Oh Captain, My Captain

This is the third post in a series (that has been delayed over and over) about the Bechdel Test as it relates to Star Trek--the results of which come from Trekkie Feminist. My question or exploration or whatever is all about why exactly it is that Voyager ranks so much higher than the other shows. So, as you can probably guess by the title, this one is about how the captain in a Trek show relates to its ability to pass the Bechdel test. Here we go:

There's a saying in the Doctor Who fandom that, "You never forget your first Doctor." And, in my experience at least, that's true. Mine was Tom Baker. I watched reruns of his tenure on PBS with my dad when I was a little girl. So, even though I didn't become a real, diehard fan until the reboot, I still hold a special place in my heart for Baker and his scarf-wearing, Jelly-Baby-eating antics.

It's kind of the same thing with Picard. I very clearly remember watching the first seasons of TNG when I was a kid. Even though, at the time, I was really young, I have very clear memories of seeing those episodes when they were new. And, because of that, I guess, I'll always have a special place in my heart for that ship, crew, and captain.

I was, though, appalled and not 100% surprised to see TNG ranked so low and Voyager ranked so high. As I pointed out in my first Bechdel post, as far pure as numbers go Voyager doesn't actually have any more regular female cast members than TNG or DS9 but one obvious difference is the parts these women play. In particular, Voyager has a female captain.

A lot of what I saw online when these test results were released were comments that followed this kind of logic-- "Well, of course Voyager did better. It has a female captain so it's more female centric."

I mean, I guess you could say that but, what does that even mean? Instead of just stopping there, I think it's important to think about what's really going on here. I think it's a little more nuanced than that. Because, ultimately, Star Trek is about a ship, its crew, and its captain. The captain is a separate entity because everything rests on their spandex-clad shoulders.

Everything in Trek goes through the captain. Every plot, every sub-plot, practically every character arc--somehow the captain ends up getting involved. I'd love to go through (on my next re-watch, I guess) and see how many scenes are shot in the captain's ready room. Anyway, if everything eventually filters through the captain, then the female crew members are likely to end up having conversations with them.

When I first decided to further analyze Trekkie Feminist's results, I went back and watched the first three episodes from TNG, VOY, and DS9's Season Fives. TNG passed. DS9 failed. VOY passed. Actually, every single episode of Voyager's Season Five passed the test and it was the only Trek series to have such a season. In the episodes of Voyager that I watched, Janeway and Seven talk, Torres and Seven talk, and Janeway and Torres talk.

As you scroll through the official results, Janeway's name comes up over and over. In fact, if you subtract the times an episode passes solely on the basis of Janeway speaking to another female character, you lose eleven episodes--out of a 26 episode season.  This--the most successful season in Trek according to the Bechdel Test--goes from a 100% rating to about 58%.

If any of the other Treks had had a female captain, I think its Bechdel score would've gone right up. And it's not because she would be having episodes about boys and periods and chocolate and whatever other clichés women are supposed to talk about. It's not because having a female captain means the ship is steered in a more girly direction. It's because eventually everyone has to talk to the boss. If Sisko has been a lady, all his deep conversations with the "old man" would've ranked. If Picard had been a Jeena instead of a Jean Luc, all his discussions with the doctor or the counselor (wherein she said, "He's hiding something, Captain.") would've ranked.

But why is any of this this important anyway? Well, because stuff like Trek is aspirational. Kids watch this stuff and they pick a character that seems most like them and they say, "That's me." or "That could be me." I know I did. As a kid watching TNG, I wasn't a huge fan of either Crusher or Troi. They just weren't interesting to me. My favorites were Data, Geordi, and Picard. I loved them and, in many ways, I identified with Geordi and Data--even though they weren't girls.

But then Voyager came along. At just the right time. I was in 5th grade when the show premiered and I loved Janeway. I loved Torres. I loved Seven. Re-watching the series last year, I found that I still love them. I admire their smarts and their tenacity. I admire the way they argue from opposite sides of the same goal. I love the way Janeway treats her crew like a family.

Growing up I felt like I was part of that family and I looked up to Janeway. And I think that is, at least for me, the key. I loved Picard. He was my first captain. I still love him. And, as an adult, I admire the choices he made, the way he handled himself, the way he governed his crew. But, as a kid, I didn't look up to him. I didn't aspire to be him. I looked at Janeway and I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be a leader. I wanted to have that same kind of agency as a woman in the real world. I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny and my own projects and then... I kinda did. I started my Shakespeare program when I was twenty years old because I thought I could. I decided to be a writer because I thought I could. I decided to watch all of Trek in a year because I thought I could.

How much do those things have to do with Janeway?  Did I have more confidence in myself and my abilities because I watched her be awesome for seven years?  I'm really not sure. But having her as a role model absolutely didn't hurt. She was and is important to me. And, in the end, maybe that makes her my captain.

What Are Little Girls Made Of? Exploring The Star Trek Bechdel Test #1

Alright so, just in case you're new to this series. I'm looking at the results of Trekkie Feminist's Star Trek Bechdel test and attempting to explore what it is that sets Voyager apart from the other series. This is the first post in that exploration.

I've been planning on writing a post about the terrible boyfriends of Trek for some time. After an entire year of Star Trek, I was a little overwhelmed and, for a while didn't have it in me to get to this post, but the idea kept popping into my head. Why is it that so many of the female-centric episodes of every Trek (except Voyager) involve a terrible boyfriend, potential boyfriend, or ex putting them in danger?

It's a problem that's been going on as far back as The Original Series. Aside from Kirk being everyone's ultimate bad boyfriend, we get an actual Bad Boyfriend episode and it's called: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" In this one, Christine Chapel suddenly hears from her long-lost fiancé and goes down to the planet he's inhabiting along with Kirk.  Lots of naked crazyness ensues and Chapel realizes this dude is a total creep.

But does it pass the Bechdel Test? It would if Chapel/Andrea had talked about something besides dudes.

This episode sets a precedent that would be followed pretty extensively in TNG, then to a lesser extent in DS9, not so much in Voyager, and then brought back "Deanna Style" in ENT.

Now, that's not to say that dudes don't also get relationship episodes. In fact, on this very day, 48 years ago, McCoy realized he was dating a dangerous creep when she turned into a salt monster and tried to eat him. The issue here is that, when a guy in Starfleet gets a girlfriend, he isn't usually the one who's ultimately in peril. But, when a female officer dates a guy, he usually ends up being a cad and she's either put in danger of some kind or forced to act out of character.

So lets start with TNG and what I'm always going around the house ranting about as:

 Deanna's Terrible Boyfriends

1- Deanna's terrible secret fiance, Wyatt. Actually this guy isn't awful or dangerous. He's just some guy in a turtleneck who she was engaged to when she was a little girl. That's not weird. Nope.
2-Alien Entity. This also isn't that awful except that he KNOCKS HER UP without her permission. She ends up with a beautiful little boy who she loves and then has to give back to the universe. I mean, what even?
3- Devinoni Rai. This freaking guy. Am I right? Just a scumbag.

4- Jev, the telepath. Jev and Deanna basically flirt and then, when she leaves his company and goes to bed, he enters her mind without consent and, in her dream state, proceeds to force himself on her in the form of her actual on-again/off-again BF, Riker. She falls into a dangerous coma.

5- Aaron Conor. This guy isn't so bad. He's just dedicated to his perfect colony and doing his job and, in the end, he's as affected by this brief romance as Troi is. Troi clearly has a specific taste in boyfriends though, right?

6-Ves Alkar. Super creep. He basically hooks up with Troi and then starts sucking away her life force to power his own. Troi almost dies, again. She falls into a coma, again.

Alright and then there's Riker and Worf. (Just FYI: I really shipped Worf/Deanna back in the day but I thought Worf/Jadzia ultimately made a better pair.) She ends up with Riker and they finally get hitched and you'd think she'd be done with terrible boyfriends who physically/mentally/telepathically assault her. But, no. There's Star Trek: Nemesis so...

7- Shinzon. Ok, this isn't a boyfriend. It's a legit attack by a dangerous, hostile stranger and it's absolutely horrifying. The fact that Shinzon (as Ves Alkar did during the series) appears to her first as Riker, makes it even more disturbing. This is everything that's wrong with the Troi=Victim problem in Star Trek.

It's worth noting that Beverly also had a couple of ill-fated flings. She dated her grandma's creepy life-suck boyfriend. She got way into Riker when he took a Trill symbiont but then couldn't hang when a woman took the same symbiont. Ultimately, though, she was always into Picard above all others. And, let's face it, he's a pretty good catch.

Moving on.

In DS9, Jadzia Dax almost makes a couple of questionable, life-altering decisions because she goes all doe-eyed over a one-episode boyfriend/girlfriend. This happens in Meridian and Rejoined. In spite of the way this gets on my nerves, I still feel that Rejoined was a pretty progressive episode.

Kira has a one-episode fling with Thomas Riker wherein he hijacks the Defiant and then gets captured by Cardassians. She has a weird almost-flirtation/almost-combative relationship with Gul Dukat but she always stands her ground. Otherwise, her most icky relationship is with Vedek Bareil. Though, I have to admit, I think it's just me that's creeped out by this guy. Unless it's not. Is anyone else creeped out by him?

Also in DS9, they turn this trope around in the episode, "The Muse," wherein Jake gets all messed up by his creative-energy-sucking girlfriend.

 Onto Voyager:

Alright, Janeway is basically married to the ship and, thus, doesn't have much chance for human-style romance. She gives it a brief shot with Chakotay in "Resolutions" who, honestly, probably would've been an amazing abandoned planet husband. That guy made her a bathtub. She has a flirtation with Prince Humperdink of the Delta quadrant but, after a battle of wits, its Janeway who has the upper hand.

She also makes herself a holodeck boyfriend and, again, it's Janeway who holds all the power. She even feels guilty for altering him to better fit her own personality. Oh, and she also gets it on with Tom Paris when they're both Salamanders but I'm not sure that counts because, you know, reasons.

B'Elanna is pretty much in it to win it with Tom Paris the entire series. Though they have their ups and downs, their relationship is basically steady and they provide one another with a realistic, safe, deeply felt love.

Kes shows up with Neelix but she sort of calls it off between seasons. This isn't a bad thing. As much as I love Neelix, he was a Bad Boyfriend. He was jealous, over-bearing, over-protective, and patronizing toward Kes. Once they broke up, they both became better characters.
Later, she has a one-episode flirtation with a guy named Zahir but he actually turns out to be a decent guy--instead her BFF, The Doctor, tries to kill her. Does this count as a Bad Boyfriend episode? I'm not sure. I'm leaning toward yes.

Seven of Nine. Ok, so Seven of Nine has a couple of romantic interests during the show, including one which took place solely in Unimatrix Zero. Harry Kim and The Doctor both had feelings for her but the feelings weren't mutual and the friendships didn't turn into romance in either case. At one point, The Doctor inhabits her body and does some flirting but this doesn't go anywhere. In the end, she somehow ends up with Chakotay, which, I mean, if you love hand-built bathtubs, it seems like you're doing pretty well.

And, finally, Enterprise:
I'll be honest with you, I've been up since five o'clock this morning and I've already been working on this post for two hours somehow and I'm getting really exhausted. I mean, seriously, I just forgot how to go "back" on Firefox so I'll try to keep the rest of this short : 

Aside from T'Pol's main squeeze, Tucker, she has a brief encounter with a radical Vulcan. I'm not sure whether this counts as a boyfriend but it's definitely an "encounter" and this guy ends up violating her and leaving her with an (apparently) incurable (and tabooed) disease.

Hoshi has a whole Beauty & The Beast thing with this creep in a castle. Is there another one?

Anyway, both of these episodes feel like they could've just been re-written with Deanna Troi's name all over them following this simple pattern:

 Here is an intelligent, capable officer of Starfleet who just happens to be female. She hooks up with a guy or flirts with a guy or just happens to be in the same quadrant of space with a guy and he ends up endangering her in some way and her plight becomes the focus of the episode. The plot revolves around this woman being a victim.

Aside from the whole Kes/Neelix weird relationship, which they got rid of pretty quickly, Voyager didn't seem to have these episodes. (And please correct me if you think of one or more Bad Boyfriend episodes) There were stories wherein B'Elanna, Seven, or Janeway were in danger but it wasn't typically because of a bad, one-episode relationship. And, moreover, most of the plots of Voyager's female-character-driven episodes weren't based on the old "woman in peril" device. It's like the difference in a knight and a damsel. The knight rides knowingly into danger to achieve some greater goal. The damsel screams her beautiful lungs out until someone rescues her.

In Voyager, the women are knights. Deanna Troi is a damsel in distress and usually her peril is at the hands of a man and, often, at the hands of a man she is romantically involved with.

Unfortunately, at least until Deanna Troi takes the Bridge Officer Test and gets a new suit of clothes, most of the Deanna-sodes were about her being a victim. Not about her figuring something out. Not about her solving the problem or working alongside her crewmembers to save someone else. They featured her in tears, in danger, or in a coma. And that's a pity. Eventually, they endowed her with more ability and responsibility but go back to that old, awful stand-by of the mind-rape in Star Trek: Nemesis.

So, I'm not entirely sure why they went in such a different direction with the female-led episodes in Voyager. Was it that having a female captain lead to different story lines? Was it part of the zeitgeist? Was it just a steady progression from TNG to DS9 to Voyager wherein everyone involved grew steadily more conscious of the role of women in their show? Were people asking the question, "What are little girls made of?" and getting new answers?

I'm not sure. I'll keep thinking about it.

But not right now. Right now I'm going to get some sleep.

One Year Ago: Starting Voyager

A Captain, An Engineer, and An Astrometrics Specialist Walk Into A Bar

The Mary Sue (who I've written a few things for) recently published an article by Jarrah Hodge and, basically, I ended up with a new (imagined) BFF. This chick (with some help) put every live action episode of Trek to the Bechdel Test (#1- Two named female characters. #2- They talk. #3-They talk about something other than men.) and reported her findings. Were they super surprising?

From: The Mary Sue

Not really. Though, Enterprise really let me down. I love that show and, while I feel that Hoshi and T'Pol both had strong character arcs, it's still disappointing that the ship's Science Officer and Communications Officer had so few (man-less) conversations. My main issue with Enterprise has always been in their missed opportunity to showcase an LGBT character (and you're welcome to read all about that in my love letter to the best Trek romance that never was: Reed and Hayes) but this is also troublesome.

The series that fared better than any other was Voyager. I considered putting a little "of course" in that sentence but, in thinking about this test as applied to Trek, that seems a little counter productive. I've read a lot of fans talking about these results and that seems to be the general attitude. "Of course Voyager passed, it was female centric/heavy/focused/dominated." But... it's not. Not really.

Here's what I did. After reading these results, I queued up Voyager SSN 5. The fifth season of a show is often my favorite--or at least often features a lot of my favorite episodes. It seems to be that time in a show's life when the characters are firmly set, the actors are very comfortable with their roles, and the writers have to dig deep to come up with fresh and interesting story lines. I feel like the fifth season of all these Middle Star Treks (aka- The Unitard Era) is when the show really comes alive so it seems like a good place to give it a test. Ok so, I watched the first three episodes of Season Five of Voyager. And here's what I found:

#1- They all pass the Bechdel Test. Easily.
#2- Each of their stories are driven primarily by a female character (Night: Janeway, Drone: Seven, Extreme Risk: B'Elana) This is a bit of a coincidence. The next episode in the line-up is a Chakota-sode. Still, I think it's a point worth mentioning--especially since the season premier focuses heavily on a female character.
#3- There are three women in this show.

Three women. How does that make the cast female heavy? Here's a little snapshot to better illustrate my point:

I'll be honest, I picked this look because I'm way into Janeway's sassy bob.

So here are nine people. TNG, DS9, and Voyager all had nine-member casts. It's apparently something everyone in development thought was super important from about 1987-1995.

It's good to see Sears Portrait Studio of the 23rd century is still upholding this kind of quality.

I don't know, I couldn't think of a joke for this one.

Alright, in TNG you have two regular, female cast members and with an optional third in Tasha/Guinan. DS9 is about the same because you get a rotating cast of female regulars in Kai Wyn, Keiko, Leeta, Kasidy and Ziyal. Anyway, you don't have to have a fancy Starfleet degree in mathematics to figure out that 2-3 out of 9 isn't a majority. It's not even half.

You could say, "Well, the Voyager women are more important in terms of ship's operations." Well, that's true in the case of the Captain, I suppose, and maybe that's the key. Because I don't think that Kira or Dax are less important than Torres or Seven. And the ship's engineer and astrometrics specialist are no more essential than the ship's doctor and counselor (though I would make an argument about Troi's character before/after her Starfleet Uniform) so why is it that Voyager is so far ahead of the other series in terms set forth by the Bechdel Test?

So here are a few thoughts:

#1- Is it the female captain that makes all the difference?

#2- Is it the actors?

#3- Is it a more specific treatment of the show's female characters in an episode-by-episode and long-term character arc breakdown?

#4- Is it that Voyager was just the most recent after two prior re-envisioning of Star Trek and the writers knew they needed to do something different but then fell off the wagon when it came to Enterprise?

#5- Did Voyager come along at a time when it could be influenced by other pop-culture? Something about the zeitgeist?

I have a few theories but I'm going to explore them in blog posts to come because this is an issue that really interests me. Star Trek is a show that has (obviously) been a huge part of my life and I like thinking about why and how it affects me, and what lessons I can take from it as a human, a woman, and as a writer.

So, because I'd like to talk about each of these ideas and don't want to make your eyeballs bleed by putting it all right here, I plan on, over the next few days, writing about my further explorations in the Trek Bechdel Test. I'm going to watch a few more episodes (probably the same SSN/Eps from DS9 and TNG and some later eps from TOS and ENT) and I'll get back to you. Especially about #3, which is something I've been wanting to write about for a while. Would you like a hint about its subject? Here's my gift to you. I feel like a benevolent parent letting their child shake their Christmas presents.

It's not a train set. Sorry.

A Note About The Bechdel Test: I fully realize the Bechdel test isn't a perfect measure of a show's ability to represent strong, female characters but it is telling. And it does present us with a way to observe and analyze the shows/movies we love in a quantifiable way--which can then lead to a dialogue about the treatment of female characters.


A Year Ago Today: Deep Space Nine: The Last Romp