Star Trek TOS and Star Trek: TNG - perception of male leads (Kirk & Riker) [poll]

When you say "it", do you mean "the peener"?

This is a hard one for me to answer. My knoweldge of TOS is limited, though I did watch TNG when it aired. However, I was young and paid more attention to Wesley - SO SUE ME - that I wasn't really watching Riker's portrayal with women.

As I've gotten older, I've appreciated the other characters more and while I appreciate that TNG did try to have a variety of different personalities and push the boundaries, they ultimately failed in several ways. Riker had a lot of potential as a character, but several factors inhibited character growth, so they went with rawr manly.

And really I wasn't into all depth and world changing stuff when I watched TNG. I just really wanted Riker/Troi and Picard/Crusher to hook up.

dpaterso said:

Was talking to my niece today about Star Trek, original series and TNG (yes, we have exciting, meaningful lives). Both are re-run daily in the UK, with the digitally reworked versions making them more visually appealing for modern audiences. (And I kinda like the look, too.)

I was stunned when she told me she saw Kirk as a sleazy, smiling groper of women who just couldn't keep his hands to himself.

And the same for Riker. His rank, like Kirk, put him into a position of power over women, which he happily abused.

Really, this was pretty shocking to me, I'd never once seen either character in such a light. Have I been blind, or is this something that's widely sensed and felt?

-Derek

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I'm an old school Trekkie, and I'm wondering if my memory is on the fritz. Yes, they were in positions of power. But I can't recall examples of them abusing women from that position.

They were confident, handsome, sexual and had, what I guess the kiddies today would call, swagger. They were known to look a lady up and down, but the ladies looked at them the same way often enough. The pursuit was often on the female's side, when there were such storylines. I'm not saying Trek is without sexism--it's not. Very few things are, and TOS is a product of its time. But abusing women with their authority? I guess I don't have the right goggles for that.

I don't see that either. They are both products of their time.

And with Kirk, you have to remember that a lot of women saw them as heroes, as manly men. The world has changed a lot since then. And TOS was quite groundbreaking in a lot of ways.

And yeah, Riker could have kept it in his pants a bit more but don't remember him ever forcing or coercing a woman into sex. They always seemed up for it, as far as I remember.

But ..... Jean-Luc and Wesley? That's a bit .... yick. JL is old enough to be Wesley's granddad!

Oh dear..... I think I just made a numpty of myself.....

LOL!

Sophia just pointed that Kweei most likely meant Jean-Luc and Dr Beverley Crusher. And yeah.... that's much more like it!

I'll just sit in the corner with my coat over my head.....

Post above yours, D!

As a child of the 80s and 90s TOS was, for me, from a much earlier epoch. Kirk's Enterprise: all the women were walking about in miniskirts, looking less like soldiers than sexualised air hostesses and secretaries, and mainly functioning as objects of Kirk's lust. It felt anachronistic, because even though TV wasn't anywhere near perfect then, attitudes had shifted.

When TNG came along, it was interesting how consciously politically correct it felt in comparison to the old series - almost hammering the point home with the replacement of the super-virile Kirk with the cerebral, largely urgeless Picard. But still you had Riker leering at people and Troi in her unique onesie, etc etc.

I think you have to give Trek some credit for always trying to be forward thinking and socially-conscious, even if they were generally the forward edge of a cultural Overton window that wasn't always terribly advanced.

It's noticeable how the recent Trek reboots were in something of a bind because they felt they had to nod to TOS's philandering Kirk in a world where that made him look like a pig. I kind of get why they felt the need to do that, but it didn't really work.

Awww, I thought this was a Kirk vs Picard poll. Fail!

shelleyo said:

They were confident, handsome, sexual and had, what I guess the kiddies today would call, swagger. They were known to look a lady up and down, but the ladies looked at them the same way often enough. The pursuit was often on the female's side, when there were such storylines. I'm not saying Trek is without sexism--it's not. Very few things are, and TOS is a product of its time. But abusing women with their authority? I guess I don't have the right goggles for that.

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I'm usually the one who sees sexism everywhere, and also a huge TNG fan, and I don't see it either. Sure, Riker liked to take women up on their offers. But there's nothing wrong with that, and he never did anything creepy or abusive.

There are a thousand shows out there more deserving of criticism on this point than Star Trek.

I'm TOS only and I don't see it.

I don't think he ever abused his power, or came close. In fact I think he was careful to not step over lines he could've (remember Miri?). He liked women, women liked him, and he mostly got it on with alien or civilian chicks, not Stafleet underlings.

RichardGarfinkle said:

I think it's an accurate portrayal of Kirk. But if one looks at TV heroes of the time, it was an extraordinarily common characteristic for such characters. It's startling to rewatch 60s and 70s shows and see how much these guys were callous users of others.

Riker, it's a little harder to say. There was some attempt in Next Gen to establish some kind of idea that sexual morays were open and that they had fewer concerns on that matter than we do, but I don't think they succeeded too well on that.

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I took it as just the opposite. Riker was a sleazy slut. Kirk put the job first. If there was shore leave he availed himself, but the ship and crew were always first.

I always figured Riker had to be Kirk's grandson, personally, but that's neither here nor there.

Guys who are confident in their position, their masculinity, their power get admired and are desired. Simple fact. Many such guys enjoy the attention. That's what I figured was the deal with Kirk and Riker (though I thought Riker was also a little more forward about hooking up sense Troi was his ex from the start). I never gave it a thought, honestly. It was interesting to see Riker shift a bit in what I watched of the series, but I never thought either of them were particularly sleazy.

Sleazy would've never ignored an opportunity to grope, insult, leer, etc. a potential sexual partner. (Howard Wolowitz on Big Bang is the closest example of sleazy I can think of on TV, and he's only close because we see the insecurities and desperation that lead to it. Seeing beneath the action makes a big difference in character interpretation.)

But, then again, I'm a "first gen" Trekker, so I lived through the eras that created the characters.

As for the reboot Kirk's over-oogling of women (especially in the first movie, there's only the briefest nod to it in the second), I also figured that stemmed from the messed up childhood he had (Mom off-planet all the time, missing father, etc.) and trying to get attention and validation. As he got more positive attention and validation and important things to do, he focused more on them than carousing.

mirandashell said:

I don't see that either. They are both products of their time.

And with Kirk, you have to remember that a lot of women saw them as heroes, as manly men. The world has changed a lot since then. And TOS was quite groundbreaking in a lot of ways.

And yeah, Riker could have kept it in his pants a bit more but don't remember him ever forcing or coercing a woman into sex. They always seemed up for it, as far as I remember.

But ..... Jean-Luc and Wesley? That's a bit .... yick. JL is old enough to be Wesley's granddad!

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Ew, no. I totally meant Beverly and Jean-Luc, LOL

I would be curious to gage my reactions if I were to rewatch TNG now. I was a different person in my teens and I watched for different reasons that I would now.

I'm still stuck on the term "sexual morays" further downstream here. Has me thinking of eels engaging in filthy stuff for some reason...

williemeikle said:

I'm still stuck on the term "sexual morays" further downstream here.

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An x-ray and everything.

What about my Benedict?

Who?

I think you have to look at both series as being products of their times. TOS was in the sixties when men were always portrayed as being badasses and Kirk was most definitely a badass. As I recall, he never forced a woman to kiss him (except for an android in one episode) so while the scripts may have been a bit sexist, it wasn't as if he was jumping his female leads' bones.

Riker was a little randier it seemed although I enjoyed his interactions with Deanna Troi. He seemed to be a more good-natured dude than Kirk was.

Picard was bald and cerebral. After that, I got bupkis.

I got the impression from both Kirk and Riker that a firm 'NO!' would have sent them on their way

So not creeps or whatever. Creeps don't care whether you say no or not. Riker came across to me as just a guy who liked to hang out with women and sometimes....

A guyliking the female form (or vice versa) isn't creepy. It's kinda natural for both men and women to look. It's how is the thing, and how they use it.

Yeah, I don't see it either. Were they swaggering playboys? Yeah, kind of. But I don't recall even Kirk ever pressuring a woman who seemed the least bit unwilling. If they treated most of their relationships extremely casually, well, there's no indication that anyone in the ST universe considered that a bad thing, and the women seemed to do it too.