GateWorld Podcast: Women In Stargate

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• I agree with pretty much everything said in this podcast about women in Stargate. Honestly, I think the only sci-fi shows that have handled female characters well are Farscape, Firefly, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Female characters in Stargate really don't get any "action hero" moments as the male characters, and when they do its almost laughable at the cliched way in which the situations are handled. Teyle being the best example of an underused female character. Weir I think had some good moments, but after the first season of Atlantis she lost a lot of her edge.

• Thanks so much for having the women on the Podcast, very enjoyable and I always love Tame on the show!
  I am nostalgic about Vala now, but at the time of the original airing I pretty much stopped watching the show because of the focus on her. Several years later, I can watch her without cringing. But I thought they just brought her in for the sex appeal to the fanboys.
  But I loved Claudia on Farscape so it wasn't the actress.
  I always loved Sam because she showed us a very intelligent and capable woman and never thought she was a Mary Sue, she was a good person and I appreciated that.
  Janet Fraiser was terrific, competent, but not super-woman. She was probably my favorite female character on SG1.
  Although I like SGA more than SG1, I don't think the women were as well-realized on SGA.
  When she was a regular on the show, I did not appreciate Weir, she wasn't very consistant personality-wise and I did want to see more conflict between her and Shep.
  I thought they shoe-horned her into the script sometimes but couldn't figure out what to do with her as a leader. But after she left and then came back for those few moments as replicator, I realized how much she had brought to the show. With her there, something that had been missing returned. Somehow just having her there made the mix of characters richer.
  Re Teyla, I agree they could have done so much more. I love Teyla as a character but she was so incredibly underutilized. My favorite parts of SGA are the Team aspects and I wanted to see more of her. I think the pregnancy derailed her character even further, although I did not want to see her go "darker" as was the plan prior to the pregnancy announcement.
  I think my favorite ladies on SGA were the secondary characters, Biro, Novak, Cadman, they had quirks and weren't there as sex-objects.
  The less said about Keller the better, in my opinion she was just brought in because the producers had a crush on the actress and they wanted to attract the fanboys and Firefly fans with a sexy young blonde. The romance with McKay was so poorly done and alientated me from much of the last season's shows. McKay was one of my favorite characters and I started to dislike him due to him lusting after this young girl. If they has kept her as a young intern assigned to Atlantis and in the background I would have liked her more. Her character was probably the weakest one in the two shows.
  SGU women: just awful, sexist portrayals of women, hopefully the women they have hired for the second season will rescue these poor gals.

• The women in the Stargate universe are not written very well, period. Sam was probably the best, because at least - for the most part - she was not squeezed into a tight (midriff-baring, at times) outfit. I think I read somewhere that Amanda Tapping told the writers to write her as a man, and she'd take care of the rest. Sam was probably the only well-written woman on the series.

  There was a lot of potential with good actors wasted because the writers just did not know how to write women. Keller was probably the worst (no offense to the actress) because she was nearly a caricature - whining, trying to figure out who to date, etc. etc.). THe SGU females are, as someone pointed out, defined by the men they interacted with to create their identity. I'd rather see Chloe not mope around and actually go "What CAN I do to help in this intolerable situation??"

  If the writers want to emulate BSG with their darkness, etc., they should also watch how many of the women were written. Would help otu SGU a *lot*.

• I think a lot of the female characters are often no more than the sum of who they're sleeping with.

  It's like they get so caught up in 'omg, we're writing a GIRL!!!!!!!!!' that they forget that she's a person first.

  And they don't write her as a person, they can't seem to get past the cleavage to see the person that's underneath.

  I can agree with sylvia that the secondary characters seem to fare better, and so do the secondary male characters. I personally think Lorne was the best example of an officer on the whole of SGA. And I think that's because, when they write the secondary ones, they don't get all focused on making them something or fitting them into a stereotype, they just write them as people that move the episode along.

  I did not like Vala on the show, not her personally, but what she was. She was so trivialized and marginalized as a person even as she was thrust into the limelight as much as possible.

  She was the 'hot alien chick that had the hots for the favorite geek', and was used for comedic relief more than anything else.

  It was sad to see all that potential wasted.

  I also agree with weir being 'shoehorned'. There were episodes - namely the one underwater where they found the crashed ship, and why was weir there? she served no purpose, beyond her presence filling out the number of episode requirements in the actress' contract.

  Weir was defined by allowing and permitting shep to run the city, teyla was defined by her caring for Shep, and later being a mother of the resident 'super baby', Vala was defined by her feelings for Daniel and being the 'super baby mama', Chloe is defined by her relationship with Scott, TJ is defined by her relationship with Young, Young's wife is defined by her dual relationships, Wray is defined by her relationship with Sharon, Keller was defined by her relationship with Rodney....there's a theme here.

  Early Sam and Janet were women in a man's world, doing their job and rarely was their gender a plot point. (with exceptions of Hathor and Emancipation, both 1st season shows), but the same can't be said of the others.

  You, generally speaking, can't take any of the other leading ladies, swap their genders to be male, and have them - roughly - fit the same role in the show as males that they had as ladies.

  These guys can't write REAL women to save their lives. It's cliches and stereotypes and yes, quite often, sexist and with some very real examples of gender bias.

  I think, how they write women is why I'm not as big of a fan of SGA and SGU as i was of SG1. In SG1 there was someone to identify with, a female on the show that's just doing her job. She's not a sexpot, not a vamp, just a person.

  We didn't have that on SGA and we don't, thus far, have that on SGU, so I don't have much interest in the shows.

• I think one of the best Teyla moments in SGA was when she kicked Michael off the ledge to his death. She took ownership of her destiny and made a decision to act. More moments like this would have made me a happier Teyla fan.

• Firstly, let me congratulate you on the subject of the podcast and on bringing women to talk about women.

  Having said this, I must say that I haven’t been so disappointed since the podcast about SG- season 10. I thought the whole point was to have 2 women with different views of the female characters; as it turned out Tame and Ms Robison agreed with each other almost all the time and it was David who did most disagreeing. In this light I can’t help but think the combo of him and one of the ladies would be more interesting.

  What’s more, for all the complaints about Stargate women being stereotypical, opinions presented by Ms Robison and Tame – with all due respect – were also incredibly stereotypical. At times I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sam Carter is responsible for Janet’s death? Really? That’s the argument often repeated by Sam bashers and one that has no basis in the episode; additionally it was refuted by the writers themselves. I’m at a loss how it made it to the podcast. I also can’t agree with the claim that Sam was too perfect; she was no more perfect than the rest of the guys. She made mistakes just like they did. If that wasn’t the case, why would the fandom be so divided about her? You have small but vocal contingent of fans who claim that she’s a total failure and another small but vocal contingent of fans complaining about her being too perfect. I’m sad that there was nobody representing majority of the viewers who see Sam as just a normal woman – very smart, intelligent and having a cooler job than most, but still, normal. I think her character was very well balanced.

  Besides, how can I take seriously complaints that she’s too smart, too pretty etc. when the women making them have no problem with male characters being too smart and too pretty? It’s called “double standards”.

  Same with the claim that the guys weren’t getting emotional scenes. They had plenty of them. If Ms Robison thinks Sha’re doesn’t count, then how about Daniel’s reaction to Vala being burned alive? How about his suicidal attempt in The Light or ascension in Meridian? How about Teal’c grieving for his wife in Redemption or for Shau’noc in Crossroads? How about Jack’s upset over Sam’s missing in Grace, if you don’t want to count his grief over his son? The number of emotional scenes each character had in the first 8 years of the show was quite even.

  I also noticed that Tame and Ms Robison focused on Vala’s portrayal in season 8&9 and ignored her very poor use in season 10 (in the episodes not dealing with the Ori, such as Bounty).

  I agree that in the later seasons writing of the women on SG-1 got worse. I also agree with the part about SGA. As for SGU, I disagree that TJ “is hesitant”. She actually reminds me of Janet, she has the same spunk which enabled her to sedate Telford for example. I also disagree with the podcast’s guests’ perception of lesbian relationship on SGU. I think it was very tasteful and low-key.

  Hopefully, the next time you decide to invite guests, their opinions won’t be so similar and one-sided.

• I think the women were written very well in battlestar galactica. They were strong and independent but not mary sues. I think the portrayal of women has gotten worse from sg-1 to atlantis to universe. The three most important characters are all men (rush,young,eli) and the women are written as afterthoughts. This needs to change.

• I think it would help if they just wrote characters, and not fuss over the gender. Don't focus on 'i'm writing this young woman, how would she act???'

  Instead think 'ok, there's this 24 year old child of a us senator stuck on the ship, how would they act?'

  I think Janet, beyond Hathor, was the only female on the show that wasn't defined by her gender. She was the doctor. And - again ignoring Hathor - was there any instance when Doctor Frasier couldn't have been a male and still been the same basic character?

  I'm not saying they all need to be asexual. Far from it. but these show runners seem to have a very backwards, cliched and stereotypical view of what females are and how they act, and that's how they write them.

  If any of these guys have daughters, i feel sorry for the stereotypes they're perpetrating. Cause they're 'flavoring' the world their kids will grow up in. and if you're a girl, it's not a good image they're setting.

  We're not seeing females as equal and contributing members of the team, we're, all too often, seeing the guys, action heros and geeky side kicks, supported, cared for and loved by the women...who seem to be helpless without a male telling her what to do.

• I liked Weir and Teyla, but Keller was a blond love interest slash damsel in distress slash the resident whiner. In one episode she kicked some Wraith butt, in the next all she could do was stand around and whimper in fear - the inconsistencies were painfull to watch. Her favorite occupation - kidnapping victim! Give me Teyla and her stick-fighting any day.

• I have to agree with Petra. I was looking forward to this podcast, but this was very disappointing to me. When you said you were going to get two women with differing opinions on the female characters, I hoped you would actually have two women with differing opinions. I also hoped you would actually get a couple of women who actually relate more to the female characters than the male ones.

  Your commentators say that Sam was one dimensional because she was too perfect, but they think the male heroes are multi-dimensional when they were portrayed as being just as skilled and lacking in flaws as Sam. I read this recently on livejournal – “The feminine form of hero is heroine, not Mary Sue.” It would be refreshing if female characters like Sam were not held to a double standard for once. We give the male characters a pass b/c heroes are supposed to be good looking, brave, smart, and strong. When we see those very same qualities in a female character, we deride the character for being stereotypical and one-dimensional. Shepherd and Cam, although both very cute and charming, were portrayed with a lot less depth and realism than Carter, Weir, and Teyla ever were.

  They criticize Sam for being too strong, too smart, too confident, but then go on and criticize Keller for being too insecure and hesitant. What do they dislike about Teyla and Weir? That they let the guys get away with too much and seemed to be too submissive at times? And yet they love Vala and find absolutely nothing wrong with the character even though she was almost always portrayed as the stereotypical ditzy, flirty sex kitten who let men like Daniel walk all over her. She had many, many flaws but few really useful and redeeming qualities. And she is the best lead female portrayal of the franchise? What a sad state that women think that Vala makes a better role model than someone like Keller, Weir, Teyla, or Carter. Granted, Vala is fun and interesting. But she is more of a caricature than any other lead character in the franchise. McKay runs a close second.

  So in other words, if the character doesn’t have enough flaws then she is one-dimensional and if the character has lots of flaws she is just a bad character – but only if you personally don’t like her. If a character has lots of flaws and you like her and the actress who plays her, then she is one of the best characters of the franchise. I’m sorry, that makes no rational sense.

  What I find most odd and sad about fandom is that while so many male fans seem to embrace and celebrate strong female characters, so many female fans take pleasure in tearing them down - no matter how perfect or flawed they might be.