>Hi, I am brand-new to this group, but I felt I had to jump right into
>this conversation with an anecdote.
>When I was a kid, I used to try play "Star Trek" with friends on the
>back porch. The problem was, if there was more than one girl playing,
>we'd have to fight over who got to be Lt. Uhuru.
>I was gleeful in one episode where a Lt. Tracy was introduced, but she
>and Dr. McCoy were reduced to cubes (supposedly all of the water content
>was taken out) by some alien villain, who crushed one of them. Of
>course, it was Lt. Tracy that would not return to life. How scarring!
Ah, anytime you'd see a new character beam down to the planet in the
company of the regulars, you just knew they were cannon fodder and that was
the last time you'd be seeing them until the reruns....
>In the world of mainstream entertainment, I have never seen a show that
>explored gender roles and cultural difference so sensitively.
It's definitely gotten better with each new verision, IMHO. 'The New
Generation' was still fairly limited as far as the regular female
characters went (boy-toy Troy or the caring surgeon mother figure were the
options I remember once the cool security chief got killed off), but
dropped more women in competent background roles. And then there's Dax and
Kira in the next offering .... they don't need to wear dresses, AND they're
taken seriously!
Progress is being made. Thank ye gods and little fishes.
meg
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:37 PDT