Today is the eve of the first annual International Science Babe Day(Eve). Let’s warm up by looking at the best and worst of movie science babes.
It’s amazing how few there are. Even with enlisting a little help I’ve only got around fifteen at the moment. Guess it could be worse. Imagine how hard it would be to come up with examples of actresses who’ve played hookers. Oh, wait. That list is already compiled.
Anyway. The best, as far as being believable? Jodie, of course, can project inquisitive intelligence even without speaking:
And Laura was simply fantastic:
As for some of the others…er…they’ve got the “babe” part down pat! They’re halfway there!
And much as I lurve Ms. Alba, she wasn’t much more convincing than Denise.
They didn’t have to make Sue Storm a scientist in the first place. I guess it makes sense, on dangerous cosmic ray-riddled scientific missions, to only take people who can contribute. But she was already a former swim team captain! What more do you need for a space voyage?
From the same fictional universe, Famke was much more believable.
As far as Marvel’s competition goes, I’ve never known what to make of Uma’s performance:
There are others, of course, but suprisingly few. Sharon in Sphere, Nicole in Peacemaker, mad-scientist hangers-on in Hollow Man and Flatliners, etc. We’ll close out with three actress babes, one of them a real scientist. Lisa may not be a researcher, but we can’t ignore the babe created by science. Weird science.
That is exactly how we run experiments at every research facility I’ve worked. But the best fake scientist of all cinema has to be impossibly adorable Jordan, from Real Genius:
You’re free to choose otherwise, of course. xpat and edohiguma probably have multiple JSBs they’d rank over all of these Western actresses.
But the all-time actual movie science babe is, of course…Hedy Lamarr!
Get out of here, Korman! Because it is Hedy, co-inventor of an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping. Behold, the Queen of Cinema Science Babes!
Ain’t science grand?
World's Only Rational Man 
Good grief, you cannot even bring yourself to give a hat tip to Anne Francis in “The Forbidden Planet?” After all, Anne did do some important research with the guys from the space ship.
Natalie Portman, “Thor.”
Ah, thank you. I thought about diving into earlier SF and monster B-movies, but “Forbidden Planet” isn’t exactly one of those, is it?
Happy to get more entries for this list. Natalie definitely belongs.
I would argue that Thor is not SF.
Also… Beverly Crusher? Wesley was an annoying twat, but she was great.
I was specifically doing movies, hoping to do a separate tele-babe post. Brainstorm a few more and I’ll try to do one this evening.
I counter your argument with…
The Start Trek movies! That would also add nurse, later doctor, Chapel. Chapel was a nurse in the series, but doctor in the first and fourth movie.
Okay, granted. Looking at my choices, I see there was a blind spot to futuristic scientists. Fantastic, comic-book universes to be sure, but still contemporary.
I don’t know why that was. I remember Star Trek crossing my mind, but I reflexively filed it under “TV” instead of “movies”.
What scares me most is that I actually know when Chapel was what in what… Damn you Trek, you’re still in my head!!!
No Ellen Ripley? She conducted very important research. By shooting aliens in the face.
“It was in my way”.
I still haven’t got the swing of this make-a-holiday thing. I thought we celebrated SB Day two times already, and now there’s SBD Eve and then the actual SB Day. WHat fine print did I not read?
OK, I’m trying to break it down, and I think I got it:
1) Day to announce SB Day as the likely winner of holiday proposal entries. (“Thank GSB for Proposing SB Day.”)
2) Day to confirm that SB Day is indeed the winner of the holiday proposal entries. (That’s what I thought was actually SB Day, but no, it was actually “Congratulate GSB on SB Day Actually Being Chosen as the Day Day.”)
3) SB Day Eve
4) SB Day proper
It’s getting to be like Groundhog Day. I mean the movie not the day.
“Good morning! Off to see the Science Babe? Think she’ll be a pretty one this year?”
As a geek, I have no managerial skills. I’m guessing that’s why I’ve screwed things up. I believe Feb. 7th is ISBD, because it’s Madame Curie’s birthday.
…er, checking wiki, it says Marie Curie’s birthday is the 7th of November. Now I’m totally lost. It comes from a man trying to do a woman’s job.
But that’s a super collection of film SBs!
“Returner” has two and they get bonus points for being Asian (yeah, I’m totally racist when it comes to women.) Too bad both get shot. Oh wait, that was a spoiler.
Kasouken no Onna and Bull Doctor come to mind as well. Both focus on SBs. Kasouken no Onna is by now a never-ending series, having run since 1999 in various seasons and tv specials. Bull Doctor, so far, only had one season and the name is a pun at “bulldozer”. Body of Proof goes a similar track and, despite some medical issues that I have with the show, is actually entertaining (not because of the SBs, but because of three of the male characters.)
Hedy Lamarr is not and was not a science babe IMHO.
Her films were not sci-fi and her invention, which she filed with a piano playing man, may be one of the greatest examples of retrospective spying.
I wrote a book about her and partner-inventor George. Couldn’t find any evidence of an interest in science. She played with dolls as a kid and her ambition was to be an actress.
Whether she was a babe or not is another matter. She was certainly a beauty and bright.
The book is called Spread Spectrum: Heddy Lamarr and the mobile phone. More details here http://www.robsbookshop.com/page35.html.
Note: No earthworms appear in this book and no earthworms were harmed in its production.
Rob
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Excuse me, could someone tell me what day SB Day actually is (was)?
Or is uncertainty about that supposed to be part of the mystique?
It wasn’t supposed to be.
There is no SB day, but at least we have a International Kissing Day. And a Wear Red Day. And a… oh I don’t know. Seems all the “important” things have days now. But the cool stuff doesn’t.
I also realized I’d technically have to count TWIL into the SB category. After all she has a university degree and did research for her papers. And she does look extremely… good… with a lab coat.
Darnit, Edo! I really want to speculate on this but I really believe in protecting people’s privacy.
Fortunately, I’m bad both with actresses’ names and names of dramas. If I ever figured it out, it would be, “Oh, yeah! She’s the one that was in that thing with whatsisface and whatserface! And wasn’t she also in that other thing with that other gal, you know, the one with black hair and brown eyes?”
Yep, you nailed it. That’s totally her.
The one thing I fear most is that, one day, FRIDAY or some other yellow press toilet paper will take a photo of us. Not sure how we managed to avoid that so far. There’s nothing going on (she even said the (in)famous words, I’m apparently such a great friend (balls!)), but you know how that part of the “media” works.