History Recap / StarTrekS3E24TurnaboutIntruder

Janice Lester plugs Kirk into an ancient machine which causes a FreakyFridayFlip. Now in Kirk's body, Lester quickly reveals herself to be AxCrazy, supplying us with some of [[EvilIsHammy Shatner's trademark evil acting]]. Meanwhile, Lester's body is unconscious once more. Lester-in-Kirk prepares to kill Kirk-in-Lester, but the rest of the landing party walks in at the wrong moment. Lester, of course, pretends to be Kirk, beginning a TyrantTakesTheHelm plot. In Sickbay, Lester-in-Kirk meets with Dr. Coleman, with whom she is in cahoots. It's revealed that Lester murdered her expedition and Coleman was a willing accomplice. Man, does Kirk know how to pick 'em or what? After [=McCoy=] and a suddenly brunette Nurse Chapel arrive, Lester-in-Kirk announces that Kirk-in-Lester is being placed under the care of Dr. Coleman. [=McCoy=] protests that this violates Starfleet protocol since he is Chief Medical Officer, but Lester-in-Kirk ignores this. By the way, Lester-in-Kirk frankly talks about her scheme in {{Captains Log}}s. Does no one ever actually read those things? Even weirder, later we hear Kirk-in-Lester do the log, which makes even less sense.

After an escape attempt, Kirk-in-Lester is placed in solitary confinement. Spock visits and Kirk-in-Lester explains what happened. Spock performs a Vulcan mind meld (or at least a mind touch), which convinces him, but he notes that it won't count for anything in the way of evidence. Really? Freakin' telepathy isn't considered evidence of a body swap? ''Really?'' Granted, only Spock can sense it firsthand and he could lie, but... no wait, he can't lie because he's a Vulcan. What the hell?[[note]]Evidence obtained by telepathy is inadmissible in court because it's considered hearsay. Apparently this is still true in the 23rd Century. And Vulcans can absolutely lie, given a logical reason to do so. . . though what a "logical reason" would be in this case is unclear.[[/note]] Spock tries to help Kirk-in-Lester escape, but they're caught and Lester-in-Kirk has Spock charged with mutiny. At a court martial, Spock states his case. Kirk-in-Lester is then questioned in a very condescending, chauvinistic manner by Lester-in-Kirk. Kirk-in-Lester characterizes Lester as a StrawFeminist defined by "her intense hatred of her own womanhood". When Spock refuses to drop his charges, Lester-in-Kirk has a VillainousBreakdown and goes into a yelling tirade. Her new favorite word is "mutiny".

Hey, you know how this episode has clearly portrayed Lester as an insane, power-hungry mass murderer? Well, forget about that. She's in a pretty body now and FemalesAreMoreInnocent. The episode wraps up with an AlasPoorVillain ending, in which we learn Coleman was in love with Lester. (So he helped the woman he was in love with turn into a man? [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy That could say a couple]] [[HoYay of things about him.]]) Kirk delivers the last line of the series: "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only... if only..." The meaning of this line is debated almost as much as the one from earlier. Does "if only" mean "if only she kept to her proper gender role" or "if only society hadn't forced her into a gender role she hated"? Or both, perhaps? Make up your own mind.[[note]]And, of course, "if only" this series had been properly funded, had better writing this season, been given a better slot in the scheduling, and not been cancelled too soon.[[/note]]

* The offical {{Retcon}} from Creator/{{Paramount}} seems to be that Lester is just insane, which is very much supported by the rest of the episode.

* FutureSocietyPresentValues: It's revealed that ''women aren't allowed to be captains in Starfleet,'' in the 23rd century. A female character who tries to get around this rule by using alien technology to switch bodies with Kirk is portrayed as being a horribly misguided fanatic.

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Dr. Coleman sends the staff into a dangerously radioactive location, then feigns ignorance as to the cause of their illness and eventual death, thus getting away with multiple murders.

* AbsenteeActor: For this, the final episode, Uhura takes the day off and is replaced by a Lieutenant Lisa. (Creator/NichelleNichols had a singing engagement that conflicted with the shooting schedule.)

* TyrantTakesTheHelm: Lester takes over Kirk’s body and abuses the captain’s power. Things only get worse when “Kirk” tries to execute the real Kirk who’s trapped in Lester’s body, Kirk, Bones, Spock, and Scotty who start suspecting “Kirk”.

The last episode of the original ''Star Trek'' series. It's known for being the most overtly sexist episode of the show and certainly not a worthy SeriesFinale, and many fans prefer to think of the previous episode, "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS3E23AllOurYesterdays}} All Our Yesterdays]]", as the true finale. But hey, it's not the last we'll be hearing from these characters.

* SocietyMarchesOn: It's revealed that ''women aren't allowed to be captains in Starfleet,'' in the 23rd century. A female character who tries to get around this rule by using alien technology to switch bodies with Kirk is portrayed as being a horribly misguided fanatic.
** You use ''one'' piece of alien technology to steal ''one'' person's body, and...
** The franchise, naturally, retconned this in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', introducing Erika Hernandez, a no-nonsense woman who had previously served with Archer, as the captain of the second Warp 5 starship (''Columbia'' NX-02). Of course, in the 2000s, viewers were ready for that sort of thing, and, more important, Gene Roddenberry[[note]]"You can't have females taking over a man's ship"[[/note]] was dead.
** Then they retconned it even ''harder'' in ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'' by setting it just ten years before [=TOS=] and starting with a female captain who is clearly well-established in her career, advising her female [=XO=] that it's time to seek out her own command.
** There is the possibility ([[LampshadeHanging lampshaded by McCoy]]) that the woman in question was mentally ill to begin with, and thus may not have interpreted regulations with the right frame of mind.
** Creator/LeonardNimoy hated this episode, and confirmed that Roddenberry really meant for Starfleet to have such a rule: females could not captain a starship.
---> His goal was to prove, quote, 'That women, although they claim equality, cannot really do things as well, under certain circumstances, as a man' -- like the command function, for example... What he set out to prove was that this lady, given command of the ship, would ''blow it''. That's really what the script was about. Just that simple."
*** If this was Roddenberry's intention, it's something of a LostAesop. It's not as though command was taken by the most qualified woman in all of Starfleet and she still blew it. No, command was taken by a clearly deranged person who happened to be female. Janice Lester could be replaced by a deranged male villain and the change to the story would be superficial, so how could her behavior say anything about women in general?
** Notably, the original [[Recap/StarTrekS1E0TheCage pilot]] of the series included a ''female first officer''.[[note]]Never mind that Roddenberry created that role for his mistress. The fact is he put a female in an extremely important position, especially considering the more military aspects in the early episodes.[[/note]] She capably commanded ''Enterprise'' for most of the episode while the (male) captain was held captive by aliens. In fact, she was the one who dispassionately decided that letting the aliens breed humans for slavery would be unacceptable, when Captain Pike seemed willing to let it happen as part of a bargain to save ''Enterprise''. [[NumberTwo Number One]] coldly threatened to blow everyone up -- including herself -- instead, and this was what finally convinced the aliens to abandon their plot and let everyone go. If only they let Roddenberry keep that character in the show, it would have been an ''amazing'' aversion of this trope... but the pilot's test audiences failed to react well, and Roddenberry pissed off the network and his own production staff by casting his girlfriend in the role.[[note]]The often-heard excuse that "a female was considered too domineering" or "you can have the alien or the woman, not both" is apparently bullshit. The truth is they liked the idea; they just didn't like Majel. This is one reason she wears a blonde wig as Chapel; Gene honestly thought no one would notice.[[/note]]
** The excellent fan-created series ''WebVideo/StarTrekContinues'' deals with the "women can't be captains" thing head-on in "Embracing the Winds". It's revealed that this was an unwritten rule; there were female Commodores and such on bases and female captains of lesser ships, but none running Constitution-class Starships like the Big E. (Thus "your world of Starship Captains" is still a legit statement.) The policy came from the Tellarites' longstanding prejudice against females serving in that type of role. If a qualified officer with a uterus is put in the driver's seat, it may piss them off enough to leave the Federation. Turns out there is a movement on Tellar to abolish this prejudice and the Tellarite Ambassador is even one of the activists.
** Notably in ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'' while technically set in the alternate continuity, does feature a female captain in a blink and you miss it moment in the meeting room just before Khan attacks.

* AbsenteeActor: For this, the final episode, Uhura takes the day off and is replaced by a Lieutenant Lisa.

* AmbiguousGenderIdentity: Lester.

* GrandTheftMe: Lester steals Kirk's body

* PsychoExGirlfriend: You'd think Kirk would have more of them.

This episode's title is a play on the title of ''Turnabout'', a Creator/ThorneSmith body swap comedy about a husband and wife. For many years, it was a popular bit of ''Star Trek'' trivia that Sandra Smith (Dr. Lester) was the only person other than Creator/WilliamShatner to officially portray Captain Kirk. This remained true [[Film/StarTrek2009 until 2009]]. In the world of fanfiction, Dr. Lester would find a niche in SlashFic, her story providing a canon setup for JumpingTheGenderBarrier. Slashers have also had a lot of fun imagining what Spock saw during that telepathic contact to convince him Kirk was in Lester's body.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/turnaboutintruder.jpg]]

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[[caption-width-right:300:Apparently, Lester-in-Kirk has just realized that [[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Captains Hernandez]] and [[Series/StarTrekDiscovery Georgiou]] existed.]]

->''Turnabout Intruder is not embarrassing in hindsight. It is an episode that embarrassing from the very moment that the story was developed, that continued to be embarrassing through production, and which will be embarrassing until the moment that either people stop watching Star Trek or mankind goes extinct.''
-->-- Reviewer Darren, writing in [[https://them0vieblog.com/2016/09/09/star-trek-turnabout-intruder-review/ the Movie Blog review of this episode]]

* TyrantTakesTheHelm

* ContinuityNod: Kirk (while in Lester's body) recalls the events of "The Empath" and "The Tholian Web" to Spock. Additionally, Sulu outright cites General Order Four from "The Menagerie" after Lester-In-Kirk orders that Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Kirk-in-Lester be executed.[[note]]The Federation only has ''one'' crime for which the death penalty is legal: Unsanctioned visits to [[Recap/StarTrekS1E0TheCage Talos IV]].[[/note]]

In any case, the idea that women can't be starship captains is [[CanonDiscontinuity never mentioned again]], a female starship captain was seen in ''Star Trek IV'', there was later [[Series/StarTrekVoyager an entire series about one]][[note]]both take place long after the Lester thing; so the rule could have been changed in view of what happened[[/note]], and both ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'' and ''[[Series/StarTrekDiscovery Discovery]]'' featured female captains ''predating'' this episode.