I cannot speak to Buffy too much. I watched the movie, and that personage has been eclipsed by the TV characterization with which I have little familiarity, and can speak little to (other than expressing an antipathy for the lead actress).

But I do take issue with the characterization of Zoe as strictly a male role played by a female. That statement speaks not to the strength of the person, but rather to gender roles. Yes, traditionally that character might/would have been played by a man. No good reason for it other than accepted gender bias. I applaud the choice in casting.

You gave a definition of what constitutes a very strong woman, so I will give you mine. It does include courage and determination, but adds not faith and hope, but independence and self-reliance. In that, Zoe meets all qualifications (omitting for a moment her loyalty to Mal). Inara and Kaylee are also strong characters, but presented differently; it’s not the part/role they play, but the characteristics they exhibit.

You say it is insulting to have a woman play a man, but that belies a cultural and gender-specific bias one may well see just as insulting. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but saying Zoe is a woman playing a man automatically assumes man’s role is that of the stronger character.

I say strength of a person does not come from playing to their specific roles, but from the makeup of the individual. Males can be weak, females can be strong, and vice-versa, but that does not mean they are playing within or outside their respective roles. They are individuals with specific characteristics, and it is those characteristics which makes them strong or weak, not their genders.

Which brings me back to Penny. Not determined; we don’t know of her courage; is not presented as independent. She is somewhat self-reliant since she does her own laundry, but that is the extent of her characterization. She becomes a victim because she is presented as a victim. And I’ll repeat my strongest objection . . . she is not a character onto herself; her sole purpose is adornment for when the guys are around.

OK, yes, she does have a solo number, but I cannot point to the end of the show and say she has grown any, or has any self-import other than to be an object of contention/desire for the two leads. I’ll stand by my statement she could have been replaced by a cute animal or even an inanimate object. In fact, it might have made a better story; Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer as rival brothers vying for a family heirloom of little value save for bragging rights as to who has it.

I do agree with your point about Joss, yet I believe your points are completely opposite.

Joss has made a name for himself by his female characters in particular Buffy and Zoe as you said.

Yet, I would agrue that they are not savior of women in sci-fi, but its downfall.

Buffy, is often seen as a strong female role model, because she is in the male super power role of moster killer. She has the power of the slayer and just like Superman, she not just get credit because their powers which were given to them. Moreover, if Buffy is going to step out of the old roles men have put her in could we once see a heroine not pick the bad boy over and over again? She is super powered but makes the same pathetic decisions as one of the women from sex and the city.

Zoe, also is just a swap of a traditionally male solider role. What we know of Zoe is her military background and her marriage to an insecure, physically weak, petite pilot. While there surely should be a range of roles women should play, Joss’s weak character development of women here is just having a woman play a man.

Making a woman play a man is not enlightened, its insulting.

If you want a strong women role let it come from a place a woman comes from the bottom up. Penny, from Dr. Horrible actually is the closest that Joss has come to real character developement for a strong woman. Penny, we find has had a diffcult time in life and instead of turning to despair like Dr. Horrible or to ego like the Hammer, she turns to help others. She does realize from the start how cheesy the hammer is and at the end actually gets up and leaves him on stage, while the rest of society continues to praise him. She is the only non-bias person to see through him. In the end, she becomes a victim not from some macho facade or school girl crush on the bad boy, but because men unlike women cannot see past themselves to what is true. That is insight, courage, determination, faith, and hope…all which make her a very strong woman.

Dark skin would make sense for a Vulcan, being from a sunny planet. Vulcans even have a special inner eyelids for Solar protection, so they should look the part.

Making Tuvok head of security was a brain fart, he’d have to justify to much to be effective. It is hard to imagine a Vulcan joining Star Fleet a security officer. Maybe if he never lived on Vulcan. The writers were trying to confuse stereotypes, but I think a Klingon consoler would have been better.

Seven of Nine I liked, she had the science firepower missing from the cast. She should have been a nature romantic interest yet not perused for Tuvok. Two really deadpan characters. The Doctor was ok.

As for B’Elanna Torres, Harry Kim, Tom Paris good grief I could bearing watch them.

Janeway was one the least likable/interesting characters I’ve ever seen. She combined the least likable traits of Kirk (bull headed), McCoy ( fast to jump to a conclusion, and Spock ( unsympathetic). I could go on, believe me.

-t

1) BSG was not planned. B5 was. And it makes all the difference in the world: re-watching BSG is not half as satisfying as re-watching B5, because all the pieces are missing in the beginning and the Cylons most definitely do *not* have a plan. BSG is a series of episodes that continue on from each other. B5 is a story with a beginning, middle and end. Structurally, these are two very different beasts.

2) The characters in BSG aren’t ambiguous, they’re erratic, and their “journey” is arbitrary. As much as I adore the actors in BSG, and some of the characters, their development is at times completely random, and only there to fuel whatever the conflict of the episode is. Sometimes it’s like the writers haven’t been talking to each other, or don’t care. I remember how much that affected our enjoyment of the show: every time a character made a decision we liked, we couldn’t really be happy about it, since he/she might have a completely different mindset by the next episode, just because it was convenient.
In B5, like in real life, the characters are fully capable of taking on positions. “This is what I believe in!” they’ll say, and act accordingly. Sometimes they’re truthful, sometimes they’re not, and many times their opinions gradually shift – but they are capable of making decisions that will last for more than ten seconds, and that are motivated by the world around them.

3) In terms of politics and philosophy, B5 is both darker and more hopeful. BSG starts out with some horrible stuff, but after that things mostly remain the same. In B5, things get considerably worse before they get any better – war between the Narn and the Centauri, dictatorship on Earth, war with the Shadows, war with the Shadows and the Vorlons, etc. And for things to get better, sacrifices have to be made that have real and heartbreaking effects. In BSG, everything is dark, until suddenly the Hand of God saves everyone, or at least mostly everyone.
The politics of B5 are also much more realistic, in that they are genuinely complex, and feature groups and individuals with all sorts of motivations. BSG, while sometimes having very fascinating episodes on this matter, too often has politics as simply the result of personal issues; and, with its “wonderful” finale, completely throws the idea that any of it matters out the window.
The philosophies of the two shows seem to be
B5: Things occur as the consequence of their sociopolitical context and the actions of groups and/or individuals.
BSG: Stuff happens. Sometimes it’s God.

BSG is still one of the better shows of recent years, in that it at least tried to be serious, and it did have some really good moments. But with its amateurish and inconsistent approach to writing, and its use of “darkness” as a stylistic directive rather than a storytelling tool, it comes nowhere near to the interlocking complexity that is Babylon 5.

Anyway, I’ve writen a 2 part review of BSG on my blog for scifi uk, which you can read here

http://www.scifi.co.uk/blog/battlestar-galactica/bsg-final-episode-review—par/

Call me Pollyanna, but I think that Babylon 5 represents a more realistic vision of humanity past, present and future.

Why? Because in the end, Babylon 5 offered a glimmer of hope, and laughter even in the Shadow of the gallows. I’ve enjoyed BSG, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back and rewatch that series. It is so unrelentingly bleak that the ride becomes oppressive. To draw from da’Square Wheelman’s comments, BSG is of the post-9/11 era. BSG offers no light moments, no laughter. And if we can’t laugh, then the terrorists -er, the Cylons have already won.

Leap ahead a decade, the Twin Towers fell. We could no longer ignore the rest of the world. On 9.11, we suuffered “blow-back”: things that our gov’ts had instigated, condoned, or just ignored were came back to bite us on the ass. And with that we had BSG. 12 colonies, prosperous, fading memories of a war that pitted us against that which we had created …

Essentially then, Bab5 represents our attempts to move forward from the Cold War. I was in my early 30s then. We actually hoped that the fall of the USSR would herald a new time of peace and understanding. But within a decade we got BSG with it’s “survive at any costs” cynicism and despair.

While the idea of a female captain was neat, I felt that the writers pushed to concept too much: as Lejon above put it, they made her too hard, too manly. Apart from that the acting made me sigh out loud more than once. It never felt natural to have her there and putting a female in as the chief engineer was just overdoing it. I am female myself, but when I see producers and writers try to rub it into people’s face all the time that we can do all that stuff as well, it becomes comical rather than a statement.

Overall, it was a good concept, but they did not nearly get out of it what would have been possible.

We Are Grey, We stand between the candle and the star.