There's still a window, if Kelvin happened early enough, and Sulu's conception happened late enough, to be born before December 31st 2233.
HUGE Mr Sulu Spoiler
- Thread starter Danlav05
- Start date
I was thinking of main characters, not extras without a name. Female extras are nice and all, but they don't do anywhere as much for female representation as main characters.
Yes, that, too.
I was answering to someone though who was speaking about the new movies and praising them as "very pro-LGBT representation". We wouldn't have this big thread right now, if that was true of the first two movies. We might know in hindsight now, that Sulu was gay in them, but back when the movies came into the cinemas, they did nothing for LGBT representation.
I will be happy when it is not an issue if a character is gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex, or queer. (Queer is used for those who are questioning their sexual identity.)
You are right, she is still alive, but she might as well be dead. She was just there giving birth. Even in the deleted young Kirk scene, they rather introduced a stepfather than use her again. We still hear his voice though, while young Kirk is driving the car.
And I haven't seen Beyond yet. Maybe Jaylah's race joins the Federation or is already a member? She could join the ship, if they wanted. With the track record of these writers though, I doubt it will come to this.
The point was also that seemingly only one female character, Uhura, is allowed to appear in more than one movie. They didn't introduce more female characters right from the start, for example Chapel and Rand. They also kept Pike around for longer, old Spock was in two. Keenser is apparently also worth more keeping around than Carol. Even the security officer Hendorff has a place in ST09, STID and because a movie seemingly really can't work without him, he will also appear in Beyond. But finding a place for Carol on the ship, she just joined in STID? No, that would be too much estrogen.
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You mean like it wasn't an issue in the 1950s?
The truth is we should get both. Tokenism by having only one or two main female characters, often as love interests or mothers for main male characters, isn't really acceptable either. Uhura is great but her presence does not mean there should not be 50% female security officers.
By the same token (pun intended) Sulu and his partner should not be the only gay character we see. Here's hoping that if Kirk makes a move on Jaylah, she turns him down flat.
Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not advocating there should be 50% gay security officers, although if you take into account 50 years of near-total absence for LGBT women and total absence for LGBT men, even if they did, they'd still have as long way to go to make up the numbers to reflect society. ;-P Of course this is doubly so for female characters identified as security officers. I think once I've seen an all-female security team coming in after the new Ghostbusters I'll be happy. Statistically, an all-female team should be as likely as an all-male team and we've had many of those!
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So, any time any affection for anyone is shown by a main character, there has to be a story reason for it?
Enlisted vs. Officers.
12 week boot camp (Guess? It might not even be that.) vs. 4 year super-university.
Genius Citizen Soldiers vs. Cleaners, Security Guards and Specialists.
The officer to enlisted ratio in a modern army is 1:10.
100 officers yelling at a thousand enlisted seamen to keep a boat floating in a good direction.
Because of near magical automation in the future, "technology" seems to have reduced that ratio to 1:03 in most fields divisions except security, who still needs armed dangerous people to stand in front of millions of doorways across the Federation until you can really trust Holograms not to wink out during a power cut.
I can understand how you might want more female officers, but if you see a security squad that is all women, yes the squad is all women, but only one of those women is an officer, and the other 8 women are enlisted.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Choosing enlistment is fine.
It's still hard to get into the boot camp, hard to pass boot camp, and once you get the job, it'll most likely kill you. So it's sorta the same but with a much shorter turn around, and zero room for advancement, that the highest possible enlisted rank is still Junior to Harry Kim one day out of the academy.
No, but I like love stories.
Ha ha - yeah! Every time I type officers it grates but I'm never sure what to call them instead - security guards maybe?
I was quite miffed when IDW made Zahra a lieutenant TBH. I would have rather they kept her as a petty officer. I was really shocked to learn in the comic that Keenser is a lieutenant too - the man can barely speak! Given the lack of respect Scotty shows him, I'd assumed he was a petty officer at most. Wtf?
I think the writers struggle with the concept of enlisted crew. In the Marvel comic, and in the original TOS RPG, they had Rand listed as a Lt-Commander, despite her never having worn an officer's insignia of that rank. If they eventually do bring in Rand, I hope she's kept as a petty officer.
I haven't read this thread, so I'm not sure what's going on outside of the first few pages (before Takei had his word on the matter), but I can't believe there's such a large argument over whether a character should, to put it in simple terms, like dick or pussy. Twenty pages or so of that shit. And it's not even just on TrekBBS, it's all over the internet.
This just feels so backwards and toxic. Who cares?
This just feels so backwards and toxic. Who cares?
Of course it's not just about that, it's also another dimension to the Spuhura narrative - about whether characters should be 'changed' in the reboot.
The term (on starships at least) "crewman" or "crewmen" covers everyone, but there was once when Picard was talking to Q and the phrase "lowly crewman" was used which makes me think that crewmen means Able Body Third Class.
Berman & Braga forgot that everyone wasn't an officer on Voyager, and it totally showed,
Berman & Braga forgot that everyone wasn't an officer on Voyager, and it totally showed,
Over in the spoiler thread it's revealed that at the end of the movie Jaylah is joining Starfleet Academy. So I guess it's not outside of the realm of possibilities that we might see her again on the Enterprise.
Well, I have read the entire thread and I must say for the most part people are really postive and/or enthusiastic about Sulu being gay. Sure, there are two or three guys who are opposed, but the vast majority seems to love it. And I think that's amazing!
Considering how big the Federation population is and how relative few big exploration ships the Federation has, I didn't really find it so far fetch, that a crew would practically only consists out of officers. Isn't it kind of a dream job? And when you can choose from the best of the best, why settle for less?
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I suppose it's because you need a chain of command. If you have 300 ensigns on board, who outranks whom? It goes back to this notion of why Uhura never sat in the chair (in universe) when she is formerly a command track officer and has more bridge experience than most? The more officers you have the messier it gets.
Another example is putting Ensign Chekov in command of the bridge during a crisis. He's an ensign just out of the academy. Is he really the best qualified to be left in charge?
Technically, she wasn't an extra, because she spoke.
I agree that extras don't do as much, nearly as much, as main characters in terms of representation, but extras are nonspeaking.
But on the other hand, all roles are something that one can point to to say, "See, it does happen in the Star Trek universe, and we can see it."
I find Simon Pegg to be an odious little shit. But I agree with him that creating a gay character would reek of tokenism. That character would only be defined by his or her sexuality. Sulu works because he's the only character in the original series, original movies and JJ movies that hasn't had any kind of relationship, past or present.
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