Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, and the Bechdel Test

So, about 9 months ago, I posted a "news from the Snowdrop camp" post, burbling about various things and, in particular, mentioning my love of a science fiction tv show called Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.

In that post I made a rather bold claim:

While I couldn't swear that all the episodes pass the Bechdel Test, I think quite a lot do, simply because there's quite a lot of people talking about how to escape weird space-y "natural" perils and sometimes the female characters discuss the problem in one-on-ones. There are other topics as well, not all directly plot-related (hobbies seem to come up a bit, I think).

Well, I now have 3 out of 5 seasons on DVD (seasons 2, 3 and 4) so I thought it would be a good idea to test that belief against objective fact (or as objective as can be managed when discussing a subjective artform). This was also a great excuse to go back and watch all the episodes of one of my favourite shows all over again.

As chance would have it, I was about halfway through this oh-so-arduous task when RMJ @ Bitch Media posted applying the Bechdel Test to television shows. RMJ discusses briefly what it would take to declare a show as passing the Bechdel Test, and what passing the test means:

It’s a good indication of whether or not a film is at all concerned with women, or if its focus is entirely on men.

...

So if one conversation in one episode doesn’t cut it, what does? How does a television show pass the Bechdel test? To fully pass the Bechdel test, every single episode must feature a conversation between two named female characters that is not about a man.

This may sound stringent, and it is. Off the top of my head, I can barely think of a show that would easily pass this. But at the same time, it’s not unreasonable. One 30-second conversation about mothers, or daughters, or female friends, or goals, or cleaning, or even Applebee’s, in every 22 or 30 or 43 or 60 minute episode is not that hard of a requirement to satisfy.

Even more so, I feel, when the show has three central female characters who are strong and well-developed roles (Andromeda has Beka Valentine, ex-hustler, salvage ship pilot and treasure hunter; Andromeda, a hugely complex warship artificial intelligence with apparent emotions and lots of quirks, and the mysterious Trance Gemini who serves as medic and mystic, with lots of hidden depths).

So how did the show fare over 66 episodes?

The raw figures are: out of 66 episodes, 27 featured conversations between women that fit the Bechdel description and were three lines or longer (that is, the shortest conversation I would have accepted would be something like, [Woman A: "Hi, how you doing?" Woman B: "Fine! You?" A: "Yeah, fine. See ya!" End of scene]). Most scenes that I counted as a "pass" were on the shorter side.

Included in that is one scene where Andromeda the starship has a conversation with her android version (usually identified in the show as "Rommie"). Does this count as a solliloquy (since technically they're the same character) or a conversation (because they are also two separate personas)? I chose to count it as two female characters, because that's what it looks like on screen (even if they are played by the same actor).

There were some great scenes and episodes, however. In Season 2, the episode titled "Una Salus Victus" (translated in the episode as "One hope of the damned", but I think it seems closer to "One saviour of the defeated"?), Beka Valentine goes on a rescue mission alone. She saves the medical transport ship she was trying to save, but is disabled in the attempt - as is the only survivor of the raiders attacking it. As the (female) raider and Beka race to fix their ships and blow the other into spacedust, they discuss life, the universe, and the upcoming duel. Their conversations form a counterpoint to the action going on elsewhere in the show.

Also in season 2, there's an episode where Captain Dylan Hunt and crew set out to recruit a fabled resistance leader named Isabella Ortiz, and have to fight a last-ditch defence of an isolated tavern - with a number of female staff and patrons, including the colony's only medic. Discussions of life, healing and alcohol take place between the female crew members and the tavern's regulars/staff.

In the season opener for season 3, Beka Valentine discusses emotions (in the middle of a crisis) and ambitions for when they survive, with Trance Gemini. (There's further conversations between the two that are more plot-specific, and describing them would also require spoilers for that episode). The episode closes with Beka finding Rommie and Trance hiding away in a cubbyhole on her salvage ship (the Eureka Maru), where those two characters (being an alien whop needs little sleep, and an android who needs no sleep at all) hang out together in the wee small hours; as Beka says, "the ancient ritual - Girl talk!" The three female leads settle down for a conversation (we only see a tiny snippet of the "girl talk" as the episode is ending).

In episode 6, Beka returns to the "girl talk" cubbyhole and there discusses her anxiety about an almost-impossible covert bombing raid that she's going on with Dylan Hunt and Tyr Anasazi (it's a "rogue state acquires WMD" type story, and was most likely written in the build-up to the Iraq war, as that's how the dates match up). They discuss their role as "the good guys", the "big picture" and such. A great "Bechdel Test" passing scene.

Finally, in an episode titled "Point of the Spear", Beka and Trance discuss the ways events have conspired to change their roles in life. While Beka at the start of the scene refers to Tyr, she is talking about letting someone else fly off in her ship (the Maru) while she "plays fighter jock", rather than Tyr as "a man". I feel like I bent the rules on this one, but the emotions and content of the talk are not focussed on men but on the life and choices that they (and Beka in particular) are following for themselves.

Season 4 had only one such high point, in the first half of a 2-part "grand finale". Beka Valentine (again) discusses with Rommie her feelings of unease about a deeply pacifist society the crew have encountered. They compare this to her reactions to the evil "Abyss". Rommie adds observations on life, and in particular on Beka's need for goals in life.

That's six really good scenes or episodes involving women talking to each other (about something other than a man) out of sixty-six episodes. Another 21 with shorter or less impressive scenes. I could make excuses for some ("oh, that episode was about this male character's development alone, so it's natural they'd all talk about him", "well, the plot required that all the women go off doing different things so they couldn't talk to each other") but ultimately those are the totals.

I still like Andromeda for those strong, self-determining female leads (Rommie/Andromeda herself is perhaps less self-determining, being an artificial lifeform, but in a season 2 episode, she's pretty much given the bulk of the story to develop her character as an independent and self-determining role). The fact that they don't, generally, stick to standard female ideals is also refreshing: Beka is a brilliant pilot, can hold her own in a fight, and generally likes the dirtier side of life being essentially a crook in her own right; Andromeda identifies as a warship and her hobbies are blowing stuff up, and building new missiles out of asteroids; even Trance, the most familiarly feminine in role, is proud of being able to drink people under the table and can act really tough when she needs to.

But, with those strong characters, it says something when the show can't even get 50% of its episodes to pass the Bechdel test (and let's face it, with 60% of the episodes watched, that's got to be a reasonable sample).