this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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I mean the original line was "where no man has gone before" which at least made sense, although it didn't represent the female crew very well.
Yes, it did though. Women, too, are human.
English uses 'man' and 'mankind' interchangeably.
Grammatically, 'no man' makes more sense than 'no one.'
I've always thought it was an odd change. I get why they did it, but the original clearly wasn't being used in the way the change implies.
It has the same energy as saying that you can't use the term "whitelist" and must substitute "allowlist", or "master bedroom" to "primary bedroom", or that time they changed "monkeypox" to "m-pox".
"Master bedroom" being changed is such a silly one. That term wasn't even used until the 20th century and referred to the master of the household. It has nothing to do with slave masters.
It speaks to a larger cultural ignorance or poor literacy to even consider it, in my opinion. I've seen similar reactions to talking about "plantation-style" home architecture. It's as if many people have only ever heard these words in connection with slavery from their lessons in school.
A place I worked out stopped carrying "Plantation" brand peanuts because somebody complained.
Nevermind the fact that the word "plantation" existed long long before America ever existed and associated it with chattel slavery in the minds of Americans, or the fact that the peanuts in question literally come from a modern, active plantation still today!
The etymology of "Plantation" is very transparent too. And with the centralization of agriculture almost anything we eat comes from plantations today.
Yeah it’s be hard to argue TOS was excluding women in that sentence given the presence of female bridge crew members.
You mean space secretary and space operator? The pilot had a woman as first officer but we couldn’t keep that for some reason…
You mean the Yeoman and Communications Officer?
Those are actual roles on warships that at the time women were not allowed to fill. How come when a woman is in those roles you reduce them “secretary” and “operator”?
I don’t. The show did.
As I pointed out there was a woman first officer, but we could not keep that.
The show didn’t, you did. The show put women into positions reserved for men at the time. The men in those positions weren’t called secretaries or phone operators, the female characters in Star Trek weren’t called secretaries or phone operators. The only person being reductive of their roles is you lol.
It kinda seems like you’ve never seen the show. I’m well aware of what a Yeoman does on a ship and it is not limited to bringing the captain tea and having the log dictated to you (or you just stand there while dude writes it). Those are, however, things that a secretary did in the 60s. I’m not reducing their roles, there’s a reason that women were only given positions on the bridge that were traditionally filled by women in 60s offices and that the female first officer was removed from the show.
But they weren’t given roles traditionally filled by women. They were given roles traditionally filled by men. They make a point of it in the show when Kirk is upset that the Yeoman they assigned under him is a woman.
You keep talking like these roles were works of fiction, created solely for the women of TOS to keep them out of having an “real” role. I don’t understand why you refuse to acknowledge the unarguable fact that these are actual, real roles on real human naval ships, for men, that go back centuries.
Why is it that despite these being real, traditionally male roles, when you see two women doing them you reduce them to “Secretaries”. Gene Roddenberry himself regretted not showing a female starship captain in TOS, but he didn’t denigrate the role the women played just because they were women.
Like, are you really just trying to argue that there’s something wrong with Star Trek because despite how unprecedentedly progressive it was at the time, it’s somehow misogynistic because it wasn’t wasn’t unprecedentedly progressive enough?
I’m not arguing that there’s something wrong with Star Trek. I’m arguing that people are giving way too much credit to the 60s. They were not given roles traditionally filled by men, men could not even type in the 60s. It was seen as beneath them. That they had the woman answering the phone on the starship wasn’t seen as oh they gave a woman a traditionally male navy roll. It was seen as oh look they still have a woman answering the phone even in the future. Most of the people who watched the show weren’t in the Navy and weren’t drawing those kinds of parallels.
They were. These were men’s roles, that men were doing, in the Navy, in the 1960’s.
No, it wasn’t, except by you lmao. You are projecting here.
They absolutely were drawing those parallels. Everybody in the 1960’s was fully aware that women weren’t allowed posts like that on naval ships. It would have been implicitly understood by literally everyone that women being allowed these roles on a ship in the future was a progressive idea. The fact that women were allowed permanent posts on a combat vessel at all was a novel idea at the time, much less a woman serving as a commissioned officer on the bridge of the vessel.
Would you also reduce O’Brien from TNG to an “Elevator operator”, or are these reductions of yours reserved for women only?
Okay well now you are just blatantly ignoring my point to make yours. I’ve literally talked to women, like my grandma, who lived through this time period and specifically asked them how they felt about these things. I encourage you to do the same. You don’t have to trust me, but I hope you don’t take offense to me trusting these people more than I trust you. My grandpa was in the Navy in the 60s and also felt this way about the portrayal. I hope you have a good day.
My mother and grandma both lived through the 60s and were a Navy family. They got me into Star Trek initially as they were big fans of the series. They, as well as many other women at the time very famously found Star Trek to be uniquely empowering for women among the TV landscape. The concept of women serving in science and technology and even leadership roles on a ship, as well as being treated as experts in their fields and with equal respect to the male crew was unheard of for the time. In fact it was a woman who started the letter campaign to get Star Trek back on the air for its second season. I guess your grandma didn’t tell you that.
It’s disheartening to see that in the big 26 there are still men like you who want to denigrate women in those roles and the lasting positive impact they had on our society. Do better.
The reason was Gene Roddenberry had cast his mistress in a costar role, and wasn't yet the Lucas-esque TV god that could get away with it.
That’s true, but they could have kept the part as a woman. There were other motivations in removing the role entirely.
They told Roddenberry he could keep Spock or Number One, but the network didn't think the 1960s audience was ready for both at once.
Look it up.
You are saying the same thing I did. That her being romantically entwined with Gene wasn’t the only reason the network wanted her off.
I honestly don't know if Majel minded that much in retrospect; she's still the only actress to voice the Enterprise herself. She died in 2008 and most recently voiced the Enterprise D in what? 2024?
Progress happened. Uhura wore Lieutenant's stripes so Janeway could wear Captain's pips.
Progress happening doesn’t negate my original point.
Fun fact: The first on-screen woman captain was in The Voyage Home.
The first starfleet captain, yes. Season 3's Romulan commander counts for something!
Especially when Romulans are fashioned a fairly regressive military culture in general.
I still think that Master and Slave were the most apt descriptions for IDE drive roles
Someone else posted that they didn't consider getting rid of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben as big wins.
Most of the changes are performative and not material. imho.
They were big wins the same way getting rid of the Redskins was a big win for Native Americans. It’s not about the specific instance. It’s about what growing up in a world that tolerates that kind of portraying of ethnicity does to young minds.
Yeah I don't disagree, but that is still why they changed it. Using "man" to refer to all mankind (and even "mankind" for that matter) is going out of style.
What’s the preferred replacement?
Humankind and person I guess. Idk I'm not a stickler on that kind of thing.
I hate pointlessly gendered shit. No one sounds much better to me and makes the same grammatical sense as no man. I don’t see it as any different than using they instead of he or she.
To boldly go where no ugly giant bag of mostly water has gone before.
It wasn't considered as gendered, as referring to humanity as "man" is a holdover from when "man" wasn't ever gendered; we don't have any recordings of it specifically referring to males until around 1000 CE.
The old words for male/female were "wer" (see: werewolf) and "wīf", the latter of which diverged into "wifmann" ("female human"), later "woman", and "wife", specifically referring to a married woman. You still see "wife" used without implication of marriage status in words like "midwife".
Anyway tl;dr "man" historically wasn't gendered, hence it commonly being used to refer to humanity as a whole even in modern use. Also it more accurately states that no humans have been there before, rather than discounting present natives.
Edit: also, as another comment played on, this was used as wordplay in the Lord of the Rings, in which humanity is referred to as "the race of man", where a prophecy refers to no man being able to defeat one of the antagonists but doesn't specify that a woman can't.
I don't have anything to add, but I want to say that I found this comment super interesting.
wait, so are werewolfs trans people or intersex.
"I am no man!" Says the female crew, who proceeds to stab the space Nazgul in the eye.
Goes into the women's bathroom because I really have to shit and the men's has been occupied for 20 minutes