(Click the links to read Favorite Female Action Hero #2, #3, #4, and #5)
First of all, this is a countdown that demands a few honorable mentions.
First of all, this is a countdown that demands a few honorable mentions.
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As you can see, this month was a tough one, but we've reached my final favorite female action hero of all time, Major Kira Nerys.
Deep Space Nine is the most neglected Trek series, neither held as classic like the original series or Next Generation nor reviled like Voyager or Enterprise, which is sad, because its character and plot development are the deepest, most nuanced, varied, intense, and successfully experimental of any incarnation of the show.
If you haven't seen it, here are the basics:
After the planet Bajor at last repels a generations-long occupation by the Cardassian Empire, The Federation of Planets sets up an outpost in orbit around Bajor called Deep Space Nine, at the request of the Bajoran Provisional Government, to help with reconstruction and monitor Bajor's progress toward qualifying for Federation membership.
Kira Nerys, a Major in the Bajoran Militia, is assigned to Deep Space Nine as Federation Commander Benjamin Sisko's First Officer, in the hope of encouraging Bajoran/Federation cooperation.
If you haven't seen it, here are the basics:
After the planet Bajor at last repels a generations-long occupation by the Cardassian Empire, The Federation of Planets sets up an outpost in orbit around Bajor called Deep Space Nine, at the request of the Bajoran Provisional Government, to help with reconstruction and monitor Bajor's progress toward qualifying for Federation membership.
Kira Nerys, a Major in the Bajoran Militia, is assigned to Deep Space Nine as Federation Commander Benjamin Sisko's First Officer, in the hope of encouraging Bajoran/Federation cooperation.
With me so far?
Kira's been fighting for Bajoran independence since childhood, and she's not thrilled about depending now on a more powerful ally. She and Sisko immediately get off on the wrong foot, and to make things more complicated, a stable wormhole connecting the Alpha and Gamma quadrants of the galaxy is discovered next to Bajor shortly after the establishment of DS9, making what was supposed to be a backwater outpost into a hub of scientific exploration and, like it or not, a critical strategic position.
Kira's been fighting for Bajoran independence since childhood, and she's not thrilled about depending now on a more powerful ally. She and Sisko immediately get off on the wrong foot, and to make things more complicated, a stable wormhole connecting the Alpha and Gamma quadrants of the galaxy is discovered next to Bajor shortly after the establishment of DS9, making what was supposed to be a backwater outpost into a hub of scientific exploration and, like it or not, a critical strategic position.
Trek, for all its great qualities, has a well-earned reputation for thinly drawn characters. Benevolent, enlightened, anti-conflict humans, aliens defined by a single broad cultural trait. DS9 does the best job of breaking this trend, especially with Kira.
She's a guerrilla freedom fighter suddenly turned legitimate by her people's victory over their war-crime-happy one-time conquerors, and that equation isn't glossed over.
She's a passionate, uncompromising defender of the downtrodden, but she's got plenty of moral grayness, some war crimes of her own under her belt, and the concept of fun tends to elude her after all the unimaginable awfulness she's been through.
She's a guerrilla freedom fighter suddenly turned legitimate by her people's victory over their war-crime-happy one-time conquerors, and that equation isn't glossed over.
She's a passionate, uncompromising defender of the downtrodden, but she's got plenty of moral grayness, some war crimes of her own under her belt, and the concept of fun tends to elude her after all the unimaginable awfulness she's been through.
That doesn't mean she won't try for her friends.
She's also intensely religious, their spirituality having been one of the Bajoran people's only consolations during the occupation. It's enough to cause a rift between her and a Federation school teacher on DS9 who begins teaching science to the station's children, Bajorans included, and to make her advocate a return to a caste system that would have disqualified Bajor from Federation protection, when one of Bajor's historical religious leaders is resurrected from the dead.
Hey, it's still Star Trek.
Over the course of the series, Kira has to become more open-minded, form friendships across cultures, make an uncomfortable transition from violent rebel to administrator and diplomat in order to keep advocating for her people, and allow herself to recognize corruption where it arises among the Bajoran clergy, all without losing sight of her personal faith.
Hey, it's still Star Trek.
Over the course of the series, Kira has to become more open-minded, form friendships across cultures, make an uncomfortable transition from violent rebel to administrator and diplomat in order to keep advocating for her people, and allow herself to recognize corruption where it arises among the Bajoran clergy, all without losing sight of her personal faith.
It would be easy for Kira to fall into the subordinate girl part, as the series's Captain's mismatched first officer who has to learn to respect, follow, and eventually love him, but the ensemble structure of the series stops her from falling into the same traps a character like her would in a movie. The growing mutual respect and friendship between Kira and Sisko is one of the important plot threads, but that's all it is, a friendship, and one thread out of many.
They each get their own in-depth plotlines, romantic and otherwise. They each get to play protagonist in a nearly equal number of episodes, and while his tie in more closely to the (not particularly interesting) overarching mythology of the series, she becomes more of a leader at the station than he is with all his mythology related distractions, and her plotlines are more frequently action-packed and emotionally powerful.
She’s the one who ends up forming a close friendship with an elderly Cardassian man after being kidnapped and forced to impersonate his daughter.
They each get their own in-depth plotlines, romantic and otherwise. They each get to play protagonist in a nearly equal number of episodes, and while his tie in more closely to the (not particularly interesting) overarching mythology of the series, she becomes more of a leader at the station than he is with all his mythology related distractions, and her plotlines are more frequently action-packed and emotionally powerful.
She’s the one who ends up forming a close friendship with an elderly Cardassian man after being kidnapped and forced to impersonate his daughter.
She's the one who once had to pay a profiteer she despises to help her conceal a murder from the investigator who would later become her best friend.
She's the one who ends up sharing guardianship of a naive political refugee with the same Cardassian overlord who abducted Kira's mother as his consort when Kira was three.
She's the one who ends up sharing guardianship of a naive political refugee with the same Cardassian overlord who abducted Kira's mother as his consort when Kira was three.
...Cue wacky sitcom music?
It would be equally easy, with her formidable battle history established in the first episode, for her to end up as that one character everyone gets to beat up to prove how tough they are.
*Cough*
But no, her unrivaled skill set in the field of fighting dirty and fighting to win is shown as often as it's told. She's nearly undefeated in onscreen physical combat (which there's plenty of on DS9), and by the final season, with the galaxy in all-out war, she's called upon as an expert to train Cardassian military leaders in the same guerrilla tactics she used to defeat them, to make them more useful unwilling allies against the greater threat from the Gamma quadrant.
It's up for grabs who's more annoyed and embarrassed by this.
She's the best at what she does, and she doesn't need to be shown up in action, because action isn’t her problem. Her vulnerability comes from her struggles to deal with her anger and adapt to living as a whole person in the tenuously liberated Bajor she's worked her whole life toward creating, and it’s a long, difficult, fascinating journey.
Like my picks for greatest female action heroes? If so, this is the point where I’m obligated to note that I create female action heroes as well as analyze them. If you’ve enjoyed this list, I’d like to introduce you to another resistance fighter defending her species, named Mina Todd:
Or, if you’re in a lighter mood, a certain zombie slayer named Cassie Fremont.
