Well… didn’t see that coming…
On reflection, I’m reminded of one major reason I didn’t like the new Bionic Woman (there wasn’t much to like, but whatever). The directors kept having Michelle Ryan engage in the same ridiculous pseudo-kungfu that had become cliche, when if anything, her character had brute strength and should have been just punching her way out of trouble instead of resorting to dance-like acrobatics.
I can see her getting martial-arts training just to be able to keep her balance after throwing a brick-smashing punch but keep the wire-fu out of it, please. It would have been fun in the early episodes to see her throw some wild massively powerful punches and kicks and getting tumbled over by Newton’s laws.
Well, that and everyone being surprised that a woman of her normal-looking physique weighed ~180lb (and was thus able to throw heavier punches without toppling over) because her nano-bionics were far denser than human tissue, but why inject realism when you can just sneer in its direction?
And for some reason, I looked at a few Olympic hammer-throwing vids, and I admit I’m impressed by how the athletes can put a lot of energy into giving the hammer momentum and yet near-instantly stop in place the instant after release. I know if I tried, as soon as I let go of the hammer, I’d fall over, and if I kept practicing to not fall over, I’d never get any distance on the throw.
Really, that is so cool…but totally coincidental, I swear! 
I see what you did there.
Also, Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale in the earlier seasons of The Avengers
I was hoping somebody would.
Keri Russell on The Americans
Sonja Sohn on The Wire
Robin Weigert on Deadwood, cocksuckers
Danai Gurira, on The Walking Dead
Big Bang’s Penny has shown some fighting skills (hitting Sheldon in the nose, kicking a guy in the crotch) and talk about others.
Angelina Jolie in almost anything. Lara Croft and Mrs Smith come to mind, but I think her hottest, bad-assest was Fox in Wanted.. oh boy.
Look for a Steven Seagal movie called Half Past Dead. Nia Peeples is beyond awesome in it.
They seem to sort of do this on “Beauty and the Beast,” at least in the ep or three I saw. They established that Kristin Kreuk’s character is quite skilled and agile at hand-to-hand, but she still gets thrown around like a bean-bag since she only weighs about a hundred pounds. The annoying bit is how they got to the fight scenes, which is her assailants knock the gun from her hand constantly. :rolleyes:
River Tam, Firefly
Samantha Carter, Stargate SG-1
I do usually enjoy the ass-kicking girls trope, unrealistic though it often is. But one thing I liked about the TV series Veronica Mars was in the first season ( I think ) they showed her being disarmed ( stun-gun ) and without her huge dog and suddenly she reverted to what she realistically was - a particularly tiny blond teenager that was pretty physically helpless when up against a much larger thug.
P.S. Buffy does it for me as well as Faith. Not to forget Kendra too.
I got tired of it much in the same way that I got tired of 80s action movies. By the time Serenity came around I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when River Tam started beating up the horde of space zombies. But then I also had a hard time buying Echo going toe to toe with Agent Ballard in Dollhouse.
Batgirl! (a.k.a. the Domino Daredoll of Gotham City!)
Wrangler Jane on F-Troop
Ellie Mae on the Beverly Hillbillies
I liked Veronica Mars and I agreed with Rob Thomas’ decision to not make her a super-powered bad-ass but to me they always went too far in the other direction once she was disarmed. She always became a mewling wimp which was out of character, and she never had an alternate weapon or strategy once her stun-gun was gone (unless crying all over someone’s fists can be called a strategy).
Someone Veronica’s size with a cop for a dad would have been taught at least some street/dirty-fighting techniques. And someone of her intelligence who’d been disarmed before would carry back-up weapons - once the stun-gun was gone, she’d move to collapsible baton, then small knife.
It’s been ages since I saw her on that show, but shipboard security on Trek shows has always been pretty incompetent. For plot reasons, it has to be. Whatever threat comes aboard the Enterprise has to escape confinement or somehow become serious enough for the captain to have to deal with it. If their security was any good, the episodes would be 10 minutes long. We’re told that Klingons are the baddest mofos in the galaxy, but Worf got beat up more often than Tonto.
Susan Ivanova from Babylon 5.
Na’Toth from Babylon 5 (first incarnation only).
Major Kira from Star Trek: DS9.
Gaia from HBO’s Rome.
Karen Milner from The Sandbaggers.