Sneakily taking the hinges off the doors of perception

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L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

2 Comments

  1. EK
    May 2, 2016 @ 1:39 pm

    Nice analysis – I particularly enjoyed reading about the psychogeography perspective. A lot of the imagery of this episode was memorable for me too.

    I personally have some feminist gripes with this episode. It is the second in the series in which Deanna is jealous over a man – the first being 'Man of the People', which is pretty much unwatchable for me. Eye of the Beholder isn't, though I perceive some unfortunate parallels between the two, as in both there are external forces that have 'taken hold' of Deanna and led to her 'irrational' jealousy. There are just too many cases in the series of the writers using plot devices in a way that justify effectively turn Deanna into dramatically heightened versions of walking, sexist female gender stereotypes. 'The Loss' is another example; Deanna is pretty much portrayed as your quintessential 'hysterical woman'. The extreme lengths that Deanna is willing to go to in EOTB as a result of her jealousy (willing to kill herself) takes the archetypal idea of the 'jealous woman' to a wholly new and terrifying level. Star Trek is bad for this – there seems to be the mentality that if a female character is under the influence of some mysterious alien or enigmatic force, hyper-dramatic stereotypical gender representations are okay. Respectfully, this is where I have to say fuck you, TNG.

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  2. Daru
    May 16, 2016 @ 9:28 pm

    I do remember being particularly struck by the imagery in this episode – including the inner workings of the nacelle. The idea of death being at the heart of the Enterprise is pretty shocking and stunning as a comment on the show's origins.

    And the Work and Deanna relationship is indeed for me one of the best represented in the show overall for me. I just enjoyed so much witnessing how each character was being open up by the other. Lovely.

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