Are any of you big Star Trek fans? I know I am. Which means you should be too. You’re reading my blog, so do what I say. That’s how it works. So yeah, Star Trek. It’s a great series, and groundbreaking in some ways too. Did you know that Star Trek is the first show that did an inter-racial kiss on TELEVISION!? Well now you do. At the time that was so earth shattering that it nearly didn’t happen. Luckily Gene Roddenberry isn’t a pushover.
On the issue of gays in space, Star Trek was considerably quieter. Having grown up with Star Trek as a child, I never thought about it. Not knowing what gay meant, I didn’t know to look for its absence. In fact, I can recall only a few shallow instances in which the sexuality of characters was explored.
The original Star Trek came too early for such experimentation. God forbid American citizens see someone different from themselves in the 60’s. It might have caused mass panic, or just riots and protests and a cancelled show. But The Next Generation lightly touched on the subject when Riker fell in love with a member of an androgynous race. I guess doing a guy doing an “it” is more acceptable than doing another guy. Of course, the gender neutral love interest was played by a woman to avoid involving the gays.
After TNG came Deep Space Nine. It diverged from the beaten path of its predecessors by not changing the setting after each episode. Once it became established, DS9 began exploring things the rest of the series never dealt with. War, death, genocide, politics were all subjects shown to viewers. In several of its alternate universe episodes one of the female characters is shown hitting on another female character while being “attended to” by scantily clad males. What a scandal. The real swing at gay issues came when Dax met the present day host of one of its ex-wives. Of course Dax was now a female, and so was her ex-significant other. AND THEN THEY KISSED ON TV. I don’t think it was the first lesbian kiss on TV, but it was well done at least. Having viewed the special features (yeah, I’m that big a Trekkie), the actresses said that it was very tastefully done. Their director did everything he could to make them both feel comfortable, and they treated it as just another part of the job.
After all the shows ended, I began (who am I kidding) reading the novels based on the series. Star Trek: SCE has TWO GAY CHARACTERS! And this isn’t fan fiction either. The gay storylines included in the series are idealized of course, just like everything else in the Trek universe. But it’s nice to read a book about a series I love that I can really relate to.
Are you wondering what brought all this up? I recently read a quotation on Queerty talking about the lack of gay characters on the various Trek series. Braga, one of the writers and producers of Star Trek, tried to explain why we were never included in the shows. And he’s right, in Ten-Forward we never saw homosexual couples being lovey-dovey. We were always seeing heteros. Should we have been included? I think so. Surely it wouldn’t have caused such a huge ruckus to see two guys kissing in the background while Troi indulged in some chocolate!
Does our absence from Star Trek make it less of a show? My answer is: absolutely not. Oh, and Star Trek totally kicks Star Wars’ ass. No contest.
-Kevin
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