I want to love Sam Carter, I really do...

[thegrrrl2002]

But I just can't seem to work up the same amount of enthusiasm for the character as I did for, say, Dana Scully. I loved Scully, loved her with all my little scientisty heart. She was the coolest girl scientist *ever* on TV. She made me so proud, figuring out all those weird little X-Files mysteries. Not to mention giving Mulder a hard time in each and every episode. I want to love Carter like that, too, but I just can't connect with her as a character. I just don't know why. Is it because she's in a different field? Scully and I are both biologists, and Carter, of course, is a physicist. But I like physics, even though my interest is strictly amateur.

I think it might be because Carter is presented as not just any ordinary scientist, but as a Genuis. As if we couldn't buy into a woman being scientific unless she was some sort of freak of nature, a supergenuis who can figure out everything. Not just an ordinary run of the mill scientist who is fairly bright and works hard to get their answers. That's too big a stretch. Maybe that's why I can't connect to her at all--I'm not anywhere near that level of smartness. (Just dogged.) And related to that genus issue is that to me, I don't see the "scientist" in her character, except when she's talking technical. I believed Scully as a scientist. She was skeptical, she needed a logical reason to believe, she searched for answers in the only way she knew how. For Carter, none of the scientific abilities she shows seem to be organic to her nature. Not that scientists all act a certain way, but there is something about the inquisitive nature that should stand out. Instead, the character is written as a simple plot device, as how to get from Point A to Point B to Solution in any given episode. There's hardly ever any evidence of the road she traveled to get there.

Or maybe it's none of the above. I don't know. I just know that I want to love her, and I don't. I think the character is okay in most eps, decent in some, and less than exciting in most. I really wish I found her more compelling.

Comments

[gigitrek.livejournal.com]

I had a friend who's perpetual answer to that old chestnut, "Which actress would you cross the fence for?" was Gillian Anderson. I could never see it, myself. But then again, I wasn't a big X-Files fan.

I think writing compelling scientific females is a problem for (mostly male) writers in a lot of TV shows. I was going to mention the travesty that is T'Pol, but that's probably best left alone.

T'Pol...

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

I was astonished to discover that T'Pol is really growing on me this season. And not in a 'I need anti-fungal cream now' sort of way. Aside from the un-Vulcan-like moments (which will not be spoken of) I enjoyed most of her screen time. Maybe it's all relative--most of her stuff in the first season made me wince. She was more bitchy than anything else, which drove me crazy.

As for Gilian Anderson, yeah, I could see it.