Lack of female characters in the new Star Trek

[sqbr]

Unspoilery thoughts: Overall awesome, cast all did a pretty good job, Spock and Bones especially. But Bechdel test FAIL(*) (also physics fail, but I can live with that).

Spoilery thoughts:

Non-gender-related thought: I really liked that they made it an explicit Alternate Universe, that way they have the freedom to diverge from original canon (and boy did they ever) but still acknowledge it's existence.

But: I'm pretty annoyed by the lack of any female characters who aren't mothers or love interests, apart from like one line from that woman on the first ship. Ok, yes, the main cast are almost all male, can't fix that.

But here are some characters that could have been female:
The captain at the start
The Starfleet guy who tells Kirk off and then later promotes him
The redshirt with the explosives
Some of the Romulans. Nero. (Oh wait but then that would be someone avenging the death of their husband, noone does that :/)

Uhura was pretty awesome, she got to be competent and more than just a love interest. (Yay interracial relationship, wouldn't have seen THAT in the original series. Also she and Spock were cute)
But all Spock's mother got to do was say "I'm proud of you" and then die, and Kirk's mother was noticeable mainly by her absence. Even during her ONE SCENE all she really does is be sad and make a bad suggestion for a name. How does she feel about Kirk wasting his life? Or going to Starfleet? It feels like all she did was give birth to him but otherwise he is 100% his father's son.

Geeky gender thought: Also Winona Rider is way too young to be Spock's mother. Isn't he like 60 at this point? His father looked older, and he's got slow Vulcan aging on his side!

(*)The conversation between Uhura and her room-mate doesn't count, imo, because while she may not have been explicitly saying "Leave so I can have sex with Kirk!" that was the intent of everything she said.

Comments

[trouble]

But they could have had Number One. Christine Chapel. Janice Rand, even! They're all cannonical! *sigh*

[deathwombat.livejournal.com]

I also found the movie quite awesome, especially the opening battle. The minimal/minimalistic sounds for shots in space I thought were quite good too.

Regarding Spock he's actually only about 36 when the movie is set. But with Winona Ryder I didn't realize that it was her until the end credits when I went "Holy crap that was Winona Ryder?!"

The only thing I didn't like is the disregard for the Secondary Characters like Chekov, Sulu and Scotty. They each had a moment or two and then just faded into the background.

[sqbr]

Oh yes. But I guess my point is that they could have made exactly the same film with more female characters.

[sqbr]

Given that Winona Rider is 38 I think my point still stands :)

[greymalkin]

"Yay interracial relationship, wouldn't have seen THAT in the original series"

Ok it wasnt a relationship, but the original Star Trek in fact was the first fictional television programme in America to ever show an interracial kiss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series#Episodes

[sqbr]

*nods* The unspoken end to that sentence was "..given how much crap they got for just an interracial kiss". I didn't mean it as a criticism of the old series, it did really well for it's day, I was just thinking about what aspects of the film continued the vision Gene Roddenberry started.