During its legendary first five-year mission under Captain James T. Kirk, the USS Enterprise gave a start to some of the most well-known and well-decorated officers in all of Starfleet. Several of those now-famous officers were women: who doesn’t know the names Nyota Uhura, Christine Chapel, Janice Rand? They stand as an example and inspiration to women young and old throughout the known universe. However, while they are all undoubtedly outstanding Starfleet officers, they were also not the only amazing women to serve on that ship. Today, we’re going to look at several other officers who served aboard the USS Enterprise who deserve some recognition!
(Pictured left to right: Kazue Tamura, Charlene Masters, Elizabeth Palmer.)
Kazue Tamura served in the Operations division as a yeoman during her time aboard the USS Enterprise. At the time of launch, she was the third youngest enlisted crew-member aboard the ship, having gone directly into an abbreviated administrative track at the Starfleet Technical Academy after finishing high school. Despite her schooling as an administrative assistant, while aboard the Enterprise she sought out training in weaponry and martial arts, and won first place at the informal Annual Marksmanship Competition held by Captain Kirk in 2269 and 2270. After her tour with the Enterprise, she enrolled in the four-year program at the Starfleet Academy, majoring in Security. During her time there she was one of several female Starfleet officers whose complaints about the pressure on female officers to wear short, revealing uniforms led to a fleet-wide uniform redesign. After graduating from the Academy, Tamura served on several other starships, eventually making head security officer on the USS Hood. After retiring, Tamura emigrated to Vulcan to be with her husband, Arev. They currently live in Raal with their two young daughters.
Charlene Masters served aboard the USS Enterprise in the Sciences and Operations divisions at the rank of lieutenant. She grew up on Martian Colony 3, where she attended a local university at which she studied both spaceship engineering and architecture. She then applied to the Starfleet Academy in San Francisco, where she majored in Botany with a concentration in Subsistence Agriculture. In 2263, Masters helped to design scientific and agricultural greenhouses that were to become standard on refitted Constitution-class starships. During her time on the Enterprise, she counseled several alien colonies on the most effective way to grow crops in order to feed their growing populations. After the five-year mission concluded, she left Starfleet to return to her home colony and start her own business growing specialty food items in greenhouses she designed and built herself. She is most well-known for her coffee beans, which are prized as some of the best in the galaxy. She still consults for the Federation on greenhouse design and colony agriculture.
Elizabeth Palmer served as a lieutenant aboard the USS Enterprise in the Operations division. She was also certified as a bridge officer. Palmer was born and raised on Alpha Centauri and was valedictorian of her highschool before attending Starfleet Academy, where she majored in Xenolinguistics. She wrote her thesis on the variations between several urban Andorian dialects, and it is still cited as a foundational work in the field. After graduation, she married fellow cadet Sarah Rodgers, and they had a son (Maurice Rodgers-Palmer) while both were stationed in San Francisco. In 2264 they divorced, and Palmer took a position aboard the Enterprise for its seminal five year mission. During her time on the ship, Palmer taught informal language classes to her fellow crew-members and continued her research on Andorian language and culture. After her tour with the Enterprise concluded, she served on two other Constitution-class starships for several years until she was offered a teaching position at the San Francisco Starfleet Academy in the Xenolinguistics department. She is now the head of the department, and continues to teach several upper-level classes on the Andorian language.
Tags: aimee fleck, artwork, miniskirts in space, nyota uhura, star trek, uss enterprise, women of starfleet
YOU GUYS THIS IS AMAZING.
I love this!!!! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is a series, and that there will be a TNG edition (TNG 4 Life, y’all).
Also: Goddammit, I wish Starfleet was real.
Agreed on both fronts!
Agreed!! I wait (im?)patiently for the DS9 edition!
Guuuysss you should play Mass Effect, it is pretty much like being in Starfleet and I LOVE IT. It includes the kissing aliens part and everything.
GARRUS VAKARIAN <3 4 LYFE
I love my metallic lizard-bird man
(you can play as a woman, choose your background and a female player character gets all the same badass options as a male and doesn’t get stuck in super-skimpy stuff unless you choose the ‘designer dress’ option for casual wear)
You should play it
I didn’t really get it, and then I did the romance. And I was like, “Holy shit.”
so good. Have you played any Dragon Age at all? If you liked the ME romances you’ll like the Dragon Age ones. In DA2 EVERYONE is romanceable expcept Varric and that’s blatant anti-dwarf racism.
Oh yeah, I played DA first. I’m only just playing Mass Effect now because I did not play shooters, ever, until like, last year.
I am with you on blatant dwarf racism. I definitely made all my dwarf characters in Origins make out with everyone possible to make up for it.
I am SUCH an ME fangirl. Every time I replay the series I promise myself that this time my romance won’t go Liara-Garrus-Garrus but it ALWAYS DOES.
I also keep telling myself I’ll try to play through as straight paragon or straight renegade, and I always play ‘paragade’ (mostly paragon but a few renegade choices when they seem fun)
Yeah, I play that way too. On the plus side, you’re not a terrible person! I am doing a Renegade playthrough right now, and I was sad about being mean to people, but you’re actually not THAT much of a jerk.
I think it gets worse. With the series. I recall one of my friends saying that later on the renegade options are basically just ‘I’m a dick! I’m a dick! I’m a stupid dick!’ In number 3 you begin to question why anyone would choose them.
Theres a few videos on youtube, which are basically collections of the dickish options.
I am still so, so bitter about not getting to virtually make out with Varric, dammit.
To be fair, he loves Bianca more than he could any person of flesh and blood.
MAYBE WE’LL GET TO IN INQUISITION!? Cuz he is in it.
Mass Effect ATE MY BRAIN. Garrus Vakarian <3 <3 <3
Let’s take a moment to appreciate Awkward!Garrus.
“Can it wait? I’m in the middle of some calibrations.”
“You know me, I always like to savour the moment before popping the heatsink.”
“I had reach, she had flexibility.”
I So wish Starfleet was real. (Side note! My phone recognized the word “Starfleet” without trying to autocorrect it.)
Is there some kind of Extended Universe novel out there that explains what horrible tragedy occurred between the 23rd and 24th centuries to cause Starfleet to switch from miniskirts to full-body jumpsuits for female crew members?
Uh, FEMINISM?
sick burn sick burn dude
If I felt comfortable googling “Commander Troi cleavage” at work I’d have a GREAT COUNTER ARGUMENT in jpg form.
Marina Sirtis had a great comment about her costumes, cleavage, and her character’s apparent mental prowess and how those all tied together (I feel like she’s told the story many times, I heard it myself at DragonCon a few years back). I’ve pulled it from her Wikipedia page:
“Troi’s switching to a standard Starfleet uniform in the same season in “Chain of Command” elevated the character’s dignity in Sirtis’ eyes, and her enthusiasm in playing her, with Sirtis commenting, ‘It covered up my cleavage and, consequently, I got all my brains back, because when you have a cleavage you can’t have brains in Hollywood. So I got all my brains back and I was allowed to do things that I hadn’t been allowed to do for five or six years. I went on away teams, I was in charge of staff, I had my pips back, I had phasers, I had all the equipment again, and it was fabulous. I was absolutely thrilled.'”
“Hey Starfleet, these revealing uniforms are a little unfair to the female crew members. Could we maybe have a longer hem, or throw some tights on or…”
“FULL BODY JUMPSUITS you said?”
“No like maybe we could wear pants or”
“JUMPSUITS IT IS.”
Only Deanna Troi (btw she is the worst) wore a full-body jumpsuit (and I guess 7 of 9 but fuck Voyager amirite). All other Starfleet officers wore the unisex Starfleet uniform.
Star Trek is serious business, no joking about Star Trek on my watch.
How is the standard uniform not a jumpsuit? The pants are attached right? Troi’s just has more cleavage showing.
ETA: Now I’m genuinely worried that I’m wrong about everything in my life.
So per google poor Scott Bakula is definitely wearing a jumpsuit but I’m voting jackets and pants for everyone else.
in the beginning all the TNG uniforms were jumpsuits, and then at some point they switched to two-piece uniforms and that’s when Picard started tugging his shirt down every time he stood up.
Then for DS9 they changed up the shirt/trouser style so it looks like a jumpsuit most of the time but sometimes they show it as two separate pieces with I guess some kind of fancy space closure to keep it all together most of the time, and stuck with that basic faux-jumpsuit style through Voyager and the movies.
IMO they should have kept everyone in the unisex skants, seen briefly in like two episodes of TNG.
also I think the two-piece TNG uniforms were men-only, women kept wearing the jumpsuits.
anyway this contains answers to every starfleet uniform-related question anyone will ever have.
And in the original, they had to be two pieces so that Captain Kirk could be shirtless in every episode.
obviously two pieces, and also very flimsy for maximum opportunities to be torn open.
I love you for this.
YOU GUYS. If you watch like, the first two or three episodes of TNG (even though the first season is basically just for masochists in my opinion), you totally see male extras wandering around the hallways of the Enterprise in the minidress style uniform that Troi is wearing in the first couple of episodes. I would link to a screenshot but apparently my friend that hosted a Star Trek blog we attempted let it die.
EDIT: Oh derr, those are mentioned in the comment I’m replying to. Got overly excited!
In season 1 some women are still wearing the miniskirts!
Also they’re not jumpsuits, they’re two pieces. I don’t think they’re attached, because you see them pulling the top down all the time.
If anyone would like to see my powerpoint presentation on the fashions of TNG, I am happy to provide it.
The one-piece jumpsuits with no collar were worn in seasons 1 and 2 of TNG, and replaced by a modified Eisenhower jacket top with pants in season 3. You can sometimes see background actors in season 3 wearing the earlier version.
The skants are unisex but read as SUPER SEXXXXXY on the women and sort of hilarious on the men.
My knowledge ends with TNG…but I know the clothes on that one PRETTY well.
By the way, Fashion It So is one of my very favorite things on the internet, to the point where I can’t read it at work for fear of indecorous snorting. So, you know. Well played.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who would very much like to see this powerpoint.
These ladies!!! These outfits are SO GREAT I would like five of each please.
This is Yeoman Landon: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Martha_Landon
She is my favorite Yeoman, because, in addition to her amazeballs hairstyle and fresh eye makeup, she judo-throws murderous aliens like it’s her job, like so: http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g287/therobotha…
And like so: http://media.tumblr.com/e39ddb263bfbaa98ec052a0a5…
and all in an outfit that clearly doesn’t even TRY to cover her ass-cheeks. That hair is excellent!
I did love Nichelle Nichols’ defense of the miniskirt. “I was wearing them on the street. What’s wrong with wearing them in the air? I wore ’em on airplanes. It was the era of the miniskirt. Everybody wore miniskirts.”
Lady was way too busy being all groundbreaking black lady with an Actual Important Job on a TV show and having the first interracial kiss on TV to give a fuck about her miniskirt. She had other shit to DO. (I might love Nichelle Nichols quite a lot.)
I’d be fine with the miniskirts if Kirk weren’t always complaining about how all the female yeomen were SO HOT and SO DISTRACTING and how is he supposed to WORK IN THESE CONDITIONS??? You’re the captain dude, order them to wear some pants.
Oh, the miniskirts and the sex-shaming and all the stuff definitely ARE problematic, I just enjoy that particular response to the critique. There are so many sexism problems in the original Star Trek it’s not even funny, except that it is pretty funny because they seem so ridiculous now, and hopefully the shit we have to deal with on a regular basis will seem ridiculous to our children, like really? People did that? What was wrong with them?
And we’ll collectively go I KNOW RIGHT and continue having high tea. (I imagine that when I am in my fifties and my children are finding out about the sexism of our generation that I will have high tea a lot. I love high tea now, but it is expensive. 55-year-old me is going to have more money. I’m very clear on that.)
You are the greatest, let’s have high tea together! We will be able to afford macarons, also.
oh yeah, Nichelle NIchols is great, no question. And like, I agree, if you’re a lady in space you can be a lady in space wearing a miniskirt if you want to, that’s not going to make you less of a badass. The existence of the miniskirts doesn’t bother me nearly so much as, you know, the male gaze on female bodies explicitly highlighting the miniskirts and making them A Thing.
AIMEE FLECK ON THE TOAST
ahhhhhhhh
I KNOW!!! I love when someone I love from one place (tumblr, in this case) shows up somewhere else I like.
This article scratches a fan itch that I hadn’t realized had been itching since the last time I read stories on the Lower Decks fanfiction archive in high school.
… Also Lt.-Prof. Palmer’s story is reminding me about my Confusing Childhood Feelings for Lt. Tasha Yar.
Isn’t Alpha Centauri a star rather than a planet?
nobody knows
I always thought it was a solar system?
It is a star, part of a constellation. But I think it has a planet which is also called Alpha Centauri?
(why I am not just looking this up on Wikipedia instead of pulling it out of my 6th-grade astronomy obsessive brain, we may never know)
In the case of Star Trek, maybe it was like…a spaceship colony near Alpha Centauri or something? I don’t know anything about Star Trek! WHY AM I EVEN IN THIS THREAD
I finished reading your comment and then read your username and I just want to high-five you for delivering what was advertised. 🙂
Serious as a heart attack!
It is a star system in real life (actually binary stars!) and according to Memory Alpha, the nerdiest wiki on the internet, it is also the name of a planet in their solar system.
Clearly I am not enough of a Star Trek nerd to be in this thread.
Mass Effect ATE MY BRAIN. Garrus Vakarian <3 <3 <3
First, I love the outfit Kazue is drawn in.
Second, in the new movies, why are the women in miniskirts again? If you are going to update the look of everything else, why not that? They seem super impractical. Easy solution, put a pair of leggings on underneath them, which still gives a nod to the OS, but seems more realistic, and also show some women in the same uniforms as men, because at that point the women shouldn’t all be wearing a totally different uniform from the men. But obviously the new films don’t really care about making strides in sexism or racism issues, like the original series did.
First, I love the outfit Kazue is drawn in.
Second, in the new movies, why are the women in miniskirts again? If you are going to update the look of everything else, why not that? They seem super impractical. Easy solution, put a pair of leggings on underneath them, which still gives a nod to the OS, but seems more realistic, and also show some women in the same uniforms as men, because at that point the women shouldn't all be wearing a totally different uniform from the men. But obviously the new films don't really care about making strides in sexism or racism issues, like the original series did.
MAYBE WE'LL GET TO IN INQUISITION!? Cuz he is in it.
I love you for this.