Day 15 - Meta - Statistically Speaking: The Women of Babylon 5

[muccamukk]

[A/N: This was originally posted on my now-deleted tumblr in August 2013.]

Trekkiefeminist has been running a Behind the Camera week over on her Star Trek blog, and her mention of D.C. Fontana made me think of doing the same for Babylon 5.

I guess I should preface this by saying that Babylon 5 is, and probably always will be, my favourite TV show. I love it with all the passion of a fourteen year old, even with the insight of an adult. It also has two of my favourite female characters of all time: Susan Ivanova and Delenn, as well as several other women who I love very much (and wow, do I sten for Liz Lochley when provoked). I would wholeheartedly support the statement "Babylon 5 has the best women." Because, seriously, Delenn and Ivanova are the best. Also, ♥.♥

However, when people start saying that B5 did the best ever at representing women, I start to make frowny faces at said people. Because of that is the future, there’s been some kind of calamity that’s knocked the female population back to somewhere between a quarter and a third of the whole, just saying. And that’s humans. Aliens just don’t seem to need as many women as we do. Like three is totally fine.

Behind the camera, the situation is just as bad if not worse.


Behind the camera

Only 7% of directors, 13% of writers, and 20% of producers are female. With such a dearth of female representation in front of and behind the camera, it’s a struggle to champion female stories and voices. The [Geena Davis] Institute’s research proves that female involvement in the creative process is imperative for creating greater gender balance before production even begins. There is a causal relationship between positive female portrayals and female content creators involved in production. In fact, when even one woman writer works on a film, there is a 10.4% difference in screen time for female characters. Sadly, men outnumber women in key production roles by nearly 5 to 1.

Why we should care who’s behind the camera [x] [A/N: Somewhere on here, the page has changed since I posted it.]

Out of 110 Episodes (I’m not counting “The Gathering” or any of the movies):
98 episodes were written by J. Michael Straczynski (two of those co-written with Harlan Ellison)

18 episodes were written by other people (5 of those by women, 4.5 % of the the whole, but 27.8% of ones not by JMS)
Larry DiTillio wrote 7
D. C. Fontana wrote 3
Peter David wrote 2
Neil Gaiman, Scott Frost, Christy Marx, Kathryn M. Drennan, Marc Scott Zicree and David Gerrold each wrote 1
(personally, I could have lived with less DiTillio, and rather more Fontana and Drennan, but oh well).

14 episodes (12.7%) were directed by women:
Janet Greek directed 12 (tied for third most of any director working on the series)
Lorraine Senna Ferrara and Kim Friedman each directed 1

I… don’t really know much about production, but it looks like Susan Norkin was the only woman involved in more than a handful of episodes (she worked as associate producer on 44 episodes). There were seven other dudes.


In front of the camera

We had 18 actors show up in the opening credits, across five seasons; seven of those were women (38.9%).

7 out of 18 doesn’t look too bad, until you realise that most of these roles are replacing each other. Mira Furlan is the only actress on the entire series who did not leave for one reason or another. Patricia Tallman replaced Andrea Thompson; Tracy Scoggins replaced Claudia Christian; Mary Kay Adams replaced Caitlin Brown, and then also left. The only time the men did that was Bruce Boxleitner replacing Michael O’Hare. (And I guess you could argue that Jason Carter replaced Robert Rusler, as they were both meant to be something like pretty boys, but it seemed like they played characters with very different jobs: a secret agent/paramilitary and a fighter pilot, respectively. As opposed to two telepaths with special powers and conflicted relationships with PsyCorp, two space station command officers with angsty family issues, and two actors literally playing the same character. Though it did keep the numbers even, dude wise, or would have if Jeff Conaway hadn’t also joined the cast in season three).

There were only at best four women on the show at any given time, and usually it was three. It was not a show that spent a lot of time passing Bechdel, especially after Talia Winters left.

So it actually looked like, by opening credits:
Season One: 11 people, 4 of them women
Season Two: 12 people, 4 of them women (essentially 3, as Adams was barely there)
Season Three: 11 people, 2 of them women (essentially 3, as either Thompson or Tallman were there most of the time)
Season four: 12 people, 3 of them women
Season five: 11 people, 3 of them women

The show also suffered from Default Dude syndrome, where many of the secondary characters were men. Why? Because why would they be women?

Reoccurring female characters (as opposed to, say, David Corwin, Kosh, Mr. Morden, Bester, Lorien, Byron, Draal, Ta’Lon, Refa, Neroon, Brother Theo, Cartagia, Zathras (all of them), Morgan Clark, William Edgars, David Sheridan, Senator Hidosh, most of the League ambassadors, and several more-forgettable people):
C&C Tech: 20 episodes
Computer: 18 Episodes
Jane the ISN anchor: 10 episodes
Lise Hampton: 9 episodes
Number One/Tessa Holloran: 7 episodes
Kat the Bartender: 4 episodes
Anna Sheridan: 4 episodes
Catherine Sakai: 3 episodes
Alison Higgins: 3 episodes
Lilian Hobbs: 3 episodes
ISN reporter: 3 episodes
Adira Tyree: 2 episodes
Mary Ann Cramer: 2 episodes
ISN Anchor: 2 episodes
Elizabeth Durman: 2 episodes
Med Tech: 2 episodes
Psi Cop: 2 episodes
ISN Anchor: 2 episodes
Med Tech: 2 Episodes

Of the 19 of them, 9 didn’t get last names and one was a computer. Interestingly, only one was an alien, though a couple of actresses did play multiple alien characters and thus were in more than one episode.

Now of course they were many, many great female characters who appeared for one show only, and I did appreciate that in crowed scenes or meetings of officers, there tended to be some gender and racial diversity. Someone with more time than I currently have can run those numbers. I’d also love to see how many episodes pass Bechdel.