Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 79 Turnabout Intruder
It’s been a little slow in the movie department lately, and I have been looking for something to blog about that doesn’t take five hours to do (those movie reviews aren’t just spewed from my brain stem stream of consciousness style in spite of how they may appear. I actually do think about them and believe it or not watch the film itself). I had a lot of fun recapping the assorted TOS episodes when I did my best and worst lists, and thought I could do something for all of them.
So what I plan to do is go through each episode in turn and talk about my thoughts on it and what it meant to me in my childhood. Also if any relevant thoughts as it relates to current events or things in my personal life crop up I will be sure to share them. I know you are fascinated. Also since this blog kind or runs backwards I will be doing them from last to first, so we start off with Episode 79 Turnabout Intruder.
This is the last episode of the dreaded season 3 and was originally scheduled to be aired on the day Eisenhower died. It tells the story of a crazy woman (Sandra Smith) who blames her gender for her failing to achieve command of a star ship and uses an alien device to trade bodies with Kirk. She then lives up to every negative stereotype with regards to women by bungling things up majorly, including her attempt to kill Kirk in her former body.
Little did I know that this episode would be my introduction to gender politics, a subject that would haunt me for many years. In art school the main focus of our department was marginalization and gender issues and most of my teachers, grad students, and peers did not have a lot of kind words for the hapless Y chromosome. Ironically by being one of three straight white males in the entire program I was more marginalized than anyone else, but had I suggested that at the time I would have gone through my own male-to-female transformation with the help of a belt sander.
The payback I would suffer for being born male was destined to continue for the rest of my life, as exhibited by the way I am treated by the women I date. There is no way they aren’t all in some conspiracy to make me suffer as much as possible. (You Lost me at Hello, the phrase I’m pretty sure all women are thinking when they first meet me, comes from the Funny T-Shirt category BTW)
I’m kind of torn as to whether this story can be counted as a success or failure in the name of women’s liberation. The female personality failed as captain in Kirks body, which implies that it is actually the strength of character that makes for a command officer, not gender. However she manages to exhibit every negative helpless female stereotype during the course of it, and the fact is TOS was pretty short on female commanding officers (for the record I think the highest ranked female was Lt. Uhura) in general. TNG made up for it (sort of). A less enlightened viewer might say that the inherent strength of Kirk as the male comes from his lifetime of experience as a man, not the few days he spent as a woman. Also I’m going to call shenanigans on the fact that I sincerely doubt a true epicurean such as Kirk would pass up on the opportunity to have sex with himself.
Speaking of male-to-female transformation my good friend A. just complete hers and is recovering nicely. Congratulations!
That’s pretty much it. Tomorrow is All our Yesterdays, an episode that confused the hell out of me as a kid.
Dave
