Star Trek has created some incredible characters across its timeline, and many of whom are still celebrated and beloved today. They're a franchise that writes compelling, thought provoking characters who are able to trascend their own films and eras and leave a lasting mark on the franchise as a whole.
ScreenRant decided to look at some of these characters and rank them, listing the best female debuts in Star Trek film history. You'd think that a list like that would be pretty obvious, with the number one debut coming from a little picture in the 1990s that we rave about so much.
Instead, they picked Jaylah from Star Trek: Beyond. A bold choice to select over Lily Sloane from Star Trek: First Contact, and one we don't agree with.
Jaylah was great in Beyond. She was a unique character that the Kelvin Timeline has never really looked into before and they got Sofia Boutella to play the character. A fine pick, but it's important to remember that Boutell, while a fine actress, is more known for his physical acting than her emoting. And it's why her character Jaylah was rather flat and one-dimensional, at least when compared to Alfre Woodard's Lily.
Lily was the emotional center of the largest plot point in First Contact, serving as not only Jean-Luc Picard's confidant, but also his conscious at times. Both characters were super important to the plot of their respective films but Woodard's performance was iconic and impressive, and few other women could've done what she did. When it comes to Boutella's Jaylah, anyone really could've played the role, and so it limits, at least in our eyes, the impact that the character had.
She still had one of the best outings in Trek history, just not better than that of Woodard's.