I do love a good romance – but, correspondingly, I loathe bad romance plots with the sullen resentment of a thousand gothic teenagers. One bad romance staple that is particularly likely to make me scowl is the Stupid Misunderstanding. Any of you who’ve ever read a mainstream romance, or watched a romantic comedy movie probably know exactly what I’m talking about – X meets Y, X and Y get along real well, X and Y do some kissing, X says/does/fails to say/fails to do something dumb which Y misinterprets/overanalyzes, X and Y have a temporary but dramatic breakup until they come to their senses at the end and realize that”¦ It was all just a Stupid Misunderstanding! They actually are Meant to Be! Yaye!

Plots that rely on at least one of the main, sympathetic – possibly even viewpoint – characters being idiotic enough to not recognize the Stupid Misunderstanding for what it is (y’know, stupid) from the beginning just never sit well with me. They feel too much like they’re expecting that the audience is about as dumb.

I can hear the cries of indolent, mediocre writers even now – “but a romantic subplot, like any other plot, requires conflict! If you take away our Stupid Misunderstandings, where will we get our conflict? Surely, you don’t want us to make one of the romantic leads a villain!”

Well, actually, that could be kind’ve interesting”¦ But no! No. What I want, O Lazy Writers, is for more of you write the sort of interpersonal conflict in a romantic subplot that developed between DS9‘s Kasidy Yates (played by Penny Johnson) and Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) in the fourth-season episode “For the Cause.”

In this episode, the audience – and Captain Sisko – learns that Kasidy has been secretly working with the Maquis, former Federation colonists who have refused to go along with Federation territory trades that would force them to relocate. Kasidy’s involvement with the group was necessarily secret, because the Maquis are very much personae non gratae with the Federation, as they’re a major source of friction between the Federation and the Cardassians.

When Captain Sisko’s staff first tells him that they suspect that Kasidy Yates is working with the Maquis, he’s understandably pretty shaken by the notion. And when he learns for sure that it’s true, he tries desperately to find a way to avoid doing what he knows he must, attempting to convince Kasidy to go on a sudden, unplanned vacation with him which will prevent her from making a delivery to the Maquis at which, Benjamin knows, she will be arrested.

But Kasidy is determined to do her job, even the illegal parts, right on time. She goes to the rendezvous with the Maquis, makes her delivery, and is exposed as a smuggler. Benjamin has no choice but to turn her in.

Well! That’s certainly not a Stupid Misunderstanding. That’s a great big massive problem, isn’t it? The sort of conflict that would really test a relationship.

Actually, it’s better than that. Because the writers are able to use this idea – that Kasidy Yates is a Maquis sympathizer – not only as a way of introducing conflict into the Kasidy/Ben relationship, but also to make Kasidy a stronger, more interesting character.

Because, despite his fears when he realizes what she’s been doing, Kasidy hasn’t been using Ben to further her activities with the Maquis. She really does love him. So much so that she voluntarily (and it is voluntary – there’s a section of the plot that I’m leaving out for space reasons that, among other things, requires that everyone who was waiting to arrest the Maquis at the rendezvous return to the space station before doing so, leaving all of the smugglers free to escape) returns to face her punishment, hoping that after she’s served her time, she and Benjamin can salvage their relationship.

Kasidy isn’t an opportunistic, amoral smuggler. She’s a woman of deep convictions, aiding the Maquis because she really believes that it’s right, and then facing the consequences bravely in the hopes of salvaging a relationship that’s clearly very important to her.

The relationship kind’ve has to be important to her, of course, if the character is to recur, because there’s no real reason for her to be on the show otherwise. Kasidy is not a main character, and was clearly marked from her first appearance on DS9 as a Love Interest. Benjamin didn’t even meet her by chance – he was actually set up on a blind date of sorts with Kasidy by his son (in the third-season episode “Family Business”).

But even though Kasidy as a character seems to have been created solely to fuel Benjamin Sisko’s romantic subplot, she was developed over the course of the series into a truly interesting supporting character in her own right. “For the Cause” was the first episode, for me, which really demonstrated Kasidy’s depth and strength, firmly establishing her as a principled, resolute woman – but it was not the last. And that depth of character made all of her later interactions with Benjamin far more interesting and engaging than they might otherwise have been (for example, her frustration with his protectiveness in “The Changing Face of Evil” in season seven).

Way better than an endless string of Stupid Misunderstandings.

1. Star Trek was just for women
2. Open Thread: the new Star Trek movie
3. The Last Few Weeks on Chuck – Predators, etc.

No, this is not the most appalling instance of misogyny I’ve come across. It’s just one example of those very subtle things that can make you think an actress is less talented than her male counterpart in a similar role. Even in sci-fi, with characters who aren’t supposed to be human, producers are more concerned about an actress’ visual appeal to the audience than they are with the character’s visual integration into a story.

1. Roslin as Female President
2. MST3K on female stereotypes
3. Note to Self: On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits

This is one of the very best series I have ever seen in terms of the portrayal of women. Off the top of my head, the only other show I can think of to contend with it is DaVinci’s Inquest. This is also one of the best and most consistent series overall to last seven years – many shows have been equally good for a couple of seasons, but to sustain that quality for that length of time? Amazing.

I find myself wondering if it’s any coincidence – the overall amazing quality of the show and its overall amazing equality of its representation of women as people. We’ve noted in the past that sexist ads tend to be for crap products, and theorized that this might happen because discriminating customers neither buy crap nor see women as lesser beings, and so the ads are meant to repel choosy people who might complain about poor quality. This seems even more apparent in TV.

Both Deep Space Nine and Da Vinci’s Inquest represent a convergence of top-quality writing and top-quality representation of women. Xena would rate a “damn good” in both categories – imperfect, but still a step forward. House would rate a “so close and yet so far” on both counts: the dialog is frequently excellent yet the cases and plot arcs (Tritter, for example) are often quite dodgy, and while it occasionally represents women very well, it consistently drags Cameron the perpetual teeny-bop girl along behind like an albatross.

Do bigotry and low-quality go hand in hand? Is bigotry really just the need to denigrate one group to make another look better? To skew “survival of the fittest” in favor of your group or the group you rely on for security? Is there a correlation between appreciating women and appreciating more cerebral and intelligent programming? Is bigotry anything more than a by-product of insecurity?

1. Star Trek was just for women
2. Open Thread: the new Star Trek movie
3. Space Wars by Michael J Coumatos, William B. Scott, and William J. Birnes

Technically he’s her first officer. But let’s examine some visual cues. Janeway doesn’t get a throne smack dab in the middle of the bridge like every other Starfleet captain: she and Chakotay both have chairs in the middle, side by side, positioned so the casual observer would have no clue who’s in charge. When dramatic events occur, Janeway frequently turns away from the camera – from us – to look at Chakotay, who continues to look at the action. Basic human body language: the person in charge does not look away from the action during a tense moment. If the chairs simply confused us about who was in charge, Janeway’s “Oh, my god, Chakotay!” glances confirm that he’s in charge, not her.

I mean, he’s not… according to the text. But he is, according to the visuals. Human brains rely more on visuals than on what they’re told. The network or producers know what they’re doing here. Jack O’Neill never turned to stare in shock at his second-in-command when an alien proposed to kill them all – it was always the reverse. Though Jack did sometimes look at Daniel… which prompted about five billion internet debates on chain of command, and whether a civilian adviser (Daniel) was technically in charge during non-combative moments on a mission. See the power of the visual?

And don’t get me started on the ‘ship. There’s some romantic something not going on between Janeway and Chakotay (at least not so far), but he calls her by her first name and she talks about not being able to imagine a day without him, and by season four, it kind of feels like they’re Ma and Pa, and the crew is their big family of kids and grandkids. I could puke – seriously.

So even though Janeway’s characterization avoids being gendered or poorly drawn (at least relative to everyone else – it’s not the best written show ever), the powers that be make it very clear that she needs a man to complete her command. Never fear, boys – she may appear to be controlling lots and lots of men, but she’s needed a man to help her do it every step of the way. Your natural superiority over women remains intact. /sarcasm

1. This Week on Heroes – Cold Wars
2. Do men belong in the corridors of power, or zoos?
3. Blake’s 7: 5 women I actually liked

Let’s examine what Anise and Seven have in common so we may gain greater insight into what TV producers believe constitutes a “sexy female” in the eyes of young male viewers. I’m basing my appraisal on half a season of Seven and Anise’s handful of Stargate episodes, partly because that’s what I’ve seen, but also because the initial impact of the character is where we really see what the producers were going for.

Both actresses are tall, white, large-breasted, puffy-lipped and blondish. Both wear skintight and/or revealing outfits. Both have the personalities of sponges. Both have questionable loyalties. Both state their sexual availability to male characters on the shows early on. Seven’s body still contains Borg implants that have the potential to exert control over her will; Freya is actually the human host to a Tok’ra symbiote (Anise) who has the potential to control Freya’s actions.

Worth noting: Anise is clearly the dominant partner in this symbiotic relationship. It’s Anise, the Tok’ra, who is a scientist, who has knowledge, who contributes ideas: Freya only surfaces to deal with Jack, who doesn’t trust Tok’ra. Freya is always sweet and nice and gentle and cajoling. Eventually, Freya at least has the chutzpah to come onto Jack assertively, with a comment about Anise preferring Daniel but Freya not letting the symbiote get its way. And that is the beginning and the end of the human woman’s assertion skills. Everything else is the symbiote.

And don’t forget the “alien” status. Aliens – like mail-order brides from third-world countries who don’t speak English or know their rights on American soil – are presumed to appeal to men looking for pliant women they can totally own.

So, according to TV producers, young men want to see personality-challenged hot bodies who put out. As always, my question is: is that what young men really want to see? If so, how did Aeryn Sun ever score any points with the guys? Or Chiana? What about Starbuck? They each share a trait or two with Seven and Anise, but overall they’re very different. And they lasted longer.

1. 20 on the 2..3rd????
2. Open Thread: is there a stigma against men reading women’s stories?
3. Blake’s 7: 5 women I actually liked

When I first started watching Star Trek: Voyager on DVD, I found I really liked Kes (Jennifer Lien). She was unfailingly kind and good and innocent and brilliant and all that Mary Sue stuff, but it worked for two reasons: the character’s background supported those traits, and Jennifer Lien played her part very low-key. Then the character developed: she chose to become The Doctor’s assistant, she worked to develop her innate telekinetic and telepathic abilities, and she formed relationships with everyone on the crew.

Then, during the third season, she broke up with her longterm beau and immediately switched to a wardrobe of skintight cat suits. But that wasn’t enough: they wrote a complicated episode in which she traveled backward through time, the entire point of which seemed to be to return her to the present with a full head of Miss Piggy hair instead of the short elfen cut she’d worn before that. I have read that Jennifer Lien was allergic to the adhesive used to attach her prosthetic alien ears, so the ear-hiding wig may have been out of consideration for the actress, but it was a really bad wig, and combined with the cat suits, what came across was that the character was being changed into a glamour girl sex kitten because she was no longer interesting as just… well, a character.

And then she leaves… and Jeri Ryan begins her infamous stint as Seven of Nine. I’ve only seen a few episodes with Seven of Nine so far, but she has the potential to be a truly interesting character. But when every show tried to copy Seven of Nine, they focused more on the unbelievably skintight cat suit and heels (I’m sure heels are a constant throughout the galaxy).

While I can’t be sure exactly why Kes was eventually written out of the show – and let’s face it; the average viewer isn’t going to investigate – what comes across is a sense that the show needed a sex kitten, so they tried to turn Kes into it, and when that failed for whatever reason, they brought in Seven of Nine.

I don’t have a problem with interesting female characters also being sexy. Particularly if they’re also sexual on their own terms – whether that means celibacy or kinky orgies. But men don’t get the same treatment on Voyager. As badly as Stargate treated Sam from Season Four on, they also put Daniel and Teal’c in ridiculously tight clothes and gave the female fans the “arm porn” they clamored for.

1. Portraying sex work as positive and prestigious
2. Open Thread: sex as a commodity in Hollywood
3. A Year in Review: The Best of 2008

Miles and Keiko O’Brien are right up there near the top of my List of Favorite Sci-Fi Married Couples, and have been for ages. I think the actors who portray the two characters – Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao, respectively – have a really believable on-screen chemistry, and the writers on both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine have done a good job of writing plenty of stories that involve both characters, and showing the audience how strong their relationship is. One particularly interesting on-going storyline is the one that began very early in the first season of DS9 (episode “A Man Alone”) – the story of the tension between Keiko’s marriage and family and her career.

Keiko had followed Miles to Deep Space 9, where he had been offered an exciting career advancement opportunity. But while Miles was moving up from transporter chief on the Enterprise to Chief of Operations for an entire space station, Keiko was going from respected botanist on a ship that came into frequent contact with new worlds to”¦ Really, really bored.

There simply wasn’t anything to do, botany-wise, on Deep Space 9. So Keiko branched out, and opened a school on the station, giving lessons to the resident children. Teaching provided the challenge and intellectual stimulation that Keiko craved, and tension between her and Miles was reduced. Unfortunately, the school failed (beginning to decline after the episode “In the Hands of the Prophets”), and Keiko was at loose ends again.

The solution, revealed in the third season episode “The House of Quark,” is for Keiko to leave the station.

There’s a six-month expedition on Bajor that’s in need of a chief botanist – and Keiko would be perfect for the job. So, after thinking it over and consulting with Miles, she takes it. And she takes their daughter, Molly (played by the super-adorable Hana Hatae), with her.

In the end, the six-month job stretches out longer than was expected (as such things do), and there are some inevitable tense moments when Keiko visits her husband on the station, and is horrified by what he’s done with their quarters (“Hippocratic Oath”), but for the most part the couple weathers the separation very well. Their biggest challenges always seem to be external – like when either Miles or Keiko is replaced with an alien impostor, as seems to happen a lot with married couples (see the episodes “Whispers” and “The Assignment”, which, back-to-back and joined by some other doppelganger episodes, like maybe the TNG episode “Power Play,” could make for an interesting themed marathon!) – rather than internal, and they are content enough with the security of their marriage to expand their family with the birth of a son, Kirayoshi (with a little – ok, a lot of – help from Kira Nerys).

There’s some more shuffling around throughout the rest of the series: Keiko and the children go to Earth, for a while, when the Dominion War is particularly intense, and then end up coming back to Deep Space 9. Ultimately, it’s revealed in the final episode that the whole family will be heading back to Earth, where Miles has been offered a teaching position at Starfleet Academy (“What You Leave Behind”). The important thing, though, is not where Keiko and Miles are, but only that they’re together.

And they seem to be a couple who manage to stay together, even when they’re apart – even during the highly stressful period when their career goals are in mutual conflict.

That’s what really impresses me about the O’Briens, and why they’re on my Favorite Sci-Fi Married Couples list. They’re played by actors who work very well together on-screen, and the characters themselves complement each other just as well. Keiko’s career is important to her, and so it is also important to Miles. That doesn’t mean that their relationship takes second place to her more personal ambitions, though – rather, it means that they discuss things, and compromise, and when even discussion and compromise fail to prevent conflict and tension, they deal with it in a way that allows them to maintain a loving union. Keiko was willing to move to Deep Space 9 in the first place, for the sake of Miles’s career advancement, and Miles, for his part, encourages her to follow her own professional development path – even when it means they’ll have to spend time apart.

Keiko is a great character, all-around. She’s a much-needed civilian face amid all of the Starfleet personnel on DS9. She’s also both a scientist and a mother, and a woman for whom career and family seem to be equally important – and a character who apparently balances these forces, showing that it can be done, even if it’s not always easy.

I like the long-running story arc about Keiko’s career. I like that, through it, the writers depict her relationship with Miles as a partnership – not marriage as hivemind, but marriage as two individuals working together toward a common goal. I like that it is made clear that, for Keiko, balancing the sometimes-competing elements of career, love, and children is difficult, yet possible.

Most of all, I like it that all of the work that Keiko does, on every level, is shown by the O’Brien’s happiness at the end of the series (and they are happy, even though leaving the station is certainly bittersweet) to be worth the effort she puts forth.

1. Open Thread: the new Star Trek movie
2. Star Trek was just for women
3. Space Wars by Michael J Coumatos, William B. Scott, and William J. Birnes

Of all the cultures Voyager’s crew meets in the Delta Quadrant, not one of them has been a matriarchy.

Maybe the writers feel having a female Federation Captain just isn’t interesting unless her gender is perpetually at odds with the hierarchy systems of everyone she meets. I was personally hoping the show wouldn’t be about Janeway being a woman, but rather she’d just happen to be a woman and the story would be about her and her crew.

A lot of sci-fi fans wouldn’t be bothered by this, I admit; we’re so inured to seeing Yet Another Patriarchy on every planet we visit in any franchise of sci-fi/fantasy. But one of the best qualities of of the genre is its ability to show other norms than the ones continually shoved down our throats here on earth.

There was an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine that accomplished what I’m talking about. The station took in some refugees which were led by a woman. In this race, women ran the households and had multiple husbands. When Major Kira failed to hide her surprise at this, the woman demonstrated equal surprise at the idea of women having only one husband. That sort of presentation opens up a thought avenue.

It may not be the show’s intention, but presenting an entire galaxy full of patriarchies just like the ones here on earth reaffirms the erroneous assumption that patriarchy is a natural state, and not one requiring dozens of laws and tons of enforcement to “keep women in their place”.

1. Blake’s 7: 5 women I actually liked
2. Star Trek was just for women
3. Open Thread: the new Star Trek movie

But what does feminine mean in this context? What is it an authoritative woman loses, in the eyes of men? The patriarchy insists, despite all logic and evidence, that all men are leadership material and no women are (occasional tokens excepted). The pressure men feel to appear leaders is extreme, and may well account for much of their typical aggression and violence. Women who demonstrate authority make it that much harder for men to continue the charade. And without the charade, they’re put into direct conflict with the patriarchy.

I have to admit to some personal experience here, so you can evaluate for yourself whether it’s coloring my view, or informing it. I’m a naturally authoritative and dominant woman, even though I don’t enjoy telling people what to do. People sense that I can function well in a crisis, so they come to me; and then they rebuke me for being… well, all those labels that usually get slapped on authoritative women. And of course, my sexual orientation must be lesbian, because a woman who’s comfortable with authority must wish to be a man, and therefore wish to have sex with women (two great leaps of illogic there). As it happens, I’m heterosexual; but in the meantime, I hope I’ve been a credit to the lesbian community. I have never taken that “accusation” as an insult worthy of correcting, even though I’m sure that’s how it’s intended.

So what a woman loses when she takes on power is sex appeal to men, which is based on her willingness not to take charge. Are men really unable to find their equals attractive? A number of marriages among my acquaintances – both equally powerful and responsible in the home and workplace – seem to indicate otherwise. But TV continues to perpetuate the myth.

I’ve written before about the lack of female characters who are allowed to exhibit leadership skills, using Sam Carter of Stargate as my primary example. As Sam’s command (authority) responsibilities grew, her leadership skills shrank until she was unable to get a roomful of pilots to listen to her lecture on a ship she helped build. And increasingly, she needed cuddling from her boss at the end of tough missions. Had she been able to command a roomful of young studs, had she been able to complete tough missions without hugs at the end, the show’s creators seem to feel she would have lost all sexual appeal to the target male audience.

Interestingly, I saw more female than male fans complain that Sam was “butch” or “a lesbian”. But maybe it was just a case of men not daring to be so un-PC, because I heard a lot of stories of male viewers developing sympathy for Sam the more she acted like a confused and needy teenager, and some examples appeared in comments on this site.

Leadership traits can be forged out of supportive upbringings with good values, or unstable childhoods that call for a lot of early crisis management. They can come from adult experiences, too, like boot camp, management training, or child-rearing. They do not come from the Y-chromosome, and they do not detract from any perceived value of the X-chromosome. If men find authoritative women unappealing, that suggests they’re incapable of a relationship between equals, and the job of feminism still has a long way to go.

1. I Used to Be Kind of a Feminist
2. Function versus feeling
3. Pepsi Max: Diet Soda for Men?

So I’m gonna cheat a little bit, and write about Leeta (played by Chase Masterson). This is easy, because while I think Leeta is great (there are not many DS9 characters that I wouldn’t describe as great, really), she does get a lot less screen time than most of the other female characters, and what I want to say about her is comparatively easy to express. It goes a little something like this:

Leeta is sexy. She is played by a lovely actress, she is usually dressed in low-cut and/or tight-fitting costumes, and her job is linked to her sexuality – she’s a dabo girl at Quark’s. Leeta is also sexual. In her first appearance on the show (in the third season episode “Explorers”), she flirts quite openly with Dr. Julian Bashir, whom she later dates. The two eventually break up, without acrimony, on Risa, where Leeta is shown enjoying a sensual encounter with another man (“Let He Who is Without Sin”¦” in season five).

Sexuality isn’t the only thing Leeta’s got going for her – she has a strong sense of justice (she becomes quite involved in the formation of the Guild of Restaurant and Casino Employees), she is friendly and seems to have many platonic relationships, and though she can be a bit flighty, she’s no dummy.

But her sexual energy is definitely one of her most marked traits. And even though that’s the case, Leeta winds up with one of the happiest endings on the show by the end of the series. She hasn’t had any traumatic injuries, and her emotional trauma is no worse than that which affects any other character (Leeta loses friends to violence, but so does everyone else on DS9). She’s fallen in love, had that love returned, and gotten married. She gets along well with her new husband’s family. And, in the second-to-last episode of the series, that husband is named Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance. Leeta gets love, health, and a husband who is politically powerful (and, presumably, a comfortable living as well).

How many other sexy, sexual female characters can you think of on television that end up so well? The sexy woman is usually the victim, or at least the recipient of some shaming or punishment from other characters on the show. She needs to be taught a lesson, made to pay, reformed, exposed as the slut she is – or else her sexiness needs to be linked somehow to a violent death or assault, in the constant sexualization of violence that we consumers and producers of Western media are so invested in.

There certainly are other female characters who are as flirty and as sensual as Leeta, and who wind up with happy endings anyway – but not many. As a person who doesn’t believe that there’s anything wrong with healthy expressions of adult sexuality, I’ll take all the Leetas on TV that I can get.

1. Open Thread: the new Star Trek movie
2. Star Trek was just for women
3. Salt director wrings hands about male love interest’s manliness