Favorite AND least Favorite Female Character?

Favorite: Cadet Tilly
Least Favorite: Michael Burnham

 

Favorite: Kira, B'Elanna, Tilly, T'Pol

Least: Keiko

 

Exactly why I count her as my Least Favorite.

My Favorites are Ro Laren, Kira Nerys and Tasha Yar.

And my absolute favorite? (Of course none of you young'uns mentioned her)

NUMBER ONE from "The Cage," the most badass first officer of the whole dang franchise, played by the First Lady of Trek herself, Majel Barrett. You others can have your Lwaxana Troi. This was her finest role in the trek.

 

Favorite characters:

Cadet Tilly because she's funny and cute. She acts, speaks and seems like a normal person.

Uhura TOS. I'm starting to see more TOS on tv, and the more I watch the more I realize she is absolutely beautiful. There's also the mysterious factor about her since her character was somewhat quiet and we didn't get to see a lot of her.

The Duras Sisters and Kai Winn. Scene stealers in every episode they're in.

Pulaski because she would say things in certain scenes that I would probably say, lol. She always tended to say things the fans were mostly likely thinking. She just tended to be salty at other times.

Worst:
The woman that stranded her crew on a planet and destroyed all the technology so they could live like they were in the 19 century. Totally corkscrew crazy.

Roxanna Troi when she was being obnoxious--otherwise she could be interesting in other scenes.

 

Favorite character: B'elanna Torres

Least Favorite: I pretty much like all the female characters but if I had to choose one, probably Deanna Troi.

 

As with some others, Kira was my favorite female character by far. This is because she is the best written female character in the entire franchise. As Nana Visitor herself noted in retrospect after her audition, her femininity was completely inconsequential to who she was as a character. She was of course a woman - and it did play into her story occasionally when it came to things like relationships. But unlike the other "women of Trek" she wasn't written as "the woman." She was neither there to provide some sort of matronly nurturing perspective, nor was she there to be the babe. She didn't even come across as if they were trying to subvert some aspects of femininity, as was the case with some of Seven and T'Pol's character. She was just a person, who happened to be a woman, and happened to get a lot of excellent character development. Not always the most likable person of course, but favorites in fiction are seldom the characters you most want to have a beer with or help you to move.

Worst is much harder, given the OP opened it up to all of Trek, but out of the main cast I'd have to go with Hoshi. She wasn't that offensive as a character, but ENT never really figured out anything useful to do with her.

 

Favourite - B'elanna Torres. If your think any other female is better than her, you have issues!!

Least - T'pol. Haven't finished Enterprise yet, so maybe it will change. But she is clearly there to be a duck faced plastic boobed click bait.

 

Nonsense. T'pol Jolene Blalock's outstanding performance was the only thing worth watching the show for. Well, other than Porthos, obviously.

 

Favorite: TOS Uhura. Smart, cool under pressure, badass when needed. (I love how she owns Mirror Sulu!)

Least Favorite: T'Pol. Sometimes I felt that the ENT writers didn't really want to write a Vulcan, or at least didn't know how to write an interesting one. She spent too much time "under the (some kind of) influence" so that she could show her emotions in an almost human way.

 

Honestly, I wish they had given Jake more screen time on DS9. I liked the dynamic he had with Nog, but I really hoped they would have fleshed out his character more than they did over seven seasons.

As for my own choices: Season 1-3 Jadzia, B'Elanna, Tilly, Keiko O'Brien and Emperor Georgiou.

Least favorite: Seven and Kes. Though I did like the mother/son sort of relationship Seven had with Icheb.

 

Favourite - Janeway, Seven, Kes.

Least - Uhura, Tilly, Burnham.

 

Dr Pulaski is my favorite. Empathetic and strong-willed. Guinan is a close runner-up as she's basically what Q is if Q weren't as chaotic. 7 of 9 is like a survivor of a cult and given more character depth than most 70s dramas where cults were all the rage. The actors may have disliked each other, but so many 7/Janeway scenes were great.

Least favorite? None, if I'm interpreting that correctly. There's maybe one or two that are poorly written, but that's true for characters in general - how they're handled. Especially season 5 onward when the polarization became so extreme that the show became a po-faced caricature.)

 

I like Majel, but she was wooden in "The Cage". The show probably dodged a bullet with NBC not allowing Roddenberry's mistress to be a co-star.

 

Have actual producers, directors, writers ever been asked by you or others about your concerns for firsthand issues as to why that may be?

Here's a fantastic article, worth reading in its entirety because it's long and no amount of quoted bits will do it justice: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/meet-women-writers-behind-star-trek-original-series

But I'll put up a couple paragraphs anyway:

I'm admittedly curious and will look around for more.

 

When Troi had good scenes (figuring out the creature that kidnapped Zorn for revenge, teaching Picard about communication with other beings, etc) she was excellent. So many writers weren't as certain so they end up having her do the "Captain, they're hiding the obvious!" corny stuff.

Dax #1 I liked much better... And bringing in a character in the last season is going to be tricky, even Dax.

Voyager dropped the ball on everyone from time to time. The episodes that work do work wonders but Torres, as with all the Maquis, became "too Starfleet" too quickly.

I liked Kira's backstory and as a character. Not sure how things would turn out in real life, but I did like seeing her and Bashir meet and from such different backgrounds. Eye-opening stuff.

 

Most: Kira Nerys (best character of all Trek)
Least: Seven (for the over sexualisation and over use of the character)

 

But according to the producers of that show they didn't get rid of the "woodenness" completely, they simply transferred it to Spock, so you still ended up with an X-O with the same character traits. It was now just an alien male instead of a human female.

And really, Majel's performance was only "wooden" by comparison to female characters in other sci-fi of the fifties and sixties, who were expected to act more like Vena. Number One was really cool, professional and focused, exactly the way a good first officer is supposed to act when her captain is kidnapped by big-head aliens.

 

Nimoy was never wooden, though.

She also only had one gear, which was wooden. She played every scene exactly the same. I wouldn't have minded the character continuing on, just not with Majel playing the part.