Star Trek movie fails the Bechdel Test

[mindstalk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dykes_to_Watch_Out_For#The_Bechdel_test

Or am I forgetting something? I guess Uhura and her nameless Orion roommate talked very briefly about Uhura's work, so maybe a partial pass.

There's a blog but it went on hiatus before the movie came out.

Comments

[fergusop.livejournal.com]

I was really hoping that Janice Rand or Christine Chapel would make an appearance in the movie.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

They're probably still in middle school...

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think there may have been a few words between Kirk's mother and the medic, but that's it.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Since the crew was set in 1966 I can hardly blame them. Creating a new hip female character that was buddy buddy with the rest of the crew would have been a little weird.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

It's an alternate timeline in which they blew up Vulcan!

[(Anonymous)]

To take a metaphor, I'd rather an alternate universe Simpsons blew up the nuclear power plant (a plot point) than that they introduce Bart and Lisa's new adoptive brother.

But hey, that's just me.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The Bechdel test doesn't require a major friendship, just a conversation.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that it would have eaten up screen time. As it was, they had two major leads (Spock + Kirk), a cast of future regulars (Scotty, Bones, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov) and two possible recurring characters (Pike, Spock's Dad) to introduce. It's no fast rule in cinema, but basically each future regular character you want to establish needs an introductory scene (5 mins) and at least one development scene (5 mins) plus involvement in the climax. Star Trek was able to shorthand a lot because people already knew something about each character.I guess they could have brought Gaila back in the finale but... why? They can always introduce another female character in the next film. In this one they had a minimum of 7 characters to introduce to non-ST watchers, and all but one of them (thanks to the 60s) were already written as male.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I'd also note that the choice to assemble exactly the original cast, including minor characters who AFAIK never had that much of a role (Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, and for that matter Scotty as a person rather than an engine fairy), despite the alternate-ness and contortions involved, is itself a choice. Kick/Spock/McCoy are inviolate for what they wanted to do, with their classic character dynamics, but if you're going to kill Vulcan and Spock's mom, no one else really need be safe.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

Uh, wasn't the green-skinned girl called Gaila? She had a name. They used it more than once in the movie. And she and Uhura had a conversation about Uhura's work. Admittedly it was to distract Uhura from the guy hiding under the bed, but fact that they were talking about Uhura's translations was pretty important to the story.

As for the lack of female characters in this movie, I'm willing to let them away with it in the reboot because all the major characters in the original Trek were written as male. Sure, they could have pulled a BSG and made Sulu a chick... but they're not BSG.

And I think they gauged their audience right when they gave us a non-realistic, not gritty, homage to the original. We've had our share of gritty franchise reboots (Batman Begins, Casino Royale) and we've seen our share of gritty sci-fi on screen. Most people remember Star Trek as being the opposite of serious sci-fi: technobabble invented to disguise the fact they couldn't film ships landing on a planet; Kirk bedding green-skinned babes; Spock and Kirk visiting the 30s Gangster planet. The reboot managed to pay homage to the original in a manner that straddled the fine line between tongue-in-cheek and seriousness.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Probably did gauge their audience right, though not most of the group I was with, I think we had approval from 1/8. I'm not sure "lack of giant plot hole" has to mean "gritty". And yeah, there are reasons for it to mostly fail Bechdel's Test, perhaps legitimate ones, but it still mostly fails. At an individual case level it's an observation, not an attack; the attack comes in the pattern.

[lyceum-arabica.livejournal.com]

so i haven't really seen the original star trek since I was in elementary school... but I seem to remember that while the girls on the ship left a lot to be desired, it was not unusual for kirk to have to deal with a strong willed/intelligent female on whatever planet they ended up on.

mind you, if i went back and looked at it I might find that the strong female s were in the alien/monster category, and only the cute damsels in distress were friendly, but you never know. I think at least the 70's tended to have more independent and useful female characters than we do in movies now. Drove me mad when I realized the cartoons I grew up with in the 80's were *far* more egalitarian than the ones on cartoon network now.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

TOS had the Romulan Commander (cloaking device). I think TNG had Deanna Troi's mother, though I know her only from novels. I don't know how common such strong female antagonists were, or even if the Commander was even that strong, though Diane Duane did a good job with the aunt she made up.

DS9 and Voyager were pretty good in their own casts, but then we had Enterprise.

[mlc23.livejournal.com]

Just heard an NPR interview with JJ Abrams this morning where he got asked about this. He spoke mostly about trying to work within the framework of the given characters, making Uhura stronger, etc. but then mostly went on to mention the strong women in the other TV series he works on.

My comments about the movie belong in the other post, but since this one is fresher:

- The lack of good science in ST doesn't really bother me and never has. Gene Rodenberry imagined it as a Wagon Train to the stars and I think the "sci-fi" setting allowed him to explore social issues in a way that was more palatable to a 1960's audience. I don't think it was ever much about the science.

-The "reboot" didn't bother me either. When you approach the level of major cultural icon/myth (as ST certainly is) then sticking to a continuity becomes extremely limiting and frustrating in its own way. I liken it to Superman who has been reinvented many, many times and appeared in dozens of unrelated incarnations including the latest: Smallville. But then maybe I just read too much fanfiction :)

As I said elsewhere: I'm about as hard core a ST fan as you can get without losing one's dignity (at least a dozen major conventions) and I loved it. It will be interesting to see what my dad thinks when I take him next week as he's a huge fan of the original series from first airing.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, never's been about the science. At one level I can't fault it for that... on another level, feels like I can, in that it'd be better not to have to make excuses. It's not bad Trek, but Trek is bad. :p

I don't think I had any complaints about the reboot per se (as I pointed out elsewhere, my favorite Rogue has little to do with the comics); my real complaints were about the story not working well on its own merits. Plot coincidences, and mass slaughters swept under the emotional rug.