Where Are All the Star Wars Babes?

When it comes to Sci-fi, undeniably the two biggest and most beloved universes are those of Star Wars and Star Trek. Each has enjoyed a long and continued career in the eye of popular culture and both are ubiquitous in the hearts in minds of almost every single person on Earth. While just about everyone enjoys both franchises to some extent, when push comes to shove, everybody has a preference between the two and a lot can be learned about someone just from the answer to a simple question: Star Wars or Star Trek?

With that fundamental question in mind, we decided to compare both juggernauts and declare a clear winner. And because we’re Gunaxin, what better way is there to do so than to compare the hotties of each universe in a sci-fi babe-off for the ages? So, with Leia’s iconic and fantasy-inducing gold bikini as inspiration, off we went to compile the babes.

Inspiration!

However, we soon hit quite a snag in our fool proof plan as detailed by this official transcript of our research meeting:

“Ok, before we dive into serious research, let’s brainstorm and list whatever Star Wars babes we can think of. Whatcha got?”

“Gotcha. Well, obviously Leia of course. Um, Amidala was pretty hot once she ditched those weird clothes, right?”

“Yep, she was smoking in Episode II in that tight, white number and technically Kiera Knightly was in the film as her double, remember? She’s pretty hot for a skinny chick.”

“Oh wow, really? I didn’t even notice that was her in the film, but she’ll work, totally. Who else?”

“Let me see…Um, well, wasn’t there some bounty hunter chick or something somewhere?”

“The one in the metal hat that Anakin chased in the speeder thing over Coruscant? Yeah, she looked pretty good from far away, I guess. There was a decent looking blue twi’lek Jedi chick or something too in that big Jedi battle, right?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t really tell if she was hot or not with all that make-up and stuff.”

“Well, that’s all the women I can think of.”

“God damn it Lucas.”

Not much of a contest after all, is it?

From that quick discussion, the painful truth about Star Wars emerged like a horrible stain on the franchise that was always there, but no one ever noticed before. And this one was much worse than anything Jar Jar ever did. While Star Trek is positively littered with hundreds of great looking babes throughout its history, after almost 36 years, six movies and scores of TV series and video games, Star Wars has less than seven identifiable ones. If one ever attempted to make a top ten list of Star Wars babes, they’d come up about five short unless they really stretched the definition of “babe” as well as the definition of “appearing in Star Wars.”

Go ahead and Google “Top Ten Star Wars Babes” and see what comes up, we’ll wait.

What you found were a few noble attempts at compiling a respectable list, but inevitably each one suffers the same fate. Besides the obvious selections of Leia, Padme Amidala, and Dorme (Amidala’s double played by Kiera Knightly who looks so much like Padme that you probably thought it was Natalie Portman playing both roles), the lists start scraping the bottom of the barrel and grasping at bit parts.

Numbers four and five on the lists usually go to Aayla Secura and Shaakti as the next hottest women in the Star Wars universe. You probably have no idea who these characters are, and we don’t blame you considering they had very small roles in the massive colosseum battle that took place in Episode II. The strange thing is these characters are played by legitimately gorgeous women named Amy Allen and Orli Shoshan respectively, but you’d never know that from the pounds of weird make-up and prostetics George Lucas chose to hide them under in the film. So in all fairness, on a list about babes that exist within the Star Wars universe, they don’t count. You can’t rightfully say the odd looking, and weirdly proportioned Shaakti is hot simply because Orli, the actress who played her, is hot.

Why Lucas? Why?!

Why the hell Lucas went out of his way to cast two professional models for the roles and then proceeded to cover them up in ridiculous make-up hiding their attractiveness baffles belief. Why couldn’t Amy and Orli just have been hot human Jedi, giving the viewers a bit of eye candy and leave the Aayla and Shaakti characters to more homely actresses? On that note, why are there seemingly no human Jedi babes at all in the films? The only human Jedi seem to be men, while all the women belong to strange looking races that make lusting after them a question of galactic fetishes. Do you prefer pulsating head tentacles or a bright red, panda-like complexion?

She’s considered a babe in a galaxy far, far away

Attempting to find more Star Wars babes beyond those two just leads to more disappointment and confusion. Some people will cite young Beru who made a short cameo in Episode III (Luke’s aunt in A New Hope), while still others will point out Aurra Sing, the white-skinned and balding bounty hunter from the Extended Universe who was on screen for about 3 seconds during the Pod Race sequence in Episode I. After naming those two, that’s it folks. Unless you start looking at extras or fictional characters that never made it into a live-action Star Wars project, the list of “babes” ends there.

Now pop in any random episode of Star Trek and take your pick about who your favorite babe is. In any given episode you’ll see Captain Kirk doing his thang on yet another barely dressed 60’s space hottie du jour, or Counselor Troi’s abundant cleavage heaving as she softly speaks of psychology in her uniquely exotic accent. Yet another episode features Tasha Yar’s aggressively curvy sister in a skin tight pantsuit complete with alluring camel toe, or a young Ashley Judd reciting Confucian rules of wisdom that left Wesley Crusher, and male viewers, begging for more. Not to mention the forces of nature that the likes of T’Pol and Seven of Nine have become in the hearts and loins of trekkies everywhere. Nothing from Star Wars can compare to the sheer volume of gorgeous women Star Trek gave us, and many of them even give Leia a run for her money.

“That’s not fair! You can’t compare the Star Wars films to the Star Trek TV series!” we hear you say. Okay, we’ll focus just on the Star Trek films then to make the comparison, and Lucas’ folly, that much fairer. Looking at the women who had starring roles (we won’t even get into the bit parts here like we did with Star Wars) in the first six films, many babes stand out immediately. Of course there’s Uhura who is every man’s forbidden fantasy, then you have the Vulcan Saavik played by Kirsti Alley before she went all Scientologist on us, the bald and beautiful Lt. Ilia, Dr. Gillian Taylor, Valeris played by Kim Cattrall, and of course Martia the changeling embodied by Iman. That’s six undeniable babes, all with starring roles as opposed to Star Wars’ two (maybe three if you want to get generous about Dorme). And that’s not even getting into the next four Trek films from the Next Generation series nor does it refer to the latest reboot where many more hotties reside.

So you see, there’s just no excuse. Lucas had all the juice in Hollywood in order to cast whomever he wanted and had a lot of room in the films’ canon to include some great looking women. If Star Trek can so easily excite a male’s sexual proclivities in every facet of its existence, no matter his personal preference, then why couldn’t Star Wars? We know George Lucas has a great eye for gorgeous women or else he never would have given the world Carrie Fisher in a bikini way back in 1983. Either that, or he just got lucky that the Slave Leia became the number one sexual fantasy in America. Could it be that Lucas is gay? No, the man has a loving and adoring family, and he did help create the obviously heterosexual Indiana Jones after all. No, we fear the real reason for the lack of Star Wars babes is far more upsetting.

Star Trek was always aimed at young, horny geeks who were shunned by society which explains why there are so many scantily clad space babes in its universe. Star Wars, on the other hand was always geared toward children who had yet to appreciate the animalistic allure of a feminine screen gem. The lack of attractive women is further evidence of our worst fears; that our beloved, epic space opera was always more about Ewoks and Gungans than Women and Wookiees, and that super massive sausage-fest is such a hard pill to swallow.

Oh, what could have been…