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Does TV have a problem portraying men (and women, too, perhaps) who are intelligent, ethical, kind, etc., etc., etc....but also sexy? You know, it might. There are examples out there, but an awful lot of TV's sexy guys are also at least half bad boys - with a heart of gold, perhaps, but still...
Well, there is Spock. A good guy doesnt have to be boring... and when they are, it's just due to the unimaginative writers and casting directors. For instance, can you blame anyone who watched Heroes for lusting after Sylar, when 1) he's played by a far better and more charismatic actor than 'good guys' like Peter Petrelli or Mohinder Suresh (although Mohinder's character has been so screwed up that I don't know if good guy still applies to him), and 2) the abovementioned good guys are mostly written as gullible idiots?
I know plenty of good guys in real life who aren't boring - it's TV that seems to have difficulties with this concept. I mean, why else have the good guys usually be gullible idiots? But yes, Spock is definitely one example of a good guy who is neither gullible nor an idiot. Quite the contrary, actually. Maybe that's one reason why he's so popular. Works for me!
Thor Damar said:
Agreed, I don't normally think that there is such a thing as pure evil but Dukat certainly meets that criteria. He seems to be the classic sociopath using and discarding others to achieve his own ends,kind of like Kai Winn. No wonder those two became allies....
And JustKate, everyone knows that nice guys finish last and that the ladies love a bad boy and such other cliches which have poisoned our society.
Well, but do they really? Or is this just one of those myths that TV adores so much? I mean, according to TV and movies, if two attractive people, one male, one female, simply loathe each other at first sight, they are going to fall in love, right? And get married? And live happily and blissfully ever after? And yet, while that presumably happens in real life, I guess, it surely isn't nearly as common as it is on TV. It's pretty rare, I'd say. I mean, most people I know, if they loathe someone at first sight, they pretty much go on loathing him or her.
I know plenty of good guys in real life who aren't boring - it's TV that seems to have difficulties with this concept. I mean, why else have the good guys usually be gullible idiots? But yes, Spock is definitely one example of a good guy who is neither gullible nor an idiot. Quite the contrary, actually. Maybe that's one reason why he's so popular. Works for me!
Thor Damar said:
Agreed, I don't normally think that there is such a thing as pure evil but Dukat certainly meets that criteria. He seems to be the classic sociopath using and discarding others to achieve his own ends,kind of like Kai Winn. No wonder those two became allies....
And JustKate, everyone knows that nice guys finish last and that the ladies love a bad boy and such other cliches which have poisoned our society.
Well, but do they really? Or is this just one of those myths that TV adores so much? I mean, according to TV and movies, if two attractive people, one male, one female, simply loathe each other at first sight, they are going to fall in love, right? And get married? And live happily and blissfully ever after? And yet, while that presumably happens in real life, I guess, it surely isn't nearly as common as it is on TV. It's pretty rare, I'd say. I mean, most people I know, if they loathe someone at first sight, they pretty much go on loathing him or her.
For me sexiness is largely divorced from character up to a point (which I'll clarify in a few). I've found many people sexually attractive that I wouldn't actually associate with even from a distance. If they also have great personalities and are good, fun people to be with, that's even better, but it's not necessary for them to be sexy. It's also much easier for me to find fictional "bad guys", or "bad women", sexy or attractive than their real life counterparts because their misdeeds are just that, fictional. No real people are hurt or killed, and the story is usually very compelling.
To me, Gul Dukat and the Intendent were both incredibly sexy characters. If I met real life human counterparts to them, no matter how physically attractive they were, I wouldn't find them sexy at all. People who so thoroughly use and abuse others are disgusting, and it's usually only very emotionally sick people who are drawn to them. Think of all the women who wrote letters to Ted Bundy in prison. That's the sort of sickness I mean. Sopabox alert. I'm about to go on a rant. If you don't want to see it, feel free to stop right here.
I firmly believe, "Nice guys finish last" is a myth that largely stems from a misunderstanding of what a nice guy really is. A truly nice guy is emotionally secure, reasonably confident, not afraid to ask for what he wants, sets healthy personal boundaries, and genuinely cares about his friends and loved ones. These are not the men you see doomed to the "friend zone" pining after some unattainable "goddess" precisely because they don't put women on pedestals to begin with, and they are not offering their friendship as a trade off for potentially getting laid down the line. If they're with a woman, it's because they're genuinely interested in her as a person, not just as a potential conquest.
The "nice guys" who finish last are anything but nice. They're emotionally needy parasites who attach themselves to women like bloated ticks. They slouch in under the guise of being a friend, usually pick women who are emotionally unstable or going through a very rough time, pretend to care about their problems, try to play rescuer, will sometimes go to extravagant lengths to "prove their love", but all the while they're really angling to get in their pants. As soon as they realize that's never going to happen, they drop the object of their obsession like a hot rock and complain bitterly to anyone who will listen about how all women are bitches and users and how women only want men who mistreat them.
They never have an honest interaction with the opposite sex. Every word from hello on is an attempt to feel out whether they have a chance of getting lucky. Every "nice" gesture is a manipulation. They don't like women, and they definitely don't see them as equals. Unlike their openly asshole-ish counterparts, they just don't directly come out and say it. They hide it behind statements that on the surface might look nice but that have an underlying nasty message. "No one will ever love you like I do." "I don't deserve you." "I'd die without you." (Gagging yet?)
Emotionally healthy women are not attracted to abusive assholes, and they don't give the time of day to the type of "nice guys" I'm talking about. Many of the women who wind up using "nice guys" are predators. They can smell eu de desperation from a mile away. They get their bills paid this way. They get free trips, nice meals, a shoulder to cry on, a bed to sleep in. When he gets tired of waiting for the ultimate pay off, they already have five more just like him lined up.
The other women who glom onto these "nice guys" tend to be perpetual victims in search of a rescuer. They create their own problems and drama and then want somebody to swoop in and magically take them away from it all. The trouble is they thrive on the drama, so any man who is actually stable and healthy will bore them to tears, and most stable, healthy men will see them for what they are pretty quickly and distance themselves. It's a sick dynamic and a self-perpetuating cycle. Dysfunction seeks dysfunction, and one of the best definitions I've seen of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. End rant.
TV sort of perpetuates it, but when you think about it, the stereotype being sold is the tough guy with the underlying heart of gold. I can't think of many fictional tv shows or movies that actually depict a genuinely evil, abusive snake as being the object of all the ladies' desires. TV bad guys who get the girl typically are reformed or saved by her love. (Also makes me gag, but hey, it's fiction.) In Dukat and Winn's case, they were both using each other, and they both got exactly what they deserved for it.
^ So true, especially what you said about the so-called "Nice Guys" who are, in fact, not nice at all. I know the type very well, and can't stand them. The worst about them is that they act as it they are entitled to something because they are so niiiice and they love you so much and even worse than that, some women actually buy into that. Not only are Fake Nice Guys arseholes, they are also pathetic leeches.
I'm not sure how to explain...but to me, I think a future husband is likely to emerge from a friendship. Not a fake-nice friendship, but a REAL one, where we learn to relate to each other as PEOPLE, not as love interests at first.
I'm not sure how to explain...but to me, I think a future husband is likely to emerge from a friendship. Not a fake-nice friendship, but a REAL one, where we learn to relate to each other as PEOPLE, not as love interests at first.
My spouse and I were friends first, and we've been married 19 1/2 years now. Still going strong, still enjoying the relationship. I could never have a long-term relationship with anyone who wasn't also a friend.
Maybe there are people who go for men who, instead of hiding a heart of gold are hiding a heart of chilly calculation and burning ambition. But not me. Compelling, yes, but sexy? Brrrrrrr...
I'm amazed! The Cardassians are the sexiest race in the entire Star Trek universe! I made sure to vote for Dukat and for Data of course, since he was my first love. =P
about half-through, and had a few glimpses through the script
which I also illegally downloaded
. I'm guessing that it was written before the author saw the episode, based on the script. The scenes that are both in the novelization and the episode are mostly very similar, and there are few differences, but it's interesting to find them. One that I noticed immediately is that Quark - in the novel as well as in the script - is just surprised and looks at Odo when Sisko calls him a community leader. In the episode, he had a huge laugh - which was my favorite Quark moment in the pilot - so it seems like it's something Armin Shimerman added during the shooting.
The physical descriptions of characters are obviously a combination of the script and basic data about the actors cast; for instance, in the novelization, it's made clear that Sisko is black, while there is no mention of this in the script - since the role was not race-specific; Dax is described, in the script, just as a very attractive woman in her late 20s with a serene manner, while the novelization describes her, or rather, Terry Farrell, in more detail. Bashir is, in the script, "mid-twenties, wide-shouldered, with a boyish face, cocky with a little too much confidence", while in the novelization he is "broad-shouldered and olive-skinned with brown hair and warm brown eyes" (well, I wouldn't exactly call Siddig particularly broad-shouldered, but this obviously came from the original script).
What is particularly amusing is that Dukat is the only character whose physical description in the novelization (there is none in the script) is completely off. "By Cardassian standards he was a middle-aged, medium-height, altogether bland, pleasant-looking male who did not appear capable of the cruelty he and others of his race had inflicted on the Bajora..."
Which is easily explainable knowing the fact that Marc Alaimo was not first actor cast in the role of Dukat, as Behr and others have mentioned. They first cast someone else and then after a day of shooting realized that they had miscast and had to find another actor, and someone said "How about Marc Alaimo, he was on TNG..." It makes me curious who they originally cast. So strange to think that anyone else could have ended up playing Dukat. Things would've probably gone very different, might not have ever become as complex or as popular.
Maybe there are people who go for men who, instead of hiding a heart of gold are hiding a heart of chilly calculation and burning ambition. But not me. Compelling, yes, but sexy? Brrrrrrr...
What is particularly amusing is that Dukat is the only character whose physical description in the novelization (there is none in the script) is completely off. "By Cardassian standards he was a middle-aged, medium-height, altogether bland, pleasant-looking male who did not appear capable of the cruelty he and others of his race had inflicted on the Bajora..."
I dunno...the key word there is "by Cardassian standards." To another Cardassian, Dukat might not look particularly tall, or threatening just by appearance alone. For them, it would probably take his actual demeanor and conduct to make that impression.
What is particularly amusing is that Dukat is the only character whose physical description in the novelization (there is none in the script) is completely off. "By Cardassian standards he was a middle-aged, medium-height, altogether bland, pleasant-looking male who did not appear capable of the cruelty he and others of his race had inflicted on the Bajora..."
I dunno...the key word there is "by Cardassian standards." To another Cardassian, Dukat might not look particularly tall, or threatening just by appearance alone. For them, it would probably take his actual demeanor and conduct to make that impression.
That might have been the case if the other Cardassians we have seen on DS9 and TNG had been very tall and physically imposing. But they were at best, of similar height as Dukat, and most of them were shorter. They could have tried to cast really huge guys if they wanted to, but instead they were medium height to tall. David Warner is the only really tall oen I can think of, and he was sitting all the time. And I don't think that any of the Cardies on Trek seen up to that point (or since) looked all that striking or threatening by comparison, either. Lemec was kinda weasel-faced, Evek was rather ordinary looking, Jaro and Joret Dal were "bland and pleasant-looking". Madred was scary because of his behavior, not his looks. Out of the Cardies we've seen since, the only one that comes close is Makbar, her eyes were scary.
A good guy doesnt have to be boring... and when they are, it's just due to the unimaginative writers and casting directors. For instance, can you blame anyone who watched Heroes for lusting after Sylar, when 1) he's played by a far better and more charismatic actor than 'good guys' like Peter Petrelli or Mohinder Suresh (although Mohinder's character has been so screwed up that I don't know if good guy still applies to him), and 2) the abovementioned good guys are mostly written as gullible idiots? 
In fact, Cardassians in general aren't doing very well in it. 
