To Boldly Go...Backwards
I can't remember wanting to love a movie as much as I wanted to love the new Star Trek.
I grew up watching the original series in re-runs, entranced by the hard-charging, womanizing captain of the Enterprise, his coolly logical (but underneath the exterior, tormented and passionate!) first officer, and its egalitarian vision of the future.
I watched every episode. I went to all the movies. I devoured every paperback that detailed the further adventures of the Enterprise's crew. When I was thirteen, I even -- oh, this is painful -- convinced my parents to take me to a Star Trek convention in downtown Hartford. (My parents were not the most socially adroit people, but even they somehow realized that this was a severely nerdy undertaking. They dropped me off at the corner).
When the ads for the new film started running, I should have been suspicious. "Not your father's Star Trek?" What was wrong with my father's Star Trek? I liked my father's Star Trek! But still, there I was, on opening day, with a bucket of popcorn, surrounded by what looked like the entire staff of several area comic-book stores.
There was much to love about the movie. Kirk was hot, and Spock was cool, and their relationship felt just right, at once edgy and familiar. Unlike the earlier outings, where a shaken camera connoted a collision, danger, and/or black holes and time warps, the special effects were, indeed, special.
I'm not so much of a nerd that I couldn't handle the way the film chucked continuity and ignored some of the original show's rules of the road (although, note to J.J. Abrams: if a Vulcan is bonded and his spouse suddenly dies, he either dies, too, or ends up in mortal agony, and should not be depicted just calmly hanging out on a transporter pad. Okay, fine, maybe I am that much of a nerd).
I was even okay with the way the plot recycled Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (in "Khan," the villain deploys a Doomsday weapon because he believes Kirk was responsible for the death of his wife. In "Trek," the villain deploys a Doomsday weapon because he believes Spock was responsible for the death of his wife....and let me just add that, in the all-important categories of "pecs," and "scenery chewing," Eric Bana is no Ricardo Montalban.)
Honestly, I didn't have a problem until about midway through the film...at which point I realized that every single lady on screen was either a mother, a ho, or an intergalactic hood ornament.
We begin with mama Kirk. As the film opens, she screams and grunts her way through labor, pops out young James T., bids her doomed husband a weepy farewell, and is never seen or heard from again. How does she feel when her reckless son runs off to join Starfleet? We don't know. The movie doesn't ask.
Next up: the luscious Andorian Kirk beds at Starfleet Academy. She's green. That's about it...except somewhere, Eddie Murphy is smiling (I'd link to his bit about the dubious hygiene of green-faced girls, but it's filthy. Filthy!)
Even though Romulan war ships were, in the original series, frequently commanded by women, there's nary a chick aboard rogue Romulan Nero's vessel. This, perhaps, explains why he and his crew are in such a bad mood.
The film throws the ladies a few bones in the form of a couple of female members of the Vulcan High Council. There's a woefully underutilized Winona Ryder as Spock's human mother, and a tossed-off reference to Leonard McCoy's ex (the bitch took everything, don'tcha know, leaving him with just his...well, never mind).
Finally, there's Uhura...and what Abrams and company do with the Enterprise's communications officer will not be warming the cockles of any feminist hearts.
We first meet her at a bar, all ponytail, miniskirt, and long legs. Kirk hits on her. She brushes him off. He persists, prompting Uhura's fellow cadets to mop the floor with him (couldn't she have kicked his ass herself? Probably. So why didn't the movie let her?)
We are told, rather than shown, that Uhura is an extraordinarily capable linguist. We are told, rather than shown, that she's intercepted an important transmission, the plot device that jump-starts the film's action...as soon as Kirk tells Captain Pike about it. But Uhura's primary function isn't professional. Her job, in this brave new universe, is to look cute in a red dress, and to humanize (and by "humanize" I mean "mack on") her coolly logical, eminently reasonable mate.
In other words, she's Michelle Obama in outer space.
I'm willing to be patient here. I understand that, to attract an audience glutted on testosterone-heavy summer flicks, you need a certain amount of the old ultraviolence to get butts in seats, and that the lofty, utopian ideals of the original have to make way for a few brute shoot 'em ups. I understand the value of simply showing audiences an (allegedly) strong black woman, even if most of what she does is stand around looking worried; the same way I know that Michelle Obama has to tread carefully as she makes the role of First Lady her own. And hey, maybe organic gardening and pairing J. Crew twin sets with kicky belts and cute pins aren't bad places to start. Baby steps.
In spite of my disappointment, I've still got high hopes for the new Trek franchise. In a few years, my daughters will be old enough to watch TV and movies the way I watched them: for entertainment, yes, but for inspiration, too, for a vision, or a series of competing and overlapping visions, of how their future could look.
Plus, if the guy who gave us Sydney Bristow and Kate Austin can't serve up any kick-ass, take-charge ladies, then who can? It's only logical.
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Just to emphasis more greatly the roles of women in Trek.
The leader of the Dominion was female. The Vulcan matriarch T'Pau was female. The Ferengi Alliance, for centuries obsessively sexist was reformed upon the advice of Ishka, a woman. In Klingon culture, the women rule the familes. Women serve equally in the Cardassian, Romulan, and Klingon militaries. The Borg leader was female (albeit evil).
Anybody silly enough to diss Kira Nerys would find themself in world of hurt. Bajoran women were not pushovers.
"Bajoran women were not pushovers?" What about Leeta, who filled the girly-girl slot on DS9 that Dax transcended? Or Tal Celes, who was supremely neurotic and felt she was only in Starfleet to meet an Affirmative Action quota?
Feminists hate Michelle Obama because she actually likes her husband, that criticism has been reported on in this rag before. Apparently being a liberated women means you never do anything that a man would like, just cater to other bitter women with dodgy looks who have no problem insulting your intelligence if they don't agree with your choices.
get sarah conner in there!
LOL, I've read plenty of myopic takes on this film. Bugging out about female roles however...
Uhura, who, as mentioned already...
And if you think wrangling the affections of an emotionally suppressed phenom is just a afterthought given to a looker in a skirt...yo
As far as the Romulan crew being absent females...
Couldn't have said it better myself. The women represented in the movie were strong. So what if they didn't run around kicking every man's a$$. That's probably not the most realistic portrayal of women either. In a fictional future where there is very little that celebrates the softness and nurturing side of women, I felt the portrayal of the women as strong mothers and strong lovers (except the andorian chick) was a nice touch to the movie.
Star Trek's universe, though, actually does portray a significantly more positive future for humanity. Things like hunger and inequality have been eliminated (supposedly) from the majority of society. However, Starfleet is at its core still a military.
Strong women don't always need to kick a$$, no matter what the Nielsen ratings say.
How is the new star trek any different from the original (which you fell in love with)? Your tastes must have changed because the original star trek was overloaded with mini skirts and women being used by kirk. It was also filled with plot holes bad storylines.
For what it's worth, I did see a female extra in Romulan cotsume in one scene in the Star Trek movie. It happens very fast and is easy to miss.
The irony, the theme of your article is the degradation of women, yet you reduce Lt. Uhura to nothing but a pretty piece in red whose sole purpose is to build up her man. I saw Lt. Uhura as a beautiful. woman who had compassion for her mate who lost his mother, and who didn't allow him to deny her the promotion she earned because of their relationship.
You toss in a diss at the First Lady because obviously, you like many men feel women should fit in some chauvinist or feminist pre-made box.
Thank God, First Lady Michelle Obama understands who she is and knows she doesn't have to cower down to any of the peanut gallery boxes.
exactly
I'm with you. I wonder if she saw the same movie as the rest of us.
Sorry, I saw Uhura's "compassion for her mate" less as important character development and more as a blatant plot device to inject some romance...
By the way, the green girl wasn't Andorian (they're blue with antennae). I believe she was supposed to be the same species as Vina from the original pilot and "Menagerie
Well, then you missed the whole point didn't ya?
At any rate, Spock is and always has been half-human. In TOS, Spoke had completely submerged his human half and was always keeping it under lockdown. The new Spock has not taken the Vulcan discipline that would rid him of all emotion, and seems a lot more rebellious and edgy (emotional, if you will). I like this new Spock. More please. :o)
But they were egalitarian enough to send a pregnant woman on a high-risk deep space mission!
Perhaps she conceived during the mission.
This is a movie based on a show from the 60's. The franchise certainly moved on in later shows in terms of its portrayal of women, but in the orginal series, they were mostly skirts and make up.
That's only to say that in order to correct it, they would have had to make up new female characters, which would have been clunky and cloying to everyone except possibly you.
Also, what in the world makes you think Uhura could beat up Captain Kirk? That's just silly. Even the idea that her character could fight at all is a stretch. Sure they could have invented it, and said, Uhura is super tough, but again, the idea was to channel the original characters. Her character was super smart hotness incarnate. But they really didn't need much of a linguist this time out because Nero spoke English, also linguistics - not very exciting.
In fact, it was that desire to always be politically correct that dragged a lot of the other Star Trek movies down. Who doesn't turn the television off if Deanna Troi walks onscreen too early?
Really, if you want your father's Star Trek, then that's what you want: short skirts, long legs, green girls fornicating with Captain Kirk. But it sounds like you wanted your father's Star Trek with gender roles updated to grad school level. It's a shame you couldn't relax and enjoy it instead.
I love to read comments by people that either didn't watch the original series or didn't understand it.
Her original character was strong, dignified, independent and she could definitely hold her own in a battle. The series was NEVER politically correct, in fact if you watch it now (which I have been doing with my daughter who wanted to see it for the first time) you would be surprised at what got past the censors of the day. What the author of this entry was talking about was not updating gender roles to grad school level of today (what does that mean?) she was talking about the fact that this movie not only didn't update the gender roles, but it dragged them backwards from the portrayal of Uhura in the '60s
Sounds like someone is either looking for an axe to grind, or looking for a column topic. It's hard to take seriously complaints about female characters being treated as eye candy when the writer so frequently describes male characters in the same way.
With your concerns about the depiction of the female characters being shallow "hood ornaments (i loved the term), i would have thought you might have referred to them as "women," not "ladies." I thought that appellation had gone out with white gloves.
Star Trek has a history of female characters in authority roles.
Many female captains and admirals, Major Kira and Jadzia Dax on DS9, Janeway on Voyager, Crusher on Next Generation.
On the original series, they had Chapel, Rand and Uhura.
Actual dialogue from Yeoman Rand: "I used a hand phaser and zap! Hot coffee!"
Not to mention that an earlier Enterprise's had a female captain. (Rachel Garrett, I think).
You're being ridiculous. It was an origins story that had to be easy to understand for first time Trek viewers and get in all the characters that made the original series great. When the series first came out it was during the cold war, civil rights and equal rights for women era. That's why you had the original bridge make up of a Russian, Asian, Caucasian, Women and half-alien. The story was mainly about the bonding of Kirk and Spock. There was no room in two hours to give you your personalized version.
By the way the Romulan ship was a mining ship.
And I thought I was the only one!! I am an old fan of TOS, I didn't like the other spinoffs and didn't watch any of them so I don't know what went on in them... but.. I totally agree about the Uhura character. I kept thinking WHY? It was a great film, I loved almost every minute of it, but whenever Uhura came onscreen.. I was left thinking that maybe the person writing her part had never seen who she was really supposed to be. .. Mild Spoiler alert (avert your eyes if you haven't seen it and will be offended at any information ahead of time) .... She spent most of her time on the ship chasing Spock around trying to kiss him. Which was ridiculous
I'm absolutely with you too. It's so odd to me that on this site, the idea of treating women as anything other than cheesecake really is the 'final frontier'.
TOS Uhura was always on task and classy -- can't recall her ever chasing anyone for a kiss.
NASA acknowledges (and has honored) Nichelle Nichols for her contributions to the real-life space program.
The characters of Scotty and Uhura are among the most frequently mentioned as inspirations by applicants in their entrance essays. Life is better than art in this case!
Yes, the original Uhura is amazing. But I don't believe the new one is an insult to her in any way. We have to remember that the original never faced the situation of watching her lover suffer through the loss of his mother and entire world. If I were in that situation, I would be worried sick and doing my best to remind him that life is still worth living. It's also important to realize that this Uhura is very young. Give her another ten years, and then it will be fair to compare them.
Ms. W. --
Enjoyable piece.
The fact that there are so few women in the flick -- and the few who are there are predictably stereotyped -- can be easily explained: the script was written by a man -- a very talented man, but a man, nonetheless -- and, like every little boy who ever climbed into his treehouse/fortress of solitude, females are ALWAYS extraneous to the story-plot
A lot of men are uncomfortable with women in positions of power (just watch Foxsnooze for 5 mins. -- if your stomach will allow it) and "littering" up the story with a bunch of females would just destroy the whole macho atmosphere that's trying to be created.
I'm not saying Abrams has a problem . . . he's just playing to his audience -- like most writers do, right?
Because the whole macho atmosphere was right out of the original show. It was campy and self-referential.
I'm absolutely delighted to see women in power, but there weren't any major female characters in the show except Uhura! You want to make a movie about Captain Janeway? Let's do it. But the main reason this worked is because EVERYONE knows who Kirk and Spock are. Not true for any of the spinoffs. Huge chuncks of the population have never watched a single episode.
"Littering" up the story is exactly what a bunch of new female characters would do. Not because they are female, but because they weren't there to begin with and aren't necessary. There was enough going on anyway.
Yeah, the "campy and self-referential" atmosphere is also, straight out of the 1960s, too -- complete with the swaggering chauvenism that was mandatory at the time (been there, done that!).
My point is, guy "fantasy" stories are always "supposed" to be more exciting and worth wasting one's time on, than girl "fantasy" stories (read: chick flicks, Jane Austen, etc.) are . . . those are trashed and dismissed as if they were UFO-abduction tales.
The bottom line (for screenwriters?) is, whenever a female is introduced, all seriousness goes out the window, and only melodrama remains.
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