Whedonesque : Comments on 9166 : The top ten hottest women in Sci-Fi.

What? No Seven Of Nine?

Yay for Gina and Morena, but where did they get that picture of Gina? It's a little...well, let me put it this way: maybe it will boost DVD sales to ~~leather fetishists~~ ~~bondage enthusiasts~~ people unfamiliar with the film. ;-)

billz | January 06, 11:17 CET

It's from Hercules! And Number Six would kill Seven Of Nine in a heartbeat

mshecubusisevil | January 06, 11:18 CET

Well, 6 is 6 of 12 so she has a bigger gang. But then Seven has nanobots on her (in)side. Plus she could reroute the femto-quadron through the particle inverter and apply a narrow band filter which is just not an option in Battlestar Galactica due to, y'know, physics. Tough one.

To conclude, astronauts. Definitely.

Saje | January 06, 11:25 CET

Aeryn deserves every little bit of respect she gets. Claudia Black is a godess.

Gina Torres/Zoe is obviously a given, but I have to give my love to Aeryn.

Gouki | January 06, 11:37 CET

Monica Bellucci as #1? Wha?

Grounded | January 06, 11:58 CET

I'm with you Grounded. I guess I belong to the group of people who don't get it from that picture and are therefore never going to get it ;-). It's fun to read this list, but I simply don't agree with half, or even most, of it :-p Not sure what my list would be like, exactly, but it'd certainly be different from this.

GVH | January 06, 12:11 CET

Jewel totally deserves to be on that list. Make it a top 11, and bump someone else up.

The Acolyte | January 06, 12:17 CET

I still say Claudia Black would have made the perfect Aeon Flux, she's got all the angles.

Ledfeather | January 06, 12:34 CET

I *love* Musetta Vander. It's not the face I forget, but it's the name. The minute I saw her on Firefly, I was like "Watch out, Mal! Xander's been down this road already!" :P

She is just so incredibly gorgeous. Same with Morena. Just awe-inspiring beauty. I will never be able to see Claudia Christian as a beautiful woman. When I was growing up, I saw an episode of LA Law where she played a transvestite/sex change, and it stuck with me forever. I managed to lose that image of her when watching Babylon5, but whenever I see her in isolation, I always go to the sexchange-bit instead of the much cooler "I am Death incarnate.. God sent me!"-bit of Susan Ivanof.

Also, when thinking about Claudia, I am also reminded of her last soliloquy in "Sleeping in Light", and tears are inevitable:

"Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon-stations. There would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. They taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. They showed us that we have to care for one another, because if we don't, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope.. that there always can be new beginnings ... even for people like us. As for Delenn, every morning for as long as she lived, Delenn got up before dawn and watched the sun come up."

Anyway, we were talking about hot chicks. How about that Jewel Staite-lady! So here's a question: how come everybody I talk to think she's prettier than Morena? Is it the tomboy-thing?

[ edited by [wcip]Angel on 2006-01-06 13:38 ]

[ edited by [wcip]Angel on 2006-01-06 13:39 ]

[wcip]Angel | January 06, 12:38 CET

Get rid of Persephone (the chick from the Matrix) and replace her with Jewel! And the chick from 'various Sci-fi'.

<3 Kaylee.

Gouki | January 06, 12:39 CET

Well as the article acknowledges any list like this is going to be arbitrary but i've got to say that all of these women appear stunning to me. I'd maybe have a wider choice through time (how about Nichelle Nichols or Erin Gray from Buck Rogers) cos i'm pretty sure we had science fiction pre-1995 - even *gasp* in black and white ;). Fay Wray anyone ?

My only complaint re: Monica Belucci would be that she's not particularly known for sci-fi (5 minutes in one Matrix movie) so perhaps shouldn't be No. 1 (Claudia Black is, for my money, just as atractive and has a much better pedigree in the genre - in fact i've only ever seen her in sci-fi from a smallish part in Pitch Black through to Farscape and SG-1).

Saje | January 06, 12:46 CET

I *love* Musetta Vander. It's not the face I forget, but it's the name. The minute I saw her on Firefly, I was like "Watch out, Mal! Xander's been down this road already!" :P

Are you sure she was in FF?

Grounded | January 06, 12:51 CET

Grounded, [wcip]Angel, don't think she was tho' she does look a fair bit like Melinda Clarke (lately of The O.C.) who played Nandi.

[ edited by Saje on 2006-01-06 14:01 ]

Saje | January 06, 12:55 CET

I hear a lot of cries for Jewel (which of course, being a big Kaylee fan I will echoe)... but how about Summer? Seriously... she is like my ideal!

In fact, Joss has a knack for getting really hot actresses on his shows. Just about all the Buffy, Angel, and Firefly gals are somewhere on my hot list. (Although probably the best part is Joss gives them actual deep characters that are more than simple fluff.)

Oh... and Caroline Dhavernas is absolutely way up my list. Have you *seen* her? Case made.

AnotherFireflyfan | January 06, 12:57 CET

10) Annette O'Toole - "Smallville"

...wait a second, Annette O'Toole plays Clark Kent's MOM on that show? Why wasn't I told about this?

Ledfeather: Oooo, excellent call on Claudia Black for AEON FLUX. Her instead of Theron, and they could've put a "Name" in Trevor's role if the Studio needed one.

Saji: If we can go all the way back to the '50s, I vote Dana Wynter from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. She is just... oh, my. I mean, she's beautiful, she's smart, she keeps it together through the whole picture. But SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! in the scene towards the end where Kevin McCarthy is carrying her out of the tunnel, and then he falls down from exhaustion, (remember, they haven't slept through the whole picture) and the camera goes slightly out-of-focus on a close up of the expression on her face and that makes him realize that she's a Pod now.... that's sexy and disturbing in a WHOLE new way. (At least, it was in the '50s. Naah, still is.)

Yeah, Dana Wynter. Yessir.

[ edited by mr_shemp on 2006-01-06 14:41 ]

mr_shemp | January 06, 13:17 CET

Good call, mr_shemp. Good looking and ahead of her time character-wise (most 50s female sci-fi characters were bascially scream queens).

It's been a (long) while since I watched the original (the 70s remake has its moments but just can't match the paranoid suspense) but it always bothered me that Wynter's character got infected. Not the why (it sort of had to happen to completely isolate McCarthy) but the how since everyone else was replaced by their 'pod-person' but she seemed to have been taken over rather than replaced. It's annoying cos if I could just figure this out I could move on to solving world peace or the free energy problem ;).

Saje | January 06, 13:57 CET

Claudia Black: at first I thought she was quite ugly, then, as she beautifully portrayed Aeryn Sun , I started to find her prettier.

Monica Bellucci is quite a beauty but has done very little in the SciFi area.

Zamm | January 06, 14:59 CET

Zamm... similar. I wouldn't say I found Claudia ugly, just that I wasn't really attracted to her. I have to say that now I find her absolutely gorgeous. She is an amazingly talented actress, and brings a lot of depth to her portrayal of Aeryn.

AnotherFireflyfan | January 06, 15:13 CET

I don't think Kaylee is overlooked because of the tom-boy thing, because I don't think Kaylee was a tom-boy. (I know this has been discussed, but Kaylee was quite the girly-girl.) I think she is overlooked because of the sweet, wholesome, farm girl nextdoor thing. Although most straight men I know would love to have someone like Jewell nextdoor, the role does not scream "10 Hottest" like some of the others. The same could be said of Summer's character.

You have to hand it to Joss. He does know how to find the talented and gorgeous combos whether male or female.

newcj | January 06, 15:28 CET

Caroline Dhavernas is indeed one good looking woman. I'm just not sure she's really a "women of sci-fi." I mean sure she was in Wonderfalls but as far as I know that's bout thee most sci-fi thing she's done and I'm not even entirely sure that was really sci-fi.

I do enjoy that Out Cold movie was in though... probably quite a bit more than I ought to truthfully.

war_machine | January 06, 15:38 CET

Yep, agreed about Joss' shows containing hot (and talented!) people. Also, I'll only say this once: Amy (!!) and Aly should've been in there, as well as Jewel and Summer. No discussion.

As for Claudia: I don't think she's that attractive, to be honest (but I'm also not a Farscape-fan), nor do I much like Musetta Vander, Tricia Heffer (almost all the other BSG girls would've been better), miss Heigl (if you're gonna choose someone from Roswell, then why not go for Shiri, Majandra or Emilie?) or Monica Belucci. Now these are certainly not unatractive women, but they wouldn't be on top of my 'look at me, I'm shallow'-list ;-).

GVH | January 06, 15:50 CET

War_machine - depends on how strictly you're defining "sci-fi". If you define it to mean any "genre" shows, then Wonderfalls is definitely applicable.

AnotherFireflyfan | January 06, 16:16 CET

Jewel was the hottest Serenity crewmember, but not the show's hottest character. That honor would belong to the lovely Christina Hendricks as Saffron. Hell, I'd marry her, despite the personality flaws.

rbt | January 06, 16:21 CET

This list is moot. ALL women in sci-fi are hot. Isn't that pretty much a prerequisite?

Willowy | January 06, 16:24 CET

Oh, of course, Christina... take me to the special hell!

AnotherFireflyfan | January 06, 16:42 CET

Hmm, Anotherfireflyfan, but then you'd be defining the 'science' out of science-fiction. I'm not getting into the fan-boyish SF, sci-fi, science-fiction debate (yes, there are people who think they're all different and are sometimes pretty, err, emphatic in their beliefs) but I think most sci-fi fans would accept that Buffy, Angel and Wonderfalls are fantasy not science-fiction (and none the worse for it) meaning that any Whedonverse actors that didn't appear in Firefly/Serenity don't qualify for this highly subjective and arbitrary list (no matter how lovely they may be either to look at or as people).

Jewel and Summer should be in it tho' ;-)

[ edited by Saje on 2006-01-06 18:09 ]

Saje | January 06, 16:59 CET

Well if you count The Avengers as sci-fi you get to have Diana Rigg.

josscats | January 06, 17:27 CET

Yeah, josscats - when I was a girl, "Emma Peel" was something else! She showed me that women could be strong, clever, brave AND good-looking! (instead of the screaming-ooh I sprained my ankle running-I broke a nail- kind of female role models available in the media then.) Funny, sometimes Jewel Staite's face reminds me of a young Diana Rigg.

m'cookies actual | January 06, 17:41 CET

Eh, none of the Firefly crew were bad to look at. At all. But still, if you're going for beauty, and not butt-kickingly strong personality, I would have put both Jewel and Summer ahead of Gina. There's a strong amount of personal preference there, obviously, but it also is possible that the revewer put Gina in because she's the least lily-white of the top 10. Hmm, come to think of it, Morena's the next least so, isn't she?

Rather than spinning that as racism by the content creators, or quota hunting by the reviewer, I'll put on my optimist hat and say that Gina and Morena are in there because Joss went out of his way to put together a realistically diverse cast of beautiful and talented women.

But Jewel's still the hottest. :-)

jclemens | January 06, 17:56 CET

i'd have to agree with the fembot on this. there are way to many beauties to deside from. All in all, I'm very jealous of all these women! :)

Lizz2727 | January 06, 18:00 CET

There is obviously no "right or wrong" here, a very defendable list! Personally, I stick with: (1) Charisma Carpenter, (2) Sarah Michelle Gellar, (3) Alyson Hannigan, (4) Summer Glau, (5) Amy Acker, (6) Amber Benson...after this, it changes daily!

Calledon | January 06, 18:07 CET

Saje said "it always bothered me that Wynter's character got infected. Not the why (it sort of had to happen to completely isolate McCarthy) but the how since everyone else was replaced by their 'pod-person' but she seemed to have been taken over rather than replaced."

YES! You are exactly right - why would there have been a pod in the cave anyway? Did they just scatter them all over the place like some sort of Johnny Podseed, hoping for people to just fall asleep in random places and get turned? That aside, I think the movie's strong enough to bear a couple plot holes.

As for the '70s remake, I kinda like it. Spock is good, naked Brooke Adams is very good (there's another hottie for the sci-fi list), Robert Duvall cameo on a swing is cool, Jeff Goldblum is always... well, Jeff Goldblum, and the final few minutes gives me the creepies.

AnotherFireflyfan: You just HAD to go and mention Christina, didn't ya? I'll be in my bunk.

mr_shemp | January 06, 18:08 CET

AnotherFireflyfan yeah but there's a few other genre shows I'm not entirely sure I believe are sci-fi either. I mean I love Lost, I love Wonderfalls, I love Dead Like Me, and I enjoyed Carnivale but I'm not convinced any of them are sci-fi. Certainly genre shows, cetainly odd, and probably fantasy. (just not your sword and sorcery fantasy)

war_machine | January 06, 19:26 CET

Martha Kent?? No Jewel but Martha Kent?? And the french blow-up doll at number 1?? Good grief. Especially the latter makes me think her line of 'well most men won't agree because women have other ways of finding other women attractive' is kinda funny because Belucci's exactly the type of pamela-anderson-porn-boob-cliche she probably thinks most men would put at number 1.

Well, on either the male or the female listings I can honestly say I have very little taste in common with 'fembot'.

EdDantes | January 06, 19:41 CET

War Machine, true, but usually all genre shows are featured at, say, sci-fi cons. Anyway, all have hot actresses, and I think I can live with that. ;)

AnotherFireflyfan | January 06, 19:58 CET

mr_shemp: Right. I imagine all these pod-executives sitting around saying 'Hey, you have to speculate to accumulate. Let's stick a couple in Randomsville, il. You just never know' ;). I reckon any kind of fiction earns a few goofs by being well made everywhere else and 'Invasion' easily balances its books (my personal favourite Firefly ep. 'Out of Gas' has a couple of stonking plot holes but it's so well structured, acted and written that you just have to let it off).

war_machine: Agreed. All those shows are/were excellent but 'Lost' is the only one which could be sci-fi (and that's only cos we don't know how they're going to explain it). Sci-fi to my mind tries to explain the events it portrays in terms of our current understanding of the physical world (or a plausible future understanding). Fantasy doesn't have to. You could make a pretty good case that e.g. Star Wars is fantasy and not sci-fi since until the kludgie 'midichlorian' explanation in Ep. 1 the force was basically magic.

ETA:

Anotherfireflyfan: That's cos sci-fi fans are so welcoming and all embracing ;-). Agreed. Seems appropriate to have women of fantasy in a fantasy women line-up. Someone should write a letter to fembot ;)

[ edited by Saje on 2006-01-06 21:10 ]

Saje | January 06, 20:02 CET

On the whole is-it-scifi? or is-it-genre? debate, I agree with Harlan Ellison's assertion in his introduction to the 1967 anthology Dangerous Visions: call it all speculative fiction and forget about it.

jaynelovesvera | January 06, 20:20 CET

jaynelovesvera (nice name, BTW): I agree it's not worth worrying about (tho' apparently it's worth me writing screeds of rubbish over;) but i'm gonna go for Science-fiction & Fantasy as all encompassing. Speculative fiction always struck me as tautological (all fiction is speculative or else it wouldn't be fiction) - not to diss Ellison, he's like a god that creates among us.

Course, thinking about it, by that definition all fiction is Fantasy as well so hello, square one, how ya been ? :). Maybe we should just stick to the only 'genres' that matter: good or bad.

Saje | January 06, 20:40 CET

I just did an electronic search through this list and no one mentioned: Kristin Kreuk of Smallville. She is one of the most stunningly beautiful and exotic women on the planet, what with her Chinese and Dutch heritage (and Canadian). I like 'em mixed.

But, yeah, I second objections to Bellucci and welcome her replacement, Jewel Staite.

Drifter | January 06, 21:00 CET

Drifter, I agree Kristen Kreuk looks beautiful but unfortunately after seeing her acting in Smallville I can't help but feel she is totally bland, even though the actress herself is more than likely not. Contrast this with Morena Baccarin, who is similarly beautiful but I just feel like she's much more compelling.

I don't get the Monica Bellucci thing at all. Sure, she's attractive, but personally I think it's a little too overt. Bee stung lips, big eyes, breasts always squeezed into some tight revealing dress. I think I'm just weird and prefer a little more left to the imagination than most men.

Razor | January 06, 22:05 CET

It slays me that no one's mentioned Dushku...I mean, speaking of women I'd go gay for, it's her and Gina Gershon.

But as a straight woman, I feel like me weighing in on a list of sexiest women is kind of laughable (despite the list being generated by a straight woman.)

blutortu | January 06, 22:54 CET

Morena - and the rest should be evicted from the list *G*

Pumps | January 06, 23:10 CET

I think that the only women that should be on there, is Morenna Baccarin. Annette O' Toole should be replaced by Kristin Kreuk. Ginna Torres by Jewel Staite. No Alyson Hannigan, Eliza Dushku, SMG, Charisma Carpenter.... Not one Buffy or Ats character, and they are all very beautiful (the women) lol. But I guess this list was more aimed at Sci-Fi "Space" shows.

SeReNiTy_88 | January 07, 00:13 CET

Saje, I agree, good or bad seems to cover it, with maybe a small cul-de-sac for middling.

blutortu, now you have me re-imagining the more erotic scenes in Bound, with Gershon canoodling with Dushku in place of Jennifer Tilly. I'm going to need a bigger bunk.

As for Kristin Kreuk, my brain tells me I should find her attractive, but for some reason I don't.

jaynelovesvera | January 07, 00:45 CET

What about Gillian Anderson from X-Files, she's just as attractive as the Babylon 5 chick.

twa_corbies | January 07, 01:54 CET

Very pleased to see the lovely Claudia Black in the list, although i would have placed her higher. I'd have to admit that she has a look all of her own but she is a very beautiful woman and she was one of the reasons why i came to love Farscape as much as Buffy and Angel.

Loving the fact that she will be a regular character next year on Stargate SG-1 too. Always nice to have a regular dose of the lovely Claudia.

As for the rest of the list, with the exceptions of numbers one and ten (neither of them being to my taste at all), i'd say that they all deserved a place. We could debate our own personal choices all day but ultimately that was the writers choice and she chose some extremely gorgeous women and, to be fair, she did list both Jewel and Summer (and the gorgeous Amanda Tapping) as runners up.

Buffysmglover | January 07, 01:56 CET

Shocked that no one has mentioned Starbuck (Katee Sackoff, not Dirk "Face" Benedict). Personally I'd take her over Six. Boomer (Grace Park, not Herb Jefferson) too. And I'm not sure why Monica Belluci is taking such flak here - I think she's lovely. (And Italian, not French, Ed . . .) And, ya know, natural too, unlike many (American) women we see on-screen all the bloody time.

I dig the inclusion of Annette O'Toole simply because I've had a thing for her ever since the Cat People remake. Gillian Anderson, totally, - and as a complete change of pace she's been wowing folks with her turn in the new Bleak House adaptation on the Beeb. And if we're going to go further back, I'd have to have as number one Ornella Muti (sci-fi connection: Princess Aura in the Flash Gordon movie), who is pretty much my all-time fave in any genre.

SoddingNancyTribe | January 07, 02:20 CET

Shocked that no one has mentioned Starbuck (Katee Sackoff, not Dirk "Face" Benedict). Personally I'd take her over Six. Boomer (Grace Park, not Herb Jefferson) too.

Well, earlier I wrote: Tricia Heffer (almost all the other BSG girls would've been better). But just to make it clearer: I agree. But please add Cally to that list of hotter-than-Six characters as well. Although she may be more 'cute' than 'hot', perse. But, wait...what am I saying? Cute is hot :-p.

And I mean, c'mon, Six? I'm sure Tricia Heffer is a very nice woman, but Six as a character is just too tacky to truly be hot at all.

GVH | January 07, 04:14 CET

Yeah, I can't complain about Monica Bellucci being #1. She's my startup picture on my camera and I picked up 2 versions of the Brotherhood of the Wolf DVD for her. I say being in 5 minutes worth of a Matrix movie qualifies! She's done some fantasy work as well. As for the BSG women, I'd probably go with Boomer over Six, but only because Tricia Helfer is looking a bit too skinny for my tastes these days, plus Grace Park has more of an accessible girl-next-door look. I would've gone with Six back when I first saw the miniseries, though. Starbuck is way too boyish-looking for me.

[ edited by areacode212 on 2006-01-07 06:21 ]

areacode212 | January 07, 05:18 CET

Sci-fi and fantasy may be separable on extremes, but there's a lot of overlap and mush together (how come all those advanced cultures with ultra-deadly ray guns always end up settling everything by swordfight, huh?). And then there's the science in a lot of science fiction that's a lot more fantasy than science. Saje love your comment re that use

Plus she could reroute the femto-quadron through the particle inverter and apply a narrow band filter which is just not an option in Battlestar Galactica due to, y'know, physics.

BtVS is certainly more of the fantasy end, but it does have all those robots - very science fictiony, robots. Not to forget also the science/med guys in the Initiative. So, I think BtVS gals qualify. And my vote goes to Claire Kramer. That is one world-class gorgeous woman. Plus she has great comic style. She would be fabulous in an old-fashioned screwball comedy.
I'd also put in a vote for Charisma who is stunningly beautiful and also has great comic skills. Eliza Dushku is not as conventionally beautiful (Robin Wood is a little bit prettier, yeah), but she sizzles. When she comes back into the story in season 7, man every scene she is in crackles.

And finally, I have to second Seven of Nine, even if she scoffs at the laws of physics.

barboo | January 07, 07:08 CET

I think that the only women that should be on there, is Morenna Baccarin.

Wait. You're serious? Claudia Black deserves to be on there very, very much. She might not be conventional beauty but she is a beauty. No question.

I wouldn't exactly call BtVS sci-fi. At some points it had sciencey parts, especially around season four, but for the most part it was very much fantasy or even horror/drama. But not sci-fi.

Otherwise, you could call Angel a law drama for it's focus on Wolfram & Hart.

Gouki | January 07, 09:02 CET

January 06 2006