Star Trek Into Darkness & The Bechdel Test

I'll have to say I disagree on this one. She was more than just an extension of Ben and he was more than just an extension of her. Wasn't her smuggling cargo to the Maquis a demonstration of her dedication to them--to the point where she even went to prison for it? That doesn't sound like someone that's just following Ben around as he leads her by the nose to me, but that's just me.

And I don't think they dropped the ball with Quark at all. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many shows sci-fi and non-sci-fi that handle recurring, minor, and secondary characters as well as DS9 did. They are out there, but they are as plentiful as needles in haystacks, imo.

 

No. She did that for Ben.

Quark was neither recurring, minor, nor secondary. Armin Shimerman's name was on the opening credits for Pete's sake. Additionally, he got lots of screen time, and plenty of episodes revolved around him.

 

I'll have to watch it again, but let's just say that's the case. She still, as a captain, had to make a choice. And it was within her power to make that choice.

I didn't say that he was. Yes, he got lots of screen time and lots of episodes dedicated to him where he was very fully fleshed out. That's hardly "dropping the ball," as you say...

 

I'm prepared to admit to any proven falsehoods in my posts.

It would be a step forward IMO if Uhura or Darwin (if she is human) or whoever takes command of the Enterprise for even 5 minutes.
This may be a non-issue for most people because they equate T'Pol, Kira, Ro, Dax to be the equivalent of human women. On the whole I agree but it irks me just a little bit that there's only one human woman 'commander' example (practically) in the whole of Star Trek. nuBSG had plenty of women pilots (humans) and plenty of women enemies (aliens)

 

Kassidy was more of a sympathizer than an actual Maquis member, and her decision to turn herself in to face justice was entirely a factor of her not wanting to have to be a wanted fugitive and never being able to see Sisko again. Ultimately she's just a freighter pilot; she's the Malcolm Reynolds/Faye Valentine sort who can sneak onto the station every once in a while, pop out of Ben's closet at 2AM for a booty call and then slink away before the security teams get there. Apart from not having the stomach for any of that, there's the little fact that, apart from the criminally insane, Federation prisons are actually pretty damn comfortable.

 

Just a freighter pilot? It's like you are making an effort to reduce her somehow. She was a freighter captain, and unlike Malcolm (I don't know about Valentine) she was in charge of the ship she was on. So, it's not the same at all.

Then you go into using terms like "booty call." I think you are being trashy and demeaning in the way that you are choosing to describe their relationship. You act like she and Ben were teenagers trying not to get caught by their parents or something. They were two adults. And as if security was going to come knocking on the the door of the Captain and Commander of the Station to ask about his off-duty and private relationship behind closed doors. Lol. The head of security was too busy trying to get Kira to have an attitude over the captain having a girlfriend and then wife.

I don't know what kind of shows you like to watch, but adults do have relationships with each other that are loving, long-term, and far more than just "booty calls." Even how they met goes against that. Sisko's son liked her, meaning that he spent time with the woman and thought she would be a good match for his lonely father (he even said as much). I'm sorry if you cannot see that, but it's true for Kasidy and Ben, and it's true that people can and do fall in love, frankly, in general.

 

The Bechdel Test makes no specification whatsoever that a character must be a human. So Nerys, Jadzia, Ezri, etc count.

 

The problem was that turning away from multidimensional characterizations and having all the protagonists adopt similar "good guy" values is not indicative of an "edgy" show. This is drifting even further off-topic, so I'll just refer you to here for what Shimerman has said about Quark becoming "domesticated" over the course of the show. Domesticating Quark, making him as adorable as he was by the end, was what I meant by dropping the ball.

 

Star Trek has plenty of its own gender stereotypes! Plus Defiance is in a civilian setting. Plus Trek has half as many women. Defiance does exactly what it should. It has a wide mix of characters.

Think about what you are saying. Do you want only homosexual relationships and no heroic, masculine males? It's the mixture that's more important.

 

For the record, I myself as a male have no problem with a female chief engineer, and wouldn't have minded one being appointed in Scotty's place, but that would have entailed putting a new character in a major role in the movie that would have resulted in less screen time for one of the big seven-a great thing if this was a TV show, but fatal for a movie (and also resulting in the hue and cry about the main characters not getting enough screen time.) Until somebody decides to bring Star Trek back to TV, this is how it's likely to be, unless you want the movie to be three hours long.

Then you should probably stop watching Star Trek, because that particular practice has been the basic premise of almost every Trek episode in history. "We have a crew of 400 people on board, most of whom are qualified specialists in their field with years of experience, so of course the Captain, the first officer, the ship's doctor and two random security officers will be part of every away team."[/QUOTE]

Seconded, with a repeat of what I said above about each of the main seven needing to get something to do in the movie.

 

For the record, I myself as a male have no problem with a female chief engineer, and wouldn't have minded one being appointed in Scotty's place, but that would have entailed putting a new character in a major role in the movie that would have resulted in less screen time for one of the big seven-a great thing if this was a TV show, but fatal for a movie (and also resulting in the hue and cry about the main characters not getting enough screen time.) Until somebody decides to bring Star Trek back to TV, this is how it's likely to be, unless you want the movie to be three hours long.

Seconded, with a repeat of what I said above about each of the main seven needing to get something to do in the movie.

 

Well, part of being a protagonist is being the “good guy.” I think they all dealt with that in different ways. And besides, what constitutes “good” was challenged in a number of ways throughout the series with a variety of races, including humans in episodes like In The Pale Moonlight. That’s “edgy” enough to me.

But getting on to Quark, I have to disagree with Mr. Shimerman to a good extent. I think the character changed more (or at least just as much) because of how he was challenged by Ferengi that weren’t misogynistic and what you might consider “bad guys.” His mother and brother had an effect, I think, and the former didn’t spend time with “humans” at all. My favorite challenge to the traditional Ferengi misogyny Quark had been trained to have was the episode that had the ambitious female Ferengi posing as a male working for Quark. He got to see how excellent she was, and by the time he found out that she was female, it challenged his thinking, and in particular, what he had been taught to believe about females. And for him, that clearly was a dilemma.

He’s a liar, a schemer, and even a cheat, but he’s also able to recognize a good investment when he sees one, and a great entrepreneur, regardless of gender. He had grown to like her and admire what she brought to the table by the time he found out that she was a woman, and by then he couldn’t deny the proof that she was just as capable as any man. Deep down inside, I think Quark was always a “good guy” who knew better than to show it very much. Had he not been that way, then I don’t think he would have secretly given her the startup money to live out her dream as a profitable businesswoman in the Gamma quadrant. I don’t think Humans and Cardassians caused him to make that choice; the Ferengi woman did, and it changed him a bit… for the better.

 

Star Trek will never move into gender equality as long as it sticks with the original crew. The only way to improve it is to go with a new crew, not go with the classic crew and try their best to give each character a moment in the spotlight, because than they're just spotlight characters.

 

So its just not possible for Abrams to produce a gender equality Star Trek movie because he's got Kirk, Spock et. al.
So its not Abrams fault at all, he just stuck with the wrong people (spotlight characters).

What is gender equality anyway, do you have to have 50% women, 50% of lines given to women (the Shatner equation) or is it possible for there to be gender equality without a strict quota?

 

IMHO, Deltans represent the swinging 60s free-love mindset. However, while that may have worked on Delta IV, GR was smart enough to realize that it would be disruptive to bring that attitude aboard a Starship, which is why Deltans had to swear celibacy. Unfortunately he had a blind-spot about romance in the workplace when it came to his own life.

 

I totally agree with that in principle. I just don't think Kirk demonstrates having grown much as far as gender relations goes. And we're so busy connecting the dots on the Trek II homage that his sacrifice doesn't feel organic at all.

The cut scene in Trek '09 where he apologizes to the Gaila-lookalike would have done a lot to make him seem to grow, but the fact JJ cut that scene out says it all about his low-priority he is on character-development.

It's a weak argument to keep sarcastically quipping about box-office figures to prove a movie has critical merit.

Congratulations. You outed me. I'm a film-snob and you are one with the common-folk who want nothing more than to enter the theater and forget their cares. How dare I ask for anything more from a movie than a few yuks and 2 hours of escapism?

You see? I can do belittling sarcasm too. It doesn't really further the argument, though.

You "came up with it" because it's largely a figment of your imagination and not something that's really evident in the story and how it's presented. If that were the case, JJ wouldn't have all but apologized for it on the talk-show circuit, so he's kind of already confessed that it was gratuitous. I know you feel it is more, but you are grasping at straws.

 

That scene made him look racist in the "they all look alike to me" vein. The scene was wisely cut from the film.

 

Reduce her from WHAT though? Not every character in every story has the chops to be an actual action hero even if had a good enough reason. Think Mary Jane, not Black Cat.

But Malcolm Reynolds was also a gun slinger and Faye Valentine was a bounty hunter, both of which embraced the outlaw lifestyle as a matter of personal taste. Kassidy Yates may be sympathetic to the Maquis, but she's no outlaw.

It applies. If Kassidy wanted to be an outlaw AND still date Ben Sisko, that's what their relationship would boil down to. That, too, didn't seem to suit her, so instead they ended up getting engaged.

But they weren't, which is why Kassidy turned herself in.

 

The last two movies managed to steer clear of them to a fairly large degree.

And a third of the females characters (or more) are gender stereotypes. If you think perpetuating stereotypes is what science fiction SHOULD do, then it's no wonder you disapprove of STID.

That's just it, though: I could count on one hand the number of openly homosexual characters depicted in science fiction between two men. The most prominent of these is Captain Jack Harkness from the Doctor Who universe. That Captain Jack is a homosexual (well, sort of a pan-sexual, but still) is interesting in itself; that he's also a highly developed character with a fascinating origin story -- in addition to being a total badass -- is what makes the character compelling.

In the context of the portrayal of homosexuals in scifi -- and that's what we're talking about, portrayal -- you would prefer we add an additional gay character and not mind if one of them is portrayed as a limp-wristed nancy boy serving as Torchwood's interior decorator.

When it comes to portrayal, a single GOOD character is worth fifty stereotypes. Quality is more important than quantity in that regard.

 

Unlikely, considering TMP was made in 1978.