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Anonymous asked: How is it that people say JJ Abrams is the worst when he is the first director to allow a female character to have a significant place in the triumvirate. To support Uhura being female lead and getting a healthy consensual romance. The first director to expand upon her skills, actually give her a first name, AND have her speak an alien language. No he isn't perfect, but none of the past writers/directors/films did a damn thing to expand her character, yet fans glorify those movies. SMDH!
lucystillintheskywithdiamonds answered:

I suspect they hate him precisely for this reason, nonny.

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sweetthingsandwetdreams:

logicians:

no.

maybe JJ Abrams did do something right with his characterization of Uhura by placing her in the triumvirate, but that’s not why we say he’s the worst.

JJ Abrams is the worst because he took one of our culture’s most optimistic and idealistic stories about the nature of existence and turned it into your average dark and gritty summer blockbuster.  He destroyed Vulcan because he could.  For dramatic effect.

He created this entire alternate timeline so anything could happen, and then remade Wrath of Khan.  Whitewashed a role that Gene Roddenberry had to fight the network in order to give to an actor of color.  Gave a female character Carol Marcus’ name, and only her name, as a “nod” to the original canon with no explanation as to why she’s suddenly a weapons technician and not a biologist.

He took away the uniforms’ representation of female character’s rank.  He betrayed a female character’s privacy by showing her near-naked from the perspective of a male character, who was told not to look.

The same male character that is portrayed as a womanizing, boob-grabbing asshole, who drove Christine Chapel to seek reassignment.  That is not Gene Roddenberry’s James T. Kirk.

JJ Abrams took Star Trek and watered it down, made it a novelty.  Gave us a couple of throw-away references to Admiral Archer or to a tribble and expected that to make up for the slap in the face he gave to Roddenberry.

Uhura did have a bigger role in the reboot, at the expense of McCoy’s character.  But that’s not why we hate what JJ did to the reboot.

This ask really discredits Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura, too. Zoe Saldana is good, but she wasn’t playing a black female lieutenant in the 1960’s. Nichols actually changed people’s perspectives on black women, she has said in interview that people have told her that until they say Star Trek they didn’t really consider black people as people, and there are prominent black women who have said that they chose their careers because of her representation (e.g. Mae Jemison, Whoopi Goldberg). Also, Nichols was the one who agreed on Uhura’s first name. It was never said in series, but it was canon before the reboot.