Been re-watching ST:TNG on Netflix (they only have up to season 5 so far sadly) as it's been a long, long time since I last saw any TNG.
I have a question for those who remember all the seaons. Does Troi get raped in EVERY season? Because so far she seems to have suffered some kind of rape at least once in each season, whether it be a memory-telepathe using his ablities to implant the memory of a rape that never happened or a non coporial entity impregnating her as she sleeps so it can father itself as a human child. It's pretty fucking disturbing, I think some of the TNG writers might have some serious issues.
I know the Alien franchise, which I love, is basically about rape but in those films everyone gets raped; men, women and even dogs. They don't have one lone female character who repeatedly gets raped over and over with each new movie to the point where it starts to look like that might be the main reason why that indivdual character exists.
Plus, in Alien the whole rape analogy thing is intentionally disturbing and horrific. Some of Troi's episodes however have almost the complete opposite tone. Especially the one I mentioned with the non-coporial alien using her to father itself into a human child.
WTF, TNG? I thought you were cool
Blame the fact that the first two seasons were penned by a misogynist fuckwad by the name Marice Hurley, who left after Season 2. But yeah, the whole thing with Troi getting fucked literally so often is not cool.
Then there was this episode known as "The Child", where she got impregnated by some energy being, implanting itself in utero. And how Troi was offered to get an abortion as baby Edward Cullen is developing at an rapid rate. She chooses to give birth to it. I think that says a lot about Marice Hurley and his views on women. That was why Gates Macfadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher) left the show for only that season and Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) left indefinitely, having her character killed before the end of Season 1.
It is a mystery to me how a show as great as TNG survived through such awful introductory seasons...
Yeah, the first couple seasons were full of crap like that. On top of the bad writing and characterization, there's a fair bit of sexism & even some stuff approaching racism (I forget the name of the episode, but that one with the planet populated by awful tribal stereotypes of black people is notorious for this -- I think it was Jonathan Frakes who called it a "racist piece of shit" when asked about it later on). It's a bit of a downer, since there were also other individuals involved who attempted to utilize more progressive ideals -- lack of male/female roles in clothing, men and women being of equal importance to the missions -- that ended up falling flat amongst all of the garbage.
The later seasons were far from perfect (particularly the way Troi was represented, and I recall that the episode about the Natives being relocated was a bit iffy in parts [though it's been a while since I watched it]), but the difference between seasons 3 onwards and the earlier seasons is incredibly glaring. Even the imperfect episodes, like the one with the androgynous species as an obvious allegory for gay rights, were relatively well done for 90s television.
Regarding Yarr, I didn't even particularly like her character (probably owing to the shitty writing & Denise Crosby's lackluster performance [which can be at least partially attributed to the lousy characterization, as she did much better when portraying Yarr and other characters in later episodes; that said, I'm not a huge fan of her acting in general]), but the way they killed her off was bullshit. I'm glad they brought her back in that one timeline episode to at least try to do the character some justice.
Pulaski was another good example of a character with potential being mishandled. The writers desperately tried to recreate the Spock/Bones dynamic with her and Data, but given Data's child-like innocence and the all around poor execution of the situation, it came across as straight up bullying. She was otherwise a great character -- spunky, intelligent, and a ton of personality -- and they tried to pull back from the lame human/non-human head butting as the season went on, but they pretty much poisoned the character at the start. I actually would have liked to see her and Crusher working together once Gates came back -- the two of them could have had a cool dynamic.
ETA: Of course, if we're going to talk about Star Trek dropping the ball, there's also Voyager's idiotic Generokee representation of Chekotay, with his spirit animals and vision quests (because you can't just have a guy who happens to be Native without making him all mystical and deeply in touch with nature, right?), or them taking one of the two most interesting characters on the show and using her as ridiculously over-the-top fanservice. A character can be both sexy and interesting, but that was just plain stupid and rather insulting to the viewers. And then there was the inconsistent characterization of Janeway...