nymeria_dw

While writing my "essay" for farscape_land

Challenge nr. 18 I loved exploring in more depth one of the many aspects of this show, so I thought of taking this other work out of mothballs, and sharing it with you.

Since it's quite long, I will divide it in several sections, leaving this post as an index.

Hope you enjoy it...

WOMEN OF FARSCAPE

It was not so long ago that female roles in sci-fi were limited to the stereotype of the quaking victims waiting for the square-jawed hero's rescue. As a rule, they were scantily clad, perfectly coiffed and totally brainless. Quite a far cry from real-life women.

Star Trek afforded us the first glimpses of a different way to portray female characters: although still scantily clad – at least in the original series – women were often professionals, with a degree of intelligence and self-assurance that had no precedent on tv or movies. Even if sometimes the writers had to give in to the irresistible urge of having Lieutenant Uhura utter her trademark "Captain, I'm frightened!"…

Then Captain Kathrin Janeway made her appearance, and the bridge (no pun intended) was finally crossed.

But the first, radical improvement came with Alien and Ellen Ripley: at long last we could see a woman who was as capable, strong, courageous and even aggressive as a man – sometimes more – while still possessing more classical feminine traits.

After Ripley it was as if a dam had been broken, and more modern tv series, like Babylon5 or Firefly, followed the same example – but none with the intensity of innovation that we see on Farscape.

Farscape's characters – both male and female – hover on the dividing line between "good" and "evil", being the realistic representation of the many shades of gray that are part of human (and alien!) nature. In the same way, female roles possess each and every quality which makes a woman a living, breathing creature and not an idealized stereotype.

The first difference we can observe, in respect of other shows, is the number of female characters aboard Moya (who, by the way, is a female herself): in Season One there are three of them – Aeryn Sun, Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan and Chiana. As the story progresses and new roles appear, the women end up being the majority aboard the Leviathan, and there is also a considerable number of secondary characters that enrich and deepen the complex narrative structure of the show.

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