Angel Two on Angel One

It makes kind of sense to start with the inspiration for the name, right? I think we did the same with the podcast, but that was about 10 years ago.

Angel One; episode 14 (13, if you look on Netflix now, as Encounter At Farpoint is considered one episode) of season 1: first broadcast on January 25th 1988 in the US and 9th January 9th 1991 here in the UK. I did not watch the first broadcast, which in hindsight was probably a good thing – though I was 11 at the time, and my understanding of feminism and the patriarchy was... minimal. What can I say? State schools in the early 90s didn't cover it as a subject and while my own household was very much feminist in praxis, I was a kid and didn't know what a praxis was. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country hadn't premiered, so it wasn't even a Klingon energy production facility yet. (I'm also not a very well-read leftist, so words like praxis and semiotics and dialectic are ones I have a very fuzzy understanding of, and frequently have to look up because the only jargon that sticks in my head comes from Star Trek - it got there first.)

The Enterprise is looking for the survivors of a freighter that was lost due to an asteroid strike, and the nearest class-M planet is Angel One.

This era of TNG is very much in the vein of TOS storytelling, so the planets visited are remote from Earth and the main part of Federation space; but unlike TOS, they aren't tripping over incredibly advanced alien civilisations with god-like powers every other episode. No; 20-25 years (or about 80, in-universe) after that demonstration of the infancy of human civilisation; we are still a dangerous, savage child race - so every planet is essentially some aspect of 20th century Western culture writ large. Seasons 1 and 2 are barely allegorical in their subject matter (tbf, all of Trek is barely allegorical most of the time. I've been quietly shrieking about Let That Be Your Last Battlefield since Discovery was announced, and a portion of the fandom started complaining about Trek suddenly becoming political.)

Angel One attempts to tackle feminism head-on.

A noble idea, for sure. The story is credited to Patrick Barry - probably a man. Herbert J. Wright (who was also a man) was quoted in The Fifty Year Mission: The Next 25 Years as descibing an early story meeting thusly: "So one of the major issues that we didn't want to do was an Amazon Women kind of thing where the women are six feet tall with steel D cups," he recalled. "I said, 'The hit I want to take on this is apartheid, so that the men are treated as though they are blacks of South Africa. Make it political. Sexual overtones, yes, but political.' Well, that didn't last very long. Everything that Gene got involved with had to have sex in it. It's so perverse that it's hard to believe. The places it was dragged into is absurd. We were talking about how women would react, and Gene was voicing all the right words again, saying, 'Oh, yes, we've got to make sure that women are represented fairly, because, after all, women are probably the superior sex anyway, and it's real important we don't get letters from feminists, because we want to be fair and we don't want to infer that women have to rule by force if they do rule, because men don't have to rule by force.' Very sensible stuff. All of a sudden something kicks in and he changes: 'However, we also don't want to infer that it would be a better society if women ruled.'" His voice becoming increasingly louder, Roddenberry continued that this was because women were untrustworthy, "vicious creatures," which he angrily blurted out in a torrent of hateful verbiage. Concluded Wright, "Then he looks out the window, looks at the outline, and says, 'Okay, on page eight…' and continues like that didn't even happen." (Altman and Gross, 2016; via Memory Alpha, emphasis mine.)

Besides everything else in this extract, I have to laugh at the persistent myth that D cup breasts are huge. Divorced from band size, it merely means that the widest part of the breast tissue measures 4 inches more than the band size. It's been 40 years and still it exists, though maybe DD cups are now referenced more often. Perhaps that's a useful allegory for the understanding of typically women's bodies and rights; and the backlash that has held progress down in the years since this took place. People (men) have a very fixed idea of what a detail of the typically female body is (breast size) but don't understand how bra sizes work. Instead of listening to people with breasts who wear bras, they persist with their fixed notion that D/DD are enormous mommy milkers. For a small number of petite people, maybe. This idea that D/DD breasts are huge isn't confined to cis straight men, either. I've read several anaecdotes online about people who refused to believe they needed a bra with larger cups (I was acquainted with someone very upset that she'd measured at a larger size in M&S, a long time ago. The attitude baffled me then, as it does to some extent now. Do people wear too-small shoes because they can't accept being 2 sizes larger?) and more distressingly, many examples of people being immediately sexualised for having larger breasts – they're hard to hide. Yet another way to police typically women's bodies and behaviour, just for existing in a human body.

I read somewhere that bra sizes were overhauled in the 1970s (probably in the US; the UK has a different sizing standard) so older generations may still have the idea that D is as big as they go. People struggling to find bras with J cups would like a word.

Back the the subject at hand: this is where the concept of Angel One starts deviating from feminism – the writers' room. The society our heroes visit is matriarchial; essentially 'what if real world, but opposite?" In the 1980s, there was a very popular and wide-spread stereotype of feminists; that they wanted to take over and treat men like men currently treat women. It's such a failure of imagination that those with any investment in maintaining the patriarchy immediately assume that we just want to reverse the polarity, to coin a phrase. I don't doubt that there are some folks who think women would do a better job if we were in charge, but that's never been most feminists - and it's never been the goal. The idea is to free everyone from oppression, including men. It's really that simple. I feel like I should drop some Audre Lorde quotes here - except I haven't yet read her work. Something about "for the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" and how until all of us are free, none of us are free would be really good here - but I'm not that well-read just now. I'm going to be switching from Kindle to Kobo really soon; perhaps I'll acquire some of her work? I digress.

There's a bizarrely vivid but very short memory (thanks, trauma brain) of me walking home from primary school - so in the late 1980s - and talking with friends about feminism for some unknown reason. The one thing that has really stuck is me saying to the others "I wouldn't call myself a feminist; more of an equalist." I suspect I was around primary 6 at the time, so around 8 years old; which would put the memory most likely in 1987/8 - a handy coincidence that brings us back to Angel One. The mainstream understanding of feminism was extremely lacking and the stereotype was very successful in misdirecting everyone else's attention from what feminism was truly about. I couldn't tell you why that idea of feminists and feminism was so pervasive that it was in the consciousness of 8 year old children, but it worked. Thinking about it now, my friends and I had no problem accepting that women didn't have the same rights and freedoms as men when we were 8. We weren't questioning the need for work towards gender equality (feminism), that was a given.

The bridge crew exposit a bit about the crew of the Odin and the society of Angel One, including Picard noting that Starfleet is "adamant that we maintain excellent diplomatic relations with this planet" - foreshadowing is a literary device wh- and Data tells us that the planet was a constitutional oligargy 62 years ago, and they're on the line even now, according to Yar. Picard asks Troi to take the lead, as she's a woman, and... um... Sure, why not.

The notion that The Elected One (the high heid yin of the whole planet, apparently) would prefer to talk to the ship's counselor over the officer in command, who is leading this mission to get in contact for the first time in 62 years, illuminates how the men who wrote this script view the real world. When someone in a position of authority unexpectedly reaches out, would it not be better if it was a man? Doesn't matter that the man they're talking to doesn't actually have much say in how things will be handled - it would actually be up to the woman in command - but they'd be more comfortable with another man.
Beata, The Elected One, is finaly put through and Troi introduces herself and does the diplomatic outreach. Beata responds that Angel One isn't particularly interested in a diplomatic tête-à-tête, and the ominous strings kick in. Troi mentions the missing crew and asks if they can beam down to see if they can find them; Beata says that "a brief visit will be tolerated." In case you didn't catch the ominous strings and the line read, Geordi then pipes up "ever get the feeling that you're not really wanted?"

For some reason, Riker is taking Chief O'Brien's pet tarantula Christina somewhere. He runs in to Wesley and his silent friend, and they share some cringey banter about skiing on the holodeck. It strongly indicates that the people writing the early seasons had never met or interacted with a 15 year old, and had possibly never actually been 15 themselves. This scene is a requirement of the story though; as the skiing lesson is where the virus that will come into play later (and imperil the ship, mission and, indeed, balance of power across two quadrants of the galaxy) somehow pops into existence. Maybe it was cut for time, but no-one ever explains where the virus came from. Perhaps the Enterprise itself generated it in the holodeck? The mechanics of the holodeck have always been very much driven by the needs of the plot, especially in Season One, but they pretty much came down to forcefields and replicators. Given that 99% of the food on the ship is made by the replicator (except for Picard's cases of caviar that really underwhelmed Kurn when he came to visit, and maybe a few other items), it stands to reason that the holodeck relies heavily on matter resequencing. Worf and Data peruse a gift catalogue when looking for a wedding gift for Miles and Keiko; why can't the crystal swan be the size of a gormagander - on the holodeck, as it would be wildly impractical in pretty much every other room of the ship. Anyway; viruses are generally fairly simple organisms - at least here on Earth - so surely it would be a breeze to replicate them. DS9 and Voyager went on to expand on the workings of holotechnology; there were holonovel authors and people who wrote programs for folks to play; maybe a sneaky sod wrote a literal virus into the Denubian Alps ski trip scenario (maybe they found out Wesley Crusher was going to be one of the participants of the Quazulu VIII fieldtrip, and wanted to try to take him out?) Personally, the theory that the ship is sentient and is desperately trying to communicate the existential torment of its being via the medium of the holodeck trying to brutally murder everyone is my favourite. Go with me on this; I will develop it as I keep writing. Emergence will never be quite the same again.

Picard re-emphasises the diplomatic import of the mission to the away team before they beam down; then we're treated to a captain's log where Picard explains that Angel One is a matriarchal society - which is "unusual", even though Troi said it was similar to Betazoid society and Worf growled something about Klingons appreciating "strong women" and I am aware that I'm only 5 minutes into this episode (including opening titles), don't worry. If you're one of the six or seven other people who listened to the Angel Two podcast, you should be used to digressions and meandering off topic by now. If you've somehow arrived here in blissful ignorance of a now-defunct and always tiny podcast; it's called knight's move thinking: the seemingly pointless deviations from the theme are related, I swear.

The log finishes with Picard saying that in this matriarchal culture, the women are stronger and bigger than the men; they are the hunters and soldiers - "as aggressively dominant as the male gender was on Earth hundreds of years ago." (again, emphasis mine)

This episode is set roughly 400 years after it was written, so how many centuries are we talking here? The mention of hunters and soliders obfuscates the period that they're referring to - the 1700s; the 1900s? Who can really say?

At this point, the nipple count begins to rise. Before Beata even speaks, we're at 2. It would be three, except in the establishing shot Trent is far enough away that it's not really that clear. The fabric of the men's attire is draped coquettishly so that the exposed nipple is sometimes hidden, and now that I'm actually thinking about it; well played, Wardrobe Department. Well played, indeed. It possible that they grasped the point of the episode better than the writers did. The male outfits also have something like ribbons wrapped around the legs and hips, in such a way to emphasise the wearer's crotch. I'm minded of David Bowie as the Goblin King in Labyrinth (the ballroom scene in that was choreographed by one Cheryl (Gates) McFadden, if you didn't know) and I'll stop there, lest I sound like a desperate romantasy writer who's trying to think of their eighteenth euphemism for the genitals of their main characters who are banging yet again.

The away team speaks with the Elected One and goes to look for the Odin survivors, and discovers that the situation is a bit more complex that just picking them up and warping away to next week's adventure/face off with the Romulans. You see; the survivors have decided that they prefer their apparently peripatetic life on the run on Angel One to whatever their lives were like before they landed there. This is something pretty much entirely glossed over in the episode: while there are only 4 survivors (one of the 3 escape pods must've been pretty cozy for those 5 months, 6 days, 11 hours, 2 minutes and 57 seconds - Riker isn't interested in the exact amount of time, but the occupants of that pod probably felt every moment and latterly every second) they are threatening to bring down the entirety of a planetary society that has existed for more than 62 years.

Remember how everyone went a bit loopy after lockdowns? We were still allowed to leave our homes for essential purposes, so we could go outside if we wanted to. Imagine how you'd feel after 5 months, 6 days, 11 hours, 2 minutes and 57 seconds of being stuck in (making a lot of assumptions here) your living room. You could also watch the Enterprise episode Shuttlepod One, but why would you do that? The sense of claustrophobia and seeing your brain as it liquifies when Reid talks about T'Pol's bum? I know what I'd choose, and there's no skipping intro involved.

Right, so: the survivors. They apparently landed seven years before and were welcomed by the inhabitants to begin with, but when they finally understood how a matriarchial constitutional oligarchy works, started to push back against the social order of the planet. It's never actually stated what Ramsey and the other survivors (a maximum of 4 people, to start with) were saying or doing – we're guided to assume that they were promoting Federation ideals of gender equality, but for all we know they wanted to introduce the concept of trad wives to Angel One. So they've been on the run for maybe six years; but they don't want to leave. Troi specifically mentioned reuniting them with their families, but maybe she was making assumptions about their lives before the asteroid struck the Odin and forced them to evacuate. They've "all taken wives, a few of them even have children" but... siblings? Parents? Extant wives and children? Yes, yes; narrativium – and the writers were probably struggling to come up with a good reason for why the Enterprise arrived for Riker to explain gender equality (feminism) without breaking the Prime Directive. Data does repeatedly make a point of saying that the Odin survivors are not bound by the Prime Directive, what with not being Starfleet ship crew.

The most interesting, and possibly most effective, scenes are when Riker and Beata have their intimate evening with flirtatious banter and the subtle suggestion of sexual activity. Beata comments that Riker's tunic picks up on his eyes, emphasising that she is objectifying him and values his percieved beauty and her attraction to him quite highly. Their conversation continues on to her saying that men are the lucky ones on their planet; women do all the hard work while men get to lie around eating hot chips and charging their phones. Or the equivalent on a planet in the 24th century that's technologically as advanced as 20th century Earth.

This is something else that bothers me. Angel One is described as similar to 20th century Earth more than once, but they're sort of in contact with Starfleet. Sort of. Later episodes clarify that the Prime Directive means that Starfleet leaves pre-warp cultures alone - warp-capability being the technology that allows for interstellar travel. On Earth in the 21st century, we don't have that. Both Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 and reached the heliopause and interstellar space in 2012 and 2019. A mind-bending achievement for human ingenuity and space exploration, but not exactly warp speed. The Vulcans might scan the probes, but they'd still carry on and leave us well alone.

Then there's the execution machine. Beata demonstrates it's operation on a large black vase - it seems that Angel One has an interesting sideline in creating sentient pottery, as she goes on to say that the death is "swift and painless". HOW DOES SHE KNOW THAT??? She can't possibly know that. Even if people have been executed that way in the past, they're vapourised pretty quickly (based on the vanishing vase) so it's really difficult to ask someone if their execution hurt. This holds true for real world executions, even when they're not botched. To be honest, I'm relieved that 21st century humanity does not have access to technology that vapourises people because the US states that still use the death penalty would be far too happy to make use of it. What colour would Democrats wear to a joint session of Congress to protest that?

As far as I know, no states have executed any feminists purely for being feminist activists, so to have Angel One be willing to execute 14 people (the other 10 are the wives and probably native followers of Ramsey) for political activism is quite the escalation – this is one of the recurring weaknesses of season 1; the need to introduce mortal peril to increase the dramatic tension and narrative stakes.

After fading out to Ramsey's campfire, Riker and Beata have put their clothes back on to lie on the bed and make out, while discussing gender equality (feminism) some more. Beata expresses some more benevolent sexism - in general about how women only want what's best for their men, and specifically about Riker not being like other boys - while Riker pushes back that "men are not objects to be possessed". Beata agrees and dismisses it as a figure of speech, seemingly eager to get back to the disrobing part.

When you've watched this episode so many times and so closely as I now have, the interactions between Beata and Riker invite the viewer to superimpose the patriarchial version over it. We're well used to media showing us men being dismissive and belittling to their romantic interests (I wonder if there was a version of the script where Beata told Riker to not worry his pretty little head about something?) when she wants to discuss something important. It's usually subverted now, and is typically shorthand for a male character who underestimates the female character he's speaking to, especially in stories set in the first half of the 20th century.

I usually balk at merely switching the genders; reality is rarely that simple and a simple gender flip glibly ignores the context of the characters and the world they're living in, especially when the story is set in reality. We haven't yet achieved real gender equality, so no; swapping the genders doesn't work. However. This is a fictional story, set somewhere that is not reality (just a distorted reflection of it), and we've been given so little context about Angel One and Beata, that we can swap Riker and Beata in these scenes. If you were watching this when it aired, you also knew very little about Will Riker; we're only halfway into season 1 and he hasn't even got his beard yet. The flirty scenes where Riker is in his native attire (and the shade of blue does, indeed, flatter Frakes quite well) have the energy of someone flirting with their boss – who is receptive and reciprocating. They both want to but know there are many good reasons why they shouldn't... but they really want to, so they do.

Will and Beata are interrupted by Trent again, this time closely followed by the rest of the away team - who seem to be taken aback to see him in a somewhat compromising position. His feet were off the floor, and he'd taken his sandals off – my goodness, how scandalous. Sandal-less? I'll see myself out.

The away team have moved to the main meeting room, rather than the quarters they were assigned, to discuss what's happening aboard the ship and their current situation. This means that Beata doesn't have to go hunting for them when she brings in the fugitives, which is nice. Ramsey accuses the away team of giving away their location, but surprise! It was revealed to the viewer earlier that Mistress Ariel, second in command after Beata, is the wife of Ramsey and this is now shown to our heroes. The Angel One crack squad of ninjas simply followed her to them – perhaps the arrival of the Enterprise, and the suggestion that the Odin crew would be taken away, made her more careless. Beata tells them that they will all die tomorrow, then we cut to her private quarters, going by the gauzey curtains. She's presumably signing the death warrants as Riker steps into view. He's hanging out in her room, but this time he's back in uniform, so probably no sexytimes. The hostility between them also points in that direction, as he challenges her decision to execute the dissidents. She called Ramsey an anarchist earlier in the episode; it's always gratifying when that's wheeled out and misused. Anarchy (in the political sense, and Ramsey does seek to disrupt the political system) is simply the lack of a heirarchy. No gods, no masters - or mistresses.

The actor who played Beata, Karen Montgomery, did a beautiful job in these scenes. Her delivery of "You'll accomplish nothing with that attitude." is so familiar to anyone who has ever even suggested that maybe the status quo isn't that good for the majority with any level of anger behind it.

Riker and the away team once again try to convince the dissident group to leave with them. It's hard to get a headcount, but there might be more than 14 people in the group? And no children of 7 or younger. Anyway. Data once again reminds everyone that they have no jurisdiction to remove the dissidents, and Riker says he'd prefer a court martial over 14 executions. Starfleet made it very clear to Picard that diplomatic relations were of utmost importance to the mission, so I doubt he'd so much as get a talking to, tbh. However; by this point of the episode, with 10 minutes left, the life-threatening peril of the virus that's knocked out the Enterprise crew (literally all 1009 of them - only the away team and somehow Dr. Crusher are unaffected) and the increasing threat of the Romulans are now driving the dramatic tension. Starfleet's orders? Forgotten, it seems. Riker sends Data back to the Enterprise with poorly worded orders to get to the Neutral Zone asap; he, Troi and Yar are going to stay in their quarters and feel bad about not being able to prevent the executions. Trent arrives to request their presence at the executions with an extremely sanitised description of what's about to happen, but is interrupted by Data hailing the away team, who explains in a very autistic-coded way, that Crusher still has 47 minutes to find a cure before the Enterprise must leave for the Neutral Zone. Riker and the others decide that they have another chance to change Beata's mind (why they couldn't have tried this anyway, I don't fully understand – given the resolution) and the charge out to the execution/meeting/government chamber with Trent trailing after them.

Beata does her vase destruction demonstration (with Trent being the one who operates the device, which could have been a commentary on those who side with their oppressors in the belief that it will benefit their circumstances, but there's no time left to ponder that) and Riker asks to speak. Beata tells him to be quick about it, and arguably he isn't. He talks about revolutionaries, evolution and martyrs. Attitudes to gender equality (feminism) have been shifting on Angel One for quite some time; Ramsey and the 3 others' arrival merely served to become a focal point for the activism. I have no idea where Riker got this from; maybe something was cut for time? Killing Ramsey, the Odin survivors and their native allies will simply make martyrs of them; Beata can't stop the change that's started.

Yes. Riker mansplains gender equality (feminism).

This appears to give Beata pause, but only for a moment, as she indicates to Trent for the first execution to go ahead. He points wordlessly and a security officer grabs Ramsey's arm to push him to the painless vase vapouriser, only for him to pull his arm out of her grasp. Another security officer prevents Ariel from going with her beloved husband and she stares at Beata. Gotta say; if someone was about to execute my spouse for any reason at all, I'd be fighting like a very angry cat to try to stop it. There would probably have to be a minimum of six security officers holding me down, and I'd certainly be making a lot more noise than anyone makes in this scene. Maybe Angel One uses the painless vase vapouriser only to destroy unwanted decor, and Ariel doesn't really believe that an execution will happen?

Trent makes a grand gesture, the better to slowly bring his hand down on the activation mechanism of the painless vase vapouriser, and Ariel makes one last appeal to Beata. Just as Trent is about to touch the crystal ball, Beata grabs his wrist and mutters "Stop." The government (aside from Ariel, who has presumably lost her seat but not her uniform) will adjourn to ponder Riker's speech about evolution and martyrs and they file out. Until this point in the episode, I wasn't clear on what the women of Angel One were wearing. Obviously, I saw the wide (and somewhat Romulan) shoulders immediately, and the HD remaster has sharpened the image enough to see that the ministers/mistresses of government are wearing tops that seem to be made of felted wool. The texture and variation in the material got a little distracting during one scene, when I was watching it again recently. The bottom half of the uniform for the governing mistresses turns out to be a long skirt with pleats in the middle, front and back. I had wondered if they were wearing culottes. It's interesting that while the Angel One security officers (the only other inhabitants we see, besides the constitutional oligarchs and 3 men) wear trousers, the governing women wear skirts. I'm no garment maker, so I don't know if that was a practical choice on the part of the Wardrobe Dept; they were running on limited time and money - or just something that happened because, well, women wear skirts, right? Maybe putting all the women in trousers would have been a bit on the nose? As I mentioned earlier, the popular image of feminists at the time involved dungarees, if I recall correctly – certainly trousers. The women of Angel One also have very subtle makeup, compared to Troi and Yar - likely a deliberate choice given the popular notion that women wear makeup to be attractive to men. Even lesbians, which I'm sure is news to them. The men of Angel One don't seem to be wearing cosmetics diagetically, even though we're shown Trent spritzing himself with the perfume that baffled Data [who was discovered and activated by Starfleet 26 years before; somehow he has never encountered perfume or the concept of aphrodisiacs, ever, despite the fullness of his functionality.] I'd hazard a guess that that might be because of attitudes to men wearing visible makeup at the time making it a bridge too far for the producers (who were infamously leery of anything remotely homosexual) to stomach themselves, and certainly not to air on a family-friendly show made for syndication.

Meanwhile, Beverly has found her cure with 17 minutes left - so everything around the executions handily took exactly 30 minutes. Very neat. Data contacts Riker, who was previously quite adamant that Data get to the Neutral Zone sharpish but now wants a bit more of those 17 minutes to stand around looking pained. Except Beata and the other mistresses are back already. That was conveniently quick. Ramsey and the other dissidents are to be exiled to an unpopulated region of the planet; their children returned to them.

Wait a minute. They were going to evacuate the dissidents to the Enterprise – and leave their young children behind?? That's certainly a choice.

Beata explains that yes, they cannot stop the revolution (gender equality/feminism) but perhaps they can reduce it to a slow crawl. She finishes with "For a man, you can be very clever, Commander Riker." The away team beams back to the ship, and the French horn of resolution plays. The recovering crew set course for the Neutral Zone and hoho! Picard is still too hoarse for Data, the android with superlative hearing, to hear. In the finest TOS tradition, our heroes sit on the bridge and end the episode with some laughter (and probably coughing) as they warp away, never to return.

This is supposed to be a good resolution? Yes, the people pushing for gender equality (feminism) weren't killed, but they were effectively removed from society.

What does this say about how the writers view feminism in the real world?

In 1987, feminism had been a mainstream movement for at least 30 years. Much longer, really; Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. The writers' room discussion quoted earlier suggests some disdain for feminists who might write letters to complain and the view that women are probably the superior sex but also that society wouldn't be better as a matriarchy. That implies that there was a lot going on here; women as 51% of the population is one quite theoretical concept, but the attitude to the women in from of them was another thing entirely. Any women reading this have undoubtedly had some experience with men like this: male feminists. They certainly know the words to say and might have read the books and on some level might well believe in gender equality in some nebulous, systemic way – but day to day? The women around them had better still cook and clean and raise the children and help him with his thoughts and feelings and not interrupt his very important monologues and not ever express any unhappiness or discomfort in his general direction, especially not if he has any part in the cause. Arguably, the more damaging of my two abusive relationships was with a male feminist. (The other guy definitely wasn't supportive of feminism, though he probably knew, and knows, not to outright say that to the women he's trying to date.)

The cognitive dissonance of men really dragged this episode down. It's not the worst episode of season 1 (Code of Honor is bluntly and blatantly offensive, not just bad) but it's close to that end of the scale. Leaving us with the resolution of a planet's government actively slowing social progress that the viewers know is for the better leaves a very bitter taste. The message of "yes, gender equality (feminism) is a good idea buuuuuuut maybe things are changing too fast, and we don't like that, so maybe we can slow it down?" is presented as a satisfactory conclusion because it satisfied a small group of mostly middle-aged men (Roddenberry was in his late 60s at this point) who were writing for an audience they expected to be mostly men, aged 18-35.

Imagine if the person trying to change Beata's mind was Troi, rather than Riker – the impassioned speech about revolution, evolution and martyrs, not the shagging. (Though can you imagine?) Or how about if the society of Angel One was patriarchial, rather than matriarchial. In the enlightened future of fully automated luxury gay space communism, a partiarchial culture would be as equally unusual as a matriarchy, right? Right? You wouldn't even have to make the Odin survivors women; just men who were used to gender equality (feminism) and didn't like the way that women were treated in this society. Misogynists tend to only listen to men; cis people tend to only listen to other cis people; white people tend to only listen to other white people. Remember who the writers think they are writing for - so that's probably why Troi and Yar just stood in the background for Riker's grand plea for mercy and compassion, instead of leading the charge. Within the conceit of the episode, Riker being the interlocutor is actually a positive thing – the mostly male audience will pay more attention to what Riker says, far more than they would Troi or Yar (probably). But would they understand that the story is supposed to be sort of pro-feminism? The popular image of feminism at the time was militant man-haters who wanted female supremacy; Angel One is a planet where female supremacy is the norm – was Riker's rebuke of the fictional society read by some of the audience as a rebuke of real world feminism? I'd like to think not, but the passage of time has made it clear that some of them would. I once had a conversation with a well-meaning stranger on Facebook, who was utterly insistent that The Outcast is and always was a trans rights story. This person was willing to bend reality to make it fit their idealised notion of 1990; when same sex marriage was a hot topic in California, as there was a reasonable chance it would have been legalised in that state that year. To be fair, I don't clearly remember 1990, and I certainly wasn't abreast of US politics never mind Californian. It's hard to watch The Outcast these days and not see it clearly as a trans story – but that's not what the writers had in mind when they made it. It happens to underscore that just like gay rights; trans rights are vital and necessary for humanity to progess and realise the best possible version of our collective future - then, now and forever.

Yes, the patriarchal planet version of the story wouldn't have been allegorical enough for Trek, but that said, was Let That Be Your Last Battlefield really all that subtle? Turnabout Intruder might be even more apt, as it's sort of about gender equality (feminism): an old acquaintance of Kirk appears, having gone mad after being denied the captaincy of a starship merely because she's a woman – and when TOS was made, women couldn't be starship captains. (I assume the makers of Strange New Worlds aren't even going to acknowledge that one as canon, as it's so breathtakingly regressive. Even Enterprise had female captains in Starfleet, and that was eye-wateringly regressive quite often.) The underlying premise of Turnabout Intruder indicates that the misogyny of Roddenberry was established well before anyone ever dreamed of The Next Generation, and that it hadn't really changed in the 20 years between the episodes. The anxiety that women will rise up and displace men is still as strong as it ever was, along with the reactionary dislike for the feminist movement.

I have a biography of Gene Roddenberry sitting on the bookshelf - I'll get to reading it eventually; but I know he served in the Air Force duing World War II and then as a cop in the LAPD for some time after demobbing and before making Star Trek. He wasn't one for the counter-culture (the way that hippies are represented in The Way To Eden underscores that) though he was obviously on the right side of history in terms of human rights and the direction humanity should take for the best possible future. Coincidentally, Tom Lehrer came up in the groupchat the other day; his feelings about the counter-culture aesthetics of anti-Vietnam protesters were quite similar. He's still alive at the grand age of 96, at time of writing, which was a pleasant surprise.

How to conclude this? It could have been a decent episode. Gender equality (feminism) was a hot topic in the mid-to-late 1980s (and 1990s, and ever onward) and in some ways, progress was being made. As legendary music producer Steve Albini once wrote on Twitter, "For myself and many of my peers, we miscalculated. We thought the major battles over equality and inclusiveness had been won, and society would eventually express that, so we were not harming anything with contrarianism, shock, sarcasm or irony". He's referring to attitudes in the 90s there, to be clear. People thought that once the battles were fought, that was that – who needed to keep fighting when we'd won? At the time, I guess folks didn't realise that - for now, anyway - the fight to secure equality and human rights for everyone requires maintenence, like the dental hygiene model of race discourse described by Jay Smooth in 2011; and we are where we are now. One beacon of light in the encroaching darkness – yesterday (at time of writing) Poland's first abortion centre opened, and long may it's doors stay open. They aim to increase pressure on Poland's government to change the laws around abortion, and legalise it again.

In the underlying attitudes of the Star Trek writers, I'm reminded of a recurring segment from The Two Ronnies called The Worm That Turned. It aired in 1980 and feels weirdly similar to the society of Angel One. If you should click through to the video, please bear in mind it's 45 years old and a lot of the jokes are extremely dated. I've not watched it all, so there may well be offensive content therein. Looking at the Wikipedia page for the show overall, it seems that racial (racist) caricatures as well as plenty sexism was considered primetime entertainment in those days. How times have and haven't changed.

Angel One was not TNG's finest hour (or 46 minutes) and it couldn't get out of it's own way to reach the point it thought it was making. I'm not sure there was much agreement about the point it was making: gender equality (feminism) good; or replacing the patriarchy with a matriarchy = bad? So it leaves us with a slight imbalance of the status quo that maybe, might, hopefully, probably will eventually, if we have the time and energy, tip into real and meaningful change. Not that we'll ever find out. Lower Decks has finished now, so we won't be seeing a third visit by Starfleet anytime soon.

So: the nipple count. I did get very, very tired with about 15 minutes remaining when I was actively keeping count, and when I came back to it, I got distracted and decided to write about something else in the episode instead – so I lost count, I think. My method of counting was quite basic: every time a nip was on screen, it got counted. This is how I noticed that on Angel One, there were only 3 men who weren't Ramsey and his followers (and they all had their chests entirely covered by at least one layer of fabric whenever they were on screen.)

The final total was 20; a lot of representation from Leonard John Crowfoot, who portrayed Trent – but also a respectable showing from Jonathan Frakes, even if his chest hair did obscure things a little – and even Patrick Stewart with both out at once, while lying in his bed as Dr. Crusher gave him some sort of remedy from a Space Thermos (well before she found the inoculant, so maybe she was just enjoying being able to lord it over the captain in his vulnerable state? She gives it to him as she says "It looks horrible, tastes worse, but it's absolutely guaranteed to make you feel better" but we never find out if it does). Roddenberry was reportedly kind of obsessed with including sexual content wherever possible – at least he was equal opportunities about some sexual objectifcation?

The next episode of a TV show I watch is going to be from Deadloch. It will balance out and rid me of all the icky and disappointed feelings Angel One left me with. At least when the serial killer mansplains feminism in that, it's fucking hilarious. Yeah, nah, too-rah.