++ relapsed catholic ++ religion politics culture blog

for those who like that sort of thing. Key words: risk aversion...

The therapy-speak was the most annoying aspect of the new show. No one was allowed to simply be brave or adventurous or even rash -- everything had to be explained away according to whichever article in Psychology Today the episodes' writers had skimmed at the dentist's office. In the old misogynist days of Kirk and Spock, the character of Counselor Troi would have existed to have her complacently perfect psyche overset by a real emotion, usually expressed as a violent attraction to one of the major male crew members. And she usually would have ended up tragically killed (so as to leave the heroes free to go on adventuring), or simply never mentioned again, such as Scotty's lady love in "The Lights of Zetar." But in the later shows that wasn't allowed, and we couldn't get rid of her. (It is interesting that the women who often ended up meeting a bad end were the ones who were what we would have known in my childhood as "tomboys" -- "warrior" type women with "masculine" characteristics such as adventurousness, belligerence, and so on, and a marked lack of "nurturing" characteristics such as a tendency to talk about their and everyone else's emotions and feelings, unless it was feelings like "I'm going to beat up that Romulan!" -- characters such as Lieutenant Tasha Yar, who was played by Denise Crosby.)

Recall those refreshed opening credits: "To boldly go where noone has gone before!" Inclusive language for nerds.

PS:

It is really not that daring to suggest that the typical sci fi devotee is a socially awkward white male who prizes laborious detail of setting over literary quality. Hence the dominance of writers like Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and William Gibson, in whose entire output one will find not a single stirring passage or notable use of metaphor. And yet their fans must number in the millions.

My suspicions about any woman who announced a love of science fiction would be, in order:

1. Dumpy looking

2. Socially maladept

3. Resigned to grabbing the low hanging fruit of mating material