Star Trek Into Darkness & The Bechdel Test

What a shame. It's a bit of a mix of themes from Firefly and Babylon 5, although it's early days to say where it might go if it's popular enough to continue.

 

Defiance: Mothers, wives, daughters and girlfriends/potential love interests for the most parts. A mayor, an evil ex-mayor, a doctor, a deputy, a madam, one girl who exists to be "Juliet" and one woman who's main role seem to be getting naked.

 

Do you mean Stahma exists mainly to be getting naked? She's also on a power behind the throne kick. But yeah, it's a trope-o-rama of a show. I enjoy the Firefly style setting of the town though, and we haven't had such an alien filled show for a long time.

 

Yeah and they've also had female miners, guards, politicians, scavengers, council members, and civilian vendors. What's also interesting is the way the women in the seemingly servile roles exercise the power and influence they have they have in subtle ways.

 

That would be her. Hubby won't be too happy when he finds out.

 

Yeah, but you can say the same about Star Trek. In the main cast, with the exception of the evil ex-mayor and the doctor, all the female characters have connections to the male cast members.

 

I wish Defiance was on HBO so we would have more nakedness and fighting.

 

And the male cast members have connections to them.

People.. connect.

 

True, but the gangster, the sheriff and the entrepreneur seem to be "leads" and the connections were there from episode one and not something that developed. Not that I mind, but one of the complaints is about women in mother/daughter/wife roles. Why aren't the sheriff, the entrepreneur and the gangster women?

 

It becomes frustrating if a character is defined solely by their relationship to their partner but so far, with the possible exception of the miner's daughter, that doesn't seem to be the case and her boyfriend isn't much more developed either. Otherwise, yeah, we have to accept these days that pretty much every recurring character is going to be paired off in some manner sooner or later.

Carol and Uhura as girlfriends are fine as long as they still get to interact with the plot when their work skills are required.

The white male action lead is still the most common, although Continuum and Fringe have pushed that to white females as well. Defiance has played about a bit with the villainous mayor, scheming politicians, and the enigmatic and very blunt doctor. As I said before, if you have enough women you can mix in the 'traditional' gender roles with less common ones. We also had a politician with two pretty young husbands in one episode. A mixture is good.

 

Carol isn't a girlfriend, yet.

 

Everyone should be women. EVERYONE.

No seriously, it would be great. Okay you can keep Datak around, he is kind of quirky.

I'm hoping that the portrayal of who is the "lead" shifts.

 

I bet she tried it once in college.

 

Babylon 5 is vastly superior to Star Trek. There's just a helluva lot more Star Trek out there so it becomes more interesting to talk about. I don't really get how anyone who likes Star Trek can see Babylon 5 as "ick" though.

But we all know that's why this character is here. JJ could have used anyone or no one from the Prime universe and he picked the mother of Kirk's son.

 

B5 is a flawed masterpiece - it could have been so much better if it hadn't been plagued by problems but it remains decent sci fi even if the humans' dialogue does sound awful sometimes.

Kirk resisted a relationship with Rand while hey were serving on the same ship. It might be interesting to see if NuKirk wrestles with that or just dives straight in. I didn't subscribe to the notion that Kirk had boned Chapel because if he had, I don't think he would have had no idea who she was.

 

B5 is poorly written and over half the cast are mediocre to poor actors. JMS needed a script doctor and better casting directors.

Yeah, but they didn't drop that "bomb" right away. Points for restraint.

 

And do you think he knew those "Caitians" names months later?

The guy was a horndog.

 

Kirk's a softy. Remember how dewy eyed he got seeing Ruth?

 

I thought it was implied that Chapel was a brief romp, not a past romance, by how he didn't remember her. Yes he does remember past women he had romances with fondly. But I bet three months from the Caitian romp he would struggle to remember their names.

And then there was that awful deleted scene where he couldn't remember Gaila..