The Spike TV Scream 2009 festival was held this Saturday. Normally we try and keep up with awards and festivals of this kind but, in the opinion of Seattle Geekly at least, Spike isn’t really a credible source for information on what movies and TV actual geeks enjoy. This opinion was strengthened when Megan Fox was voted best sci-fi actress for her role in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, prompting website Contactmusic.com to crown her “Queen of the Geeks“.
There are so many things wrong with that we hardly know where to begin. I’m sure there are people out there who enjoyed Revenge of the Fallen and there are clearly people out there who like Megan Fox but “Queen of the Geeks”? I think most self-identified geeks would agree she is a poor choice.
On the top right sidebar is a little poll where you can vote for your choice for Queen of the Geeks. If your choice is not on the list, please feel free to leave a comment on this post with your nomination.
Our list of candidates is as follows:
Felicia Day
Best known for: Creating The Guild
Created The Guild out of her love for MMORPGs, has tapped into the well of Whedon geek cred with appearances in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse and is also wicked smart having graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a double major in mathematics and violin performance and a 4.0 GPA.
Sigourney Weaver
Best known for: Roles in the Alien movies
Kicked more butt than a whole squad of Marines in Aliens and has a sense of humor as well as evidenced by Ghostbusters and Galaxy Quest.
Carrie Fisher
Best known for: If you’re visiting this site you really should already know who she is.
If she’s not the Queen of the Geeks she is at least the Princess.
Kari Byron
Best known for: Mythbusters
Does experiments with explosives, guns and electricity. Plus she can weld stuff. How cool is that?
Maria Chudnovsky
Best known for: Being one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10″ and “25 young scientists / researchers likely to change the world”
Associate professor in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at Columbia university, Ph.D in mathematics and researcher in the areas of graph theory and combinatorial optimization. “Wicked smart” does not even come close.
James Tiptree Jr.
Best known for: writing Up the Walls of the World
AKA Alice Bradley Sheldon. Veteran of the United States Army Air Force’s photo intelligence group, Ph.D in Experimental Psychology from George Washington University and she wrote hard science fiction for ten years before anyone realized she was a woman.
Summer Glau
Best known for:Roles in Firefly, Serenity and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
She may ACTUALLY be able to kill you with her brain. Why risk it?
Katee Sackhoff
Best known for: playing Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica
Took the pretty boy role from the original BSG and totally made it her own. Who among us that have watched both the original series and the new still thinks of Starbuck as a guy?
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry
Best known for: Playing Nurse Christine Chapel and the voice of the computer in Star Trek: TOS
If she is not the Queen of all geeks, she is at least the Queen of Trek. In various roles, Barrett participated in every incarnation of the Trek franchise produced during her lifetime, including live-action and animated versions, television and cinema, and all of the time periods in which the various series have been set.
Gail Simone
Best known for: Writing Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman for DC Comics
How much more geek cred do you need than being a professional comics writer?
19 Responses to “Who is the REAL Queen of the Geeks?”
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How about Anne Rice? You can’t get much geekier than taking out a full-page ad in the NY Times to protest the casting in the movie you adapted from a novel you wrote, and then taking ANOTHER full-pager to apologize for being wrong the first time.
Danica McKellar! She may not have appeared in any big-budget scifi movies or had starring roles in scifi TV series, but she’s done voice work for comics-based cartoons and for video games; she’s made guest appearances in several scifi TV series (Babylon 5, Twilight Zone); and she even has a theorem named for her in mathematics. For Pete’s sake, she has an Erdos-Bacon Number of 6!
Majel!!!
Anyone who can make big badda BOOMs has my vote.
Danica gets a good vote too, but I’d consider Danica Patrick too, as a dark horse. I mean, Indy Car racing is pretty geeky, compared to NASCAR….
Maybe this has a March Madness playoff going for it. Add the two Danicas, Anne Rice and Anne McCaffrey to the list…
Oh, and Xeni. Can’t forget Xeni.
And Sarah Michelle. You got 16.
Head to head match-ups for ultimate Queen of the Geeks? Looks like QueenOfTheGeeks.com is available =)
I voted for Milla Jovovich, I know not all the movies have been top notch but I do think she is awesome.
(And if you do the head to head vote off… at the end, whoever wins? donate the url to them.)
Let’s be honest, you can’t be a geek queen just by playing one on TV. Of all these picks, I’d like to say Felicia Day.
ON THE OTHER HAND: there’s someone not on the list.
**Jane McGonigal.**
I think Tina Fey would be pretty high on the list.
Felicia beats Kari, by just a hair. Except for maybe Gail Simone, the rest (including those in comments) are distant also rans.
This was a tough poll. Most of these women are all kinda awesome.
Picking first choice between Majel and FeliciaDay/DeliciaFay was the toughest.
And Summer Glau is all kinds of awesome!
Great idea for a poll!
@donbcivil
Honestly, it has to be Majel. She loved what she did, she helped Gene Roddenberry create a whole new generation of Scientists and geeks who have created their own little geeks. The others are passable, but none really have the commitment she did.
~JYH
Have to go with Felicia. My mind instantly went to her when the question was posed. She just wears her geekiness with pride and doesn’t try to be a bad-ass (well, not successfully).
She just is what we are, yet somehow better at it than all of us.
What a hard decision, but kudos to Shannon and Matt for doing this after the embarrassing Spike and Contactmusic.com announcements. I would have liked to see Anne McCaffrey on the list (personal fave for many years).
If I missed it, I am sorry, but did you say how long will you have the poll up?
I think that, while these women are revered by geeks, they are not all geeks themselves. Shouldn’t the Queen of Geeks be a geek? Kinda bends the favor toward Felicia …
I gotta boldly go with Majel Barret-Roddenberry as the true Queen, but definitely Felicia Day as the heir-apparent.
Using the argument that Felicia Day wins by default as she actually is a geek is a little bizarre. While there ARE actresses on the list, most of which we know little about when it comes to their personal geekiness, there still are plenty of options that have proven their geekdom by their lifestyles.
1. Gail Simone – Not an actress. Works on comics. You have to be geeky to do that.
2. Majel Barrett-Roddenberry -DUH!
3. Alice Bradley Sheldon – Hard sf writer. Again, one must begin as a geek to even dream of this.
4. Maria Chudnovsky – Ph.D. in the top of her field. The field of mathematics. Geeky? Uhm. Yes.
5. Kari Byron – No one joins that cast unless they’re a geek.
Is Felicia a geek? Yes. But the list is NOT entirely full of actresses who have been paid to play a geek, or a character that geeks like. So if you want to vote for her or for Majel, that’s fine. But don’t lump these women in with actresses. They’re work deserves more than that.
(That being said, I want Ursula K. LeGuin to win. Or Lois McMaster Bujold.)
I’m divided on your poll. Some candidates are geek because they star in Sci-Fi / Cult media but are attractive. While others produce or create content that we love.
So on one hand. I vote for Natalie Portman – not on the list – for both her beauty and choice roles in SW, V for Vendetta, etc
On the other hand I vote for J.K. Rowling – not on the list – for making it cool to love magic, dragons and bad ass wizards!
Cheers
Whenever I hear Queen of the Geeks, my first thought is of US Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper who was the first person to coin the term Computer Bug. And yes, it was an actual bug (a moth).
But of your posted list, I’d have to vote for Felicia Day. She’s super smart, quirky, and sexy.
…have to give props to the suggestion for “Tina Fey”.