When Star Trek Gets It Wrong: The Lesson of "Code of Honor" 

The assault on Yeoman Rand is even harsher in hindsight when you consider that it happened to Grace Lee Whitney in real life.

I remember the DS9 episode "Rejoined" when Dax was conflicted over her ex. Kira asked "why can't they just get married again?", with no regard for the fact that they were 2 women. I remember that being SO progressive!

The two saving graces with Profit & Lace are that it was clearly intended as a riff on Tootsie, and that it implies that gender confirmation is a totally reversible outpatient surgery that a general practice doctor can knock out on his lunch break, as if lancing a boil. Hey, I'll take my progressive bones where I can find them.

Let's not forget the late great Madge Sinclair, who, as her role as the captain of USS Saratoga in 'the one with the whales', fully retconned the Turnabout Intruder error of women couldn't captain a starship.

Janeway is (and always been) a role model for me, wildly inconsistent writing (and differing magnitude of character flaws) aside. Taken on the whole, she gives me something to aspire to as a woman, as a working professional in a male-dominated field, as a human in general. She's the captain I'd most like to serve under or at the very least be friends with. More than once, an imagined pep talk from her in my head has helped me through a few mental and emotional slumps.

Unconscious biases are like walking around with parsley in your teeth. If someone points it out it’s not because they are trying to insult you by doing so. You should want to know it’s there so you can fix it

I'm Team Kira Nerys, all the way! I just went to IMDB to confirm I was spelling her name correctly and, oh my... I was reminded of how amazing that cast was. So many great characters portrayed by equally great people.

I love captain Janeway, my beef is with her writers.

La' ann (Christina Chong) is such a badass!! Love her!

I straight up never saw the original episode and only experienced it via your review recently. When my sister started showing me TNG, she was literally like "Yeah, we're skipping this one. You're welcome." and so I've never seen it lol

Another day, another Shives video that once again reaffirms how much of a role model he is.

You said favourite female character but im gonna have to go with the whole of DS9 for that, so many great female characters like Kira, Jadzia, Ezri, Ishka, Kai Winn, Grilka, Kasidy etc, even a more traditional female character like Leeta is written well. Its such a breath of fresh air from TNG’s limited portrayal of its female characters (mainly troi). EDIT: i cant believe i forgot Kasidy Yates

Star Trek was pitched by Gene Roddenberry as Wagon Train to the Stars. At it's heart, Star Trek is a western set in space. Star Trek was started in the 1960s, and a lot of the societal mores and morals bleed through on the screen. It's a 1960s man (Kirk/Shatner) reacting to situations with the norms of 1960s people. It's not always good - Roddenberry actually auditioned women and cast them based on their physical attributes. In some ways, Roddenberry reminds me of the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Roddenberry was alleged to have an affair with Nichelle Nicolas, and the actress who played Janice Rand , Grace Lee Whitney, was allegedly assaulted by a producer on the show. There is a history of women who acted or worked behind the scenes on Trek were second class citizens, and that's a shame. Even in the 1960s sexual assault was bad. I believe that ST in all it's incarnations has tried to do the best, but has also often fallen short. Give Star Trek credit for trying to be it's best, but also acknowledge the failures. True knowledge only comes from experience, and when we f*$k it up, we have to acknowledge the error, promise to change the action and attitude, and go forth and make new mistakes. Nobody is perfect. However, that doesn't mean we should not try to be better.

Great video. I would also say though, even if someone is accusing you or attacking you in bad faith, if they make a valid point concerning some unconscious bias you have then you can still hear that and improve. Just because someone is an asshole, it doesn't always make them wrong.

Pretty much all of S1 of TNG sucked. If they had kept the Lizard People concept (or just had different costumes with white or diverse extras) for the Ligonians, "Code of Honor" would be remembered as just one of the bad S1 episodes. I can imagine the producers saying "lizard people prosthetics are too expensive, let's just go with human-looking aliens," but the it was the director's choice of casting an all AA cast for the Ligonians that made this the worst ST episode of all time. (And the series finale of _Enterprise_ tried to beat it in badness, but failed.)

I just started a rewatch of TOS (partially due to your channel putting me in a Trek mood) and I got to "The Enemy Within" and yeeeeeeeah...I'd forgotten how really uncomfortable the scenes with Rand were and how really not good that whole situation was handled. A shame because the resolution, with Evil Kirk not "defeated" by violence but rather by Good Kirk appealing to him was surprisingly well written and well done. Still a pretty good episode but definitely could have been better.

I was up early this morning and decided to watch some of your older videos while doing my chores, thanks for dropping a new one for me to watch

statistics about rape actually show that victims are more likely to be too afraid to report it then to lie about it, and i can't blame them.....as a man, i can only imagine how terrifying it is to be a victim of that crime

I have always loved Star Trek. And when I was old enough to see how it showed that all of us are so alike and can live together in harmony as long as we value each other's differences, it became my favorite science fiction franchise ever made.

What we can learn if Star Trek is capable of taking accountability and recognizing its flaws and become a better version of its self and we can that too what a beautiful to say it Steve

I want to love people bitching about modern Star Trek being woke, but then I realise those are the same people who back in the day would have flipped their fucking shit over Uhura kissing Kirk.

One character I would really like to see again is Gillian Tsylor. Not only did she see through Kirk, then eventually help him out; she proved to be strong and committed to her cause of finding a better place for the whales to live.

The episode in TNG where we saw the debut of Trill. Beverly tells Odan (woman Trill) humanity is not ready for same sex relationship

I like to think that the writer of the episode thought that they were showcasing a culture, or something like that. I tend to err on the side of incompetence versus willful evil. That doesn't make the product any better, of course.

I liked original Philippa Georgiou, the Malaysian captain of the the USS Shenzhou, first human to study at the Laikan Military academy on Andoria. I would have wanted to see more of her.

If you address things like sensitive social issues or marginalized groups it is easy, so very easy to get things wrong. The lesson is that it is often better to platform discriminated people than to try to speak for them. But it would be worse, far worse when you would not dare to discuss such things at all. Better to try and sometimes fail than never to try at all.

I have a tip on lighting: I think the addition of one single light would greatly enhance the quality. You need a "hair light" or a "rim light". A light above you, and off to the side. Look at the image of the man with his arms wide open at 3:40, he has a hair/rim light that's purple, TNG was really well lit for its time, and they made prolific use of hair/rim lights throughout the 7 seasons.

The part about ICE in Picard Season 2. As a non-American, the assumption is that it's something made up to enforce the "Dystopian future" phase of the world, similar to the episode where Sisco and Bashir are locked in the sanctuary in that DS9 episode. When somebody tells me it's actually based on reality, it makes me question how America can consider itself part of the Civilised world. The worst part is that this isn't the only thing that makes me question it. The predatory American healthcare system, almost no time off from work, and the fact that an employer barely has to pay waiters peanuts because tips are a thing. They all make me question how America can consider itself civilised.

Captain Rachel Garret in command of the Enterprise NCC-1701C was tough as nails, brave, confident, and determined to do the right thing, even though it essentially guaranteed her death and the destruction of her ship. She was a model Starfleet officer.

Also the queer main cast of Disco is all played by actually queer actors which is a major win

Steve, just because Star Trek has always been a progressive franchise doesn't mean the people who run it were all progressive. Roddenberry himself had a history of not being kind to feminism as shown when one of the first episodes he wrote for the original series was "Mudd's Women" and the episode before this "The Naked Now" reduced all the female characters to being relentlessly horny.

Steve made some great points again. All can say in Star Trek's defense is when you have a long franchise with so many different writers not all of thier views are going to be the same.

I remember when Code of Honor first aired. Even as a young kid in the 80s i was like, "huh. This seems wrong." It's almost painful to see now. I'm glad they learned.

I may not love voyager but i love Janeway. She is incredibly resolute and gets shit done. Second favourite captain by far.

Excellent video. I was born in 1945 and thus grew up in the era of Original Trek. I was in college during the Civil Rights era of the 60's and the Gay Liberation era of the 1970's and 80's. I will say that while I never had any sympathy for segregation or the racist attitude toward non-white people in principle, most of the people around me growing up were white. I was also a Lesbian in a time when LGBTQ issues were just beginning to have some consideration in popular culture in the US ( remember there was a strong gay rights movement in Europe in the 1920's, which I researched. ) But it was Trek and the character of Spock who first made me aware of racism on an emotional level. I think that was an important thing for many of us at that time.

the only good thing about turnabout Intruder is it connects my birthday to Star Trek

One episode that I always thought was kind of strange in a way that fits today's topic was in Voyager's "Future's End." For some reason, the episode had an appearance from a white-supremacist militia group, and then they're never mentioned again. It's almost like the writers were saying, "oh, by the way, these people exist," but then didn't really say anything else about them.

What's wild, especially Rios case is that it looks like Paramount could have been pressure to leave it be or tried too many stories and didn't wrap them all up in a 13 episode season. Seeing the history of Trek, Rios is the most confusing

The writer of Code of Honor also wrote Stargate SG-1 season 1 episode Emancipation.

You completely glossed over a MAJOR factor: The sheer amount of drugs the writers, directors, and producers were on. The only explanation for Code of Honor is that everyone was too stoned to notice.

12:00 I feel this is the big weakness of Disco, too: in their attempt to represent more people's struggles and oppression, it often veers into trauma porn rather than storytelling. Good intentions, but pretty hard to watch.

Fun fact: the writer of Code of Honor, Katharyn Powers, also wrote the script for Emancipation for Stargate SG-1, an episode with a similar plot, more or less the same message, and just as much controversy and poor reception.

17:06 - Super use of alliteration!

I gotta say I’m really digging this background and setup !

So well said, Steve. I do my best every day to get away from the upbringing I had (which wasn't a *bad* one, per see - but I was the product of a pretty traditional Irish-descended Australian Catholic, working class life; all-boys school, stay-at-home mother, etc. etc.), and I sometimes horrify myself at the occasional thought that pops into my head. Fortunately, too, I have a daughter who is so smart, so open-minded, and so thoughtful that she puts me to shame - and she keeps me in line. Sometimes I'll say something without thinking, and she will pull me up: "Dad? Think that through for a minute." Avoiding the products of unconscious biases isn't a one-time deal. You don't just decide "I'm going to be progressive." It is a work in progress, and requires vigilance and the careful examination of one's own thoughts and behaviours.

Retrospect is absolutely horrible and cathartic to hear you call it out. Profit and Lace, which you gave rightly less of a beating, Quark is forced to live the stereotype of "a women" just like women are forced to live that stereotype. He is also forced to endure the piggishness of men. This was my mom's take, who grew up experiencing things like "girls can't do math, therefore you are just stupid at math", and for her it was fun to see the tables turned in this case.

A lesson that can be taken from this episode (and excellent review) is that the best of us or in this case a tv show can get it wrong sometimes badly. However given the opportunity redemption can achieved

When you were discussing Profit and Lace, I really wish you had mentioned the (most likely accidental) transphobic message it holds as well. We've never seen an actual trans person in Trek at this point (I'm sorry--Jadzia is an icon and I even named myself after her when I came out as trans myself, but her iconic transness seems to be a happy accident and not a deliberate allegory so she doesn't count). So, when Quark is turned into a woman in order to trick a man into doing something that furthers Quark's own agenda, that's a bad look as well, especially now in 2024, where trans people have to deal with the constant threat of "bathroom bills" and all kinds of accusations of duplicity. You were spot on about the sexism, Steve, but man, the entire narrative of the episode is also implicitly transphobic.

10:06 i felt that the "emotional woman" part was still played as a joke. Like. Its so over the top that i think the point was to say "this is what people think women are like, how dumb is that!" And to be a bit soap opera-y.... But text vs subtext is a tricky business

I love how casually, yet fiercely, your discussion of any given topic is politically grounded. Most creators who would talk about the kinds of topics you do wouldn't go anywhere near politics for fear of losing half their audience. Much respect.

I felt inspired by Janeway when I was a kid. Even considering some of the inconsistencies in her character and some things that she does that are honestly mistakes, she still stands out to me as an example of a strong, competent woman.

I always considered Janice Rand's comment about women not being allowed to be captains the rantings of a lunatic and Kirk's lack of pushback just being him not wanting to argue with an irrational person.

While Kira is one of my all-time favorite characters, I have to say that ST: Discovery has so many women who are so much more than just decorative. They're powerful, they have important jobs to do, they have depth and many layers; and they kick ass. Philippa Giorgiou is one of my faves now!

Code of Honor is an interesting case.. because the writer was trying to criticize the inherent sexism of the planetary society.. but I wonder how much of the blame for the clear 'badness' of the episode can be laid at the feet of the direction, casting, and costume/character design side of the equation. How would the episode change if all the Ligonians were all white? If their costumes were just.. random fashionable clothes. The story bears some strong resemblance to another (admittedly problematic in it's own right) story told by Stargarte SG1.. s01e03 Emancipation. Where Carter is put through the 'you have to dress like a native member of the society' ringer, and ends up getting kidnapped and shoved into a powerplay of similar stakes. In that episode, it's "Mongols".. and still pretty cringe because of it. But I think the problem is, any time you want to lean in on a story about 'a sexist society' the tendency is to lean back on the 'old tropes'.. that tend to be problematic for today's audiences.. not to say that Code of Honor was good at the time.. but it definitely had that 'leftover scripts for Phase II' vibe. Written for a 70's audience perhaps.

The Voyager episode (Retrospect) is actually an interesting case. They were trying to address hypnotic recovery of repressed memories, which was a big thing in the 90s. It was a major part of some of the Satanic panics in the 80s and 90s. People would, under hypnosis, recall horrific stories of abuse. Frequently these "repressed memories" were not real and had been accidentally created by the psychologists doing the therapy. So that's where they were coming from, though clearly the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

2:38 - Those 'tiny blinking lights' are referred to in Nerd Culture as "BLINKENLIGHTS": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights

It's being reported Rachel Garrett, will be appearing in Section 31. Yesterday's Enterprise, is definitely my favorite single episode.

I was a 13 y.o. "liberated" girl in 1968 when I watched "Turnabout Intruder." I considered Janice Lester to be nuts. I never considered that women couldn't be captains of starships. She was obsessed, jealous, and determined to punish Kirk for dumping her. The reason she couldn't become an officer in Starfleet is because she flunked the tests! When Kirk does say something about women not becoming captains, I figured he was just humoring her. That's the way I saw it back then, anyway.

I really enjoy most of your videos; but the message you present in this episode is spot on! You’re right, despite our best efforts & intentions, we all make mistakes or missteps sometimes. Admitting those and making an effort to do better is what is most important.

One of the most unfortunate parts of Code of Honor is the fight Lt. Yar has with the wife of the leader of the planet. A rare opportunity to show off Yar's hand to hand combat skills

Thanks for this. It’s so encouraging to hear someone speak out for both progressive values and graciousness towards people (aka all of us) who are still working on perfecting those principles within ourselves.

When it comes to "Profit and Lace," I wish for memory loss.

The one thing Star Trek completely dropped the ball on was queer representation. It's absolutely shocking how long it took for proper representation to appear. Even Enterprise had literally zero, and that ended in 2005. Sitcoms had better representation a decade earlier than that.

Due to a quirk in television distribution in South Africa, we only got TNG Seasons 1 and 2 in the early 90's and then the Generations movie. Seasons 3 onward only aired to general audiences almost 10 years later. Same thing for the later seasons of DS9 with season 2 being skipped entirely. Only Voyager has a semi consistent airing run from 1996 to the end.

May we all live long and prosper And help folk who aren’t prospering live long lives

Beautiful video, excellent lesson. Those little nuggets of bias creep in to us all and we have to fight them actively. At first it takes conscious effort, but like any other talent, devoted practice makes it easier and easier until it's just second nature. The bias doesn't actually go away, though, at least not always, so you do still have to fight it. It'll just be mostly subconscious. For me I discovered I had unjustified preferential treatment towards women. Sort of a small-scale "women are just naturally better at everything" mentality, thankfully kept to a minimum. But still there. So whenever I felt it rear its ugly head, I fought it back. When I felt bad about how such a high percentage of my closest friends were male, I forced myself to think of everything awesome about them that MADE them my friends, to make sure I wasn't punishing them for stupid reasons beyond their control. And they ARE awesome :D But there's also a fascinating little bonus to this that I think people need to hear and consider: There are times I intentionally let the bias stay. When I get a message and I check who it's from, and it's from my best friend (who is female), I get a thrill because it's specifically her, and...I just let that one sit. It wasn't making me think badly of anyone else, it was making me happy to talk to a close friend. The idea is that whenever I have a positive thought based on the bias, I keep it, and whenever I have a negative thought, I fight it. Which tends to amount to "let my sexism make me happier around women, but refuse to let it make me less happy around men". Likewise with how I actually treat them when talking to them or thinking about them. This does of course have to be done VERY carefully. If I give too much sway to women, I may end up trusting someone who doesn't deserve it. I'm already aware of and careful about this in my behavior, and it's fairly well into the second-nature realm at this point, but when talking to others it VERY much needs to be said. Being trusting of or loyal to people who would abuse that can be every bit as dangerous as being suspicious of or hateful towards decent, well-meaning people. Often because the former tends to lead into the latter, in incredibly sneaky ways. Just remember: Keep fighting the bias, day after day. You should judge people based on their actions and motivations, on what they DO, not on what they ARE. If there's a part of yourself you can't change, you shouldn't judge others based on it.

The first-season TNG episode Justice sticks with me because I interpreted the moral as, "respect other cultures, but only if those other cultures don't suck."

It has been quite a trudge for me to cope with my implicit and explicit biases. I have no pride in any of them (more like deep embarrassment). I sometimes get disheartened at how deeply flawed I am all the while finding what appears to be a never-ending parade of faults I had not previously been aware of. In some ways, I can easily relate to being a clumsy oaf the way Star Trek has been at times. Other times, I take comfort in getting things right. Dealing with my shortcomings is not easy. One way I was spared some of these stereotypes is that I had never experienced women in my life as portrayed by insulting caricatures. I could not watch something stupid about women and find it echoed in my life, anywhere. One small transient, easy step, and many more of picking myself up after faceplanting on the concrete for the twelve billionth time. Ugh. Humanity is not always pretty.

I read somewhere that Russ Mayberry, the original director, was responsible for the casting of the Ligonian parts with all black actors and was promptly fired by Gene Roddenberry (either for the casting itself or for the way he treated the black actors) and replaced with Les Landau

I like the "Star Trek can fuck up," so can all of us, sentiment. I hope if and when I do fuck up people will continue to point it out so I can grow. Thanks for all you do, Steve.

I'd like to point out DS9's third season episode, "Through the Looking Glass" where regular-Sisko essentially pulls a Revenge of the Nerds on Mirror-Jadzia. Not even TOS did something *that* fucked-up.

"Treating our experience as the default experience." That's the kicker right there. Empathy is crucial. So many times I hear a variation on "I haven't personally experienced X, therefore X is not a serious or pervasive issue." Dare to believe that you are not the main character of the universe. That when people tell you of the injustices and oppression they experience, regardless of whether or not you've personally witnessed it, believe them. Star Trek does its best to present things in that way, and it can be jarring when they goof up, but like you, I still believe in the messages of Star Trek and applaud the work they did and do to call attention to these important issues. That being said, that line from Spock at the end of The Enemy Within is astounding. I talk about this in my review of that episode, but I'm shocked not only that it was included at all (since we see how traumatized Rand was by the experience), but also that Leonard Nimoy, a guy who has proven himself to be a very upstanding and gracious person, didn't raise a stink himself about the line. Not dinging Nimoy on that, I don't think any worse of him because of this, but you'd think out of everyone who could have been given that line, that he would be the one to say, "No, this is not something Spock would say or condone." That very episode he introduced the nerve pinch precisely because whacking somebody with the butt of a phaser isn't something Spock would do, in his opinion, so it wouldn't have been unheard of for him to do that.

The treatment of Yeoman Rand in the show is even worse when you look up why Grace was removed from the show.

I read once that "Code of Honor" is the only time that a Star Trek episode director was fired mid-shooting. The version I read said that the producers were distracted with other things like overseeing the scripting of the rest of the season and figuring out budgets and breakdowns and all that following the pilot episode, so the director was mostly unsupervised in overseeing the casting and costume design for the episode. After a few days, they finally found out and fired the guy on the spot, bringing in a director for another episode to finish it because they couldn't afford to reshoot it. Now, I'm not sure how much of that is accurate and how much of it is the producers trying to throw one person under the bus for that unmitigated disaster of an episode (because multiple people had to have been involved because that's how television production works), but it's still an interesting bit of trivia. For all the failures of S1 TNG, the only one that got the director fired mid-production was "Code of Honor".

Whilst Kira and Dax are teo of my favourite characters, I always love seeing Grilka being smart, resourseful and tough in a very cut-throat culture, and learning to appreciate the strengths not traditionally appreciated by Klingons.

Great shirt, Mr. Shives.

Its interesting how Star Treks representation of women changed a bit when the Animated series came out in 1973, there is one episode where its implied a female captain as an all female crew was needed (not shown) to help the women in the "The Lorelei Signal". That episode does show Lt.Uhura take command of the Enterprise too! I was pretty mad when they killed off Dr.Culber in Disco's 1st season. I guess they brought him back later at least.

There's some material in beta canon and fan productions that retroactively suggests the implication in "Turnabout Intruder" that women can't be assigned as starship captains was in deference to the Tellarites... as apparently some of them found the idea of female captains unacceptable. However, it's suggested that this is primarily in reference to top-line first-rate heavy cruisers, such as Constitution class vessels... smaller support vessels might still have had female commanding officers even in the TOS era... and by a few decades later, in the late 23rd century, things had apparently changed enough in Tellarite society that this was no longer objectionable.

My understanding with the Voyager episode Retrospect is that it was intended to be about the Satanic panic, and the use of hypnosis to recover repressed memories. The memories would turn out to be fake, caused by the hypnotist indirectly suggesting them, and actually making the person believe they were true. It is indeed very unfortunate that the crime they decided to use it for was rape--or, at least, used terminology like "violation" and such to make it seem like such. But the goal was not to make a "false rape allegation" episode.

Theres always gonna be episodes that some how slip through the net, especially when theres hundreds of episodes per show.

Thank you Steve 😊

Wise words steve.

Star Trek can fuck up, and so can I. wise words to remember, about ourselves and each other oh, and my fave is Kira... yeah, she's complex, believable, well written and acted. I could go on, but you know

Even in the 80's as a young kid, I knew Code of Honor was a racist af. I later came to refer to it as the "black episode"....there are so many 50s stereotypes, heck even some vaudevillian ones. Its just so bad.

Andrew Robinson has stated in an interview that Garak was gay. To your point, though, if that was the case, it was *extremely* low-key.

1:30 Patrick Stewart has criticized it too, in his recently published memoir: Making It So.

My folks, friends and I always thought Kira from DS9 was a strong female character. I liked how she dealt with her inner Demons over the Cardassian occupation. It couldn't have been easy for her to stop hating all Cardassians but she did. She joined the rest of the crew on Deep Space 9 in teaming up with Garek. She bonded with her half sister who was also half Cardassian and Gul Dukat's illegitimate daughter to boot and spoke against the murder of a guilt ridden Cardassian prisoner at the hands of one her people. When she asked why he killed him he said-"He was Cardassian." "Isn't that reason enough?" She said-"No it isn't.

Even Sir Patrick ranted about this episode in his recent autobiography. He used it as an example for how terrible the first season was. Obviously he rewatched a bunch of episodes as research for the book and was shocked about this one.

Great video- small request though, could you place a TW before mentions of SA next time please? (Unless you already did and I missed it while away from the screen)

5:40 that was a good video, the Starfleet HR officer

I miss the blinky lights.

16:05 yes Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall Fame as a Hedonistic alien turned on by Seven of Nine. I mean come on this is Scott Thompson!

A good friend of mine is on a rewatch of Enterprise that I've casually followed along with, and we're both just now realising how grotesquely it treats Jolene Blalock as a sex object for the camera to stare at. Plot and character-wise the show does have good points, but man, if I'd been depicted like that on a Star Trek show I'd avoid interacting with it for the rest of my life too.

Don't forget how Picard season 1 dealt with the refugee crises theme! Picard ignores a 'no human' sign and then his child soldier kills one of the patrons!

One point I would like to contend is that in Profit and Lace, it is a Ferengi teaching a male Ferengi how to act as a woman in a very sexist culture that has unfair expectations of women's behavior in order to please their men (and this is all in attempt to seduce and manipulate a dyed in the wool Ferengi besides), so it was understandable in context. As for Quark's emotional difficulties, it's also understandable in the moment simply because HE, (an already fairly emotional character who got irritable quickly when things went against him) has had zero experience with greatly different levels of hormones running through his system (and the hormones of Ferengi women for that matter that we have zero data about in comparison to human women.) It was run as a joke, but not an irrational joke all context considered.

I think the Orville, as a Trek adjacent series, also needs a mention here. Their story intended to be in support of transgendered people initially sent the oppose message unintentionally. Seph MacFarlane has acknowledged the fuck up and brought people who are transgender onto the writing staff to particularly help develop the story in a better way, and season 2 and 3 of the Orville had episodes that depicted some of the heartbreaking abuse transgender people go through whilst also showing the hope and happiness transgender people can experience when they get the support that all of us need but transgender people often don't. It would have been so easy for the staff behind the Orville to just dig in their heels and cite their good intentions, rather than admit fail and change, and thankfully they did listen and did change.

In 'Turnabout Intruder', Janice Lester's line, "your world of starship captains doesn't admit women", shouldn't be taken to mean that Starfleet doesn't allow females to command starships. Rather it means that Kirk's personal world does not allow him to commit - which he couldn't - they were a year together at Starfleet, when he broke it off. Indeed, we see a female (Number One) in command in the very first episode ever produced (and then again when the footage was reused for The Menagerie). Unless you think that Starfleet doesn't allow women permanent command, but are for some reason happy to allow women to rise to positions where they can exercise command temporarily.

Star Trek has had missteps, some (code of honor we are looking at you) worse than others. However, this isn't completely bad. It shows that you can have problems you CAN grow and move forward. People are never perfect but TRY. Be more like Demar (from DS9) not Dukat (also from DS9).

Great t-shirt! Apropos of the subject matter of this video.

_Straight New Worlds_ is rolling it back...