Jenny Agutter...wow!  I was ten in 1976 when Logan's Run came out.  I was barely a hatchling, but I had already realized two things.  I was already in love with science fiction, and I was definitely starting to like girls.  While many people considered those two passions to be at odds with each other, I somehow knew that there was to be a connection for me.  (My wife and I had a three-hour discussion on Robert Heinlein the first night we formally met.) 

In Logan's, they utilized "The Circuit," a computer-operated dating/mating system.  While the concept is certainly remembered by SF fans as displaying an eerie prescience of online dating services, I will always remember and treasure it as the device that first brought Jenny to me.  SuddenlyJenny was up there onscreen as Jessica Six, being as lovely as a women could be while helping Logan overcome everything he'd ever been taught en route to Sanctuary.  There she was fleeing a killer robot with a plankton obsession.   There she was soaking wet as the sea began to pour into the city.  There she was being so spiritual and female and familiar while at the same time being exotic, different and futuristic.  And watching her I somehow knew that science fiction and beautiful women would forever be intertwined in my my life. 

By the time I was thirteen, I had moved on from my beloved Jenny.  In 1979, Erin Gray appeared as Colonel Wilma Deering on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.  From that moment on, my obsession with SF women began to take on another dimension.  By adolescence I was vaguely aware that I was liberal and that I was definitely in favor of "Women's Lib," even though I was a little shaky on what it all meant. 

But I knew that Colonel Deering was somehow a step forward for women, and satin jumpsuits.   She was career military and near the top of the chain-of-command.  She was smart, tough, brave and totally feminine.  Not a prime example of character depth perhaps, but neither was any other character on the show.  She was given the same treatment as the boys.

The show also featured the slinky femme fatale,  Princess Ardala, played by the lovely Pamela Hensley.  She was a more traditional female character--all schemes, moods and designs on the leading man.  But we, the audience, were allowed to see that Wilma was the better choice for a modern man.   Ardala was hot, and obviously open for business, but she never stood a chance when there was a genuine heroine around.

The "good girl who gets the fella in the end" was already a convention in many genres, and was soon to become  a staple of Molly Ringwald's career.  But this was something more than the loyal Tess Trueheart (Dick Tracy universe) or even the incredibly capable Lois Lane outwaiting her man's obsession with an archvillainess. Wilma Deering was an action hero and worthy partner-in-adventuring, as capable as any man.   What siren's song could compete with that?

 These two gorgeous women started me on a lifelong obsession with women in SF.  The actresses I have gone weak-kneed for and the characters I have adored for the past thirty-three years have given me insight into the way I view the world, the way I view women and the way I view myself.  And isn't that really what SF is supposed to do?