Dr. Mae Jemison, MD, the first black woman in space and first actual astronaut to appear on a Star Trek show, one of the very few people on this planet of whom two pictures can be posted depicting them doing their job on a spaceship with entirely different contexts.
Holy shit this is a serious contender for the best post I’ve ever seen on tumblr.
star trek
I acknowledge all the issues Into Darkness had with Carol Marcus (and Other Noteworthy Things) but the dismissal of her in the reboot fandom (or at least what I’ve seen of the reboot fandom, specifically on Tumblr, and it’s not necessarily an extensive view) irks me. I realize Jaylah had (count ‘em) 0 unnecessary underwear scenes and is surrounded by a better, more Trek-ky movie, but I guess I wish people took to Carol the same way? Since there’s nothing inherently wrong with her as character in Into Darkness? By the time the movie ends we find out her intentions throughout the movie were always in the name of justice and even if I think the writers could have highlighted what it meant for her to be welcomed on the Enterprise after her terrible father does his terrible deeds and is overall just a terrible guy…I’m still not able to figure out how those issues could have led to her being dismissed in the fandom. To the point that she’s even reduced to Love Interest in some criticisms (even though the ‘romance’ with Kirk was arguably the least developed thing re: her character, and to be honest, after the afore-alluded-to underwear scene I’m not sure I’d have wanted what little seeds were there to have been met with any rainfall if you catch my meaning (I don’t think I thought that metaphor through)). And maybe that’s down to your average, run-of-the-mill misogyny (like that one Beyond post that suggested Uhura’s only role in Beyond was to be a damsel in distress for Spock to save? ???) but I still feel like Carol deserves better. She deserved better from Into Darkness and deserved better than ‘Couldn’t think of what we might do with her besides maybe kill her’ from Beyond and I wish the ‘We Love The Female Characters Writers Hate’ part of Tumblr had given her that.
I love Carol. Her complete lack of a fandom makes me so sad. :(
(Though I do wonder if Alice Eve’s transmisogyny contributed to the Carol hate. But still, that was the actress, not the character, and I bet Carol Marcus is no bigot.)
I heard that in the next ST movie, Chekov will be in another ship, which is fine because seeing another actor playing him would be too sad. But the other day I started thinking that maybe there should be another character, a new one, because it would be right to do again what Roddenberry did when he added Pavel Chekov to the crew. I mean, back in the 60s, Chevov was way more than a cute kid. It was the middle of the Cold War and he was from Russia, the sworn enemy of the USA at the time. His presence at the bridge was a symbol of peace, of hope.
Since things have changed, this new Chekov never had the same meaning. So maybe they should add someone with that meaning now. I’m not American, I don’t know what country he or she should come from. Maybe from North Korea? Cuba? Iran? Whatever country America hates most now, this new character should be from there. Put an Iranian woman wearing a Starfleet approved hiyab on the bridge and don’t make a single comment about it because it’s the 23th century now and no one gives a shit about these things. Then, she’ll give us the same message that Chekov gave us in 1967: things will get better.
I love this idea.
#TBT to 1985 when we whale-comed a crew of star-trekking time travelers. Happy 50th Anniversary, Star Trek! George and Gracie say “Hi!”
When Star Trek IV hit theaters, humpback whale populations were low, having been hunted to the brink of extinction before a hunting moratorium was introduced in 1966. But thanks to conservation efforts, these whales have made huge strides towards recovery, so much so that nine of the 14 distinct humpback populations were recently taken off the Endangered Species List. Live long and prosper, humpback whales!
Why Star Trek matters.
Why representation matters too.
Everyone should know, in the 70s Nichelle Nichols went to NASA and asked why there weren’t black astronauts in the pipeline, and they said, “Come recruit for us.” And she did.
“From the late 1970’s until the late 1980’s, NASA employed Nichelle
Nichols to recruit new astronaut candidates. Many of her new recruits
were women or members of racial and ethnic minorities, including Guion
Bluford (the first African-American astronaut), Sally Ride (the first
female American astronaut), Judith Resnik (one of the original set of
female astronauts, who perished during the launch of the Challenger on
January 28, 1986), and Ronald McNair (the second African-American
astronaut, and another victim of the Challenger accident).“ (x)Yaaaaaaaas
