The strange needs of the new worlds to imagine more for his female characters

Star HikingThe utopian vision of an equal society, especially in terms of gender equality, has always been an complicated aspect of its idealized vision. It is true that the franchise has a legacy of beloved and nuanced female characters and defended these characters under the spotlights of more than six decades of narration. But it’s just as true as Star TrekThe often conservative vision of women in leadership roles, as figures of desire, and, as we can see, the stories of male characters sat down in hand with this feminist progressivism.

There may be, however, few individual seasons of Star Trek for the last 60 years which have reflected this dichotomy more than Strange new worlds‘ Recently finished third.

On paper, Star Trek: Strange new worlds He undoubtedly has one of the largest groups of female characters in his main distribution. From the current main crew, only four of the central characters in the series are men – Pike, Spock, M’Benga, and the addition of Martin Quinn of this season as a young Montgomery Scott – in comparison with six women: Una, Uhura, La’an, Ortegas, Chapel and Pelia. This gap only increased during the life of the series, Pelia replacing the former chief engineer Hemmer after the first season, and even the increased prominence of guest characters like the young Jim Kirk of Paul Wesley was balanced by an increasingly important role for the Marie Batelie Scrofano (in particular this season, as we will).

These female characters also served to facilitate part of Strange new worlds“So far, the most remarkable episodes and arcs. Uhura’s initial objective as a new perspective on board the Business During the season, the first prospered in episodes like “Children of the Comet” or in his mentoré relationship with Hemmer. The history of La’an with the Gorn has played an important role in Strange new worlds“Characterization of the species (for better or for worse), and it has received space to treat both this and, in episodes like” Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow “, his complicated relationship with Khan and the increases. The revelation by Una of her Illyrian heritage was made a culmination in the last moments of the first season of the series, leading to a decisive turn for actress Rebecca Romijn in the episode of the season two “Ad Astra per Aspera”.

But, sometimes, these female characters were also badly served during these first two seasons – a problem exacerbated by season three, rather than entirely created by him. The Arc of the Chapel nurse in the first two seasons largely articulated her relationship with Spock with Spock, who was reprimanding himself almost immediately after the two were allowed to meet (shortchanging another great female character in the vulcan fiancée of Spock, T’Pring, played by the star guest Gia Sandhu). Ortegas, on the other hand, was regularly criticized for never really having obtained his own moment to shine in the series, constantly seeking a scenario outside a superficial exploration of his role as Business Helmsperson (a frustration aggravated by the fact that the character, a veteran of DiscoveryThe Klingon Federation War, never was wary of wary aggressive Klingons or other extraterrestrial species or simply say things like “I pilot the ship”).

Unfortunately, different factors that led to Strange new worlds“The third season does not even approach the brand left by the seasons one and two – an experimental width of tone and gender leading to more Star TrekThe past, and a continuous question of its episodic format being increasingly friction with the work of the characters in the series, among others – one which has stood out the most was that these previous problems that the series had with underpublled some of its female characters suddenly started to impact almost all.

During his third season, he always felt Strange new worlds had little idea where he wanted to take his characters, but especially with his women. Prior Arcs Like la’an’s traumatic History with the Gorn Were Dropped or Shuffled onto Oother Characters: Ortegas Sustains A Nearly Fatal Injury from a gorn Attack in the Season’s Premiere, Setting Her Up to Take On That Arc Instate, To Mixed Results – Until the Penultimate Episode of the Season, “Terrarium,” in Which She’s forced to work with a similarly stranded gull pilot, but Erica’s attitude Towards the hostile species and his own traumatic memory of his injury are almost immediately abandoned in the episode with little exam to know why.

UNA’s relationship as Illyrian, a genetically modified humanoid who won a legal precedent against Starfleet’s rules against such species being part of the Federation, has manifested less like an arc for her and more like a conspiracy when she became essentially a “magic blood” donor to save the life of Captain Batel.

And then what was continued, or introduced to serve as a replacement for these previous arcs, was almost unified in the majority of female characters in the series: romantic relationships with men. Almost as soon as she was broken with Spock, season three presented Cillian O’Sullivan as a new love interest of Chapel (“new” in that he connected to his possible status quo in classic Star Trek) Dr. Korby, with his time in the series, largely, to exploration and his own agency, and more on the way in which her relationship made the characters of men advance with whom she was romantically involved. Even more immediately, after the break of Spock with Chapel, he was twinned with La’an, a decision that was a narrative out of nowhere and was only largely sold by the chemistry of Christina Chong and Ethan Peck – and again, was more in service to the character of Spock than in ‘or to his own agency in the matter.

Even UNA and Uhura could not escape this heteronormative focus either. Uhura was twinned with casualness with the newly presented brother of Ortegas Beto (Mynor Lüken) here and there throughout the season, only for their booming relationship to apparently painful and not to be picked up after the shots of a “what is Starfleet?” and “Four Vulcans and a half”. This last episode, among his a lot problems, could not even resist also capture una Strange new worlds“ Obsession with romance, giving its second most important arc of the season to a prolonged gag on a previous and sexually intense relationship with the role of Patton Oswalt with the Doug Vulcan, obsessed with man.

It is not even a romance plot is intrinsically a bad thing. The real problem is the fact that Strange new worlds Apparently, we only had the idea of ​​doing one with most of his female stars this season to give them any other type of arc. The only characters who escaped this framing were Pelia, which exists almost entirely as an excuse (delicious, that) for Carol Kane to make a gag after the other, and Ortegas, that the show still has trouble doing Nothing with, romantic or other. And in the end, all these romantic arcs were less on the autonomy of their female halves and in the service of the service of the arcs of men in their lives, stagnating more their characters throughout the season.

This culminating point and is symbolized the most obliquely in the last episode of the season, “New Life and Civilizations”, highlighting the culmination of the romantic relationship of Captain Batel and Captain Pike. Strange new worlds had done very little with Batel during his first two seasons outside of his role of interest in love with Pike, apart from endangering it in the attack on Gorn which ride the end of season two and season three (season three, once again, woke it up for its recovery, focusing on the impact of its situation on the Pike), but season three finals has placed their relationship to the first plan of the emotional program. In doing so, it was even less skum and who we knew we were as an individual and more to define the fact that she was Pike’s girlfriend.

The dramatic push of the final sees Batel confronted with the revelation (largely out of nowhere) that it is the subject of a paradox of predestination where it is intended to become a crystallized statue sealing an old evil race called Vezda for all eternity. But instead of focusing her own concerns and fears about taking this coat – she was almost literally rendered her job in the judicial division of Starfleet after a combat season to be put back in service – the emotional line of the episode becomes almost entirely on Batel. Also Anxious to sacrifice itself essentially in comparison), leading to an extended dream sequence where it uses its new caretaker capacities to put itself essentially on a pike through a hypothetical future where they age and to raise a child before it is crystallized and, essentially for the series, suppressed as a continuous character.

It was, in the end, the most important appearance of Batel in Strange new worldsAnd not only did this not really strengthen our understanding of its character, but it was almost entirely framed by the prospect of the emotional journey and the story of Pike with regard to its own predestined fate.

As Strange new worlds gets closer and closer to his own conclusion – 16 episodes of the series remain in the past two seasons, about two -thirds of A Season of a classic Star Trek Show – it is overwhelming that the apparently one of the few ideas he can have for his female characters defines their arc in relation to a man. With the time he has left, one of the lessons that the series must take to heart is to better explore the richness of the opportunities that its extent of female characters can provide, instead of pigeon them in the same arc again and again.

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