One I think we can all get behind… Also fantastic that they took the dude who said that and SURROUNDED him with badass women on the bridge. Seriously they’ve got like Spock and Pike on the bridge and that’s it.
I think it’s worth discussing the context of this comment a bit.
Roddenberry’s original vision of shipboard life in space was based highly on shipboard life in the US Navy, and particularly the submarine service. This is a pretty good model, because you have the somewhat contradictory social pressures of a military structure that must maintain good order to function properly, while also being a relatively small group of people sharing a confined living space for extended periods of time. You can’t really escape from each other. Also your living space is a fragile piece of equipment that you have to maintain carefully in order to stay alive, the only thing between you and the hostile environment outside.
In 1948 the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act was passed, which:
enabled women to serve as permanent, regular members of the armed forces in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and the recently formed Air Force. Prior to this act, women, with the exception of nurses, served in the military only in times of war.
However:
Section 502 of the act limited service of women by excluding them from aircraft and vessels of the Navy that might engage in combat.
Fighting was a job for men, you see. The definition of “vessels that might engage in combat” basically covered everything the Navy had in service, because even a support ship might have to defend itself from attack.
As a result, there were no women serving on the bridges of any Navy vessels.
This finally changed in 1978 in Owens v. Brown, in which Judge Sirica declared the prohibition of shipboard service for women to be unconstitutional. At this point women began serving aboard support and noncombat vessels. Congress finally approved service for women aboard combat vessels in 1993.
Women were still prohibited from the submarine service until 2010.
When The Cage was filmed in 1964, the idea of women serving on the bridge of any vessel was 14 years ahead of its time, and if we consider that the USS Enterprise was a ship-of-the-line, a true Starfleet combat vessel even if her primary duty was exploration, then 29 years ahead of its time.
Taken out of context the original line seems sexist and repressive, but in its time it was projecting a very progressive view of uniformed service.
Wow. Well, today I learned. Genuinely, thank you so fucking much for this piece of information. Especially when I have a very close friend who has had a hard time starting SNW due to that line specifically.
You’re welcome. I hope that your friend can understand that in this context the intention was good (to call attention to the exclusion of women from shipboard service), though the execution was bad.
Judging the current series on the merits of this one out-of-context scene, filmed 61 years ago for the rejected pilot episode seems… rather narrow-minded. It sounds more like your friend is looking for excuses not to give the series a genuine try.
yeah i do get it but they still could have chosen a better line. even with context pike announcing his inability to get used to seeing women on the bridge just makes him sound like a bit of a dick
True, but again I think you’re pulling the line, and the scene in which it’s delivered, out of context and expecting it to stand on its own - 61 years after it was filmed. Plus, it’s a pilot episode that was ultimately rejected, and then later recut into an episode of the series that was actually produced.
In the historical context I gave above, what you’re actually seeing is one of early Trek’s many ham-fisted attempts to address the prevailing morality of the time in a far too direct way. Basically, Roddenberry is using Pike to preach at the audience of his day - he is commenting on the exclusion of women from shipboard service intentionally (and probably more generally the classic superstition about women on ships).
In this scene, Pike’s character is being used as a stand-in for men who actually do (or did, in 1964) have “traditional” (sexist) ideas about women on ships, so that Roddenberry can tell them directly that he thinks they’re wrong. The line is bad, because it’s poorly written, it lacks subtlety - it is an example of the writer being preachy, to the point of tryhard. It is a failure to follow the old adage “show, don’t tell”.
The context in which this scene was written and performed no longer exists. To judge this in the context of the present and conclude that “Pike sounds like a dick” is to miss the point.
okay yeah that makes sense, thanks for taking the time to reply, of course pike ain’t really a dick
Star Trek broke so many social conventions so far ahead of time.
Yes, though often in too-direct ways that are needlessly preachy and don’t hold up particularly well over time (case in point).
SNW Pike is not a man’s man or a lady’s man. He’s just a human’s human.
Also an alien’s human.
And a damn good human he is imo
I still hold the opinion that The Cage as a whole isn’t part of continuity, just the parts that made it into The Menagerie.
I think star trek is no stranger to the idiot ball or designated asshole tropes. Conflicts between the major groups (good guys/protags vs evil/antags) are compounded with conflicts within the groups, and some of the ‘internal conflicts’ were pretty silly when you consider that they had apparently been selected as elite examples of federation folk.
Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve watched parts of the series, but from my hazy memory it seemed like character consistency wasn’t all that important outside of the ‘major’ characters.
pretty silly when you consider that they had apparently been selected as elite examples of federation folk.
This is one reason to appreciate the idea Roddenberry put forward in his TMP novelization, that Starfleet officers are intentionally selected from the slightly less intelligent and progressive candidates, the ones who aren’t perfectly suited to the true utopia back home.
