Purely because this is a podcast about 'thinking' I want to bring my thoughts even though they aren't in the 'fun' and 'geeky' tone you were hoping for with this ep. There are no other comments tho so.... I like to look at things analytically and I love the fact then even though I am pushing 50 I can go online and find 100s of pods and video essays made by people much younger than me and be intellectually engaged. What would one of them do with Star Trek? Maybe geek out for sure but also balance that with some critical thinking and considered analysis.

That show definitely had some progressive energy and some utopian futurist vision. The best of that probably came from Roddenberry? Is any of it original or would you find influences in other earlier sci-fi writers? I dunno. No my area.

What I do know is that there were lots of issues that plagued the whole franchise right up until the reboot that Discovery represents (and maybe beyond, I don't know). There should have originally been a female second in command but that was jettisoned due to the idea that it was far too much for audiences to handle. It is nice that there was one black woman on deck but she was in a very passive role wearing a little skirt. I remember Nichelle in interview saying that she is Bill were not supposed to actually kiss even though Roddenbery wanted it. Bill went ahead and kissed her preventing the director getting the 'safe' version he wanted. In retrospect she was kinda sad that her old friend turned into the right-wing buffoon he did in old age.

The franchise was very toxic toward women for decades and numerous women who worked on the shows have talked about about this. I remember talking to male friends about Tasha Ya, the only strong female character on the TNG being written out and how disappointing that was. They regurgitated some narrative about how she (the actor) was 'too difficult'. The other (her) side of that story made a lot more sense, especially post #metoo. She pissed off men in power and they did what they were known to do.

Everyone now ackowledges that before the body postivity of Discovery all female actors in Star Trek were expected to keep below a certain weight to be attractive to male audiences (male actors such as Colm Meaney for eg were under no such pressure). In some ways to Star Trek franchise was a little slow and certainly not leading the way. I could go on and on and breakdown some problematic elements of the episodes you mentioned but ...whatever...fun is fun. As far as the original show being mainly for kids it probably did plant some positive seeds.