Also, what’s Starfleet’s sexual harassment policy because Dr. Bashir, whoo boy ...

Good piece. I wish it would have explored Roxann Dawson a bit. She actually did manage to parley her Voyager character into a career writing and directing.

Write them some? Bashir and O’Brien weren’t friends until the writers changed that so...

Sometimes, sure. But when you have an entire crew of relatively nice people who respect Data and one that doesn’t, they stand out. Jellico was an asshole too and the fans didn’t really like him. No, everything isn’t about gender.

I remember thinking that Kira is the “catsuit cast member” of DS9 (like Troi, Seven, T’Pol) but we never think of her as that.  They gave the “sexy character attitude” to Dax, the one in the baggier jumpsuit and the “sexy character outfit” to the emotionally scarred chip on her shoulder ex militia religious…

The problem is that they were trying to recreate the Spock/Bones relationship. Pulaski was fine as Bones but Data was completely unlike Spock. In their verbal sparring, Spock gave as good as he got and you could tell he enjoyed the rivalry, dunking on Bones whenever he could think of a zinger that was subtle enough to…

The writing was just ridiculously bad in S2. Not only if she making fun of the android, she’s making of the third highest rankest member of the bridge crew... while standing on the bridge. It’s a moronic thing for the character to be doing.

Lower Decks was excellent, and I agree that Star Trek has always been at its best when treated as an ensemble cast rather than Lead Character and Friends.

At this point in human history, my favorite message inherent in Trek is that for humanity to not just thrive but to survive, we all have to consider our individual contributions to society as essential. We all have value and all have a role to play in the collectives story. I think TNG became so much bigger when it…

That’s ... a reductive way of summarizing her entire role on STP, but you do you.

FWIW, yeah, that was a brutal scene I wish they would have done without. And she was, in a way, a glorified cameo that serve some plot points. But introducing the idea of Seven, reclaiming her humanity, and fighting for justice? That’s…

In the generally awesome and rightfully praised TNG episode “Best of Both Worlds” there’s a bit of dialog that kinda doesn’t sit right and hasn’t gotten any better with age. Admiral Hanson and Commander Shelby have come to the Enterprise to assist with the Borg incident. Hanson tells Picard that Shelby’s a good…

It’s interesting that with the exception of TOS and TNG season 1, almost all of the problems the article identifies were in some way a product of Rick Berman. Forcing sex appeal into a show that never needed it, thinking sex appeal would rescue flagging ratings, aggravating other actors, pretty much all of the major…

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20, but I can totally see why Denise Crosby left. But at the same time, had she stayed through season 3, she may have eventually had the role of the lifetime she was desiring at that point in her career.

The problem was really more about what they were aiming for, and how they didn’t realize the problem with it.

Enterprise’s problems are way more complicated than just the “boys’ club.” I’m not disagreeing with anything you said, just trying to illustrate that Enterprise failed because of a confluence of different events.

Denise Crosby was a victim of the weak structure of the first season or so of TNG. If you go back and look you’ll see most episodes follows the same framework where the Enterprise encounters a problem, and each member of the bridge crew uses their individual gimmick to help solve it. Troi would use her empath powers,…

An enumeration of a train wreck can be as long as one has space for. So, towards completionism:

In Turnabout Intruder, the final episode of the original series I believe, we discover that women were not even allowed to captain starships in Kirk’s Star Fleet. Even as a young boy way back then, yet to firmly grasp the injustice of sexist roles, I was horrified by this unfairness.

Enterprise erasure!!!

Awesome.  This is the kind of article that makes me come back to io9.  I have watched my fair share of Star Trek over many years but I haven’t really followed back stage happenings.  Also, as white cis male, I have found (partially through io9 articles over the years) that I have really had some blinders on for a long…