Reviews by Kyle Ellis

Not every badass needs to be able to kick the crap out of you in a straight-up fist fight, a point proved readily by Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura on [Link removed - login to see], though Zoe Saldana’s rebooted version totally could. She may not be known for her technical combat skills — if we’re being honest, was anyone on the original Trek series all that skilled? — but Uhura certainly smashed the hell out of some pretty rigid social barriers in her day.

Just how rare was it to see an African-American woman on TV in 1966? When Whoopi Goldberg first saw Uhura, she famously proclaimed to her father, “I just saw a black woman on television, and she ain’t no maid.” The first African-American woman to fly on the Space Shuttle, Dr. Mae Jemison, has specifically cited both Uhura and Star Trek as key influences on her decision to join NASA. And if that isn’t an impressive enough level of influence, Nichols wanted to leave the show after the first season, but Martin Luther King Jr. himself convinced her to stay on because of the show’s vision of a future of racial harmony and cooperation.

Beyond a larger cultural impact, Uhura was a key part of the crew, equally as brave and competent as anyone aboard the Enterprise, regardless of race or gender. That is definitely someone to emulate. – Brent

If your idea of a heroine is someone whose outfit spits in the face of animal rights activists everywhere — and why wouldn’t it be? — then there’s no reason to look beyond Carrie-Anne Moss’ Trinity, the leather-wearing badass who serves as second-in-command to Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus on the Nebuchadnezzar. A role whose shadow Moss may never escape from, Trinity was someone who often came across as cooler than the main character, especially since that main character was Keanu Reeves’ wha-spouting Neo/Thomas Anderson. If you’ve got bad guys with itchy trigger fingers and the ability to walk all over walls and do crazy flips and shit, Trinity is a necessity to have at your side.

Of course, these opinions are mostly centered on the stellar first film in the [Link removed - login to see] trilogy, as Trinity’s role was morph(eus)ed into the love interest and pushed to the back burner for [Link removed - login to see]. And though her death in [Link removed - login to see] was necessary for Neo to ascend to full heroism, it still felt like the character didn’t come full circle in living up to her potential. She was a wry mystery whose brain contained secrets that normal humans wouldn’t understand, and she was able to do things with her body that most people can only dream of, as well as being extremely handy with a gun and a chair. Especially a chair. – Nick

Love her or hate her — and I’ve met plenty of people who feel both ways — there’s no question Starbuck is a compelling character. Dirk Benedict, who played Starbuck on the original Battlestar Galactica series, was beyond angry about what he called the “[Link removed - login to see]” of the character, but in case you haven’t seen the original BSG lately, Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck has far bigger balls than Benedict’s. She’s not afraid of a fight, whether it’s with a Cylon, her XO, or a boxing match with her lover. After surviving a crash landing, she figures out how to activate and fly a Cylon raider, which she later uses to successfully fly back to Caprica to locate and retrieve the Arrow of Apollo, which was then used to “open” the Tomb of Athena and show the survivors of the Twelve Colonies the way to Kobol.

My favorite Starbuck moment is in the episode in which they’ve teamed up with Battleship Pegasus and its terrifying, insane, civilian-slaughtering Admiral Cain. After it becomes clear that the crews of Pegasus and Galactica can’t live in harmony, Cain’s got an assassin ready to off Adama and Adama’s got Starbuck ready to off Cain, despite the fact that Cain just made Starbuck her CAG and Cain understands Starbuck in a way no one else does. That Starbuck is prepared to shoot Cain in the head on Adama’s orders, despite not being a cold-blooded killer and despite honestly respecting and appreciating Cain, exemplifies all of the dichotomies of the character — single-minded yet torn in different directions, compliant yet subordinate, spiritual yet practical, afraid of disappointing others and afraid of disappointing herself, yet somehow afraid of nothing.

We’ll forget back-from-death Starbuck. I never did buy that whole ending. On [Link removed - login to see], Ronald Moore said of resurrected Starbuck:

She is what you want to think of her. It was left deliberately nebulous and vague. And I think she was a representative of an entity that didn’t like to be called God, but everybody else talked about it in godlike terms. If you want to call her an angel, you could say that.

I don’t want to call her an angel. I want to call her an asshole — and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible. – Joelle