Messed Up Things You Didn't Realize About Star Trek

And then there was the sexism. In a utopian society where equality is the watchword, it's amazing how much time is spent on worlds where women are, scientifically speaking, just the worst. The Original Series stuff is, predictably, pretty out there. In an episode of the same name, an alien named Elaan of Troyius (the on-the-nose wordplay names were a whole other problem) decides that she'd like herself a sweet new Enterprise to take over, to which Kirk responds by threatening, and this is true, to spank her. Luckily that never comes up again and oh wait, no, it does. She space roofies the captain and then inquires about that whole "spanking" thing he brought up earlier. The future might be female, but it's written by adolescent boys.

This sort of misogyny occasionally pops its head out throughout the franchise. Kirk meets a woman in the second season episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion" who's so mentally stunted that he has to explain what "freedom" means to her. And yes, they hook up. In the last episode of the series, it's made explicitly clear that women can't be Starfleet captains since they're too emotional. In TNG's "Angel One," the crew visits a planet run by women, and the place is a full-on disaster.   

Luckily, by the time the series rebooted in 2009, sci-fi had advanced to the point where equality was a reality and women were treated like human beings and no, just kidding, there's Alice Eve in her underpants for no reason.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB9lXFwbWhforK0v8SdZK6oXam1qrrGrGSyp6Visaqwza1kq52Roba7sYyamaitpGLAta3RZqurnZtk