Kirk, Uhura and Chekov fight for their lives on a planet run entirely for the amusement of three brains under glass. Lay your quatloos and place your bets as we put The Gamesters of Triskelion in the Mission Log.
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Um, fellas, I know you’re working on your awareness of sexism, but you both have a big blind-spot, where gender issues are concerned.
On the podcast, both of you extensively went through the definition of ‘selection’, and concluded that it had to do with breeding more thralls. That’s why the Captain gets Shanna, Uhura gets Lars — top fighter, matched with top fighter.
That also explains the (attempted) rape — on Triskelion, a female used to autonomy has to be made obedient, so she doesn’t kill herself or her forced offspring. Even its cessation is explainable — Uhura’s so valuable that, as with the Providers being otherwise indulgent with the landing party (they get away with defiance that kills other thralls), Uhura doesn’t get attacked again, and Lars becomes a touch more gentlemanly.
If you bothered to set aside the she-male jokes, you would have seen that, logically, in the story, Tamoon was female, valuable and desirable stock, not a man in a dress — why else would Chekov be paired with her? She was on the first fight team for the landing party, and she was healthy enough to train more thralls. In fact, she was more valuable to the Providers as a trainer than as breeding stock.
Tamoon was respected by the Providers, and Chekov, despite his disgust played for laughs, didn’t take her strength or smarts for granted. He didn’t let her know about the plan, and he knocked her out efficiently, just like the landing party did with their trainers. In that, she was equal. Too bad you were making Paul Lynde jokes, to see that.
I don’t have a clue why you went into that tranny-hatin’ space, when you sure as hell didn’t go there when Ruk could get away with wearing a pink blouse, a neat robe (over an ambiguous chest) and use whatever voice it wanted, to serve Korby, the Old Ones or its own awesome programming. I don’t even want to think it’s because you hate the fatties, or the tall girls, or the ladies who could win 2 out of 3 falls in a wrestling match.
I’d like to think you’re better people than that — and, upon listening to this podcast on the week where queers of all sorts honor those who survived those snide jokes, and the accompanying 60s bashings, to stand as a people claiming their God-given rights as citizens, I’d like to think you had a momentary lapse in judgement.
There are not many costumes from TOS that I could wear; Tamoon’s might be the only one. I’d like to think that for those of us who’d overflow the B-cups of Miss Sherry Jackson, there is a way for us to imagine ourselves in the ST universe. Losing one fierce, tender warrior woman to the episode’s jokes is bad enough, but your piling on is worse; i thought we had made more progress, in fan culture alone.