Meta (ish) on ST:2009
over on mccoy_and_kirk right now there's a meta/discussion about why so many fans dis and hate on Uhura.
In short, what I've pretty much discovered is this:
The screenwriters fucked up in their character creation. And also in their storytelling.
Why in the hell would the Kelvin disaster affect anyone but the family(s) involved? I understand that there might be a 'George Kirk Memorial' whatever at the Academy and possibly other Fleet-heavy areas, but in all honesty, why would the other characters care? Why would Spock give a shit about it except to use it as an example of a no-win situation when accusing Jim of cheating?
Why would Jim be typed (which he totally is, in fanon as well as canon, I've done it myself) as the bad-boy trying to fight his father's image and prove himself? Other than the dare that Pike threw at him, the only thing keeping him down would be him. There wouldn't be a lot of 'he slept his way to the top' going on either.
The way the writers depicted Kirk was actually very unflattering. I understand that he was different and from the deleted scene and the car scene that he was a 'rebel without a cause' or whatever, but to ramp up the serial monogamist image to that of a womanizer, simply from a comment made when he wasdrunk and talking to Uhura (who is very hot, NEGL, I'd hit on her, too) and then a brief conversation with Bones (who I feel was really only characterized enough so that when he brought Jim on the Enterprise people didn't go 'wtf was that for?') three years later. Also, he and Gaila were in their underwear, not naked (admittedly only to keep the rating, but still), even though he had admittedly used her for something... Three years of diplomatic courses and some damn hard Ethics classes, you'd think that Jim would have grown out of it a little. They depict Academy as college, but anyone with emotional depth larger than a teaspoon would change at least a little.
As for Uhura.... She's the only black girl (if that label offends you, tough, it's how I think about it when I actually do think about it) in the movie. The only person of color in the entire movie if we're to get technical. She's it. There is no Geoffrey M'Benga in this one. The only other person besides Spock (whose mother is Canadian or from Wisconsin, can never remember) who isn't white of some type is Sulu... I feel like they really played up the 'these are our token black and Asian people, here.'
Uhura has been seen as a bitch because everyone wants to believe that Spoc is so fragile and she took advantage of his vulnerable state. Bullshit. If he started a relationship with her while she was his student, that's his fault. He was the one with the power to say no, he had the greater responsibility and also the greater moral imperative. I feel like they just made Spock a rebel in the movie. No other word for it. He fights when he's a kid and turns down VSA because they made fun of his mother.
He then joins Starfleet, where he 'tries to keep up his Vulcanity'? How would that work? How would he possibly still follow the Vulcan ways completely when he turned his back on them so thoroughly? That's what I didn't understand about the characterization. I mean come on guys, he could have been 'reserved' rather than unemotional, though I suppose going to Starfleet as the only Vulcan made him free to try and practice the 'Vulcan Way' without having everyone breathing down his neck when he stumbles.
I'm not even sure why I wrote this, just had to get some venting out even though none of it is connected or makes any sense.
TL;DR: The writers could have done better. They didn't. The end.