This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.
I have been more or less ignoring this- the need for me to become familiar with The Original Series. In general I don’t like much of what I’ve seen. In any case, I am now watching it and will be doing reviews of those episodes. I will be giving pretty low scores, probably no higher than three stars out of five- I just don’t like TOS.
Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).
“That Which Survives” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode. I give it one star out of five.
“The Lights of Zetar” See this for a plot summary.
Overall a non-political episode, but there are a few things to mention:
1) More sexism than usual. A female StarFleet officer is frequently referred to as either a girl or a lass. Sulu makes a joke which seems to endorse thinking of women as brainless.
UPDATE 11/9/11 I think that with this post and maybe a couple others where I accused ST *TOS* of being sexist I went a little too far. I mean, there ARE two statements by kirk that are sexist, and I think the whole thing with women crewmembers wearing skirts (or dresses?) thing is sexist. But when it comes to Kirk and in this case also Scotty, referring to adult female crewmembers as "girl" or "lass" I have to wonder, how often has kirk called adult male crewmembers "boy?" I think probably rarely or never, but I'm not going to re-watch the series anytime soon, so I don't know. It is possible I'm being too harsh with the characters and writers over the use of "lass" and "girl." And I could be wrong about the skirts.
2) The idea of an electronic repository for all the knowledge in the Federation, which is open to anyone, sounds like a good idea.
3) The last members of an alien race (less than a hundred of them) whose planet died a long time ago is eliminated in order to save a StarFleet offcier from being inhabited by them, which seems reasonable.
“Requiem for Methuselah” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode. But I liked the idea that Flint was immortal and had actually been many historical figures (such as da Vinci).
I give it two stars out of five.
“The Way to Eden” See this for a plot summary.
You could possibly call this episode “StarFleet versus the Hippie.” Although Spock likes them, it’s fairly negative towards the hippies.
I give it three stars out of five.
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