first of all chemistry is subjective, although what seems to be going is a bit of shallowness with jess and celia and not that I blame many viewers completely. I also blame some of the bad parts of third way feminism that SNW Uhura now seem to be a victim off.
I wonder if Celia Gooding has been styled the same way as Jess Bush or had her body type,
we will even be having this conversation. I personally did not like the character design for Celia Gooding because she looked nothing like the original actress that plays Uhura or Zoe Saldana, if you ask me I would say she is styled to look too masculine, versus the Uhura who we have seen in the past that were very feminine looking characters.
This has always been a worry of mine about how woman are physically designed and styled, I even made a thread about this issue a year ago about what attracts men to watch women in films and there was this discussion here on this board that men do get easily turned off if the female characters are designed to be very masculine and I am seeing it here with strange new worlds about Uhura.
I do wish Celia had been a new character, if she personally did not want to stick to the established way Uhura had always looked, then maybe a new character would have been the better choice. So in a nut shell, maybe subconsciously part of the reason some may think Jess has more chemistry with Spock is because Jess looks far more feminine in the traditional sense, and oozes far more sex appeal, so it is easy to see that as chemistry when she is with a male character.
Jess Bush has been styled as the classic tall hot blonde vs Uhura who basically has been given a hair cut that barely suit the actress face and the uniform barely fits her body type. Celia looks very bulky in those uniform. I will just say it that her character design is poor and the worst of the bunch.
This Uhura from SNW has none of the sex appeal that Zoe Saldana or Nichelle Nicholas had, two women who had chemistry with their own Spock. Meanwhile I have seen constant talk about how hot Jess Chapel is, people are not saying that with the other girls on the show so this is clearly playing a factor here and also Jess Chapel is shamelessly openly flirting with Spock and that by default means chemistry however only in the superficial of sense.
Again, I don't know what is ahead with this writers, but I am aware of star trek shipping stuff and the Spock and Uhura ship have a very strong fanbase because of the kelvin films, while Spock/Chapel dont have a strong fan base. perhaps the writers do want to go the spock/chapel route here and did not want Uhura to be a threat to that, so they chose to give her the Rose Tico treatment from star wars, this is when a female character is stripped away of any kind of traditional take of femininity and sex appeal, given a very bad hair style and is made to look very androgynous, if this was the writers plan for strange new worlds, it seem to be working here with Celia's Uhura.
Also the race aspect could also be a factor too. maybe some just think Spock is better off with a the white blonde than a very dark skinned black woman. However I won't put much on race yet until we see more reactions, right now I think it is more about looks and sex appeal and Jess's Chapel is bring that while Celia Uhura isn't. Which is kind of ironic because this show is a direct prequel to TOS and in TOS Uhura is the one with all the sex appeal and hotness, while Chapel is the timid mousy woman.
This video just sums it up about what they have done to Uhura and I think it is just sad.
nah, it is a lot of people's take that a woman flirting with a man as instant chemistry, especially when the woman appears physically attractive in the way society has always defined those terms.