Thanks! This thing grew into such a massive self-indulgent project, I'm just glad there are other folks out there interested enough to read the thing through. ^^;
My not-so-secret ulterior motive in writing this whole thing out is to see if I couldn't maybe convince a few more ficcers to work Sarah or Heather (or, heck, even Gracie or Gemma!) into their stories. I'd already started running into Lisa Rogers in fic by the time I met her in the show, but gosh, she did not make much impression on me. The scripts give her so little to distinguish her it would've taken some sort of acting genius to breathe life into that role, and Barbara Moore (though through no fault of her own) really wasn't up to it. It hardly seems fair she's the one people remember when there are such better developed characters to choose from!
(As a minor addendum RE: Heather specifically, since posting this I've finally happened on some old news articles and interviews with May Heatherly from the time, most of which focus on the fact that she was studying to be a bullfighter in Spain before she moved back to Hollywood, but had to give it up when she found out women weren't allowed into the ring in Spain. Iiiii think I feel yet another edit to this post coming on... XD)
It actually took me a bit aback when they had the episode with April announcing her as the first UNCLE woman enforcement agent...
Did they actually announce it explicitly? I've only seen a couple of episodes of Girl from UNCLE, and I can't remember whether anything was said or not. I remember Moonglow sort of implied it, but I'm not sure if it was stated outright.
Regardless, I'm with you on the disappointment. I could sort of in theory buy that they don't have any full-time female enforcement agents, given that they seem to send support staff into the field when they really need a woman for a job (like in the Love Affair). But given how obviously they need women in the field, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they wouldn't have had them acting as enforcement agents forever. Women have been acting as professional spies since time immemorial - they're good at the job precisely because people are less likely to expect them to be.
Wandas everywhere. ;D I wonder if it was an in-joke after the first few.
I'm pretty sure it must have been. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole reason Boris Ingster started using the name again when he took over the show was because it had already been used for three different women back in Season 1, so why not revive it for the Chapman/Craig double-up scene? If it wasn't an in-joke already, I'm sure it was after. (I recently wrote a brief gag into a fic I'm working on where "Wanda" is the official code-name UNCLE uses for every female staff member whose voice THRUSH might hear over the radio, to hide their identities. And if I ever get around to writing my daemon!AU, she is totally getting a chameleon.)
On a slightly tangential note, you wouldn't by any chance be the same person as flightsoftheseagull on tumblr, would you? It's a name I've been seeing attached to MfU activity a bit over there lately.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2016-08-31 03:28 pm (UTC)My not-so-secret ulterior motive in writing this whole thing out is to see if I couldn't maybe convince a few more ficcers to work Sarah or Heather (or, heck, even Gracie or Gemma!) into their stories. I'd already started running into Lisa Rogers in fic by the time I met her in the show, but gosh, she did not make much impression on me. The scripts give her so little to distinguish her it would've taken some sort of acting genius to breathe life into that role, and Barbara Moore (though through no fault of her own) really wasn't up to it. It hardly seems fair she's the one people remember when there are such better developed characters to choose from!
(As a minor addendum RE: Heather specifically, since posting this I've finally happened on some old news articles and interviews with May Heatherly from the time, most of which focus on the fact that she was studying to be a bullfighter in Spain before she moved back to Hollywood, but had to give it up when she found out women weren't allowed into the ring in Spain. Iiiii think I feel yet another edit to this post coming on... XD)
It actually took me a bit aback when they had the episode with April announcing her as the first UNCLE woman enforcement agent...
Did they actually announce it explicitly? I've only seen a couple of episodes of Girl from UNCLE, and I can't remember whether anything was said or not. I remember Moonglow sort of implied it, but I'm not sure if it was stated outright.
Regardless, I'm with you on the disappointment. I could sort of in theory buy that they don't have any full-time female enforcement agents, given that they seem to send support staff into the field when they really need a woman for a job (like in the Love Affair). But given how obviously they need women in the field, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they wouldn't have had them acting as enforcement agents forever. Women have been acting as professional spies since time immemorial - they're good at the job precisely because people are less likely to expect them to be.
Wandas everywhere. ;D I wonder if it was an in-joke after the first few.
I'm pretty sure it must have been. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole reason Boris Ingster started using the name again when he took over the show was because it had already been used for three different women back in Season 1, so why not revive it for the Chapman/Craig double-up scene? If it wasn't an in-joke already, I'm sure it was after. (I recently wrote a brief gag into a fic I'm working on where "Wanda" is the official code-name UNCLE uses for every female staff member whose voice THRUSH might hear over the radio, to hide their identities. And if I ever get around to writing my daemon!AU, she is totally getting a chameleon.)
On a slightly tangential note, you wouldn't by any chance be the same person as flightsoftheseagull on tumblr, would you? It's a name I've been seeing attached to MfU activity a bit over there lately.