they like them.’

I can use the same line of reasoning to suggest that they dress that way because they think it might help to excel them through the rigors of starfleet faster. Sexism was apparently no stranger to TOS (turnabout intruder being the most overt example, sad sad example of how many men still think of women as emotional wrecks incapable of performing complex jobs due to reproductive disposition).

‘We have seen women in black pants and tunic on three occasions in the first season of TOS (excluding the pilot). This suggests that female officers may choose between different uniform styles.’

Or it could be an indication of what happened when a network exec saw the pilot and basically said ‘no, I do not want women to be strong and intelligent ever, you need to dumb them down and make them wear sexually provokative outfits and basically say nothing other than ‘hailing frequencies opened’.

I always thought it was shameful how little they used Uhura, and how they relegated her to a few lines of dialogue pertaining to her official function aboard the ship. She was, after all, a senior officer with a much grander role than the average filler actor. Any time you did see a woman holding her own with Kirk it was a non-crew member who was visiting the ship for a diplomatic reason, and even then they almost always seemed to succumb to Kirks male prowess. In retrospect it is just silly. TOS was definitely before its time in many ways, but the portrayal of human sexual/gender relations was not one of them.