Just quickie responses: to your charge of sexism -- no female security
guards, no female pilots -- you've only seen two shows so far. In further
episodes, we DO have female security guards, AND female pilots (including
Ivanova, who goes into combat), AND female doctors (one of whom is
Hispanic, and plays a major part in an episode), and females in every
other capacity on board the station. Virtually every female shown on this
show has a career, responsibility, and for the most part is as content
with that career as the men are.

Further, not only are our cast members equally male and female,
we've taken this *behind* the camera...half or a little over half our crew
are female, many in non-traditional jobs (traditionally male in Hollywood
terms, in any event). It's not just wardrobe and makeup, it's set
and prop design, set *construction*, editorial, you name it.

As for the militarism needing to be repressed...there are already two
other shows which feature repressed (or absent) military aspects; let's
have something a little different. I don't think all SF shows should look
and feel alike.

As for the notion that it could use "a little of Trek's humanism,"
I don't much like the way that's been defined there. Seems to me that
that version of "humanism" is placid, unpassionate, orderly and for the
most part, with some exceptions, bloodless. To me, humanism means
embracing our flaws as well as our nobilities, and saying that we don't
have to shed our basic humanity in order to go to the stars, but that we
remain *humans*, with all that entails. And we somehow persevere in SPITE
of our flaws. I find the process of overcoming more interesting, and more
human, than assuming that we've already overcome everything.

The kind of humanism you're referring to isn't humanism, by my book.
It's "we should all be nice to one another, and nobody should have any
problems except the ones forced on us by bad guy aliens"...it's humanity
as written by Barney the Dinosaur.

In any event -- and none of this is directed at you, it's more
generic woolgathering than anything else -- my feeling is that you've GOT
two shows already that advance that kind of thinking. We're not Trek, we
have no obligation to BE Trek, and if we just do what Trek is doing, what
is the point? It just becomes the same old thing. I didn't fight for
seven years to get this show on the air, to do Trek's vision of the
future.

(The funny thing, of course, is that when TNG went on the air, people
complained roundly about the lack of militarism and action in the show,
that Picard surrendered too quickly, that it was too passive and too
let's-all-be-nice. Now a show that has action and an element of military
is told that now we have to be like TNG is. TNG was faulted for not being
TOS. We're faulted for not being TNG. This stuff goes 'round and 'round.
The series will find its niche.)

jms