It's weird that you're picking on when the women do it, but not when the men do the same thing. I wonder why that is?
Was TNG less progressive than TOS?
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I remember being a lot younger and thinking, yeah, I love kick-ass girls, but most of them really aren't that realistic, especially if they don't have superpowers. It's easy to see how that makes sense on a surface level. But it doesn't last long as an idea if you actually take two seconds to stop staring yourself blind at just the female characters and actually compare them to all the other characters surrounding them.
The truth is that the 90 pound female who can kick-ass is not one ounce less realistic than any of the other action movie/show style characters. It's the entire genre that is fundamentally unrealistic, not the female characters specifically.
Sheer cussed determination does not really allow you to shrug off major cuts, bruises and broken bones and just keep fighting (Die Hard, and every movie later inspired by it). Even a musclebound giant like Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot actually plow through an entire group of armed opponents like a conquering hero. No amount of skill or training makes you untouchable or, in fact, anywhere near close to untouchable (Bourne, John Wick, etc). Superior strength is only one possible advantage a fighter can have and history is littered with examples of weaker fighters using other types of advantages to defeat stronger opponents, as well as examples of super-skilled fighters who fell to superior numbers, strategy or plain bad luck.
To go very specifically Trek related, I'd say Kira as a hand to hand fighter even in a realistic world could very easily defeat men like Picard, Bashir, McCoy, Paris, Kim, etc (which is by no means a guarantee she would always win against them, as such guarantees never exist in the real world). So to criticize the franchise for having Kira get into fights but apparently have no problem with men who are obviously just as physically unsuited to it doing the same (having a few dozen extra pounds does not make them more believable as fighters) is just not credible.
The truth is that the 90 pound female who can kick-ass is not one ounce less realistic than any of the other action movie/show style characters. It's the entire genre that is fundamentally unrealistic, not the female characters specifically.
Sheer cussed determination does not really allow you to shrug off major cuts, bruises and broken bones and just keep fighting (Die Hard, and every movie later inspired by it). Even a musclebound giant like Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot actually plow through an entire group of armed opponents like a conquering hero. No amount of skill or training makes you untouchable or, in fact, anywhere near close to untouchable (Bourne, John Wick, etc). Superior strength is only one possible advantage a fighter can have and history is littered with examples of weaker fighters using other types of advantages to defeat stronger opponents, as well as examples of super-skilled fighters who fell to superior numbers, strategy or plain bad luck.
To go very specifically Trek related, I'd say Kira as a hand to hand fighter even in a realistic world could very easily defeat men like Picard, Bashir, McCoy, Paris, Kim, etc (which is by no means a guarantee she would always win against them, as such guarantees never exist in the real world). So to criticize the franchise for having Kira get into fights but apparently have no problem with men who are obviously just as physically unsuited to it doing the same (having a few dozen extra pounds does not make them more believable as fighters) is just not credible.
In the sport of fencing you can often see men get beaten by women. You can frequently see a very old person beat a younger person also.
I'd rather fence against a man than box or kick box or do karate against a man.
More power to Kira though.
That's because a weapon is force multiplier.
Sufficiently armed and experienced, a lightweight person can much more easily defeat a heavier one.
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I mean in a setting like Star Trek it would be as easy as saying Bajorans are physically stronger than many other races, with the average trained woman being able to overpower a trained human male. They could have even said that was why the Cardassians liked to put them to work in the mines.
And suddenly the 90 pound woman wiping the floor with bigger, stronger looking opponents makes sense.
In canon I think with Tasha, at least the implication was that she had mastered some kind of (Hollywood) martial arts that allowed her to overpower opponent. I think that was the idea at least, hard to tell with that great Season 1 "quality"
And suddenly the 90 pound woman wiping the floor with bigger, stronger looking opponents makes sense.
In canon I think with Tasha, at least the implication was that she had mastered some kind of (Hollywood) martial arts that allowed her to overpower opponent. I think that was the idea at least, hard to tell with that great Season 1 "quality"
There are plenty of sports/competitions/combat situations in the real world where smaller people have a clear advantage and plenty where the exact opposite is true. This is because, in the real world, context trumps everything - which is also why having a clear advantage isn't the same thing as actually winning, even if your advantage is massive.
But all of that is very literally beside the point. Action adventure stories like Star Trek don't portray anything remotely realistic when it comes to fighting and physical altercations in the first place. Kira or Yar are no more or less guilty of that than Picard and Kirk.
Yes, Nazi's are universally bad, not really liked by anyone, except other Nazi's. Here and there someone says something stupid about them or Hitler. But, I've never associated the term "SJW" as having anything at all to do with Nazi's, not ever. Like I said, the term is used by many people who are defiantly not Nazis
Well it stands for "Social Justice Warrior". Which in the minds of the people who use the term are bad things. People who think fighting for social justice is a bad, make me go "hmmmmm, who else is against social justice?"
I never got the impression. The idea in TOS was that Klingons were "the stronger." Trek comics carried forward that idea that Klingons were physically stronger.
Exactly this. Being put off by the fighting in Trek is rather odd, especially since we see our heroes overwhelm physically superior opponents all the time, unless the plot calls for it. See Kirk v. Khan.
If you look at the barfight in Tribbles I think you'll find the humans and Klingons are pretty equally matched. Except in the case of Chekov vs the Big Klingon.
Tribbles might be the only time we see humans and Klingon fighting hand to hand in TOS. Don't recall if Day of the Dove had fisticuffs or just sword fights.
A good point. Yeah, somewhere it changed a bit because I definitely recall it being as part of the TOS comics, at least in one story.If you look at the barfight in Tribbles I think you'll find the humans and Klingons are pretty equally matched. Except in the case of Chekov vs the Big Klingon.
Because it’s much more egregious.
"Egregious"?
Really?
It's bad?
I absolutely can't figure out how you came to that conclusion. Do you have a reason?
More egregious than retirement age, pot-bellied Kirk? Or even young Kirk (who was already getting pudgy in season 3) who somehow thought the 'flying double fist' was a great combat move? Or you just don't notice how unrealistic Kirk is because he's a dude?
Yep. I'm calling bullshit.
Bullshit.
Kira's not even human, by the way.
How so?
Huh? I already posted the reason.
Yes, obviously. Maybe he beat up guys that he should not have been able to. But, at least when he beat up Khan, he used a weapon to do it. That makes sense, right?
Uhh... I think you need to back that up with some kind of reason, right? I don't even know what you are calling it on. Are you saying it never happens? Or are you saying it happens, but there's a good reason behind it, such as...? Or maybe something else?
I don't thing the Cardassians she was fighting are human either, by the way.
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