If there’s been a model of progressiveness in science fiction, it’s Star Trek. Famously the first series to air an interracial kiss on American television, the show’s prided itself on its diversity and talking of serious social issues. Yet, Star Trek has had, until this week’s Star Trek Beyond, an extremely odd blind spot: There’s never been an openly gay character. Yet, in several episodes, Star Trek made noble, if sometimes disastrous, attempts to explore being gay on the final frontier.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Host”
Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) is romanced by Odan (Franc Luz), a diplomat with an odd distaste for transporters. Odan is injured during negotiations and turns out to be a Trill, a unique species where the host, a human-like being, is implanted with and controlled by another being, called the symbiote. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) temporarily takes over as host to finish the negotiations, not to mention, it’s implied, hook up with Beverly. But at the end of the episode, Odan finds a new host… a woman, who tries to pick up where Odan and Riker left off. Crusher, shell shocked, turns her down with an “It’s not you, it’s me” speech, saying humanity’s view of love is “limited.”
This, in turn, introduces an ongoing and rather strange theme when it comes to LGBT rights in Star Trek: The franchise is far more comfortable dealing, however awkwardly, with characters changing their gender than they are with characters having any sort of romance, gay or straight. It also makes “The Host” one of the single most argued-about episodes of Star Trek ever produced.
Fans were divided on Beverly’s reaction. Some felt that the episode’s message about love being spiritual instead of physical meant she could have at least made a go of it with Odan instead of shutting the whole thing down right away. Not helping matters was the fact that Beverly didn’t seem to have a problem with Odan when he was in another male host who happens to be her friend and direct superior, but having a vagina is suddenly an insurmountable roadblock. On the other hand, some fans liked that the episode acknowledged that strong emotions and good intentions will only go so far, and that some things that shouldn’t matter to us do.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Outcast”
Easily one of the most controversial episodes of Star Trek, “The Outcast” follows Soren (Melinda Culea), a member of a race called the J’naii. The J’Naii claims to have evolved beyond the need for genders, and in fact views the concept of gender as something for “less evolved” races. And yet Soren finds herself identifying as female, thanks entirely to the sheer sexual charisma of Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes). Part of the problem is that the transgender experience is a delicate, sensitive issue, and Star Trek‘s social consciousness tends to be… less so. The J’naii are repulsed at the very idea of gender, those that feel they’re male or female are forced to undergo “therapy” to suppress their gendered feelings, and if that weren’t enough, the finale ends with the poor character having undergone the “therapy” and essentially being brainwashed. All Riker can do is beam up, and feel bad about it all.
The episode wasn’t popular among fans. In an in-depth look Salon took at Star Trek and LGBT issues in 2001, it quoted a fan who summed up the episode as accidental right-wing propaganda:
“The depiction of Soren’s society seemed to be something taken right from Rush Limbaugh’s show or Pat Buchanan’s campaign literature,” complained an anonymous message poster. “If you listen to those people, you’ll hear them talking about how the feminist and homosexual political agendas want to destroy the traditional family and make society into a sexless, genderless collection of politically correct clones … Soren’s society was a depiction of those people’s worse nightmares.”
Even the cast and crew weren’t happy with the episode. Frakes rather bluntly later said that at the very least Soren should have been “more evidently” a man. In other words, Star Trek meant well, but they couldn’t quite get there. And that would hold true even as the show advanced.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: “Rejoined”
Deep Space Nine is a departure for Star Trek in many ways, a bolder and more experimental series than the rest of the franchise. And that extends to sexuality to some degree, in ways both fortunate and unfortunate. On the unfortunate side, you had the show’s episodes in a Mirror Universe full of depraved bisexuals, and the show dancing around the topic of Garak, a Cardassian tailor and spy who it could never quite come out and just say what was obvious to many fans and even the actor, Andrew Robinson, who played him.
On the flip side are Dax and Odo, who each got an episode dealing with their unique situations. The Trill and their lack of gender-binary ways was a plot point right from the start of the show, as Sisko (Avery Brooks) expects to meet his old friend, the rugged adventurer Curzon Dax… and is instead confronted with the young woman (Terry Farrell) Dax has been transplanted into. Sisko never quite gets over it, either, insisting on calling her “old man.”
The show got deep into how Trills romance each other, however, with “Rejoined,” an episode where Dax meets her former wife Lenara Kahn. It turns out the Trill, despite switching genders with hosts, have a sexual taboo: Even though Dax and Kahn were married in the past, now that Dax has switched hosts, romance is strictly forbidden. Once a Trill changes hosts, their previous connections end; if they continue their romance, they’d be exiled from their home world and denied new hosts.
It’s an interesting choice, not least because the social taboos in question let the show interrogate the idea that love should be forbidden because of social taboo. The case for the Trill’s overreaction doesn’t make much in the way of sense, and yet many Trill seem to just mindlessly accept it as the way things should be. It also has a tough ending, when Kahn chooses to “stay in the closet,” as it were, and leaves Dax on the station.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: “Chimera”
Odo (Rene Auberjonois) got an even more fascinating episode. Odo was an oddball character even for Star Trek, a snarky cop who could shapeshift and had no memory of who he was or what species he was a part of. What gender and sex mean to somebody who can alter their form at will is an open question the show never fully answers, but comes closest here when Odo finds a fellow shapeshifter and tries to demonstrate the appeal of a life among people nothing like him.
As he tries to teach Laas (J.G. Hertzler), a shapeshifter new to the world of “Solids,” about the appeal of relating to those with only one form, Laas is having none of it. On the surface, of course, it’s all about whether Odo should try to fit in with the non-shapeshifters by holding to one form in public or embrace his nature and shapeshift wherever he wants. It’s not a particularly subtle metaphor, as Odo is in a romance with a female “Solid,” Major Kira, in the episode and finds himself torn between the two on a political, if not romantic, level. (Not helping matters: Quark, Odo’s frenemy, drops a quip about a “changeling pride parade.”) Kira even volunteers to step aside, freeing Laas and sending Odo to him. Odo ultimately chooses to stay “solid,” so to speak, but it’s also the only episode that ends well for the gay-coded character in question: Laas goes to explore the universe and decide who he is for himself.
As for the franchise’s future, Sulu’s personal life is being presented as no big deal, but there’s still that discomfort with romance: Sulu originally had a kiss with another man in the movie, which was edited out. But while we know little about the crew of Bryan Fuller’s upcoming Star Trek relaunch, it seems likely that if there’s an openly gay character, it’ll be treated as no big deal. The fundamental premise that, two or three centuries from now, we should advance as a society is hard to argue with, and keeps with Star Trek‘s unstated mission of showing a better future for everyone is within our grasp, if only we’re willing to try.
