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.

  • @PrinceWith999Enemies
    5•9 months ago

    I’ve read they added Chekov because the Russians were making fun of the fact that even though they were major innovators and often lead the space race, there were only Americans aboard the enterprise. That’s why so many of Chekov’s jokes are about the Russians doing something first.

    • Flying SquidM
      4•9 months ago

      They added Chekov because the Monkees were huge and Walter Koenig had a superficial resemblance to Davey Jones.

      Koenig revealed Chekov was supposed to resemble Jones. “The character was inspired by Davy Jones from The Monkees and for the first six or seven episodes I wore a wig — a woman’s wig for that matter and I wore that until my hair grew out and then it was my hair — until I started to lose it and we went back to a hairpiece!” Koenig recalled.

      https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-monkees-davy-jones-inspired-star-treks-chekov.html/

      The “you need to appeal to Monkees fans” came first. The Russian thing came second.

      So I really doubt that was the reason they made him Russian.

      • @PrinceWith999Enemies
        4•9 months ago

        Screenrant.com

        As TOS season 2 was beginning production in 1967, Russia was winning the real-world space race. Roddenberry decided that if his vision of a utopian human future was to be authentic, a Russian crew member should be present on the Enterprise. Roddenberry also hoped to bring in younger viewers by appealing to fans of the rock music revolution that was happening in the mid-60s, The Beatles and The Monkees in particular, hence Chekov’s mop top hairstyle.

        There was no reason to add a Monkees (or sometimes attributed to the Beatles) character as specifically a Russian in your argument. It also doesn’t explain why there was a running gag about Chekov making “Russians did it first” jokes. It just says that they needed a kid with a bowl cut. The implementation details are what I’m talking about.

    • ArtieShaw
      1•9 months ago

      That sounds weird. How were Soviets watching Star Trek?

      • @PrinceWith999Enemies
        1•9 months ago

        I don’t think they were talking about the average Soviet citizen. It was more like “Typical Americans - even though we were the first into space, they still think the world revolves around them.” Plus, like having a black woman as a bridge officer, Roddenberry saw it as showing inclusivity, except they also used the “we did it first” as a running gag.