Yeah, me, too, for all the same.

It was beyond girl-lite, and Uhura didn't even get to hit anyone.

No room for a new female character, which leaves you two choices: One, genderswitch an established character a la Starbuck. Too soon, doesn't fit in with the relatively conservative reboot. Two, give Uhura more to do (which the character has richly deserved for 40 years anyway). The obvious thing to do is give her some kind of leadership role, but that just plays into the already gigantic problem of Kirk's rank inversion. (At the end of the movie, literally every one of the established characters is a more credible candidate for command than Kirk.)

I liked the movie coming out of it but the more I think about it the more problems I find...

I'll grant that this particular conservative reboot (and I loved it in many ways for being conservative in its re-imagining of many things) would have had a hard time integrating significant female roles. And I really truly did love it in so many ways that I feel a bit sucker-punched about that.

There's a voice that wants to say "maybe a good adventure story has to exclude women".

I'm just annoyed that even the *insignificant* roles had to be men. Or that Uhura couldn't just be competent, she had to be competent some-guy's-girlfriend. I don't think every story needs to have a River Tam or a Buffy or a gender inversion. I love a good manly protag as much as the next bi girl. But if you're going to do that, throw in a few extras, make the women part of the world. Women were so *absent* from this version, except as props for the men.

Admiral Pike can totally handle Kirk's rank inversion. And I have a whole new love affair with Iowa these days. Of *course* Kirk is from Iowa. (Yes, I know, it was always in the mythos, but now it's even better.)

Admiral Pike can totally handle Kirk's rank inversion.

How so?

I think there's totally room for a story arc where Pike, as captain of the Enterprise, takes on a rebellious young Kirk and grooms him into a true leader of men, having to promote him over his previous protege Spock along the way, giving Spock one more logic/emotion conflict to overcome his resentment of being passed over. That would be a fantastic character story over the first season or two of a rebooted Trek series (then you phase Pike into a background role, and by season four you have everyone in roughly the same place as TOS). But it's completely incompatible with this movie, so we won't see it for another 20 or 40 years.

Maybe I've been reading too much O'Brien (who gets a free pass for being a historical, and anyhow, sneaks a surprising number of women in despite this) but a friend in the Admiralty can fix most Starfleet problems.

And, hey, he doesn't even have to communicate through Morse code now!

I like your version. You should totally write it.

In my copious spare time.

There's a voice that wants to say "maybe a good adventure story has to exclude women".

Nope, not buying it.

My benchmark for a woman in an action hero role is Ripley in Aliens. She's an action movie heroine but doesn't feel like a regendered male character. The women we see in Alien and Aliens have traded away "bubblegum" femininity in exchange for more equality (though we admittedly don't see much "private life" in either movie), yet the military is still male-heavy and one has the impression that Vasquez has had to fight pretty hard for her place in that world, which I find more believable than, say Starship Troopers*. In spite of that, Ripley feels like a (natural) woman throughout. Also passes the Bechdel test if you count Newt as a woman (or if you count the dropship pilot as a named character). She gets in some very very low-level flirtation in with a hot guy, but that follows from their obvious mutual respect rather than being her default method of dealing with men.

* That's my reading of it, YMMV.

YES our odometers are in synch on this, couldn't agree more.

I *love* Alien/Aliens. I love that Ripley was originally scripted male, and when they changed the character's gender, they changed the story, because so much of the resonance in Aliens comes out of that one small change. I loved how they did the women in Alien/Aliens overall. Vasquez is one of my favourites.

Did we really hit the peak of gender equality in the late 1970s?

(Yeah. I know. This is why I read books. Look at Lenie in Peter Watts' Starfish, for instance, as a great counter-example.)

Edited at 2009-05-11 05:31 pm (UTC)

I was a little disgruntled when I saw the director's cut of Aliens because they established that Ripley had had a daughter Newt's age that she lost when she went into cold sleep. It makes the whole Newt/Ripley arc so painfully obvious. I preferred the idea that her maternal instinct just snuck up on her when she met Newt. But either way she's definitely a person.

Did we really hit the peak of gender equality in the late 1970s?

I don't want to believe that; I think a larger problem is just lazy writing. Clearly filmmakers understand that nerdboys and nerdgirls want to see hot strong women in their SF, they just don't know how to do it "right". God, look at Trinity in The Matrix - in their zeal to make her Neo's equal, they've basically made her his clone.

I did like how her talents were framed more as exolinguistic genius as opposed to glorified telephone switchboard operator. Given that, a natural career ladder for her would lead toward diplomat/ambassador.

Also, I agree that about the only way to get ST to even approach satisfying the Bechdel rule would be to completely gut it. Not that that would be a bad thing, but I think they felt like they were already tempting the fates of Trekker righteous indignation with any sort of a reboot.

I did like how her talents were framed more as exolinguistic genius

It would have been okay except that it was part of the whole "Captain Pike's Starship For Gifted Children" thing*. I always liked the idea that the Trek crew were just a tiny bit more awesome than everyone else, not every one of them supergeniuses in their field. In my idealized Trek continuity, you could have done the show about any one of the 12 Constitution class starships and seen just as much swash and buckle and awesomeness in 3 seasons as you did aboard the Enterprise.

If Kirk had kept his mouth shut under the bed, they could have juuuust barely managed a Bechdel.

* Now that I think about it, this was an X-Men story, not a Star Trek story.

Yeah, that's one point where being true to the spirit of the original most definitely sucked.

Also, I suspect I'm going to be spending the next few days trying to work the phrase "beddable biscuit" into conversation, and failing horribly.

o i am pretty sure alocholic_bunny could manage it... ;)