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Only an aspiring Trekkie over here. Can you explain this line? I don’t follow.
Uhura’s response, “sorry, neither,” is to the other meanings of those words. She is saying that she is neither fair—“pale-skinned”—nor a maiden—a “virgin.”
I always took it as she needed neither protection nor was she a fair maiden.
Both explanations are pretty great. She was a treasure.
But you need to protect treasure!
“Fair” in the context of this phrase is meant to convey “beautiful” but literally meant “light or pale skinned.”
“Maiden” is meant to convey “young woman,” but literally meant “virgin” (as in “maiden voyage”).
literally meant “virgin” (as in “maiden voyage”)
I can’t believe I never made this connection before.
I learned this wrt romeo and juliet, maidenhead is the hymen or virginity (maidenhood?)
For reference the line in Romeo and Juliet was
Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads. Take it in what sense thou wilt.How did Bill get that past the censors?!
It’s amazing how far a little royal patronage can get you.
On horseback, mainly.
They’d never heard him tell a joke before.
It’s hilarious how Shakespeare’s are seen in modern times considering what they were originally. They’re full of dirty jokes and the accent they were originally performed in sounded nothing like the “modern” Received Pronunciation used today.
Do you happen to know where to find whole plays done in the original pronunciation? I’m not exactly bad at finding things on the internet, but I can’t find any of Shakespeare’s plays in their original pronunciation, or more than a tiny bit of Chaucer’s Canterbury tales in spoken middle English.
I found this performance of As you like it on the wikipedia article. The quality of the video isn’t great, but beyond that I can only find short excerpts in OP.
Here’s the prologue of Romeo and Juliet. – and here’s a playlist by the same guy
A playlist of sonnets by polýMATHY
And short scene from Julius Caesar
Bonus, but unrelated: Here’s The Lord’s Prayer in old English
Neither had the maiden.
I never put that all together before.
Well you’ve gotten your answer but I do gotta say I love this place. Within 5 minutes you had 3 answers.
Trekkies love showing off our knowledge of various things. Soon you will be one of us buddy <3
Shit, I even learned something about Shakespeare’s Romero and Juliet I didn’t learn in school.
there are a LOT of jokes about pussy in Shakespeare
Even titles of plays. Nothing was slang for vagina, so Much Ado About Nothing was an off color joke roughly translated today as “a ruckesss about pussy”.
I’m sorry but I cannot stop cackling at the image of Picard, straight faced as fuck, saying everything you just did word for word. Or quoting Shakespeare and then saying “From one of my favorite lays, A Ruckess About Pussy”.
i think the comedies exist primarily as a combined project to discover as many cheeky expressions for human genitalia and their actions as were possible to create with the language
Shakespeare was the original “Sex and Violence”
My Catholic school skipped them all.
Fair can mean pale-skinned and maiden can mean virgin.
There was a short lived cartoon series between the last episode of TOS and the Motion Picture.
In one episode all the males are hypnotised by an alien creature, and the women have to save them.
The line was ‘This is Lieutenant Uhura, I am in command of the Enterprise.’
The ad lib that was cut was ‘…at last.’
I didn’t know that line was cut. It would have been so appropriate!
She was already suspicious from the very beginning. When Scotty got weird and started singing… the super creepy expression he had on his face. Jfc
She handled it perfectly
Ominous Uhura face “Soon.”
The Naked Time, I just watched this episode yesterday. (New fan here, watching for the first time). SPOCK WAS AWESOME.
Such an absolute classic!
Welcome to the team buddy 🖖
Oh my . . .
Why would this need to be snuck passed the censors?
It’s funny, but it’s a fairly benign line.
Benign today, sure. 56 years ago? Not that benign.
Marilyn Monroe disagrees
Yes, Marilyn Monroe, the woman in the white dress might disagree but the woman in the white dress was a bit different than Uhura. Can you guess what that difference was and why that might have made an enormous difference 56 years ago?
Also you say that like Marilyn Monroe didn’t have a constant swirl of scandal around her.
Please explain
Women talking about their sexual life was taboo. A black woman talking about her sexual life was insanity.
It seems odd to me too. Even if it was 60 years ago. “Fair”, she’s dark skinned, so not “fair” in that sense. And he’s using “maiden” in the sense of “a girl or young woman”, which she also isn’t. Yes, you could also see a secondary meaning of “maiden” as in “virgin”, but would the censors really block something that was only mildly sexual and only when taken out of context? Was “maiden” in the 60s seen as a much more sexual term or something?
Yes
Someone is almost as horny for Uhura as Mariner
Well, it’s certainly not Sulu. Oh my!
Why would it have been censored?
“Maiden” used to imply virginity and “fair” implies light, usually white, skin. Doesn’t take a leap to figure out why censors in the 60s would have found it objectionable to call attention to that.
I wasn’t even thinking about words like maiden having “deeper” meaning back then … Thanks!
That’s why the term “Old Maid” used to be such a biting insult as well.
Doesn’t it still mean virgin? If not what does it mean? Non-native speaker here.
Nowadays ‘maiden’ can just mean ‘young woman’.
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Oooh! Now I get it!
The 60s were a very different time. Her talking about her virginity in any way would have been taboo to all hell.
I was hoping someone in the comments would have linked to the scene but I will instead: https://youtu.be/M58aP5DtNqY?t=165
Looking pretty fucking ripped.
Shirtless Sulu can’t harm you; he isn’t real—
She was a gigastacy.
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Oh my God!! I never caught that! 🤣
