Thursday, February 4, 2010

I did 18 first, here's 17

The episode of the original Star Trek I watched was "Turnabout Intruder". The episode starts when the Enterprise receives a distress call from a nearby planet. When they get there the they see three people. Kirk knows this woman Lester. SHe is crazy because she never received her shot to command a star ship because she, she believes, she is a woman. This has driven her mad. She gets kirk into this device to switch minds with him and become kirk. She finally achieves her goal of being a commander on a star ship. She, however, being crazy can't control her rationale and is eventually discovered to not be the real Kirk. She attempts to kill her old body(kirk) several times failing.
I believe this episode clearly reflects on the struggles women have in society. Qualified women would be turned down for whatever they were attempting to do just because of their gender. This becomes far more relevant when you consider that this show was aired in 1969. At the time a womens right movement was taking place. It makes a lot of sense given the era. This message is very clear. She wanted something so bad, but there was nothing she could do about it. She was very delusional and tried to change it by herself. There have been many women that attempted to take a stand for something and change it completely. Rosa Parks tried to change the world by not relinquishing her seat on the white mans section of the bus. There was injustice there and injustice here.

2 comments:

  1. It seems like a lot of the shows we watched in class dealt with the struggles of women in society.

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  2. Also a theme that came up a lot in the shows we watched was the huge impact technology can have on our society.

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