A Star Trek review May 13, 2009
Posted by Sara in Reviews.trackback
In between explosions and ridiculous set pieces (I know the Romulans are a different race, but really, what is the point of a ship that has cliff edges every place you turn, so you could trip and fall to your death at any moment?), I counted the number of women who spoke at all in the new Star Trek movie. I got to 10:
- Kirk’s mother
- Her medical attendant
- Woman killed in the first Romulan attack
- Spock’s mother
- Uhura
- Girl Uhura spoke to in bar
- Uhura’s green roommate
- Officer on Enterprise
- Someone I can’t remember
- Someone else I can’t remember
Now, I like Star Trek. I’m glad they rebooted the franchise, and I think the alternate timeline story is great. I get that the story focuses on the original characters, and I’m not asking for a Battlestar Galactica/Starbuck gender switcheroo. But why on earth does this bright shiny future have every commander, instructor, and most of the officers as men? Gene Roddenberry wanted his wife to play the Enterprise’s first officer and the network made him recast; 40 years later and we’re in the same place. Don’t even get me started on the miniskirts: I want people to wear whatever they like, but you’re hardly likely to get picked to go on an away mission or be able to help Scotty fix the Enterprise’s engines if you’re running around in a miniskirt and high heels.
I loved the movie, but I agree with you on this. I wanted to see more women in it. (They did a much better job with having POC in the secondary roles than women.)
Some people have been arguing that they should have done a complete reboot and made Kirk or Bones a woman. Meh. I’m glad they didn’t do that; I like these characters.
I would be interested to do the math on the secondary characters and see how many were women/POC/etc. I know on the Kelvin, there are women on the bridge but they don’t speak; the engineering officer is a white guy; the nurse wheeling the wheelchair is an Asian guy, and the pilot of the shuttle is African-American. And there’s a couple of other white guys in there (one of whom is Randy Pausch, so there’s some trivia for you).
Er, I’ve seen it three times. Maybe next time I’ll do the tally.
P.S. For the record, I got an account just so I could log in and comment.
And I just figured who one of the people you can’t remember was. It was the woman who was in charge of the shuttle bringing recruits to Starfleet Academy, who pimp-slaps Bones into getting into his seat. She appears later, when they’re sending everyone from the Academy off to their various ships.
Thanks for creating an account and for helping me remember one of the speaking female characters. I agree that they did a better job of including POC, which actually made the dearth of women stand out even more to me.