David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman gets a stronger, braver makeover

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Earlier this year, David E. Kelley’s draft pilot script for NBC’s ‘Wonder Woman’ leaked online, and some fans took issue with its less-than-Amazonian version of girl power: Yes, there were scenes of Diana having a sleepover, and eating ice cream (‘It’s been a three-scoop day!’), and teaming up with her press secretary Myndi to ‘scream like schoolgirls’ over a Katy Perry video, and maybe even crying herself to sleep over her old flame Steve Trevor. As the Daily Beast quipped, Diana was acting a lot like Kelley’s last feminism killer, Ally McBeal.

But someone must have thrown a golden lasso around that script and saved it, because it’s been rewritten, and now Diana seems to have grown a pair. According to i09, the new version of the script finds her lifting bad guys by the throat, gouging their eyes with her thumbs, kicking them into their air with those go-go boots and making obscene gestures at them. In a flashback, we see her pulling Steve out of a burning airplane, despite being told that doing so will be way too dangerous. Even her cat seems braver: In one scene, we discover it’s bitten her neighbor William Marston (named after the ‘Wonder Woman’ creator), who tells Diana he thinks Wonder Woman is a fascist. And apparently, Diana’s glad the cat bit him.

Well, well! Obscene gestures? Kick-boxing? Animal violence? Is Kelley’s Wonder Woman going from white swan to black swan right before our eyes? If so, you’ll find us right in front of the TV for that first episode, screaming like schoolgirls.

-- Melissa Maerz