by Janice L. Newman
The mood was bittersweet as we gathered to watch the final episode of Star Trek. It also held a hint of trepidation: would we get another instant classic, like All Our Yesterdays, or another disappointment, like the string of episodes before it?
As it turned out, the final episode of Star Trek, probably the last new one that will ever be aired, was compelling, well-acted, well-paced, well-directed…and disappointing for an entirely different reason.
The episode opens with Kirk encountering a former lover, a woman by the name of Janice Lester (not to be confused with Janice Rand, his former yeoman). Lester is ill, having received a dose of unknown radiation, and Kirk stays at her bedside to discuss their shared past, which was rife with emotional upheaval. Then Lester utters a sentence that gave every one of the watchers pause: “Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.”
This, on the face of it, makes no sense. I will discuss why later in this piece.
Kirk agrees with her that, “No, it isn’t.” When he turns away from Lester for a moment, she sits up and remotely triggers an alien machine which causes their “souls” to be switched. Kirk’s mind is now in Lester’s body, and vice-versa.
The plot that then unfolds is simple: Kirk must try to convince his crew that he is himself, despite being in Lester’s body, while Lester must convince them that “Janice Lester” is dangerously insane and that she is Captain Kirk. Lester is hampered by the fact that she is emotionally unstable, to put it mildly, and clearly unfit to be a starship captain. Spock uses Vulcan telepathy early on and believes Kirk, and the rest of the crew slowly come to support him as well, despite no medical tests showing anything off about Kirk (this is another implausible point—surely brain scans, psychological tests, or gauges of emotional stability should have shown that something was different.)
I have to give both Shatner and Sandra Smith, who played Janice Lester, credit here. Shatner does a good job playing someone not himself, particularly with body language (small touches like primly sitting with his knees together in the captain’s chair, for example). Smith also does an excellent Kirk impression. It's clear she studied his mannerisms before the role, and the tight, narrow-eyed, watchful look she has throughout definitely evokes him.
Eventually, apparently with the help of Spock’s telepathy, Kirk is able to force a reverse mind-transfer. Lester breaks down, and Kirk ends the episode with a mournful, “Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only. If only.”
There are a couple of ways to interpret this story. You could, as we tried to do, simply say that Lester sees sexism where it none exists, blaming an outdated concept for why she couldn’t get promoted rather than her own mental and emotional instability. Unfortunately, this is undercut by Kirk’s agreeing with her statement that, “It’s not fair,” and Kirk’s own final words that her life could have been as rich as “any woman’s”.
On the other hand, taking it at face value seems wildly counter both to previous episodes and to current (present-day) trends. “Number One” from The Menagerie was a woman, and even acting captain of the Enterprise back in Pike’s day, years before Kirk was put in charge. Perhaps there hasn’t been a female starship captain yet (there are only 13 Enterprise-class ships, per Tomorrow is Yesterday) but you don’t make someone First Officer if there’s no avenue for them to eventually become a captain. And in “our world”, two world leaders are women: Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel just two months ago, while Indira Gandhi has been Prime Minister of India since 1966! In every other way, the “Federation” has been shown to be an organization freer of prejudice than our own time. Race hatred is a thing of the past, so much so that the very idea causes revulsion in Day of the Dove and helps Kirk realize that they are being controlled. Yet we are to believe that this same future somehow bars women from holding certain positions of power?
Perhaps…yes. The ugly truth is, no matter how we spin it, those lines on the face of them say to female viewers, “Stay in your role. You are allowed to do certain things, but not everything a man can do. To want more is madness.” This, from a show that made so many women into science fiction fans, and for which female fans have fought so hard and created so much support, is doubly insulting.
In summing up, I can’t put it better than a friend who goes by Greenygal, who has had thoughtful and interesting commentary on a previous episode as well:
Do I prefer to think that all the dialogue of women's limitations and hating womanhood and "as rich as any woman's if only" is just about Janice Lester's own issues and not institutional and societal sexism in the Star Trek universe? Sure, of course. Are those lines perfectly innocent? No. Do they hurt? Yes.
Bittersweet indeed. Four stars, despite the script, because the production and acting were just that good.
Despite Itself
by Lorelei Marcus
While it's true that the episode sets out to send an egregious message about female incompetence in the realm of leadership, I think the result is quite the opposite. In the world of literature there is an emphasis on showing rather than telling the audience any information that needs to be conveyed. Not only is presenting a concept visually rather than verbally more engaging and complex, but also more impactful because of our dependence on sight as our number one sense of reality. We may not believe everything we hear, but we almost always believe what we see. Perhaps that is why I was so moved to see a woman unquestionably in the captain's role, with no epithets to belittle her importance.
The person on screen may be the soul of a man trapped inside a woman's body, but what we hear and see is a woman's voice and a woman's face speaking with the same determined spirit of Captain Kirk, receiving the same respect from the male first officers as any leader of the Enterprise. She is not a "beautiful" Captain, or an "ice cold" Captain, or even a "woman" Captain. She is simply, The Captain, a person with a role beyond her appearance.
Before this episode I had not realized the extent of the limited portrayals of women in television. I had heard the first season of The Avengers was remarkable because the co-star role had been written for a man, but ended up being cast as a woman, and the characterizations were excellent because of it. I never saw this first season for myself though, and when I tuned in later several seasons in, it was to a new female co-star relegated only to being the seductress, beauty, and potential romantic interest for the lead.
Nearly everywhere, women characters are written differently than men, and severely restricted in the roles they can play in a story. Even in the lauded Is There in Truth No Beauty?, the female guest star is primarily interacted with on the basis of her beauty and her ultimate destiny is to fall in love, despite her being a talented ambassador and telepath. Female characters, no matter how intelligent, or complex, or interesting, will always be confined by the expectations of the characters around them and the audience. The first thing noticed about them will always be appearance, and unless they're meant to be the villain, they will always end up in some sort of romantic scenario, because that is the way it is. But Turnabout Intruder made me realize that it's not the way it has to be.
No one calls Janice's body “beautiful”. No one tries to court her. Once the first officers understand her authority, they never question her intent or her orders. And thanks to brilliant acting and slow pacing, there were moments when I forgot that she was meant to be Kirk at all, and simply believed a woman was the Captain of the Enterprise. In much the same way that seeing Uhura on the bridge for the first time was world changing, seeing Janice sit confidently in the captain's chair, or at least the witness chair, which is much like it, was inspiring. She is a symbol that makes me believe that even I could become a starship captain someday.
I can only hope that this is one of many examples to come. Television is a reflection of our larger society. If women of the silver screen can break free from the bonds of limited expectation, then so can those of society. For the positive role model, and a good viewing experience, I give the episode four stars.
Painfully Familiar
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman
"Your world of starship captains does not admit women."
That one line hit like a phaser to the back. It was just one of the many times I had a strong, visceral reaction to lines and moments in this episode, vacillating wildly between recognition and revulsion.
It is a hard thing, to hear true words spoken by a villain. Dr. Lester has to be a villain, because she hurts Kirk, and then gloats about it. She killed her team, has never moved past her and Kirk's young connection at Starfleet Academy, and declares that she never loved him but instead loved "the life he led," his "power."
This poisons the powerful truth telling of her words.
Watching Dr. Lester-in-Kirk’s body back up when the officer in orange is menacing her-in-his-body, was so recognizable, so clear an experience known to many of the women and perhaps fewer of the men watching. Likewise, when Dr. Lester-in-Kirk stands over the young communications officer and hollers at her, that too, is painfully recognizable. That she-as-he treats Spock with the same overbearing arrogance is just another reminder how tenuous a protection gender is to anyone deviating even a blue eye shadow’s swipe away from the straight and narrow.
After that dominance-driven performance on the bridge, with all its uncomfortable complexity, we are back to the same sexist clichés that too many people explicitly and implicitly trot out to force women out of so many leadership roles: "hysteria" and "emotional instability" and "erratic mental attitudes." This too is a danger of science fiction, taking cruel characterizations that rarely if ever entirely encompass a real, living human being, but on screen can flow out to fill the edges of a full character, leaving no complex internality to explore or expose.
These characterizations perfectly match what we see on screen, and what we see other women believe about Dr. Lester on screen. I was particularly disappointed by Nurse Chapel's easy agreement that the woman in front of her was insane, with no one but a strange man's say-so. Chain of command means passing little to this crew when it suits the plot, but in this instance it turns Nurse Chapel into a tool as if she has no other purpose or will but to obey.
Setting aside the male chauvinism that made my skin crawl and neck itch throughout the entire episode, if we treat Dr. Lester as a whole person, desperate for a chance to engage in leadership, it is fascinating to see what an incredibly bright woman, kept outside of the power structures that she still chooses to serve, sees as the motions and emotions of power. Though Bones's recitation of Dr. Lester-in-Kirk's body's mental changes is one correct summary, there are other aspects to highlight.
Dr. Lester-in-Kirk thinks that leaders—or perhaps just Captain James T. Kirk—has power by virtue of his title and rank, his smirking glad-handing relationships with his staff, his willingness to bully and raise his voice, his knowledge of and position within the legal and hierarchical systems of Starfleet, and when in a moment of extreme danger to Dr. Lester-in-Kirk's masquerade, his willingness to use violence. Yes, Bones was horrified to see Dr. Lester-in-Kirk hit Kirk-in-Lester. And yes, and Spock brought it up chidingly later. But one slapped Dr. Lester-in-Kirk in irons, threw him in solitary, or drugged him with sedatives because he'd laid hands on a nearly-naked, nearly-dying ill colleague (I would have wished for the actor's sake that the director would have tried for one more take of that scene, perhaps one where her half her bottom wasn't visible when she was lifted by the crew).
This vision of brute-force leadership is both cruel and perhaps one most of us have seen in our own lives or that of our country.
But then I swing back to recognition during the interrogation by Spock and the trial, not from the actions of Dr. Lester or Captain Kirk, but by Spock. Spock's argument and method of discovery are both deeply, traditionally feminine: in a system designed by human men, his forms of evidence are not accepted, the reality of his perceptions are not honored as evidence in their systems of justice, and his entire position is mocked and undermined, from the smirking guards to the giggle of the young communications officer we saw Captain Kirk dominate over earlier.
And yet, in the best of feminine traditions, Commander Spock persists. He insists on hearing Kirk-in-Dr. Lester. He believes his own mind, his own way of knowing things, is valuable, and while he is disappointed not to have it confirmed by the methods and sources acceptable to Starfleet tribunals, he does not waver and does not drift from his convictions.
"Her intense hatred of her own womanhood," is Captain Kirk-in-Dr. Lester's summary of why he dumped her. And that is one way of viewing her. But a fuller version of her, one made less glassy and plastic by the world of our own viewers, has the potential to be more Beatrice than Cruella de Vil.
Beatrice cries out in Act IV, Scene I of Much Ado About Nothing, after the young rake Claudio has ruined the life of Beatrice's even younger cousin Hero:
Beatrice: You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy.
Benedick: Is Claudio thine enemy?
Beatrice: Is he not approved in the height a villain, that
hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O
that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they
come to take hands; and then, with public
accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour,
—O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart
in the market-place.
That fantasy of Beatrice's is so much more violent and explicit than anything Dr. Lester-in-Kirk ever says, ever does: eat his heart in the marketplace.
Wow.
While Dr. Lester first simply aims to have Kirk warehoused on a strange planet, a cruel and earthbound life for a starship captain that provides some deep irony, it is not as explicitly violent as it could have been.
It is nearly as cruel as having her colleague take ownership over Dr. Lester when she finally loses, her body and life given to him because he promised to "take care of her."
That was a final, deeply disturbing moment in an episode that gave me such a strong and impenetrable mix of feelings, I found myself wishing for a Vulcan mind-meld to sort them all out with me.
I was however heartened by the final lines. "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only … if only."
One read is, "’if only’ she had surrendered earlier in her life to a gender role of vastly limited scope and ambition." But it just as likely could have been, "’if only’ she had lived in a more enlightened time, when her leadership yearnings were treated with respect, honed, corrected, and empowered so she could become the powerful, effective starship captain she so clearly wanted to become."
Three stars.
Love and Ambition
by Joe Reid
If the woman I loved were so jealous of her ex-boyfriend that she pretended to be him to take everything he had accomplished, could I still love her? My answer is a resounding NO! However, in this week’s episode of Star Trek, titled “The Turnabout Intruder,” we meet a man who would answer yes: Dr. Arthur Coleman. I have rarely seen anyone, woman or man, as committed as Dr. Coleman was to Dr. Janice Lester.
We meet both doctors on the planet Camus II. The Enterprise arrives in response to a distress call from the planet. There, we find an infirmed Dr. Lester under the care of Dr. Coleman, the last two surviving members of a research party. Kirk recognizes his former girlfriend and speaks kindly of her. Then, as signs of life appear elsewhere, the crew and Dr. Coleman leave to assist, hoping to find another survivor. Kirk is left alone with Dr. Lester. In the ensuing silence, Lester springs her trap, using an alien machine to swap bodies with Kirk. Lester now inhabits the healthy body of Captain Kirk, while Kirk lies struggling, trapped in Lester’s weakened body. What follows is a secretive cat and mouse game as Lester, in Kirk’s body, tries to eliminate the man trapped in hers, all while avoiding the suspicious gazes of the Enterprise crew and later matching wits against a fully recovered Kirk in female form. Through it all, Dr. Lester could fully rely on Dr. Coleman, who would do almost anything for her.
In this episode, Coleman proved his incredible loyalty to Lester. As someone who had not fared well in his career, Coleman and Lester appear to be kindred spirits, with her feeling held back herself due to her sex. Lester apparently concocted her plan upon discovering the alien mind transfer machine that lured Kirk, her former mate and the man who had achieved all the accolades she felt she deserved, to Camus II. In carrying out this scheme, Lester eliminated the other members of the research party. Through it all, Coleman stood by her side. He himself refused to kill anyone, allowing Lester to pursue her intent. Even when Lester, in Kirk’s body, gave Coleman senior medical authority on the Enterprise and asked him to murder the new Janice Lester. Bloodying his own hands was the only line he would not cross for her. Coleman’s devotion to Lester proved to be heartfelt. At the climax of the episode, the mind switch was reversed. Kirk and Lester being once again in their own bodies, left Lester insane with grief and devastated. It was here where Coleman professed his love for Lester and vowed to care for her going forward.
Coleman’s love for Lester was unquestionable, his loyalty steadfast. This raised the question in my mind of what Coleman would have done had Lester remained a man. Would his love for Lester find expression if she were in a man’s body? Perhaps he hadn’t thought things through, or perhaps it wouldn’t have been an issue for them. We saw, during one of their private moments, how Lester related to Coleman in a feminine manner as she touched his shoulder, attempting to coerce him into killing for her.
In the end, Coleman got exactly what he wanted. He was given permission to love and care for the woman he would go to almost any length for. Arthur Coleman proved more valuable to Lester than all she had hoped to gain in Kirk’s skin. Although her ambition for power failed her his love didn’t.
Overall, “Turnabout Intruder” was very well acted, with heavily nuanced performances by Mr. Shatner and Ms. Smith. Kirk delivered subtle femininity, softness, and female exacerbation convincingly. Lester grew more stoic and strategic as the story reached its climax. For its complex character dynamics and fine acting I’m willing to say this is among the better episodes of Star Trek.
Four stars
The End?
by Trini Stewart
After finishing "Turnabout Intruder", I’m inclined to reflect on Star Trek as a whole. I can’t help but acknowledge that my expectations for the episode are largely influenced by the loss of the beloved series. My first instinct is to be let down by the episode as a finale, since I hold the series so dear and the final episode had a fairly weak delivery as far as the intended message goes. What we got was an antagonist who, despite her compelling acting, I didn’t quite resonate with, even as a woman who regularly faces systematic sexism in a male-dominated work environment. While I found that Dr. Janice Lester’s challenges are inherently relatable and frustrating, her excessively drastic, vengeful means of getting her way made it more difficult to connect with her or understand her exact desires.
Nevertheless, instances of imperfect composition from Star Trek have never been enough for me to write off an episode or feel this kind of complete malaise about one as a result. There were enough ingredients for an enjoyable Trek episode in this one; there was convincing character work from everyone on the Enterprise, good teamwork from the close-knit crew to determine what was best for the well-being of the ship, plenty of Spock being the competent knock-out he ought to be, and an ending that avoids a high-stakes threat for a crew member. Regardless of whether I could relate to her, I was still intrigued by the consequences of Dr. Lester's futuristic and unconventional solution to systemic sexism, and I was curious about what exactly prevents women from being in leadership positions like being a starship Captain in the future.
Maybe what was more disappointing to me than the actual content was that there was a lot of lost hope for something more profound: a grand episode that needn't be perfect or anything, but at least answered some long-standing questions or gave hints of where the crew would be after we could no longer join them. There’s so much in this universe left to discover and explore, and many more discussions to be had with other fans. Not only that, but there is plenty of content I have yet to see from seasons one and two—I realize that my experience of the series is incomplete in more ways than one, and feeling robbed by the series’ cancellation doesn’t help.
Like thousands (millions?) of others, I fell in love with this show for its characters, its sense of adventure in uncharted territory, and the community that has grown around it, and I am simply not ready for all of that magic to end. "Turnabout Intruder" turned out to be a good episode overall, and a decent one to end the series on, all things considered. I’ll be looking forward to the reruns and continuing to celebrate Star Trek with so many others who treasure it, too.
3.5 stars.
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