Now with this comic, Star Trek's attitudes towards real honest issues are strictly limited to belonging in alternate realities. First was having openly gay and bisexual characters being featured only in the mirror universe for Deep Space Nine, now a female dominant crew in NuTrek's alternate reality. Looks like we have a long way to go before we have a Star Trek series that has a vast majority female cast or characters who are as open to same-sex relationships as the ones who are to the opposite sex. Until than, they'll treated as issues that are "out of place".
Also, William Shatner as "Mirror Kirk" is supposed to have Brown eyes!
It's not a bad example, but I still consider it a stretch. Heck, It's not even the first instance where a female Trill is attracted to another female. The thing is that these relationships both end up "not working" by the end of the episode and both main female characters wind up being paired with a main male character (Beverly/Picard, Dax/Worf or Bashir). Still no where near as bad as what they did on "The Outcast".
In the episode "The Host" where a sort of proto-Trill species debuted, we have Odan, a male host (Who Dr Crusher was romantically interested in) dying and the Trill passing on to a female host (after spending a few days in Commander Riker), also now Odan.
At least they had the scene where Crusher notes that she would find such a relationship (where the one who is loved would retain the knowledge of the past bodies, but might change body and gender) impossible for her. She doesn't judge Odan (which would have been insnaely crass) but herself for not being able to accept that kind of relationship, and expresses a hope that someday humanity might find such a relationship viable. Since such a thing can't happen in human society terms, I'll give them a bit of leeway on that one.
i think she even made it explicityly clear that it wasn't because she was a female. It's the idea that they would change hosts, they would be the same person, but they would also have the memories of the previous person. it was hard for her to wrap her mind around that concept.
hmmm going over my research, i may be off... i need to rewatch that episode....
but yeah i also saw it as a reference to acceptance of homosexual relationships
Or of transexuality, the line reminds me of Ozma's "I'm still the same old Tip you know."
Though of course Oban's desire to continue the relationship doesn't gell with the trill laws introduced later (but that's okay).
Jaddzia was shown to be pansexual, in more than the one episode... There was a lot of hints of her having interest in other women, there was the erotic pottery scene on Riza where Worf gets jealous for example.
And I don't think it's just because she's a joined Trill, it seemed to be very much a part of who Jaddzia is (though in the early bits of the first season she made references to joined Trills often being chaste and implied she was, so who even knows).
Not a bad episode, but the only non-evil same-sex relationship was still shown as wrong and taboo-breaking and they immediately broke up. If it had been one of many such stories, that wouldn't annoy me, but as it is, nope.
Exactly. Plus there was too much wiggle room there for the show-runners to point and go, "No see, it was the worms that were attracted to each other, not the girls!" for me to feel like that episode was Trek being supportive of LGBT representation.
I agree that's what the episode was saying, but the Tragic Queer forbidden love trope is an old one and far too often the only story we get. In this show, they also went with Evil Sexy Lesbians (and bisexuals). At least we were spared the other usual trope which is Dead Lesbians. Again, none of these tropes would be a problem if there were lots of other stories as well. But there weren't.
Well, Shatner's eyes are on the green side of brown, a fairly bright color. In TOS it's more noticeable than in later years after his "hair" got so much darker. I'm not seeing a vivid blue in those scans (not like the Chris Pine color); maybe they're going for hazel?
it's not for lack of trying. Gene Roddenberry believed that issues like sexuality and gender and race would not even be an issue in the future.
more than one show runner has tried to insert positive same sex relationships into the show.
Jonathan Franks tried to have an episode where Riker fell in love with a gender neutral/androgynous alien (this was to serve 2 purposes, one, it would show that it was the being he was attracted to and not the gender, and two, Frankes wanted the actor to be male so that it would allude to the idea of a same sex relationship) however, they made they cast, and made it obvious, the actress was female, defeating the purpose. (Frankes was very upset about that) though it did carry a nice message about the ethical issues of forcing someone to "choose" one gender over the other.
In Voyager, it was alluded to the idea that Seven of Nine and the captain were going to form a relationship (even Kate Mulgrew mentioned it as a possibility) before they changed it to a mother/daughter relationship.
In Enterprise, Tripp was supposed to be gay, and even in the last episode, this idea was alluded to when an off screen Riker (again played by Frankes) asks "Do you think he's attractive" while refering to Archer (it's made to look like he's talking to Tripp, when in reality he's talking to an off screen Troi)
The Next Generation movies DID manage to sneak in two or three relationships. During the Borg attack in First Contact, a character was gay (and was mentioned at having a partner at least in the novelization).
All these efforts at inclusion were changed due to executive meddling.
Wikipedia has an interesting article. Most show runners have tried. which is more than can be said for others. They do a better job in comics and the novels/
The Next Generation movies DID manage to sneak in two or three relationships. During the Borg attack in First Contact, a character was gay (and was mentioned at having a partner at least in the novelization).
Lt Hawk's sexuality - in fact, pretty much any aspect of his personality - never actually came up in the movie. He wasn't fleshed out at all until he was used in some novels. (Not the novelization of First Contact.) The people involved (including the actor) have denied intending Hawk to be gay in the movie. (Or anything other than borg-fodder.)
There was also an episode written by David Gerrold for TNG that was commissioned but never used called "Blood and Fire" which was supposed to be an allegory for the aids pandemic and have a gay character, it was later adapted for the fan series "Star Trek Phase 2," and the gay character is Kirk's Nephew.
If you're counting the spin-off material, which is what you're doing by including comics, then there have been a lot of openly bisexual and gay characters in the novels.
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Also, William Shatner as "Mirror Kirk" is supposed to have Brown eyes!
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At least they had the scene where Crusher notes that she would find such a relationship (where the one who is loved would retain the knowledge of the past bodies, but might change body and gender) impossible for her. She doesn't judge Odan (which would have been insnaely crass) but herself for not being able to accept that kind of relationship, and expresses a hope that someday humanity might find such a relationship viable. Since such a thing can't happen in human society terms, I'll give them a bit of leeway on that one.
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hmmm going over my research, i may be off... i need to rewatch that episode....
but yeah i also saw it as a reference to acceptance of homosexual relationships
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Though of course Oban's desire to continue the relationship doesn't gell with the trill laws introduced later (but that's okay).
Jaddzia was shown to be pansexual, in more than the one episode... There was a lot of hints of her having interest in other women, there was the erotic pottery scene on Riza where Worf gets jealous for example.
And I don't think it's just because she's a joined Trill, it seemed to be very much a part of who Jaddzia is (though in the early bits of the first season she made references to joined Trills often being chaste and implied she was, so who even knows).
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Remember Jaddiza was willing to go through with it.
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more than one show runner has tried to insert positive same sex relationships into the show.
Jonathan Franks tried to have an episode where Riker fell in love with a gender neutral/androgynous alien (this was to serve 2 purposes, one, it would show that it was the being he was attracted to and not the gender, and two, Frankes wanted the actor to be male so that it would allude to the idea of a same sex relationship) however, they made they cast, and made it obvious, the actress was female, defeating the purpose. (Frankes was very upset about that) though it did carry a nice message about the ethical issues of forcing someone to "choose" one gender over the other.
In Voyager, it was alluded to the idea that Seven of Nine and the captain were going to form a relationship (even Kate Mulgrew mentioned it as a possibility) before they changed it to a mother/daughter relationship.
In Enterprise, Tripp was supposed to be gay, and even in the last episode, this idea was alluded to when an off screen Riker (again played by Frankes) asks "Do you think he's attractive" while refering to Archer (it's made to look like he's talking to Tripp, when in reality he's talking to an off screen Troi)
The Next Generation movies DID manage to sneak in two or three relationships. During the Borg attack in First Contact, a character was gay (and was mentioned at having a partner at least in the novelization).
All these efforts at inclusion were changed due to executive meddling.
Wikipedia has an interesting article. Most show runners have tried. which is more than can be said for others. They do a better job in comics and the novels/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_Star_Trek#LGBT_in_Star_Trek
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Frakes.
Lt Hawk's sexuality - in fact, pretty much any aspect of his personality - never actually came up in the movie. He wasn't fleshed out at all until he was used in some novels. (Not the novelization of First Contact.) The people involved (including the actor) have denied intending Hawk to be gay in the movie. (Or anything other than borg-fodder.)
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