One of the most fondly recalled episodes of the original 'Star Trek', if not necessarily for the right reasons. However, that it was written by a woman is reflected in the remarkable number of females in the thick of the action, with Uhura taking a greater part in the story than usual and Chekhov's place on the bridge taken by Victoria George as Ensign Jana Haines.
Bestriding it all is the amazonian Angelique Pettyjohn as big-haired gladiatrice Shahna - feet apart, hands on hips, her swept-back verdant mane flowing down over her hunched shoulders. (Photographs of the late Ms Pettyjohn in her gladiatorial costume at conventions ten years later being indistinguishable from those from the original 1967 episode.)
But in reality once freed from servitude by Captain Kirk all the future would have held for her was discarding her bakofoil bikini and her matching gloves & boots for the drab existence that would now follow. A more fitting conclusion to the episode would have been her dying a warrior's death at the end of the knife wielded by Kirk in the arena; the Captain discreetly brushing a tear from his eye in her memory as he returns to the Enterprise and she heads for Valhalla.
Bestriding it all is the amazonian Angelique Pettyjohn as big-haired gladiatrice Shahna - feet apart, hands on hips, her swept-back verdant mane flowing down over her hunched shoulders. (Photographs of the late Ms Pettyjohn in her gladiatorial costume at conventions ten years later being indistinguishable from those from the original 1967 episode.)
But in reality once freed from servitude by Captain Kirk all the future would have held for her was discarding her bakofoil bikini and her matching gloves & boots for the drab existence that would now follow. A more fitting conclusion to the episode would have been her dying a warrior's death at the end of the knife wielded by Kirk in the arena; the Captain discreetly brushing a tear from his eye in her memory as he returns to the Enterprise and she heads for Valhalla.