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I never understood why the producers put Troi, Seven of Nine and T’Pol into those stupid catsuits in the first place. All of them looked so much more sexy whenever they wore the standard Starfleet uniform.
Thankfully Jellico fixed that at least for Troi.
In addition to what was said about Berman, there’s also Gene Roddenberry. The best way I can explain how his opinion of women evolved over time is that he allowed Marina Sirtis to have that role on TNG even though she didn’t sleep with him. The same was not true of Nichelle Nichols in the 1960s.
Sirtis only stayed on the show after season 1 because Denise Crosby left. Not because there was a rift between them, but because she wasn’t crossing the “too many women on the show” threshold anymore.
Gates McFadden left TNG for Season 2 because she ran afoul of Maurice Hurley, one of Roddenberry’s lap dogs:
I had been in conflict with one of the male writer-producers about certain things I thought were sexist. What I’ve heard is that he said ‘Either she goes or I go.’ I was shocked that they let me go, because I knew my character was really popular. But he was going to be writing more and more and didn’t want to have to deal with me. What was great was they got rid of him and asked me to come back.
To his credit, Rick Berman asked her back, but I think it was only because Dr. Katherine Pulaski was such an unpopular character and the fans kept writing letters about bringing back Dr. Crusher.
Rick Berman and Gene Roddenberry understood, to varying degrees, that it was important to have women represented as strong, intelligent equals—but did not necessarily personally hold that value.
I really loved Pulaski. It’s hard for me to imagine other reasons besides Crusher is hot that she made it back. She has no character.
She was unpopular because she was mean to Data right after Measure Of A Man. I know she turned around some near the end but tbh I had a bad impression of her because of that.
She wasn’t mean to data she was skeptical about his nature. I consider her relationship with data one of the best things on the show, and episodes like the one where Riker commanded the other ship in a war games exercise showed her to be fond of data regardless of her position on his sentience. It would have been amazing to see her mind changed over the course of seasons.
She was meant to be a foil against Data, but came off as hating him.
I think it’s because Brent Spiner was so damn charismatic as Data.
Absolutely way better here. Said it for years Starfleet uniforms > catsuit bullshit. That has to be a specific fetish of a Paramount exec, Rick Berman probably.
Jadzia managed to dodge that bullet somehow.
Jadzia managed to dodge that bullet somehow.
She was instead forced to wear the sort of padding made for people who have had a mastectomy.
It’s because he got to make it the Bajoran uniform for Kira
Troi was put in the catsuit from day one, to capture the teenage boy market (and most of the rest of the male market). They put her on a uniform at the height of Star Trek popularity.
Seven came in at season 4 of Voyager with the extremely tight catsuit. This is the third series of the 90s era plus a couple of movies, so franchise fatigue started to set in. They needed a way to boost ratings, and they already knew of one surefire way.
With Enterprise, they didn’t even try to hide it. T’Pol could have very easily worn a standard Vulcan uniform, which we’ve seen multiple examples. The catsuit was blatantly used to try to regain some audience. Unfortunately they didn’t realize until it was too late that good writing and multi-episode arcs were what we really wanted.
It kinda killed Enterprise for me. The catsuit and the gratuitous “decontamination” scenes. It felt really off.
It’s not like I’m prudish or anything, I like that kind of thing in certain contexts. But it’s Star Trek, I’m watching this thing to get my nerd on. Trying to sex it up just made it weird.
Because sex sells.
