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Quick RL update: due to a combination of me having caught a cold and the snow being unrelenting (and the temperatures at - 18° in the place in question), the skiing trip was postponed to next week. Monday. I hope.
As others have reported, Sci-Fi has confirmed its renewal of Battlestar Galactica by ordering twenty new episodes for season 2. Hear me squee. Or rather, do my solemn dignified Adama imitation and declare: So say we all!
Speaking of BSG, now that I've watched all the eps, I'm desperate for fanfic to bridge the time (MONTHS!) till we mortals get season 2. Although I completely agree with Andraste's superb Facts about Fandom and will probably end up writing some myself, I was glad to find someting instantly which I hadn't read before,
The Women of Billy Keikeya. One thing I love about BSG is that even the recurring minor characters, like Billy or Duella or Cally, all feel so real and three dimensional and just waiting for their own turn in the spotlight. No spoilers beyond the basic set-up of the show.
My present Galactica giddiness brings me to something I wanted to gush about for a while now: namely, the increasing existence of interesting visible women over 40 on tv. Because you know, tv is youth-slanted anyway. Still, the occasional interesting older male character will show up, and be given storylines and depth. (In the case of male characters we probably have to adjust the minority status to males over 50.) But women? Especially women who aren't the mothers of main characters? They were invisible. However, this desert, forcing actressses over 40 to play mothers of all sorts (not that there is something wrong with mothers, I hasten to add) and nothing else, is now populated with a few oasises. (Or whatever the English plural of this word is.) So, a few words of praise for my favourites. I'll exclude vampires and immortals, though. While both Darla and Amanda are centuries old, they don't look it, and thus elude my point.
1) One early pioneer from the 1990s: Kai Winn on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Played by the magnificent Louise Fletcher, Winn Adami first showed up in season 1 as a one-episode villain, then became crucial in several season 2 episodes and by season 7 had ended up having one the season's main storylines centred around her. Winn always reminded me of a ruthless Renaissance Cardinal, or Pope (the equivalent positions to those she holds in the course of the series). She's smart, manipulative, willing to go over dead bodies to achieve her ambitious ends and convinced she's doing this for the sake of her people, sometimes a foil and sometimes a help to the show's heroes, and towards the end of the show gains genuine tragic status due to her frustrated relationship with her gods, whom she desperately wants to speak to her and who never do. I'll always appreciate that the writers kept Winn's three-dimensionality all through the show. You can see her co-orchestrating a political coup ("The Circle") which she hops will bring her to the top, and you can find out about her backstory (five years in a Cardassian labour camp - season 4's "Rapture" -, and later she sold temple jewelry to save some condemmed Bajorans via bribing Cardassian guards - the final ten season 7 episodes) with equal belief. She was one of the antagonists, but she never was a one-dimensional caricature. Along the way, she also accomplished one of ways in which Star Trek broke tv taboos. Forget the uproar about the first interracial kiss in TOS days, or the f/f kiss in DS9's Reunion; with Winn, we got a woman looking to be closer to 60 than to 50 who had and enjoyed sex. Now male characters might do this all the time, especially on the big screen, and then with much younger women, but female characters? Nah. (Feel free to correct me, of course.) Winn did.
2) SpyMommy: Irina Derevko from Alias. A few weeks ago, I wrote about genderswapping sci-fi archetypes, and in one of the comments, Andraste pointed out to Alara that Irina is in some ways a female Darth Vader. The parent believed to be a saint and having died early, but who really went away, and works for the other side. We even have the element where parent and child deal each other identical physical wounds early and late in the narrative.Though in Irina's case the "Anakin" identity was never real to begin with; she was KGB from the start and later became independent (as in independent crime lord and head of terrorist organization). For a character visually present only in one season and with rather limited screen time at that (we tend to believe she's in more episodes and for a longer time than she actually is, due to Lena Olin's charismatic performance), she has an enormous impact both on the other characters and on the audience. What makes Irina fascinating is her ruthlessness and intelligence mixed with her complicated feelings for her ex-mark and husband, Jack Bristow, and for her daughter Sydney. Fanfic tends to emphasize said feelings over the ruthlessness (and body count), but that's always an attractive ambigous character's fate; the show itself I think always kept the balance.
3) And speaking of women named Irina: Iris Crowe, born Irina Belyakova, from Carnivale . Iris is, and looks, in her middle to late 40s, and among other things a pillar of her local church community and the loving sister of the likely Antichrist. To be underestimated at one's peril. She and her younger brother are Russian in origin and emigrated to the US as children under traumatic circumstances, and Iris who had a clear idea that her brother wasn't quite like other kids even when he didn't became his fierce protector. Acts undertaken in the interest of protecting her brother include the bashing of skulls of pursuers when they were children and the burning of churches (with people in them) as an adult when there was trouble with the local authorities. In her spare time, she organizes the choir, cares for her sick adopted father and exchanges smouldering looks with her brother Justin. (It's not clear whether or not the two ever physically consumated their incestous feelings beyond the one onscreen kiss we see, but the fact they have them is canon, not fanon.) What makes Iris so interesting to me is that she isn't a femme fatale. The pillar of the church, dowdy wardrobe and good caretaker part of her is as real as the ruthless and remorseless (something that disturbs Justin even after he decided on the Antichrist career) killer part.
4) Madam President: Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica (new series). As opposed to all the other ladies, not part of her show's villains line-up. (Well, unless you're a certain poster in some bsg communities.) Laura starts out as the secretary of education, which makes for some irritated "school teacher" comments later on by various characters. She also gets told she has cancer in the very first scene we meet her. Through various catastrophes, she ends up as the new President (she was No.43 down the line of the goverment, but all the others are dead), and boy does she step up to the responsibility. Soft-spoken, smart, with a steely gaze if necessary, and the ability to organize people as well as to make tough decisions in dire situations, Laura Roslin has become by far my favourite fictional polititican on tv. Not because she's perfect or saintly. She's neither. Not all of her decisions so far on the show are presented as the right ones; she makes mistakes on occasion. But she always owns up to them and never tries to lay responsibility elsewhere. She can be machiavellian, ruthless and genuinenly caring at the same time, and has an excellent grip on what you could call "the bigger picture".
Thank you, tv shows, for presenting me with these ladies in their mature splendour. May they inspire many more to come. May they also inspire fanfic, for that's what a fan lives on when there aren't any new episodes on the offering. There seems to be a start in this regard as well:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deborah_judge is continuing her Winn saga, I'm rereading something I alreay recced once because it can't be read too often, "Five Deaths (Laura Roslin)", and even unearthed a short but impressive Iris pov, Her Name, and other five-letter words starting with I.
As others have reported, Sci-Fi has confirmed its renewal of Battlestar Galactica by ordering twenty new episodes for season 2. Hear me squee. Or rather, do my solemn dignified Adama imitation and declare: So say we all!
Speaking of BSG, now that I've watched all the eps, I'm desperate for fanfic to bridge the time (MONTHS!) till we mortals get season 2. Although I completely agree with Andraste's superb Facts about Fandom and will probably end up writing some myself, I was glad to find someting instantly which I hadn't read before,
The Women of Billy Keikeya. One thing I love about BSG is that even the recurring minor characters, like Billy or Duella or Cally, all feel so real and three dimensional and just waiting for their own turn in the spotlight. No spoilers beyond the basic set-up of the show.
My present Galactica giddiness brings me to something I wanted to gush about for a while now: namely, the increasing existence of interesting visible women over 40 on tv. Because you know, tv is youth-slanted anyway. Still, the occasional interesting older male character will show up, and be given storylines and depth. (In the case of male characters we probably have to adjust the minority status to males over 50.) But women? Especially women who aren't the mothers of main characters? They were invisible. However, this desert, forcing actressses over 40 to play mothers of all sorts (not that there is something wrong with mothers, I hasten to add) and nothing else, is now populated with a few oasises. (Or whatever the English plural of this word is.) So, a few words of praise for my favourites. I'll exclude vampires and immortals, though. While both Darla and Amanda are centuries old, they don't look it, and thus elude my point.
1) One early pioneer from the 1990s: Kai Winn on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Played by the magnificent Louise Fletcher, Winn Adami first showed up in season 1 as a one-episode villain, then became crucial in several season 2 episodes and by season 7 had ended up having one the season's main storylines centred around her. Winn always reminded me of a ruthless Renaissance Cardinal, or Pope (the equivalent positions to those she holds in the course of the series). She's smart, manipulative, willing to go over dead bodies to achieve her ambitious ends and convinced she's doing this for the sake of her people, sometimes a foil and sometimes a help to the show's heroes, and towards the end of the show gains genuine tragic status due to her frustrated relationship with her gods, whom she desperately wants to speak to her and who never do. I'll always appreciate that the writers kept Winn's three-dimensionality all through the show. You can see her co-orchestrating a political coup ("The Circle") which she hops will bring her to the top, and you can find out about her backstory (five years in a Cardassian labour camp - season 4's "Rapture" -, and later she sold temple jewelry to save some condemmed Bajorans via bribing Cardassian guards - the final ten season 7 episodes) with equal belief. She was one of the antagonists, but she never was a one-dimensional caricature. Along the way, she also accomplished one of ways in which Star Trek broke tv taboos. Forget the uproar about the first interracial kiss in TOS days, or the f/f kiss in DS9's Reunion; with Winn, we got a woman looking to be closer to 60 than to 50 who had and enjoyed sex. Now male characters might do this all the time, especially on the big screen, and then with much younger women, but female characters? Nah. (Feel free to correct me, of course.) Winn did.
2) SpyMommy: Irina Derevko from Alias. A few weeks ago, I wrote about genderswapping sci-fi archetypes, and in one of the comments, Andraste pointed out to Alara that Irina is in some ways a female Darth Vader. The parent believed to be a saint and having died early, but who really went away, and works for the other side. We even have the element where parent and child deal each other identical physical wounds early and late in the narrative.Though in Irina's case the "Anakin" identity was never real to begin with; she was KGB from the start and later became independent (as in independent crime lord and head of terrorist organization). For a character visually present only in one season and with rather limited screen time at that (we tend to believe she's in more episodes and for a longer time than she actually is, due to Lena Olin's charismatic performance), she has an enormous impact both on the other characters and on the audience. What makes Irina fascinating is her ruthlessness and intelligence mixed with her complicated feelings for her ex-mark and husband, Jack Bristow, and for her daughter Sydney. Fanfic tends to emphasize said feelings over the ruthlessness (and body count), but that's always an attractive ambigous character's fate; the show itself I think always kept the balance.
3) And speaking of women named Irina: Iris Crowe, born Irina Belyakova, from Carnivale . Iris is, and looks, in her middle to late 40s, and among other things a pillar of her local church community and the loving sister of the likely Antichrist. To be underestimated at one's peril. She and her younger brother are Russian in origin and emigrated to the US as children under traumatic circumstances, and Iris who had a clear idea that her brother wasn't quite like other kids even when he didn't became his fierce protector. Acts undertaken in the interest of protecting her brother include the bashing of skulls of pursuers when they were children and the burning of churches (with people in them) as an adult when there was trouble with the local authorities. In her spare time, she organizes the choir, cares for her sick adopted father and exchanges smouldering looks with her brother Justin. (It's not clear whether or not the two ever physically consumated their incestous feelings beyond the one onscreen kiss we see, but the fact they have them is canon, not fanon.) What makes Iris so interesting to me is that she isn't a femme fatale. The pillar of the church, dowdy wardrobe and good caretaker part of her is as real as the ruthless and remorseless (something that disturbs Justin even after he decided on the Antichrist career) killer part.
4) Madam President: Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica (new series). As opposed to all the other ladies, not part of her show's villains line-up. (Well, unless you're a certain poster in some bsg communities.) Laura starts out as the secretary of education, which makes for some irritated "school teacher" comments later on by various characters. She also gets told she has cancer in the very first scene we meet her. Through various catastrophes, she ends up as the new President (she was No.43 down the line of the goverment, but all the others are dead), and boy does she step up to the responsibility. Soft-spoken, smart, with a steely gaze if necessary, and the ability to organize people as well as to make tough decisions in dire situations, Laura Roslin has become by far my favourite fictional polititican on tv. Not because she's perfect or saintly. She's neither. Not all of her decisions so far on the show are presented as the right ones; she makes mistakes on occasion. But she always owns up to them and never tries to lay responsibility elsewhere. She can be machiavellian, ruthless and genuinenly caring at the same time, and has an excellent grip on what you could call "the bigger picture".
Thank you, tv shows, for presenting me with these ladies in their mature splendour. May they inspire many more to come. May they also inspire fanfic, for that's what a fan lives on when there aren't any new episodes on the offering. There seems to be a start in this regard as well:
deborah_judge is continuing her Winn saga, I'm rereading something I alreay recced once because it can't be read too often, "Five Deaths (Laura Roslin)", and even unearthed a short but impressive Iris pov, Her Name, and other five-letter words starting with I.
