I don't think the Jaylah (sp?) character--who seems clearly female--will be "relegated" in that manner. Also seems I saw Uhura throwing some punches/blows, non? And the female admiral doesn't strike me as the June Cleaver type either.
Jaylah is the high profile female guest so she should do well. I fully expect most of Uhura's character driven dialogue to revolve around Spock, although in a fish out of water storyline, this should give her a good opportunity to shine, so she might do well. I didn't know about a female admiral character but it gets a big thumbs up from me. That's still only 3 women in a movie that has 7 surviving recurring male protagonists though. The key is what's going on outside the female leads.
My issue with NuTrek tends to be its wider sexism. That, if you strip out male and female characters one for one, you very quickly (before you've even stripped out the seven surviving recurring male characters) hit female characters whose principal purpose in the story is as a wife, mother, or love interest, you usually hit women who have one line in one scene very quickly, and you will usually run out of women altogether before you've used up your principal male guest characters.
The acid tests for me will be:
- Are there only all-male security teams? (epic fail)
- Is there a single woman in a security team of four or more? Are the numbers of women bolstered by all those women in sick bay (fail)
- Are there an equal number of male and female security officers, engineers, scientists, command officers, and medics as background characters and do the men and women get roughly equal dialogue. (success!)
- Are there any all-female security teams? (epic success - but only due to re-balancing 50 years of predominantly all-male teams).
In its defence, the IDW comic has had its moments. In one issue, the security team consisted of Yeoman Rand and Lt Zahra but that has been a one-off. Having a recurring female security officer is a step in the right direction but it smacks of tokenism if every other officer you draw alongside her is a man.