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Bad Dream, Bad Dream..
From: Benjamin
Hi Vaughn and Tracy, Since I'm sure you've already covered the sexism angle by now, and since I know I can't yell nearly as loud as Tracy by typing, I'll tell you the other thing that bothers me about this episode... The way the characters were written. There are two very well defined characters in this episode. There's William Shatner's character, who's a woman pretending to be Kirk. Shatner's character acts effeminately, and talks like he's out of a piece of bad fan fiction because his character is a woman pretending to be Captain Kirk. Then there's Sandra Smith's Character. Her character is Captain Kirk. You would expect her to sound, and act, and move exactly like Captain Kirk...but she doesn't. I'll forgive the childlike "bad dream, bad dream" bit when she wakes up, because Chapel probably gave Kirk a blast of McCoy's Space-Roofie hypo, and everybody says that when they wake up. Shatner's character had a scene to show off that he's really woman by filing his nails. What does Sandra Smith get to do to demonstrate that she's playing Captain James T. Kirk? She plays Kirk sticking his tongue out before breaking a glass on his bed, going down like a sack of potatoes after single karate-chop, and letting himself get dressed up in women clothing. Even Spock seems to have a hard time with the whole concept. Seconds after doing the mind-meld, Kirk-in-Lester's-Body and Spock get busted in the hall. At this point, Spock understands that it's his captain trapped in the woman's body...and yet his first instinct is to grab Kirk's hand like he's a scared woman and hold it the entire time they're getting arrested. Can you think of any other situation where Spock felt the need to hold the Captain's hand so he wouldn't get scared? Sandra Smith should have slapped Nimoy's hand away and given him a look like "What the hell, Spock???" It's like the writer forgot which parts of the script were the ones where Kirk was playing pretending to be a woman, and which were the ones where he was openly stating he was Kirk trapped in the woman's body. Imagine if this had been presented Quantum Leap-style, with Shatner playing Kirk, and everyone just thinking they're seeing Lester, do you think Shatner would said "I like the scene where I whimper, that's just like Kirk to do that...and I'd like it if Spock held my hand for a while" -- I also feel like I should say something about how easily Lester was able to more-or-less learn how to run the Enterprise. It took her...months? And how'd she do it? Is there some Space Wiki-leaks site she went to to get the plans, and all the mission information, and the names of the crew? Ben.