Yea I said it in the parent post … seeing this data basically, in my mind, cancelled that series. Only something wrong could have happened for it to happen after DS9 and VOY. I’m guessing the real Berman showed through or something??

I saw it when I was a lot younger and have gone back since mainly because it ends when it was just getting good. But I honestly can't remember a lot of the inter character relationship which isn't a good sign.

I kinda think Voyager failing the test despite Janeway is still a symptom of a representation issue. The test was designed because there are plenty of fully fleshed out female characters in fiction, but usually they exist as exceptions in a man’s world and creators still feel too awkward writing women to have two or more of them having meaningful exchanges.

I’d say that despite Voyager being a trailblazer for representation with Janeway, it still had these exact issues. At least until Seven of Nine came along.

It’s still important to note that the test is in no way a formal analysis, and not even its creator claims this.

I’d disagree and say that it demonstrates its flaws (as the author of the linked post says also). But there is no reason to think that it meaningless that Janeway doesn’t talk to other women about something other than a man.

That’s a fact, in some episodes, with some meaning independent of whether the episode otherwise has plenty of dialogue delivered by its female lead. Would a TOS episode have ever failed the reverse bechdel test? No, Kirk had plenty of men to talk to and did so about many things other than women. Why not Janeway? Because the show, in many episodes, surrounded her with men. Paris, Harry, Chakotay and Tuvok surround her on the bridge, while Kes, B’Elanna and Seven are often “downstairs”. The test surfaces these aspects of the show, if you think about it for a moment … and I don’t think that’s a failure of the test at all.

Well, you know, thinking about it, an awful lot of Kes's life revolves around Neelix and the Doctor, with occasional training by Tuvok. I suspect a lot of her dialogue was about one of the three...

Hold on… A show getting 100% represents the entirety of its content NOT having any woman characters talking about a man correct?

Last I checked, women do indeed talk about men, and men about women… So to have a 100% pass would be… Unnatural.

The test should ideally never be passed with 100% (at least over the course of several episodes) - because that’s just not how humans behave - but then it shouldn’t have a low score either.

The first pilot literally had them talking about how weird it is to have a woman on the bridge.

Preparing, typing and routing correspondence and reports

Organizing and maintaining files

Receiving office visits and handling telephone communications

Operating personal computers, word processing, duplicating, audio-recording and other office machines

Performing office personnel administration

Maintaining records and official publications

Performing administrative functions for legal proceedings

Serving as office managers

Performing other various clerical and administrative duties

Oh absolutely. I should put a bold /s up there.

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.

The article linked shows voyager pretty high, but DS9 surprisingly low for how many women are part of the show.

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.

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.

The initial article left we wishing for more current information. Thanks!

Very, very little romance in it too.

Great point. I did think that Seven and Janeway (who I agree were a very prominent pairing - akin to the attention given to Data and Picard in TNG) would help Voyager, but then discounted it a bit by that pairing only even existing from season 4 onwards. I don't think that's enough alone to explain Voyager doing 42 percentage points better than TNG (44.9% vs 86.9%), but it would certainly have helped a lot!

Janeway takes Torres under her wing a bit too, and talk shop often. I think the rise is almost exclusively due to the Captain being a woman and having at least a single head of staff be another woman means any episode the captain has to consult that character means it will pass. The 7 bit is just gravy filling in episodes that isn’t the case.

Wow - I hadn't realised Guinan was in that few!

That's a fair point. On reflection, I also seem to recall that some of the Crusher and Troi convos were also literally about their personal relationships.

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.

My personal bet is that until the bechdel pass rate goes up into ~90%, your point won’t really fly and the reverse will be passed all of the time … still interesting to find out.

In the era of “just asking questions”, I certainly understand any implicit assumptions that I’m oh-so-cleverly concealing some ill-conceived “point” about feminism. Certainly a case can be raised that by presenting a possible chink in the supporting evidence of your post is an inherently disruptive and destructive act; clearly your broader point about closet bigotry affecting fan biases is both correct and worth emphasizing. I’d far rather strengthen your argument than tear it down. I hope that’s ultimately what I’m doing here.

Given the numbers and the low bar of the Bechdel, some quick sampling could probably be done to get a picture. Select 10 episodes that pass the Bechdel test and 10 that fail, maybe some from TNG ans some from voyager, and we here collectively try to see if they pass/fail the reverse bechdel test in a group effort?

I don’t think I would trust the results of this, unfortunately, as there’s probably a reverse correlation between the Bechdel and reverse Bechdel tests; in a sample this small that would pollute the results. For example, take any episode where two characters of the same sex are stuck together in some sort of trouble. That episode will surely pass one of the tests (Bechdel for two women, reverse for two men) but has an increased chance of failing the other because much of the dialogue for the rest of the characters is likely to revolve around the plight of the imperiled pair.

…which isn’t to say that what you suggest isn’t worth the attempt. Certainly raising an issue and then shooting down a proposed solution to it isn’t very helpful. Episode transcripts are out there; maybe there’s a software solution here? Automatic identification of conversations between two characters would be imperfect but manageable, running that dialogue up against a list of names of male/female characters and then manually checking up on the episodes that missed to avoid false negatives would probably be the most technically efficient way about this?

Circling back on your actual point, though… You are absolutely and unambiguously correct that TOS did a horrible job with gender representation, much worse than TNG did (or could have been expected to by fans when it was about to air). It’s also clear that Voyager did much better than it’s contemporaries, and ENT was a pretty harsh step backwards. You don’t need to know the base rate to establish if one number is bigger than the other, only to draw more nebulous, general conclusions about how well shows are doing with gender representation.