Star Trek’s iconic opening-credit monologue, first delivered by William Shatner in the original series, had always declared space to be the final frontier.
In actuality, the series had two: space and queers in space. After 51 years of navigating the cosmos, it has yet to reach the latter.
Gays in space is to Star Trek fans what Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Ni**as In Paris is to a non-Black hip-hop audience. You know that said communities exist, but taboo prevents you from naming them outright. Instead, you have to couch them, for example, in two asterisks for the word you know better than to say or, in the case of Star Trek, androgynous alien species.
Prior to Star Trek: Discovery, which premieres Sunday (September 24) on CTV and Space, and features the first openly gay couple in the franchise’s half-century history, the show seemed to suggest the LGBTQ+ community didn’t survive into the 23rd century.
Series creator Gene Roddenberry was often lauded for his liberal humanistic view of the future, but this was an extreme case of Hollywood’s Bury Your Gays syndrome.
In 1981, activist and historian Vito Russo wrote a book, The Celluloid Closet, about Hollywood’s depiction (or lack thereof) of LGBTQ+ characters in cinema. In the 1995 doc film version, feminist Susie Bright quips: “It’s amazing how, if you’re a gay audience and you’re accustomed to crumbs, you will watch an entire movie just to see somebody wear an outfit that you think means they are homosexual.”
I first tuned into Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) when I was 13, questioning and searching for even the tiniest crumbs of validation. Be still my burgeoning gay heart when in a rerun of the series opener, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a male Starfleet officer donning a regulation mini-dress.
Alas, non-binary gender expression would never be seen aboard the Starship Enterprise again. Straight was a quintessentially human feature. Even TNG’s Data, an android who aspired to be as human-like as possible, had a one-night stand with Lt. Tasha Yar, incidentally, the most masculine-presenting woman on the show.
Clearly, android-human relations were far more acceptable than placing these characters somewhere, anywhere, along the LGBTQQIP2SAA spectrum (like musician Janelle Monáe, I’m in favour of adding another “A” for android).
Among the other Star Trek characters who could have been written as queer: Star Trek TNG’s Guinan, a woman who’s been alive for 600 years should have gotten tired of men’s shit at some point Deep Space Nine’s Kira Nerys: she already had the hair for it Deep Space Nine’s Odo – why did a shape-shifter who can take on any form he wants come with an inbuilt heteronormativity?
Whenever Star Trek explored sexual diversity, it hid beneath the cloak of androgynous extraterrestrials.
In the TNG season five episode The Outcast, a member of a genderless alien species is subjected to a form of futuristic conversion therapy to eliminate their growing awareness of their female identity and their attraction to men.
In the DS9 season four episode Rejoined, which featured Star Trek’s first same-sex kiss, a crew member from the Trill, a species that can live multiple lives as male or female, is reunited with her wife from her previous existence as a man.
What’s notable about both episodes is not the hate mail they received, but the cast and crew’s insistence that these episodes didn’t treat LGBTQ+ issues at all.
Of the DS9 episode, executive producer Ira Steven Behr declared, “We’re not doing a show about lesbians, we’re doing a show about Trills.”
I kind of wish it was about lesbians.
I imagine Behr thought he sounded liberal. But insisting the episode wasn’t about lesbians reminds me of people who enthusiastically insist they’re colour blind. Only, ignoring difference doesn’t make you progressive, it just makes you ignorant.
In 1991, Roddenberry told reporters that openly gay characters would start appearing on TNG’s fifth season, but he died soon after and clearly the idea died with him.
And, no, Sulu being outed (in honour of George Takei, the gay actor who first portrayed him) 47 years after the original Star Trek ended doesn’t count.
Neither does director Justin Lin’s depiction of Sulu embracing his husband in the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond, while leaving the actual kiss filmed between the two men on the cutting room floor.
Star Trek: Discovery was co-created by gay TV producer Bryan Fuller. The on-screen couple Lt. Paul Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber will be played by queer actors Anthony Rapp (Mark from Rent) and Wilson Cruz (Rickie from My So-Called Life).
Not that it’s a given, but here’s to hoping that the home team delivers on their promise: the depiction of well-rounded (and alive for more than a season) LGBTQ+ characters who we can finally raise a toast to while throwing away the crumbs.
christiner@nowtoronto.com | @missrattan
