Star Trek Into Darkness & The Bechdel Test

Good points. Quite so.

 

How dare you bring up something that happened in the past to support something that happens in a movie that obviously HATES women!

 

Especially when they replaced a woman in a primary position (chief of security) with a man.

 

Geordi becoming an engineering genius overnight in TNG really annoys me. Not even just taking over engineering because Picard needed a good officer there but becoming a genius in one day. In fact it takes me right out of TNG.
Actually I'm not even joking about that.

In TOS, Scotty never seemed to have anyone who could take over for him. Just a whole bunch of juniors. I used to think he was the most important person on the ship because if something happened to him there was nobody to take over. And at least Chekov wasn't suddenly an expert overnight. Look after 25 years I'm still not over the Geordi thing!

 

I think (and hope) that he'll do something a bit better than showing Carol Marcus half naked. Perhaps he'll have Uhura not focus on Spock so much, or have her be chief of security.

 

They should make Uhura a part of Starfleet Intelligence and Spock does not know. Wasn't she in S.I. in the books?

 

Not sure you can go the Full Marcus in a PG-13 film.

 

I said chief of security, not a member of Starfleet Intelligence. That would be consistent with Chekov being made security chief in the Phase II show and TMP based on his knowledge of tactical things, and his being head engineer in the movie. At least Uhura also has the chops to be head of security based on what other training she had during her time at the Academy. Maybe she can become an agent specializing in signals analysis, but that would take her away from being who she is and what she does on the show and in these movies.

If Ms. Bechdel and anybody else ever wanted/intended to change things in the film & television industry by publishing this list, what they need to encourage young women to do is to decide to be in the film & television industry and not let anything stop them. Also, they need to tell young women to study film making and script writing as a major, not the useless shit they usually go to college to study (and then end up with no job other than service ones afterward.) Then instead of having to worry about what films don't have enough women, they can write and create ones (maybe ones for the major studios that are released during the summer!) that do have a lot of women doing something (even if it's just talking to each other.)

 

Not according to the novels where she kicks ass as S.I.

And you know I'm not arguing with your point about her being chief of security, I'm not even replying to it. I just posted I think it would be a cool extra development for her character.

 

I just thought I'd throw this out there again:

That Carol Marcus was shown in her undies was as gratuitous as it gets; that she needed to be in her undies is not. She had to take off one uniform to put on another, and Kirk was being a dirty old man and peeking, while bringing the audience along for the ride.

 

And who covered their eyes to avoid this gratuitous scene the second time they watched the movie?

 

The point about surgery is exactly correct. The chief needs experience as well as education. Chekov was often shown as a bit of a naive educated idiot. I also thought he was a terrible fit for a security chief, although I will give him a pass as weapons officer in TMP.

I don't think that any of the season one characters of TNG were well-realised in terms of role and not all changes made in season two were for the best - Troi was way more interesting as a key diplomatic advisor to Picard.

The difference with LaForge and Worf is that they were in their twenties with years of experience before joining the Enterprise when they were promoted, although the Geordi was still a wtf moment since all the chief and assistant chiefs in season one were Lt-commanders. I think Brooke Bundy wasn't able to return as the chief due to other work commitments but we had a succession of male guest assistant chiefs after that, which was a shame.

As an aside, I've been watching Defiance, which is doing a really good job of mixing up gender roles and has a lot of women in it, including the balance of the guest stars. Setting aside the fact that it's a series and taking a single episode at a time, it still does a great job of having interesting and varied characters of both genders. It can be done.

And as for the earlier comment that we will only get equal numbers of female characters once the majority of sci fi writers are female... what a stupid thing to say. Not all men are misogynists. Buffy and Alias were produced by men. So was Xena and her show was more popular than her male contemporary, Hercules. Writers just need more awareness of the issue and encouragement to do the right thing.

 

We should consider those things, yes, but they are a bit more niche than gender or race. As I've said many times before, the balance of the characters depends on the setting. I wouldn't expect a movie set in a gay bar to have an equal balance of heterosexual males.

Star Trek, however, is set in a utopian future, where equality is espoused. I think they should be doing a better job than they are. And it should not be hard to do a better job than they are.

 

Janice Lester was insane. All that babbling about being denied Captaincy because of her gender was really code for being denied.. the Captain. That's the only way she could cope with rejection, to politicize it and grandiosely make it about all of starfleet.

 

I guess you've never been in a teaching hospital then, because that's precisely how surgical interns/residents learn their specialty, working alongside or under the observation of attending physicians.

I think your information about women in universities is a bit out of date.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Besides which, it's an odd conclusion to think that just because the Bechdel Test was created that that means women are treating that like a substitute to encouraging young women to pursue jobs in filmmaking. The two things are not mutually exclusive, and I'm sure they do encourage young women to pursue work in the field and make positive changes to it.

 

And I'm going to guess that last bit means you didn't see where we were talking about an intern being made the acting department head doing major surgeries by himself, and not under anyone's supervision, because that's what essentially happened with Chekov in STID.