Heroine Chic Enters The Space Age

The Huston Chronicle has posted up an article about the role of women's roles in Science Fiction, and how it's changing. The article focuses on Zoe Washburn, from Firefly/Serenity fame, but our favorite, Starbuck, also gets some talk:

Heroine Chic Enters The Space Age

By LOUIS B. PARKS
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Her big gun blasting away at kill-crazed mutants, Serenity's Zoe does battle in the grand tradition of Alien's Lt. Ripley. She's tough — except with her husband: Then she goes all giggly.
"I'm a lover and a fighter," says Gina Torres, who played Zoe in Firefly, the 2002 TV series, and reprised the role in Serenity. "That's what's so engaging. She is the most balanced person on that ship. She has a loving marriage (to Wash, the pilot of spaceship Serenity) and a job she embraces every morning. She likes being a soldier. She's good at it."
We can't predict the real future, but space women of the cinema future are — finally — men's equals. Zoe represents the image and status of women-in-space, but it's just one image out of many.
Also on Serenity is the cute-as-a-space-bug Kaylee (Jewel Staite). No warrior is she — Kaylee is too busy being all doe-eyed over the ship's doctor. She's also the ship's engineer and mechanic, equally at home in grease-stained dungarees or gaucho pants.

Katee Sackhoff plays Starbuck in the Sci Fi
Channel remake of Battlestar Galactica

Sci Fi Katee Sackhoff plays Starbuck in the Sci Fi Channel remake of Battlestar Galactica.
The women are equally complex — and more screwed up — on the Sci Fi Channel's hit Battlestar Galactica. Flying a fighter or punching out one of her own male comrades, Lt. "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) is the orneriest, horniest pilot aboard.
Galactica's President Laura Roslin (twice Oscar-nominated Mary McDonnell) employs religious fervor to keep her terminal cancer from distracting her as she leads humanity toward a new solar system.
Even the cyborg women on the show are complex, torn between destroying men or making babies with them.

Read the full article here.