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.
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.
I’d like to see Trek satire that gets everything wrong. Sci-fi from a myopic conservative perspective, circa 1960. A show that grabs from the same premises as these spacefaring horror scenarios and exaggerated moral dilemmas… by the writers of “Harry Potter finds Jesus” fanfiction. With episodes where a robot makes an impassioned speech for sentience and equal rights, then gets switched off and mocked for not answering fallacious arguments whilst switched off. Or a utopia without gender is secretly miserable until the introduction of sports and dolls. (Those associations being innate, of course, just like four-legged rock-based aliens finding human women hot. Especially blondes.)
All played razor-straight.