A Hot Mess on the Enterprise

| Sep 20, 2021
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What’s got Kirk so scared?

Star Trek launched on our television screens fifty-five years ago this fall, and it’s been a formative influence on my life for many reasons, including thoughtful examination of traditional gender roles in multiple episodes. But that wasn’t always the case. I’ve recently watched the final episode of The Original Series, “Turnabout Intruder,” for the first time in decades. All I can say is what an awful mess it really is.

The Enterprise answers a distress call from a planet where Dr. Janice Lester is leading an archeological expedition. Several members of her crew are dead of radiation poisoning and Lester appears to be suffering from its effects as well.

The viewer soon learns that Lester harbors great rage and jealousy toward Captain Kirk, who had spurned her after a love affair many years before. She believes she should be a starship captain, but says Starfleet doesn’t allow women to fill that role (the reasoning is never explained, but presumably, it’s because they lack the emotional temperament to do so).

During the expedition Lester has found the means to transfer her mind into another body and manages to take control of Kirk’s body, leaving him stranded in her body. After the transfer, it becomes clear how much she hates her womanhood, telling Kirk moments before a failed attempt to strangle him:

“Now you know the indignity of being a woman. For you this agony will soon pass, as it has for me. Quiet. Quiet! Believe me, it’s better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman. It’s better to be dead.”

Spock mind melds with Kirk’s mind in Lester’s body.

Lester, as Kirk, takes command of the Enterprise, but her psychotic rage proves to be her undoing. At first no one believes Lester/Kirk’s claim to be the real Captain Kirk, but a mind-meld by Mr. Spock persuades him of the truth. Eventually, Kirk/Lester’s own uncontrollable rages weaken her control over Kirk’s body and eventually break it, and both are returned to their own bodies.

One of the undercurrents of the episode, never addressed directly, is that there would be no greater indignity for Kirk than having to live out his life in the body of a woman.

One of the things that saddens me about this episode is that the story came from the pen of Star Trek’s creator, the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, Gene Roddenberry. I am disappointed, but probably shouldn’t be surprised. Although The Original Series did so much to celebrate diversity and skewer prejudices, it’s really terribly misogynistic in so many ways, from the mini-dresses on the female crew members to references to them as “girls,” to Kirk’s romantic flings with every female alien who crosses his path.

As I indicated in the beginning, later iterations of Trek have addressed sexual and gender identity in progressive, thoughtful ways, but Turnabout Intruder is a product of a world that was just beginning to awaken to these issues.

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Category: Transgender Opinion

Claire H.

About the Author ()

Claire Hall was born and grew up in a large city on the left coast and has spent most of her adult years in a beautiful small coastal community where she's now an elected official in local government after spending many years as a newspaper and radio reporter. In her space time she loves reading, writing fiction (her first novel was published by a regional press a couple of years ago), watching classic Hollywood movies, and walking.

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