Men Boldly Going

So Felicia Day made a(spoilery) post about the lack of strong women in Star Trek Into Darkness and, oh happy coincidence, I just saw it yesterday so I can take a stand and say.

She’s totally right. Shocking. So I’m just gonna springboard that into my mostly non-spoilery take.

There are two prominent, named female characters in the movie, Uhura and Alice Eve’s character (who shall remain nameless because minor spoilers). If you guessed that they never even meet each other throughout the movie, you just win every prize ever. That’s hardly the tip of the problem though.

In the first movie, we got Uhura and Spock’s relationship thrust into the narrative. Mr. Plinkett (a reviewer who is really on target with his criticisms, but his framing device is just godawful indefensibly terrible) called this a case of the “Not Gays” pointing out that every single male character in the movie made some reference to women. The “Not Gays” were significantly reduced in this movie to just Kirk (because Kirk) and Spock, because Uhura, and I hope that’s because maybe it’s pretty inappropriate to make everyone on board the Enterprise heterosexual when you’ve got two prominent Star Trek cast members who are gay, including George Fucking Takei? Maybe that’s not cool?

Anyway, whatever. The new issue is that, if you didn’t know, Uhura never needed to have a relationship with a man to be an interesting and sympathetic character in the original series or movies. She flirted on occasion but it was not a defining characteristic of her character. In this movie? She’s all about the Spock relationship. She gets maybe one pretty decent scene divorced from the relationship, otherwise? Nope. Spock. Spock Spock Spock.

Meanwhile, in the original universe, Alice Eve’s character was a brilliant scientist, one of the best in the Federation, who stood up to Starfleet. In this one, she’s eye candy and victim. She is there to be tortured and saved and occasionally half-naked.

When you’re moving backwards from the 1970s, you really need to re-evaluate your writing.

There was one helms officer that I noticed, played by Aisha Hinds, and I thought that was fairly interesting. She was mostly relegated to the sides of the screen and had one line. The weird android guy got a close-up and more lines, while she didn’t. Bleh.

So yeah, I mean. Star Trek was created in the 1960s. It was prominently about men, especially the core trio of Spock, Kirk, and Bones. But it’s 2013 and it’s a rebooted franchise. It’s not wrong to expect more and expect better.

Anyway, as a summer blockbuster, it wasn’t a bad movie. It was better than the first movie, I think, a bit more Star Trek-y, and I did genuinely enjoy it. Just…eh. Eh.