Context and how I choose to watch it: It seems so foreign to us now, but it wasn’t an uncommon sentiment felt by some extremely driven women in that time who knew that they weren’t being given a fair opportunity. The jealousy, frustration, and even the resentment that Dr. Lester felt toward Captain Kirk mirrored how many female professionals felt. They had been passed over, not given the chance to prove themselves or gain important experiences, and they realized that change was not going to happen quickly enough for this to be rectified on their career timelines.

In the episode, this drove Dr. Lester to do something reckless, believing she could cut the line and successfully jump right into the captain role if she switched bodies with Kirk. I don’t think she failed because she was a woman, but rather because she did not have the experiences necessary to become an effective captain. My beef with the episode is that this dynamic shouldn’t even make sense in the Star Trek universe, but it was written in the 1960s. We no doubt have similar blindspots today that people will cringe at 60 years from now.