this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Troi was put in the catsuit from day one, to capture the teenage boy market (and most of the rest of the male market). They put her on a uniform at the height of Star Trek popularity.
Seven came in at season 4 of Voyager with the extremely tight catsuit. This is the third series of the 90s era plus a couple of movies, so franchise fatigue started to set in. They needed a way to boost ratings, and they already knew of one surefire way.
With Enterprise, they didn't even try to hide it. T'Pol could have very easily worn a standard Vulcan uniform, which we've seen multiple examples. The catsuit was blatantly used to try to regain some audience. Unfortunately they didn't realize until it was too late that good writing and multi-episode arcs were what we really wanted.
It kinda killed Enterprise for me. The catsuit and the gratuitous "decontamination" scenes. It felt really off.
It's not like I'm prudish or anything, I like that kind of thing in certain contexts. But it's Star Trek, I'm watching this thing to get my nerd on. Trying to sex it up just made it weird.
It definitely got too weird at times. But T'Pol was smokin. So...
That's all I got lol
Yeah but why am I watching one woman in a catsuit with the occasional gratuitous decontamination scene when there was Baywatch on another channel?
They put themselves in a market they couldn't hope to compete in.
Idk I'd rather watch a good show that happens to have good looking people on it than a bad show.
I'm not entirely sure that seven's catsuit was really what boosted ratings with adding her to the crew though.
The fact is, she was a good character with interesting development. She put life back into a kind of meh show and quickly became one of the stars over most of the original crew.
But ratings was, without question, the intent of that stupid outfit. It just makes me sad to think back that they might not have needed it.
She was added due to her looks, but she ended up being a surprisingly deep character. I like Steve Shives's review of her character, and so did Jeri Ryan.
https://youtu.be/BP6CgYTR5XA?si=3fq5A_Z9tPSC62Tf
And it pretty much worked. Lots of TVs got tuned to UPN to check out Jeri Ryan's tertiary adjunct.
And stayed tuned to UPN because Seven of Nine finally made the show work. She serves as a perfect foil for Janeway as well as that Pinocchio character that explores the human condition from the outside in, in the grand tradition of Spock and Data. And Jeri Ryan turned in 4 seasons of amazing performances in the role. All while vacuum packed from neck to ankles in silver vinyl.
Now Enterprise...it's pretty obvious they tried to make that lightning strike twice with T'Pol but Jolene Blalock had some pretty big stilettos to fill and I don't think she nor the writers really pulled it off. They of course ratcheted up the fanservice not only with T'Pol but with half the principal cast; Hoshi ended up pointlessly topless in one scene and Trip and Mayweather ended up in the decontamination chamber as often as T'Pol did. It was just generally a thirstier show, and that's not the only thing about it that just didn't work.