They boldly went where no women had gone before
May 6, 2009
by Judy Silver
|
Traveling warp-speed to a theater near you, the latest Star Trek movie tells the prequel story of how the crew of the S.S. Enterprise came to their pioneering voyage.
There’s nothing like a new Star Trek movie to bring out the inner geek in me. So indulge me and remember with me the women pioneers of the original Star Trek series. First take a minute to picture the female characters on TV at the time: the schoolteacher who dated Sheriff Andy Taylor, the granny who boiled up possum stew on The Beverly Hillbillies, a farm girl and a movie star on Gilligan’s Island, a wiggly-nosed housewife on Bewitched, a sexy villainess dressed as a cat on Batman.
Onto that scene blasted Lieutenant Uhura, Communications Officer and fourth in command of the bridge of a starship. Quite Revolutionary. Actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, told the BBC her recollection of one little girl who watched Uhura, Whoopie Goldberg:
She said, ‘Well when I was nine years old Star Trek came on,’ and she said, ‘I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, “Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!”‘ And she said, ‘I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be, and I want to be on Star Trek.’ Goldberg did fulfilled that dream, after she’d already become a star, playing a bartender on Star Trek: The Next Generation.]
Behind the scenes, DC Fontana wrote Star Trek scripts. In a story on the SheKnows website, Lynn Barker relates:
As a young student and Trek fan growing up in New Mexico, I always admired this Fontana-person’s very “human” writing and, when I read The Making of Star Trek, Stephen E. Whitfield’s 1968 guide to the show, I was stunned to see, over the caption “DC Fontana,” a very pretty woman’s picture! Oh, my God — my favorite TV writer was a woman!! This opened up whole new galaxies of career possibilities to me. If this talented woman could do it, maybe I could too!
In an interview with Barker, (Dorothy) Fontana remembers being a pioneer female writer:
There were very few women executives at all and you could probably count the number of women actually writing action/adventure on the fingers of one hand. Most other women were writing either sitcoms or daytimes or they were writing with male partners. They weren’t writing alone. So I was one of the few… and few women were writing under their own names…
There are many additional stories about the history of women and Star Trek, and not all of the stories are as inspirational. Yet I’m thankful that producer Gene Roddenberry created substantive on- and off-screen roles for women, and that Nichols and Fontanna starred in them. Now, I wonder, what role do women play in the new film?
I’m not black, but I am a woman and, yes, it was cool to see Lt. Uhura calm and capable at the bridge.
For years afterward I despised sci-fi because all the samples I read or watched had only cardboard women backdrops. I wanted a Lt. Uhura, damn it! Or one of the other strong women characters who often appeared.
A lot has changed in sci-fi since then – more women in the field, some great women characters written by male writers. As well as a representational mix of all human races-ethnic types, and the occasional interesting alien.
My favorite Trek female characters (or characters period) are DS9′s Kira Nerys and Jadzia Dax. And the recurring role of Kai Win (a scene-stealing Louise Fletcher).
I don’t go to the movies much anymore, but my Trekkie soul plans to make it out for this one.
Now if I could only find someone interested in publishing my own sci-fi…
I grew up on the original Star Trek and loved most of the subsequent shows in that genre.
I remember reading an interview with Roddenberry in which he said that his original plan was to have a male captain and a female first officer (Majel Barret was to have played that role) – but the producers of the show did not want a woman in that high of a command position. Roddenberry said that he was not going to have a first officer if it was not a woman. So her role was replaced with Spok, who was not “first office” but “science officer.”
So Roddenberry was even more ahead of his time than we knew, but was shot down by the powers-that-be.
Roddenberry also stated that he was shocked that women viewers in the test audiences responded poorly to the female first officer as well. They thought she was stuck up. That surprised the hell out of him. He figured women would like seeing a woman in charge.
He should have lived to see the 2008 elections.
Also, didn’t Lucille Ball own the studio (Desilu Productions) where Star Trek originated?
[...] The New Agenda has a tribute to Nichelle Nichols. Quite a good one. Nichelle Nichols [...]
Leave your Response Want an avatar? Get a gravatar!
Community Room
February 22, 2012 at 11:22 am
February 17, 2012 at 2:39 pm
February 6, 2012 at 4:25 pm
January 30, 2012 at 2:36 pm
January 26, 2012 at 4:38 pm
January 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm
January 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
January 9, 2012 at 6:36 pm
BUILD your NETWORK
Our Network of College Women
Protecting our Teenage Girls
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Pioneer Mentors
Blogroll
Find us Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...