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Article by Alpha-Girl
Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 15 Comments
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Ahhh, a young Julie Neumar!
The “Pris fights, Zhora doesn’t” thing in Blade Runner is a result of some sloppy changes in the script during production. There’s several of those. For instance, in the ’82 version of the film, the cheif says there are five replicants instead of just four. This is because in the earliest shooting script there was another female replicant, but they decided to remove her from the story early on, but forgot to change the ‘number.’
Likewise, in the earliest versions of the script, Pris was the kick-murderbot and Zhora was the sexbot, which is why Zhora’s dancing naked with a snake and runs scared, while Pris kicks the living crap out of Dekard: Their names and characters got reversed early on in filming, but no one thought to transfer their death/fight scenes.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention any of the Cylon girlies, or Andromeda from “Andromeda,” who on the one hand was really cool for about 2 seasons, but on the other hand had that really annoying unrequited love for the captain thing going on.
I added the Cylon girls to “Sex Toy: subcategory: oversexed”. Didn’t add a picture, though. Rommie, I’m on the fence about because she’s a projection of the ship’s AI rather than a construct in herself.
You left out the Fembots from “Austin Powers” which combined sexbots with killing machines, and what to
make of their machine-gun breasts.
The Austin Powers fembots were one of the first Lady Bots that I suggested to Lisa when we were talking about this.
Maybe she left them out just to spite me.
John, it’s step 432 in my plan to turn you into a quivering mass of insecurity.
There were Fembots prior to Austin Powers – they were the villains in a two part episode of The Bionic Woman. Although, I don’t know if they had weaponized boobs. The weaponization of said boobs represents the power of our boobs to conquer the world. I believe that if mine had brains or cannons, I could build an empire.
The Fembots were in The Bionic Woman *AND* The Six Million Dollar Man. No built-in weapons, just your typical kick-murder squad kinda’ thing.
There were actually *Three* Andromedas. There was the ship’s own AI, which was named “Andromeda”, and the ship was her body; and then there was a holographic projection that interacted with the crew, and finally a gynoid nicknamed “Rommie.” All three of ‘em were interlinked, but were largely autonomous and had somewhat different personalities.
I feel kind of ambivalent about the female Terminators. (“Terminatrices”, maybe? Sorry, too much Latin in college.)
On the one hand, I think Summer Glau is by far a better actor than Kristana Loken. (Apologies to any Bloodrayne or Painkiller Jane fans; I just found them painful to watch.) But, on the other hand, the fact that Sarah Connor is starting to imply that Cameron is actually developing human emotions rather than simply becoming more adept at mimicking them is fairly weird. That storyline didn’t work for me with Data in the Star Trek movies, and it’s pushing the boundaries of believability here. There’s a big difference between an artificial intelligence that can recreate facial expressions and vocal qualities in order to elicit a desired reaction from the humans, and one that can actually feel things. Cameron is coming dangerously close to that line. The T-X had a simplicity of purpose — which certainly works better in a movie than all the necessary character development in a weekly series — and didn’t take crap from anybody.
See? Ambivalent. :-
I’m with Robin – the “Terminatrix” (That’s what they called her in the press releases) AKA Kristana Loken is pretty-but-bland. Summer Glau isn’t as pretty, but is far, far, far less bland.
If they do end up doing the Star Trek Pinnochio plot with Cameron, I’m going to be very upset. I liked what the actress said a year ago about “I think it’s more interesting to explore my character’s inhumanity than her humanity, because she doesn’t have any humanity.” I like to think that she had at least an inkling of what the producers were up to when she said that. As such I’d like to think her emerging emotions are part of a larger plot, and presumably a scam on the part of the Terminators, rather than an emerging Blue Fairy in the programming.
Ah, Science Fiction, why do you always crap out on me like this?
*Tries to remember what category the Jessicas from ‘Screamers’ fall into* Or since there’s two of them, do they fall into different categories…?
@Aza: Must admit, I hadn’t heard of Screamers until just now. But, now I have to watch it just for Peter Weller goodness.
@Hooboahoobah: Science fiction craps out the minute it gets a marketing-exploitable audience.