I found this after reading and responding to this post here about early Trek fans’ prejudicial negative reaction to TNG. One of my responses (see here) was to point out that any fans of the progressiveness of Trek ought to have been mindful of the room for improvement over TOS, with female representation being an obvious issue. I posed the question “when did Trek start consistently passing the Bechdel test”, thinking that it didn’t start happening until Voyager, which those hard-line TOS fans would never have allowed to be made (along with TNG and DS9).
And of course, someone’s done the analysis with graphs and everything! Awesome! (though note the links to tumblr posts at the bottom that are now behind a sign-in wall … fun).
The results aren’t surprising to me, generally. I expected TNG to do worse, but also thought it did a pretty good job with female guest characters so it might score higher than I thought. DS9, I expected to do better than TNG, which, to my surprise is only marginally true. But I didn’t expect, from memory, how much of that is attributable to so many characters breaking off into (hetero, yes even Odo) couples. Voyager obviously does very well. And Enterprise … well we shouldn’t expect much of that … honestly, for me, this cements the show’s status as a blight on this era to lean so masculine straight after voyager.
And of course TOS shows its age, which, surely by 1987, good Trek fans should have been aware of?
Beyond that, I can’t help but think of SNW here, which, IMO has a wonderful cast/crew that’s well balanced and which I’d expect to be doing well on the Bechdel (as low and superficial bar as it is). But, as it starts to transition into a TOS prequel/reboot (as it is trending from S2 and as the show runners are indicating), all of those TOS characters are going to carry that 60s baggage with them. They’ll all be men (Uhura is already there!) and all be special miracle workers. La’an’s story has already been sidelined into a Kirk romance. Pelia the engineer was already somewhat substituted by Scotty the engineer. As it goes on (presuming it does), I think it could begin to look awkward once you squint.
EDIT: For those asking about new seasons/series … I found this page/blog by the author of the parent blog post … which provides data for some new Trek (Disco and Picard S3 and SNW S1 it seems).
Somewhat notably to me (though only one data point) … the one episode of SNW S1 that (clearly) fails the test is the one with Kirk in it.
In a similar vein though, while Disco generally does well (best of all Trek so far it seems), the author notes that Season two had the most episodes that were close to the line, because Michael’s arc was so intertwined with her search for her brother, Spock. That is, the more new Trek leans into TOS nostalgia, the worse this gets.
Not even one episode of season 1 TOS passed it. For shame. What were the 60s thinking?
Edit: /s by the way. I’m aware of the culture in the 60s.
I mean, it was another time. Their first pilot had number one, and that didn’t fly. But that’s the point, it was another time, and staying stuck in that time will always have drawbacks. As the article points out, the TOS Kelvin timeline reboots don’t do well on the bechdel at all, and it’s not a coincidence. If SNW heads toward more TOS prequel/reboot territory, you’ll probably see it in bechdel data like this.
The first pilot literally had them talking about how weird it is to have a woman on the bridge.
That was likely added to quell reactions to a woman as a first officer. But the Network had notes even so on how negatively test audiences reacted to Majel Barrett’s Number One.
Roddenberry tried another tack with blonde, beehived, Whitney in a miniskirt as Yeoman Janice Rand. She was supposed to be a woman main character but even that was too much for the executives and she was written out by the end of the first season.
That’s a bit of a low-resolution phrase.
Of course it obviously was a product of it’s time - but it did push the boundaries as far as it could, and had to fight for some basic scenes.
Unlike many other “products of their time” that didn’t even try and move the needle for positive representation.
I thought it was widely agreed that the bechedel test isn’t a very good metric? Like lesbian porn passes, but a lot of very good ST episodes don’t.
I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s such a low bar that it shouldn’t ever be failed, unless the reverse bechdel test is also being failed in more or less equal measure. Passing it need not mean much. Failing it, regularly, means plenty.
Also, porn basically has no relevance to the assessment of gender diversity in drama.
IIRC Measure of a man doesn’t pass, and thats the best episode imo. And imo, the test is mainly good for rage bait and not much more than that.
Sorry my friend … that’s a downvote from me.
Measure of a man doesn’t pass, and thats the best episode imo.
This isn’t about single episodes or even whether an episode that fails can be good by other standards. Flipping this, would the episode have been worse if two women had a conversation about something other than a man? I’d imagine not at all, so why didn’t it happen?
And imo, the test is mainly good for rage bait and not much more than that.
I haven’t seen any rage here … unfortunately, your post is the most angsty I’ve seen, which, I have to say, implies that you’re uncomfortable with something like Trek or TOS being critiqued or diversity issues in general.
Beyond that, it’s a simple “test” that anyone who actually uses or talks about will acknowledge is simple and flawed, but is also relevant in talking and thinking about gender diversity in how much it if failed. Just look at the graph of pass rates for Trek over time … basically a steady increase (until ENT). That more or less shows that it’s not a meaningless hollow test but actually measures something real.
If you don’t care about gender diversity or don’t think it’s that important, would you care to explain why?
The test was never meant to be a metric for whether something is good or not. It’s meant to be a metric for representation of women in media.
The test is based on this 1985 comic from Alison Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For”:
With that history in mind, I don’t think the fact that lesbian porn passes is a shortfall of the test. The test was created by lesbians, after all.
The Bechdel test doesn’t tell you if something is ‘good’ or not, you mainly use it to identify trends in media overal. The fact that voyager predictably scored highest is, to me, a sign that it does measure something real, which I’d consider to be a hallmark of what a good metric is supposed to do.
Isn’t this just a meme test to raise awareness? I see it often being failed because women talk about their straight romantic interests. I guess that’s something most men could even do without in their entertainment. My takeaway is that more diverse groups of writers should be hired, to give us fresher stories.
Yep, using it as a literal test seems to miss the point, namely that there is a significant %age of films and TV that fail to meet even that low a bar.
It’s a low bar in the sense that a show can be misogynistic and yet pass the test.
But the show can also be a strong case for equality and fail it (ie. have both males and females involved in all conversations).
If a movie has only 2 characters, a man and a woman, and the movie is all about their relationship, then passing the Bechdel test will be a high bar for that movie.
The article mentions how many episodes in Voyager were very Janeway-centric, and yet didn’t pass the test because in all the conversations there was one way or another one male involved, even though the focus was on Kathryn.
I feel that it’s not a very good test in general. There are also shows/movies that don’t pass the reverse Bechdel test (having 2 males talk about something not involving a female) and yet I wouldn’t say those shows are sexist.
No surprise with Voyager. On the ship of the valkyries, there are plenty of opportunities for women to talk to each other about starship stuff.
Article’s from 2014. I’d really like to know how the more recent shows have faired.
Did a search and found this: https://trekkiefeminist.com/category/bechdel-wallace-test/
Maybe a separate post should be made to share … seems like a good resource on this.
Nice one!
The question I was wondering: SNW passed with 9/10 episodes in season 1.
Disco was 93-100%, Picard 90-100%. They don’t have Prodigy or Lower Decks, though.
