A Look at Archer

[CharlesPhipps]

Go on then, explain to me why the left dominated entertainment industry thinks that the Star Wars fanbase wants a Mary Sue protagonist, a Sarah Connor who isn't Sarah Connor or a black female Dr Who.

Because Rey is awesome and Daisy Ridley does an amazing job with the athletics and being immensely likable with almost little too no script support.

You know who was also good at everything, a genius scientist, a masterful warrior, and beautiful?

Jadzia Dax.

And no one hated her.

Take a moment to think, though, on Sarah Connor and the other problems you have and maybe the problem isn't the gender or the ethnicity of the characters but the fact sometimes they're badly writing. Also, maybe sometime you're seeing things that aren't there.

Terminator Genesys and Dark Fate were shit.

But so was Salvation.

A dude in the lead didn't make it better.

[CharlesPhipps]

Indeed, that's also another major issue with Archer, we are constantly told that he's this great Captain, yet almost everything we see of him in the first two season says otherwise.

And while I do like that Star Trek Enterprise was set a hundred years before Kirk and even before the Federation, it never really took full advantage of that, like completely not having things like the Transporter, Phasers or even the Viewscreen, and even when the series did it was poorly executed like "Strange New World" or with how the Vulcans were portrayed during the first two seasons, and the Temporal Cold War was a completely unnecessary addition.

I loved the concept of the Temporal Cold War and felt it could be immensely freeing to the series of previously established continuity. You could also have characters like Archer comment on the future of humanity and be scared by it. "Vulcans and humans having babies!?" The positioning of the timeline meant you could also do jumps forward to Kirk or Picard's time.

For me, I wondered why they never did anything with it.

[clearspira]

Go on then, explain to me why the left dominated entertainment industry thinks that the Star Wars fanbase wants a Mary Sue protagonist, a Sarah Connor who isn't Sarah Connor or a black female Dr Who.

Because Rey is awesome and Daisy Ridley does an amazing job with the athletics and being immensely likable with almost little too no script support.

You know who was also good at everything, a genius scientist, a masterful warrior, and beautiful?

Jadzia Dax.

And no one hated her.

Take a moment to think, though, on Sarah Connor and the other problems you have and maybe the problem isn't the gender or the ethnicity of the characters but the fact sometimes they're bad writing. Also, maybe sometime you're seeing things that aren't there.

Like it or not, society expects different things from men as they do from women. For a man to be an action hero all he needs to do is grab a gun. For a man to be a slapstick star all he needs to do is get kicked in the nuts.

That is not true of women. Female heroes who act like men rarely work. I am not saying that is a good thing, but it is true. Which is why the majority of female action heroes who make it big are also sexy. And before CrypticMirror accuses me of needing to see a therapist again, let me pose this simple test: promotional material. I guarantee you that 99% of the promotional material you will find for successful female heroes will have her tits, butt or legs emphasised in some way. We're not in some great age of female liberation where kick ass women have taken media by force, we're in the same old one where looks are just as important as being a badass.

We have even seen this put to the test twice this year.
1) The Birds of Prey movie. The thing that most men remember about Suicide Squad is Margot Robbie's ass in short shorts. The thing those same men remember about Birds of Prey is Margot Robbie wanting to cover up and calling them perverts for disagreeing with her decision.
2) The Last of Us 2 with Abby's biceps which is now so infamous a discussion it has overshadowed all criticism.

And BTW, shall I tell you the BIG DIFFERENCE between Jadzia and Rey? Jadzia is a trained professional who has 7 lifetimes worth of experience inside her head. Such a woman has every reason to be good at everything. Rey on the other hand is a junk dealer from a desert planet in the ass end of space. She has no formal education, no formal combat training, no formal piloting training, and has never been in any other environment other than the desert. She didn't even know what the Force and the Jedi were until Han told her and yet within what is apparently a couple of days she was able to match anything we have ever seen Luke or Anakin do. Her skills do not match the backstory we are given.

[Link8909]

I loved the concept of the Temporal Cold War and felt it could be immensely freeing to the series of previously established continuity. You could also have characters like Archer comment on the future of humanity and be scared by it. "Vulcans and humans having babies!?" The positioning of the timeline meant you could also do jumps forward to Kirk or Picard's time.

For me, I wondered why they never did anything with it.

I too really like the idea of the Temporal Cold War, I think the issue is that it was just tacked onto Star Trek Enterprise without a real plan set, and of course is another case of the series trying to tell us that Archer is great rather than showing it.

I think the Temporal Cold War really should have been its own series, maybe set on a time starship like the USS Relativity, and really getting creative with time travel ideas much like Doctor Who does, dealing with parallel universes, paradoxes, weaponizing time concepts, exploring different eras and more.

[Madner Kami]

Star Trek - Relativity would be the ideal playground for writers who want to write science-fiction, but don't want to be bogged down by canon and execs who want name- and brand-recognition, but don't care for the interests of the fanbase attached to it. Instead we got Discovery and Picard.

I find this fairly representative for the modern approach to brands and big names and, honestly, it reflects quite nicely on society at large. Nobody wants to risk anything and only ever goes for the safe option, but everybody complains about how trampling the same ground over and over resulted in muddy ground that sticks to your shoes and slows you down. I can not emphasize enough, how refreshing shows like The Expanse are, simply because they tried something new without a safety harness, while at the same time a parody of Star Trek is more successful with the fans of Star Trek than contemporary Star Trek, simply because the parody actually sticks to the roots of what it parodies.

[CharlesPhipps]

Like it or not, society expects different things from men as they do from women. For a man to be an action hero all he needs to do is grab a gun. For a man to be a slapstick star all he needs to do is get kicked in the nuts.

That is not true of women. Female heroes who act like men rarely work. I am not saying that is a good thing, but it is true. Which is why the majority of female action heroes who make it big are also sexy. And before CrypticMirror accuses me of needing to see a therapist again, let me pose this simple test: promotional material. I guarantee you that 99% of the promotional material you will find for successful female heroes will have her tits, butt or legs emphasised in some way. We're not in some great age of female liberation where kick ass women have taken media by force, we're in the same old one where looks are just as important as being a badass.

I suppose I grew up with different expectations of these things. When I was a little Phipps, my favorite characters on G.I. Joe were Lady Jaye and Scarlet. Action stars like Sigorney Weaver's Ripley , Princess Leia, and Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 were people that I watched as any other. Yes, fanservice is something that tends to dominate a lot of fictional characters. I was also a massive fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

You're correct that the sexism tends to emphasize sex for female characters far more than for men. It sometimes gets changed like with Steve Amell's Green Arrow (that show absolutely loved showing off his body at every point) but it's only now that men are getting the same level of treatment for female audiences.

We have even seen this put to the test twice this year.
1) The Birds of Prey movie. The thing that most men remember about Suicide Squad is Margot Robbie's ass in short shorts. The thing those same men remember about Birds of Prey is Margot Robbie wanting to cover up and calling them perverts for disagreeing with her decision.
2) The Last of Us 2 with Abby's biceps which is now so infamous a discussion it has overshadowed all criticism.

1. What I remember most of that is the wacky zanny humor. Also, how I was glad they toned it down from Suicide Squad (albeit, unlike all but 1% of the audience, I recognized Harley's Suicide Squad outfit as Deborah Harry from Blondie's stage attire).
2. Abby got an enormous pile of shit on her that's just plain strange. It's also a bad example as while people utterly shit on Abby, I think a large part of that was just that she killed Joel. Becauae Ellie is the co-star and murders just as many people.

And BTW, shall I tell you the BIG DIFFERENCE between Jadzia and Rey? Jadzia is a trained professional who has 7 lifetimes worth of experience inside her head. Such a woman has every reason to be good at everything. Rey on the other hand is a junk dealer from a desert planet in the ass end of space. She has no formal education, no formal combat training, no formal piloting training, and has never been in any other environment other than the desert. She didn't even know what the Force and the Jedi were until Han told her and yet within what is apparently a couple of days she was able to match anything we have ever seen Luke or Anakin do. Her skills do not match the backstory we are given.

Yes, Rey is missing a backstory that would have made her character more interesting I think. Luke didn't start as a person able to fight Vader. However, this applies to male characters as well. In the excretable PERCY JACKSON movies, the main character defeats the female co-star in their first battle together despite having no experience with a sword because he is the CHOSEN ONE.

Imagine inserting a few lines on the Millennium Falcon:

Han: Where did you learn to fight, kid?

Rey: I learned to fight from Lor San Tekka, who raised me until I was old enough to take care of myself. He was a former Imperial Royal Guard.

And suddenly the character makes sense.

It's called good writing.

[Link8909]

Star Trek - Relativity would be the ideal playground for writers who want to write science-fiction, but don't want to be bogged down by canon and execs who want name- and brand-recognition, but don't care for the interests of the fanbase attached to it. Instead we got Discovery and Picard.

I think it would be a good playground even for fans of Star Trek, you could tell what if stories or even show aspects of the Star Trek history never seen.

I find this fairly representative for the modern approach to brands and big names and, honestly, it reflects quite nicely on society at large. Nobody wants to risk anything and only ever goes for the safe option, but everybody complains about how trampling the same ground over and over resulted in muddy ground that sticks to your shoes and slows you down. I can not emphasize enough, how refreshing shows like The Expanse are, simply because they tried something new without a safety harness, while at the same time a parody of Star Trek is more successful with the fans of Star Trek than contemporary Star Trek, simply because the parody actually sticks to the roots of what it parodies.

Honestly, I'm happy with what we are getting, personally better than Star Trek Enterprises first two seasons, while I'm all in favor of talking about what does and doesn't work with any Star Trek series, doesn't mean I'm gonna dismiss it because it wasn't doing what I personally wanted it to do or is just different.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

And BTW, shall I tell you the BIG DIFFERENCE between Jadzia and Rey? Jadzia is a trained professional who has 7 lifetimes worth of experience inside her head. Such a woman has every reason to be good at everything. Rey on the other hand is a junk dealer from a desert planet in the ass end of space. She has no formal education, no formal combat training, no formal piloting training, and has never been in any other environment other than the desert. She didn't even know what the Force and the Jedi were until Han told her and yet within what is apparently a couple of days she was able to match anything we have ever seen Luke or Anakin do. Her skills do not match the backstory we are given.

Unless something was in Legends or even one of the canon shows, I don't find a problem with Rey's force abilities as it seems as well that a lot of people don't.

Star Wars episode 1 if anything made it pretty clear that natural force ability tends to happen inexplicably, as that seems more the case with Anakin than Rey.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

If I may be more specific I suppose, clearspira: Anakin blowing up the space station; Luke blowing up the Deathstar. These aren't exactly "noob" friendly tasks, for lack of a better word.

[AndrewGPaul]

I don’t understand why Rey’s backstory is a problem when Luke’s is pretty much identical - except that Rey is more likely to know how to use a weapon before she leaves her planet.