Re: The Official: Niners What did You Think of the Movie Thread
Apart from Uhura there are no other noteworthy female roles that are comparable to the male crew members. Acutally, I think outside of her there are only three other women that get to speak in the whole movie! Also the miniskirts are just not acceptable anymore. Yeah, they are sexy and Uhura looks very nice in them, but either have the men wear shorts or cut this sexist crap.
Other than pulling in Ilia or Commander Majel Barrett, or beefing up Rand (why bother?) or Chapel's roles beyond recognition, I don't know where one expects them to have gotten all these female characters one would like to see. I don't think it's fair to blame the movie for Gene Roddenberry and NBC's choices in filling out the roster in 1966.
Now I'm not saying Ilia or Number One would've been bad ideas per se--if Captain Pike deserved a rebirth, maybe his nameless XO did too. And Ilia would've been a delight and hopefully will show up in a future film. But a LCDR Spock would have to be written around in order to bring us the Kirk-Spock beatdown, and while dialogue and characterization is a strength, and a great strength, of this writing team, they've shown themselves as far less able to write around logical obstacles that keep them from getting their plot where they want it to go. And is that what we really want to see? An ancillary female character in there just because, only to wind up incapcitated, dead or crippled in order to cede the spotlight to the actual main characters?
As for the miniskirts, I don't really see the problem. They're not the ridiculously short lengths of TOS', which leads to rather different criticisms--tackiness and exploitativeness. I don't see either in the film's costuming.
A sexually dimorphic species is bound to show a little variation in its accoutrements, I suppose. Complaining about miniskirts is tantamount to complaining about hair length, hair removal from different places, or makeup.
Then again, I guess if women all wear pants, they don't need to bother shaving their legs, and that's two birds with one stone.
I'm not even saying that's not an argument worth making, but that's the logical extension of the complaint, particularly when we know nothing about the fashions and mores, about what is considered professional attire, of a time far removed from our own.