There are only a few instances in Trek history of a female character who has
stop you cold in your tracks good looks, and at the same time has a layered, well-developed, intriguing soul that made you want to know more about her from show to show. No question this franchise has some babes (forgive me, ladies. . . including my wife) but especially in the TNG era and beyond, most of these characters were not written consistently and convincingly.
The greatest exception to this, in my opinion, was Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) -- easily the best and most consistently written, as well as the best and most convincingly portrayed, female character in the franchise. She was believable, nuanced, layered, aged, damaged, scarred, healed over, damaged again, but never fragile and never a creature of pity. And she didn't have to be sexy every moment, but when she was, it was like a 50,000-watt spotlight.
The character who set the gold standard
when the writers bothered to pay attention to her was Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). Oh good God, of course she made my childhood, um, somewhat more delightful. But when she was written into the script as more than a prop, she was this vibrant, rich, warm, full soul who commanded your attention. And she was certainly most important for the milestone she set in American culture: one of the first, if not the first, instance of an African woman on-screen respected as an equal among her peers, and allowed to be resplendently beautiful at the same time.
There are countless other examples of other gorgeous women who have played regular or guest roles in Star Trek, but they typically fell into either of two categories: 1) They were shrink-wrapped into catsuits that accentuated their curves while constricting their characters so they were prohibited from emoting (e.g., Jeri Ryan, Jolene Blalock, both of whom stop traffic); 2) They were so inconsistently written that, even after an episode or two where they absolutely stole your heart and made you a follower, sometimes in the very next episode, you'd think the writers substituted her with someone off the street (e.g., Kate Mulgrew as Capt. Janeway, Terry Farrell as Jadzhia Dax, Linda Park as Hoshi Sato). Mind you, these are all undeniably beautiful women, whom I admire all the more for having pulled off their characters to the extent that they did under the circumstances.
I mean, for heaven's sake, the biggest indicator there is of this franchise's capability to trap beautiful characters in a box is the fact that
Padma Lakshmi was in a show and hardly anyone knows it. One of the most beautiful women in popular culture today was in a Trek show within the last decade, and it's not the least bit memorable.
Probably the one example of a beautiful and clever exception to this rule for a guest star was
Susan Gibney's performance of Leah Brahms (or, more accurately, as a hologram of her in one episode and the less adorable real-world version of her in another) in TNG. This was one of the high points of the TNG series for me, and a really great idea: Take a wonderful person but make her not real, and give the real man who falls in love with her tortured feelings (something the writers also tried with Riker and Minuet, but not with the same results) but then
years later (in real time) put him face-to-face with the real person and have him struggle to reconcile his love with his, um, irritation.
I genuinely believe that, had more women been involved with the franchise other than D. C. Fontana and Jeri Taylor, we would have had more beautiful women play beautiful characters consistently.
DF "You aren't very persistent, Sulu. The game has rules. You're ignoring them. I protest and you come back. You didn't...come...back" Scott