10 Times Star Trek: The Next Generation Went Woke

10. No MAN To No ONE

One thing we learnt from the now world-famous speech in the opening credits of The Original Series was that there is no reason you can't split the infinitive. The 'rule' against it was mostly the invention of a few particularly insistent grammarians of the 19th century. Today, no sensible grammar will tell you not to boldly go.

If Kirk broke the seemingly hard-and-fast strictures of syntax, it would be up to The Next Generation, with a nod at the end of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, to work on the semantics. The 'man' in 'no man has gone… ' might well have meant a 'human being; a person,' but it did its definitional work through exclusion, or as the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) states, "[until the 20th century] to include women by implication, though referring primarily to males." 

The switch to 'no ONE' in Picard's version opened up a new space that included women not by implication but by design.

Semantics is one thing, concrete action on gender equality is another. In that sense, The Next Generation did break ground from the very beginning with the character of Natasha Yar in particular in a non-stereotypical gender role. The Original Series infamously ended on an episode that basically said women weren't allowed to be starship captains and should just be happy with their lot, but The Next Gen strove to include women in top-level command positions — all the way up to Admirals such as Shanthi, Brand, and Nechayev — carrying on from the work that was begun by actress Madge Sinclair in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.