Oh it is an exciting time of the year to be a Trekkie. IMZADI II, a new Star Trek novel by Peter David is coming out and it features an appearance of Sgt. Roger Tang. This has the Pork Filled Payer excited because our producer is named Roger Tang, and no, it isn't a coincidence.
It seems that Roger Tang has something that he is using as blackmail over Peter David and it is safe to say it is working because this is like the 3rd appearance of Sgt. Roger Tang in a novel. Now the always reliable Sergeant from Starfleet Security has to wet nurse some Klingon bozo. For exact details, read the darn book.
However, this got our group talking about the whole Star Trek world. We have decided that it should be a mandate that all writers must have actually dated a woman and carried on an actual physical relationship before they are allowed to write a script involving a female character. This is my only explanation to why every stinking female character in the Star Trek world is fairly underdeveloped as a character, but is always overdeveloped when it comes to breast size. The only thing I can tell from the future if it were to develop along the lines of the Star Trek universe is that the women of the future will sport a healthy rack up front, and there will still be no cure for male pattern baldness.
Lets take a look at one Jadzia Dax, a woman that has a 600 year old squid living in her throat that she willingly swallowed. It has something to do with their culture. It is somehow an honor to have swallowed this creature, known as a trill, or a a symbiont (a euphemism for a parasite) and share in its many years of existence. Jadzia can usually be found prancing around on the Deep Space Station number 9 in the series by the same name. Well, at least she was. There is some question to whether or not she recently bit it. Of course, the squid survived an encounter with a nasty enemy, but it looks like the host body is gonna die.
The character Jadzia never really developed. The previous body the squid inhabited was a male named Curzon and it was the mentor of the station Captain, Benjamin Sisko. Now Curzon used to get drunk, listen to Klingon operas, and kick some ass in a fight. Jadzia has all of these memories but we never really see her knocking down the sauce and trying to kick some alien's as that is trying to pick up on her in a bar. Why is that? She never really loses her temper and goes postal, even though she is dating a Klingon named Worf. You would think that at least once she would haul off and whack him one just for flinching.
Another really undeveloped character is the captain of the starship Voyager in the TV series by the same name. Captain Catherine Janeway acts tough one moment and act so fragile the next that I really want to barf. It doesn't fit the model of captain of a starship, which might explain why she got lost in some space fog and ended up like, 40 jillion light years from home. I could see this happening to my sister if she was piloting a space ship, but not a starfleet captain.
You see, Starfleet is supposed to be the home of only the best of the best in the Universe. A good parallel is the staff aboard a US or British submarine. Only those men of the highest caliber are allowed to become a submariner. A Starfleet Captain is not made, they are born, hatched, cell divided, or however their particular species creates little ones. It is a rank that most people can only dream of attaining. To put it into modern terms, it is a bit like being made captain of a US or British submarine. Janeway simply does not fit the mold.
Oh she could, trust me, she could. The actor can carry the role but the writers simply have no idea of how to develop the character and it is easy to see why. Think of your stereotypical Trekkie. Sorry, I have a life and I only watch the shows from time to time. However, you know the type. They are not the most fashion conscious, they do not date as much as the rest of us and they have a tendency to be able to recite even the most obscure plots and references. They also have a tendency to really like Monty Python way too stinking much. OK, do you have that image in your mind? Now think if Trekkies were a submarine corps staffed by only the geekiest of the geekiest. Now imagine the geeks that those geeks look up to in reverence. Those revered geeks, the same ones that are dealing with issues of never successfully copulating with a woman, but have fantasized heavily about the advantages of sex with a Betazoid, those my friends, are the writers for Star Trek. That is why the character 7 of 9, a former Borg, has hooters bigger than her head. Why, you ask? Go back two sentences and re-read the betazoid fantasy until it starts to click.
Star Trek desperately needs to develop its plots and it's female characters like they developed the male characters. We know that Captain Janeway can kick the as of anyone on her crew, lets see her kick the living shit out of someone on her crew. As far as I am concerned she can start with Tom Paris. For those of you blissfully ignorant of the happenings of this series, Tom Paris is supposed to be the romantic male lead. Most women find him marginally more attractive than Will Riker from "TNG," but this is sort of like saying you prefer to stick your hand in a vat of boiling oil slightly more than jumping into a huge meat grinder. Both characters exude sex appeal in much the same manner that an infected scab exudes pus.
Voyager has so many problems that it is hard to know where to start. They always seem to run into hostile aliens and they are always looking for a way to get home, but they never seem to make it. That plot premise was funny on "Gilligan's Island," but occasionally the Castaways had plots that had nothing to do with hostile Hawaiian tribes or getting the heck off the rock. What Voyager really needs a run-in with aliens that are not hostile for once. They should run into some aliens that are warm and invite them to live with them, but turn out to be like that guy at a party that you really want to get away from because the cite inside references to Monty Python and wonder out loud why you do not get it? Yeah, you know, a Trekkie. Thats what they should run into. Aliens that are so annoying the crew runs for their freaking sanity.
I find it interesting that the most developed female character out of any of the various episodes is Lwaxana Troi, mother of the busty Counselor in the series, "The Next Generation." Not only was that character well developed, but Majel Barrett was also Nurse Chapel. the voice of the computer in the first series, TNG, DS9 and Voyager, and Star Trek movies I-VI, but she was also married to the series founder, Gene Roddenberry. This is not a very good trend.
Voyager starts it's new season this week and I for one am hoping to see Janeway kick someone's ass. The same with the rest of the women in both active series. I want to see women writers deal realistically with relationships with both men and women and women and women. I want to see Major Kira in a pissy mood because she is pregnant and that is just the way it is, dammit.
And I want to see a cure for male pattern baldness.
