IDW Star Trek Ongoing...

[Pauln6]

Paper Moon wrote:

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Yeah, that's crossed my mind more than once. For the 1960's, the TOS cast was pretty diverse. Nowadays, the lack of women is really noticeable. And I have to admit that I think Abrams et al could've made better efforts to incorporate non-stereotypical female characters into the film. But that's a discussion for another sub-forum.

Am I right in remembering that there actually were rumors going around, probably in '07 or '08, that Sulu was going to be reimagined as a woman? I'm pretty sure I remember Graham Kennedy over at DITL running a poll on the question, but I can't remember what motivated him...

I think the BSG reboot was very good, but it was only really Starbuck that was re-imagined as a woman - and very well I might add. The other characters were basically different characters with the same name. But BSG did not have the same loyal fan base as Trek. I think re-imagining the characters' gender in Trek would be a big mistake.

However, it's also true to say that NuBSG didn't treat the original female characters with any kind of respect. Athena, Cassiopeia, Serena, and Sheba were largely absent in anything resembling their original forms. A version of Athena crops up, although as a different character with the same name, it's arguable that Six has adopted a few traits of Cassiopeia, but she has a different name, although I think a fairly decent version of Sheba appears in Razor.

There is a difference between improving the gender imbalance and being true to the characters. For my part, I think they should have saved Chekov for a sequel (much like Robin in the Batman franchise) and made room for one or both of the other recurring women. Rand could have been updated as a more security trained Pike's Yeoman and could have been sent to Delta Vega as Kirk's security escort (although by transporter instead of an escape pod) and should maybe have taken on Chekov's transporter role and manned the transporter on Delta Vega to give her an extra niche and give us a nod to her role in TMP. Chapel could have been a biologist drafted in as a nurse by McCoy following the attack to avoid her being pigeonholed as McCoy's helper from the start.

Featuring all three women, even in minor roles (and none of the above would have altered the plot significantly) would have bumped the profile of females in the franchise slightly and if new characters like Marcus come along, they help to even the balance a bit more instead of being a drop in the male ocean.

Non-fans would not know or care who Chekov is and fans would understand that he's too young to be an officer at this time. I don't think there would have been an uproar.

The comics have an opportunity to feature more women and have featured Rand and Zahra as recurring security guards alongside Hendorff and Boma but I think if they do want to even up the roles a bit more they do need to give Rand a slightly more prominent role. They should also take a look at some of the other women who featured in TOS and slot them in where appropriate. Stick Carolyn Palamas on any landing party featuring pre-industrial societies, use Mulhall alongside McCoy for any astro-biology plot, use Masterson when dealing with phaser repairs, use Noel when dealing with psychology or pshychiatry (instead of nobody as in the reboot of WNMHGB). There are more than just a few yeomen out there - the writers just need a list of characters and roles to work from.

NB: It would be nice to see Reilly, Kyle, DeSalle, Decker, and Ilia too, as well as some new aliens but they should put a bit more effort into the laydeez IMHO.

[Christopher]

Pauln6 wrote:

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I think the BSG reboot was very good, but it was only really Starbuck that was re-imagined as a woman - and very well I might add. The other characters were basically different characters with the same name. But BSG did not have the same loyal fan base as Trek. I think re-imagining the characters' gender in Trek would be a big mistake.

First off, you're forgetting that the original BSG did have a fiercely loyal, if small, fanbase that raised enormous howls of protest at the gender-swapping of Starbuck and Boomer. It was a massive online controversy for a while, which is why Starbuck is the go-to example for a gender-swapped reimagining to this day. But ultimately those protests didn't matter because the show itself proved that the characters' sex didn't really matter to how they were portrayed.

By the same token, there were a lot of objections to Elementary casting Lucy Liu as Watson -- and Sherlock Holmes fandom is far older than Trek fandom and just as dedicated. But the show is a big hit, and while I'm sure there are plenty of purists who hate its revisionist take, there are plenty of other Holmes fans (myself included) who love it, and plenty of new fans who've been brought in by it.

So yeah, sure, if a Trek reboot changed the characters in a more fundamental way than Abrams's version has, there would be uproar from the purists -- but ultimately that would not matter so long as the actual movie or show were done well. Anything worth doing is going to upset somebody, because people's tastes are so diverse. The only way to offend no one is to delight no one, to do something so bland and empty that it has no real impact of any kind. So you can't let fear of controversy keep you from trying things.

However, it's also true to say that NuBSG didn't treat the original female characters with any kind of respect. Athena, Cassiopeia, Serena, and Sheba were largely absent in anything resembling their original forms.

Did the original BSG treat them with any kind of respect, though? Serena was killed off very early and rarely mentioned thereafter. Athena gradually faded into the background and was dropped altogether in the latter part of the season. Sheba was supposed to be a tough fighter pilot, but she was played as a simpering, whiny love interest most of the time. And Cassiopeia had the potential to be something intriguing -- like Firefly's Inara, a sex worker in a society where the profession was legal and respected -- but due to the network's fear of that idea, she was hastily retconned into a nurse and was basically just there to be a love interest for Starbuck.

The one thing about the original BSG that impressed me where its treatment of women was concerned was that it didn't go for cheesecake and skimpy outfits the way something like TOS did. There were a couple of early scenes where we saw women in flesh-toned leotard-like undergarments that made them look scantily clad but were actually all-concealing, but after that they were usually fully clothed, and it was the men who occasionally lost their shirts or played sports in gratuitously scanty attire.

use Masterson when dealing with phaser repairs

Do you mean Charlene Masters?

[Pauln6]

Christopher wrote:

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Did the original BSG treat them with any kind of respect, though? Serena was killed off very early and rarely mentioned thereafter. Athena gradually faded into the background and was dropped altogether in the latter part of the season. Sheba was supposed to be a tough fighter pilot, but she was played as a simpering, whiny love interest most of the time. And Cassiopeia had the potential to be something intriguing -- like Firefly's Inara, a sex worker in a society where the profession was legal and respected -- but due to the network's fear of that idea, she was hastily retconned into a nurse and was basically just there to be a love interest for Starbuck.

The one thing about the original BSG that impressed me where its treatment of women was concerned was that it didn't go for cheesecake and skimpy outfits the way something like TOS did. There were a couple of early scenes where we saw women in flesh-toned leotard-like undergarments that made them look scantily clad but were actually all-concealing, but after that they were usually fully clothed, and it was the men who occasionally lost their shirts or played sports in gratuitously scanty attire.

Do you mean Charlene Masters?

I don't think any reboot is going to please everybody but the Trek fan base is big. There are plenty of vocal objections to reboot we have now. Some people even cared that Pine's eyes were the 'wrong' colour.

Sheba used to annoy the hell out of me because she always looked like she was about to burst into tears. However, you've hit the nail on the head with the ways that modern writers could have updated a character like Cassiopeia (although they would no doubt be accused of making an Inara knock off). Athena tended to be generic fighter pilot for the latter episodes with no dialogue of any note from what I recall. Same with Trek's women - they would not be hard to modernise but the writers would have to respect their contribution to the story as it can be today instead of leaving them to dole out coffee, hyposprays, and glimpses of leg for their unrequieted loves.

NuBSG wasn't faultless though. Duala was a third tier character but she had her moments in seasons 1 and 2. In later episodes she was relegated to a tiresome love triangle plot. She had a couple of cracking scenes with Adama in season one but despite them having a closer relationship in the later seasons we never got a single scene of them together where they could build on those early scenes. It was such a waste!

I always get Masters' name wrong. But yeah - plenty of plots involve fixing phasers. Why not use her?

[Christopher]

Pauln6 wrote:

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I don't think any reboot is going to please everybody but the Trek fan base is big. There are plenty of vocal objections to reboot we have now. Some people even cared that Pine's eyes were the 'wrong' colour.

Relative to the population of active posters on an online bulletin board, there are "plenty" of objections. Relative to the total number of moviegoers, there are very few. The 2009 movie was the most financially successful Trek movie since TMP (adjusted for inflation, and largely because TMP was in theaters for far longer), and on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb it's got the highest approval rating of any Trek film ever. So the percentage of fans who disliked the movie, particularly over reasons as trivial as eye color, is much, much smaller in real life than it appears to be on the Internet.

The thing is, the people with the most intense opinions about something, particularly negative opinions, are motivated to comment far more aggressively and frequently than people with less extreme views, and that creates the false impression that the fiercest protestors represent a much larger percentage of the audience than they actually do. And just in general, the percentage of fans motivated to participate in online discussions is fairly low and not statistically representative of the whole. So what can be said of online commenters cannot be extrapolated to the fanbase as a whole.

Athena tended to be generic fighter pilot for the latter episodes with no dialogue of any note from what I recall.

Athena was only a pilot in the "Lost Planet of the Gods" 2-parter, I believe. For the most part she was BSG's Uhura -- or perhaps BSG's Tawny Madison (from Galaxy Quest). She was the good-looking female bridge officer who was mainly there to give exposition, when she wasn't just there to be the Veronica to Cassiopeia's Betty. (Sorry for the overload of pop-culture references.) In her last appearance in "Greetings from Earth," she was a schoolteacher. So basically she filled whatever traditional feminine role was called for.

NuBSG wasn't faultless though. Duala was a third tier character but she had her moments in seasons 1 and 2. In later episodes she was relegated to a tiresome love triangle plot. She had a couple of cracking scenes with Adama in season one but despite them having a closer relationship in the later seasons we never got a single scene of them together where they could build on those early scenes. It was such a waste!

The thing is, Duala essentially was Athena in terms of her role aboard ship, so one wonders why they didn't just call her that. Perhaps because they saved the weirder character names for pilot callsigns. And of course if she'd been Athena, and thus Apollo's sister, there would've been no romance with Apollo (not that that plot thread worked out very well anyway).

[Pauln6]

Christopher wrote:

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The thing is, Duala essentially was Athena in terms of her role aboard ship, so one wonders why they didn't just call her that. Perhaps because they saved the weirder character names for pilot callsigns. And of course if she'd been Athena, and thus Apollo's sister, there would've been no romance with Apollo (not that that plot thread worked out very well anyway).

That's true! I did think Dee was Athena in another guise initially and she was developed only slightly more. I think they just teased me with that scene when she dressed down Adama in season one. That's the Dee I wanted to see again! Oh well.

[Tino]

Dee was too whiny for me. She always had reasons to complain and to whine about. But I really loved the way she exited the series. She had no more hope that she couldn't take it anymore. Awesome scene. I wished Star Trek could be more like nuBSG because I gotta admit, nuBSG is the best sci-fi-series ever IMHO.

[Lt. Cheka Wey]

If you would combine DS 9 and Voyager you would get...

[BillJ]

Tino wrote:

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I wished Star Trek could be more like nuBSG because I gotta admit, nuBSG is the best sci-fi-series ever IMHO.

No thanks. I like my TV series to actually have characters I like and can identify with. Moore went way overboard with the number of douchebags on Battlestar Galactica, to the point that I finally tuned out and never came back.

[Pauln6]

BillJ wrote:

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No thanks. I like my TV series to actually have characters I like and can identify with. Moore went way overboard with the number of douchebags on Battlestar Galactica, to the point that I finally tuned out and never came back.

I wouldn't go that far but the humans were meant to be unpleasant - that was sort of the point. Our sympathies were supposed to lie with the selfish, self-destructive, angry humans and view the civilised but domineering and murderous cylons as the enemy. The cylons could be western society and the humans the oppressed minority whose culture is wiped out by the technologically superior race. I suppose the point was that might doesn't make right.

I loved it when the humans started suicide bombing their own. It really underscored how low you can go when you are oppressed.

Having said that, I do agree that I would have liked to see some normal people who weren't total a**holes.

[DarKush]

Tino wrote:

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Dee was too whiny for me. She always had reasons to complain and to whine about. But I really loved the way she exited the series. She had no more hope that she couldn't take it anymore. Awesome scene. I wished Star Trek could be more like nuBSG because I gotta admit, nuBSG is the best sci-fi-series ever IMHO.

Interesting, because I hated the way she left the show. I thought it was a cold send off, after underusing or mishandling her character to have her kill herself off. I don't think the writers knew what to with her after Billy and especially after her marriage to Apollo and perhaps went for a 'shocking' ending. I just saw it more as the conclusion of writer disinterest in Dualla's character.

Overall I never thought she was whiny. I thought she was put in poorly conceived relationships. Apollo seemed a more logical choice to me than Billy did, but with Apollo she sort of came off as an other woman even though she was his wife. Perhaps it was a way for the writers to try to do something with her character, but I thought it was the wrong way to go. Some of her best stuff came in Season 1 with Adama, and I wished they had continued developing that relationship, with him being able to talk to her, open up to her in a way he really wasn't able to do with Apollo, Starbuck, and even Roslin.

It sucks that perhaps the best Dualla storyline came out of the BSG comics of that time, the one about the Returners. I wish they had adapted that for the TV show, even though I'm not sure how that would've jibed with the show later did with the Cylons.

[Christopher]

^Sounds to me like the only character arcs she was given defined her by the men she was involved with. That could be the problem right there.

[Jarvisimo]

Pauln6 wrote:

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Having said that, I do agree that I would have liked to see some normal people who weren't total a**holes.

Oh, let's list (other than Dee), Billy, Anders, alot of the secondary ppl like that the Doc, Hotdog, that mechanic Figurski or the one on the Pegasus, and even the Chief and, for sure, Helo & Lee (of course both compromised, but each still the closest to the classic shining hero).

And though often 'misguided' or difficult, ppl like Adama, Roslin, Starbuck, Boomer/Athena, Kat, even Baltar, weren't 'total a[rse]holes'. They were flawed, but damn if I still didn't sympathise with them

[JD]

Yeah, I didn't think any of the characters as being outright assholes. I always thought of them as good people who were in a horrible situation and often made very bad choices.

[DarKush]

Christopher wrote:

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^Sounds to me like the only character arcs she was given defined her by the men she was involved with. That could be the problem right there.

I think you make a good point because even the comic book story I liked so much with Dualla could be arguably said was because her brother was one of the Returners. So it provided an opportunity to learn a little more about her past while also confronting her with the present potential danger of the returned colonists.

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Remember when this thread was about the Star Trek ongoing comic book?

I do and, in the spirit of that memory, I'd like to point out that the latest issue (19) came out Wednesday.

This issue's focus is Scotty. It starts in the late 18th century and ends at Mr. Scott's introduction into the '09 film. I really enjoyed this story and I was pleased to learn (after a quick stop at Memory Beta) how closely the nuTrek Scotty's life tied into what has been revealed about Scotty prime and his life in the novels and comics. The writer really did his homework on this one and the result is a fun story that suggest much more depth than the previous back story issues.

We even get a sly reference to the new movie:

A certain "Commander Marcus" helps nuScotty with his admission to Starfleet Academy.