Women in Star Trek
- Thread starter wefarrell
- Start date
I like how that character description basically said "If Dr. Crusher weren't like a smart beauty queen, Leslie would have been SOL on the Bridge".
I'm not sure if it's been brought up, but why did the producers decide to ditch Leslie and go for Wesley? Would it have been easier to stomach a Mark Stuart as opposed to a Mary Sue?
I'm not sure if it's been brought up, but why did the producers decide to ditch Leslie and go for Wesley? Would it have been easier to stomach a Mark Stuart as opposed to a Mary Sue?
I would further add the episodes...
Caretaker
(Strands crew to protect other aliens) (Takes alien remains)
Cold Fire
(Crew put into danger by keeping alien remains)
Hunters
(Consequence of her decision in Caretaker (Janeway loses her fiance))
Prey
(Risks Voyager in protecting an alien species that tried to kill them)
Killing Game Part l and ll
(Gives technology to alien race)
Hope and Fear
(Consequences of Scorpion l and ll)
Timeless
(Takes a risk on losing Voyager in order to get home)
Dark Frontier
(Takes a risk with the Borg in order to get home)
Equinox Part l and ll
(Tortures a Starfleet crew member)
Fair Haven
(Has romantic relations with a Hologram)
Flesh and Blood
(Consequences of Killing Game l and ll)
End Game
(Risks altering all of time in order to restore her crew)
Side Note:
Oh, and I would also add the following episode as an added bonus, as well...
Night
(Janeway punishes herself over her decision in Caretaker)
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Yeah Valeris - it makes you wonder what Crusher had to do to get bridge duty later on...
Crusher was actually a great character. I think their confidence wobbled (some of the season one writing was a bit ropey after all) and they brought in Pulaski to try and replicate the Kirk/McCoy dynamic rather than because of any fault with the Crusher character. I rather liked Pulaski too but they should have brought her in as chief engineer with Geordi as her deputy rather than shuffling around the doctors. The fact that we lost both Yar AND Crusher pretty much tells you how highly the writers regarded their female characters.
Crusher was actually a great character. I think their confidence wobbled (some of the season one writing was a bit ropey after all) and they brought in Pulaski to try and replicate the Kirk/McCoy dynamic rather than because of any fault with the Crusher character. I rather liked Pulaski too but they should have brought her in as chief engineer with Geordi as her deputy rather than shuffling around the doctors. The fact that we lost both Yar AND Crusher pretty much tells you how highly the writers regarded their female characters.
The behind-the-scenes story of why McFadden actually left is even more damning - it says a lot about the attitudes in the late 1980s workplace. Obviously not a lot had changed since 1960s when Grace Lee Whitney left the show for similar reasons.
Which is one of the reasons she pisses off some people so much, including some TrekBBS posters who can't forgive her for not being "feminine" enough, in their opinion, and and not nice, sweet and pleasant enough. I love reading the IMDB thread about the least favorite character on DS9 with all the people who hate Kira, particularly the guy who said Kira was "even worse than Janeway in VOY, at least the captain had some sort of maternal aura which was likeable".
Ooh - I'm aware of some of the scandalous reasons that contributed to Grace's departure but I wasn't aware of any scandal surrounding Gates too. I've always felt that sci fi writers generally treated their female characters quite poorly - Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest was bang on unfortunately.
Fifth Element featured a powerful female hero but she was a sexualised character wearing a space bikini. The other roles in the movie are divided along incredibly sexist gender lines (male police and army, female air hostesses etc). The one female army officer featured is quickly rejected because she really wouldn't look good in a space bikini. I would have loved to see a Bruce Willis and Julie T Wallace double act for part of the movie but she wasn't pretty enough so she didn't even get any lines.
As long as NuTrek's backsliding can be halted in the next movie and they can adopt some of NuBSG's approach to gender issues, hopefully the female dynamic in Trek can be given a new lease.
That kind of sucks that he has the same name as a character from Lost.
Which is one of the reasons she pisses off some people so much, including some TrekBBS posters who can't forgive her for not being "feminine" enough, in their opinion, and and not nice, sweet and pleasant enough. I love reading the IMDB thread about the least favorite character on DS9 with all the people who hate Kira, particularly the guy who said Kira was "even worse than Janeway in VOY, at least the captain had some sort of maternal aura which was likeable".
I've noticed some people attacking Katee Sackoff's portrayal of Starbuck for similar reasons. To me, Starbuck is a self-destructive nutty risk-taker with serious phsychological problems but great piloting skills. I don't really see why her being a woman affects her characterisation except insofar as it affected the characters available to her as 'love interests'. The more female characters like her (well ok - not like her - she was a nutter - but I mean gender neutral characterisations) the better I say.
I think the Alien movies created gender neutrality long before DS9 or BSG. I'm not saying they were the first to do this but they were the most successful. Ripley is the obvious example but Vazquez is the first woman I recall seeing in a genuinely military role. Okay her masculinity was overplayed to ram the point home, but she was still a revelation in a world where women almost always played a support role in military situations. As I'm typing this I suddenly remembered the Michelle Rodriguez character from Resident Evil (can't remember the character name). But that was made decades later of course.
Ripley was a great character actually, especially in Alien. Veronica Cartwright's character (Lambert?) was quite whiny but they had a really nice mix of characters overall - it certainly wasn't a list of characters like the modern AvP films where you can tell exactly who is going to live or die within ten seconds of meeting them.
Weren't there four women among the marines in Aliens (Vasquez, Ripley, the medic, and the pilot)? A couple more would have been better but that's not a bad ratio for military characters.
Agreed, although I don't think the character was established quite as firmly as Mulgrew took her in later seasons.
Boring episode, though.
Agreed, this is great.
Agreed- this is one of my fav. Voyager eps and has one of my favourite Janeway lines: "This isn't a hunt, it's a slaughter: And I'm calling it off." This says so much about her character- that even when she knows she might not be able to take on a challenge, even if she doesn't always have the solution available, she calls out moral wrongs and declares her intention to do something about them. This decisiveness has previously been seen as a 'masculine' trait which is why you should probably examine yourself for misogyny if you think this trait made Janeway an unappealing character. Doctor Who also displays this trait quite frequently ("I'm going to stop you." is something he says often).
But the premise is a little unbelievable.
Agreed- this is a good Janeway ep.
True, but it's more of a Kim ep.
More of a Seven ep. Which is fine if she wants to examine Seven as a female character, but Seven is a tough study because she WAS an interesting character, but she was also a terrible female cliche (the ice queen sexpot) wheras Janeway was more balanced.
Yeah, but it's a lot of watching for not a lot of development.
I would never encourage anyone to watch this episode. EVER.
Lame episode, if I recall.
Awful slimeball of an episode which, while it did conclude Janeway's arc and made her into a deranged psychopath, really took some retrogressive steps with her character and didn't contribute to saying anything positive about women in Trek.
Boring ep, though.
These are all great suggestions (some definitely better than mine) but we don't want to overwhelm the OP, I assume they have a deadline to meet.
"Fair Haven" is indeed an awful episode. But I see how it might be seen as an episode one would have to see (or at least know about) to all the aspects to VOY's portrayal of Janeway. Earlier on, someone - I think it might have been the OP - said that VOY writers "went out of their way to portray Janeway as feminine in her personal life" or something to that effect, which I found puzzling at first, but now that I think about it, her relationships with the holograms (Michael in "Fair Haven" and, earlier, the one from the Gothic mansion holoprogram) are in the vein of cheap romance novels (the Gothic mansion one laughably so), and fit the stereotype of the kind of romantic fantasies that females are supposed to have. Also, Janeway changing the parameter's of Michael's personality, while it can be seen as a comment on people's behavior in relationships in general, fits the stereotype about women trying to change men.
Speaking of Janeway's personal life, I was quite shocked (and disappointed) to see Kate Mulgrew say that she was against Janeway having love interests because she didn't want her to become known as a 'space whore', because, as she says, it wouldn't be received the same way as it she were a man, and "what's good for the gander is not good for the goose".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibVOzPUvtww&feature=grec I don't recall anyone calling Picard or Sisko manwhores for Picard's relationships with Vash and Nella Daren, or Sisko's long-term relationship with Kasidy. Now I know that double standards still exist, but why would Trek writers feel the need to accept them? I found it sad that she (and perhaps the writers, too) seemed to assume that the majority of VOY viewers were sexist morons, or that a minority of sexist morons should be accommodated as much as possible. That's how Trek "pushes the envelope"? 
Really? I thought "Flesh and Blood" was one of the few good episodes of the mostly fluffy last season.
Yeah, it's interesting how we all view episodes differently.
Side Note:
Oh, and Destructor:
Although episodes could be focused on a particular character and or an episode could be deemed as boring: that doesn't change the fact that the Captain had an impact in an important way within that episode. Also, making sure the researcher has all the facts (even if there is a deadline to meet) is still an important thing.
Side Note:
Oh, and Destructor:
Although episodes could be focused on a particular character and or an episode could be deemed as boring: that doesn't change the fact that the Captain had an impact in an important way within that episode. Also, making sure the researcher has all the facts (even if there is a deadline to meet) is still an important thing.
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