I don't think it "daringly explored dynamics of gender and queer desire", I think I daringly explored that stuff while watching it or perhaps trashily explored it would be more accurate. The reason there is plenty to work with is excellent lively affectionate acting on the part of most of them at one point or another. Also Kate Mulgrew touches touches touches.. everyone she is talking to and that seemed to encourage folk to stand close and look close and we the fans to fill in the blanks. I'll give you the BQ though, that was written hot, all about seduction. Vampire Queen really.
You see what you want to see. The ridiculous lengths the cult of true believers here go to to prove their fantastic claim that Janeway and Chakotay were always in love and always cow eyed looking at each other with bedroom eyes... Paddock eyes or stable eyes? I suppose a cow would only be in a stable if it was sick? A lot of people see what they want to see. I would jump on any opportunity for there to have been proof of homosexuality on Voyager but the closest they ever got was homophobia in Flesh and Blood when the Doctor expounded disgust at the thought of kissing another man. Imagining that Voyager is prohomosexual only hurts homosexuality by telling lies that Voyager loves gays when really it's almost absolutely indifferent. That's like saying that the Klan loves Jews. You can say that all you want, but it's unlikely that the Klan has much admiration for the Jewish people in day to day practice. I would have loved it if Voyager was progay in any way, but it wasn't and that's a demerit in my books that the series was a coward and backward and shouldn't be thought of as any other way as far as gay rights go. Oh? Holographic rights = LGBT rights? Ridiculous. But I could see how many people might think that becuase they want their star trek to like their orientation and they are grasping at any fray than can, which is perhaps one of the ways that I thought that Voyager accidentally touched upon Gay Rights. But it really, really wasn't about being gay in the 1990s. POssibly it was about being gay in the 1890s, but how the frakk is that relevant to us an an audience? Now if you want a Series that LOVES the Gays, may I suggest the fan series Star Trek Hidden Frontier, which has gay men and women, main cast members and supporting, in many ongoing and flash in the pan healthy and/or frivolous relationships without an once of stunt spectacle or freakshow about it. It's just something that happenes inbetween spaceship battles. (It helps that the Producer, and half the cast were gay.)
If the terms of the argument are, that, absolutely, only explicit representations of loving homosexual relationships count, then all Trek films and series fail. If we can establish that there are myriad ways in which the series has spoken to its LGBTQI fanbase in allegorical and symbolic terms, then VOY has certainly done so, and eloquently, at times. I think that likening TPTB at Trek, for all of their considerable failures on several counts, to the Klan is, well, de trop.
Teacake, there is a strong body of criticism on fan appropriation of Trek that would certainly speak to fans' own daring enlargement of what was offered. But...I actually find that many VOY episodes are extremely well-written and conceptually interesting and suggestive. Not all of them, by any means, but many of them.
Well david g I have long lost track of what was actually written and/or acted into a story and what I smuggled into the story in the service of wish fulfillment. But I'd like to see hard evidence of actual, deliberate writing or acting that was gay supportive or about gay issues in Voyager. We have Andrew Robinson's own words about how he played Garak for instance. Much as I will happily J/7 it up over the fireside scene, the pip scene etc.. I do not think that is what was meant by the either the writing or the acting. KM played it that way with everyone, she woos the people she interacts with and when one person is particularly special to her it's easy to see more to that wooing than how KM intended it. I'm the biggest LET'S MAKE EVERYTHING GAY GAY GAY fangirl evah but I do not think in the case of Voyager the happy subtext was deliberate. And I'm watching Buffy atm (NO SPOILERS PLEASE) and there is regular old gay relationship right in the middle of every episode involving a main character during the same time VOY was on the air and it's really hard not to look at this and think "Star Trek, you suck"
The network was petrified of having gays on Buffy in season four. (This is true) The Network said: You can have some gays as long as 1, you don't use the word gay, 2, they don't even touch each other, and 3, they don't tell any one that they're in a relationship. Because the sky didn't fall and the Christians didn't destroy the Warner's lot, Joss was given new less restrictive rules for season 5.
Indeed, Xena had more obvious subtext than Trek could dream of, and yet, they never really took that final step with her and Gabrielle. Heck, Will and Grace would hardly dare having two men kiss. For much of the show, the two supposedly straight characters, Grace and her kooky secretary had more kissing and embracing than Jack or Will were shown to have. Trek is a conventional product of a very typical American studio. They won't do anything truly bold till its been ten years past everyone else finds the topic old news.
Nothing so direct as that. I'm saying UPN was more timid about VGR in general, which had multiple consequences on its storytelling, and one aspect of that was that they were too timid to let Jennifer Lien kiss Galyn Gorg in "Warlord." Even if it's true that the producers managed to sneak some LGBT subtext in the show under the network's noses, that single aspect doesn't disprove the larger point, because UPN's policies were not exclusively about that single issue.
If we are making the deliberate insertion of LGBTQI subtext into Trek films and series the standard, then all of them fail. I have no idea what the writers of VOY were trying to add or to keep from being added, although it does seem that Jeri Taylor was very conscious of this issue (she wrote gay characters into her VOY novel "Pathways"). The issue for me--and this goes back to TOS--is that Trek poignantly speaks to queer experience through its narratives of loneliness and estrangement as well as its exploration of same-gender relationships. Again, I am talking about allegory, not explicit representation. I am also making a related, perhaps, but separate point that the excellence of the writing on VOY--at times--lent itself to the possibilities of queer allegory, not that it intentionally created or promulgated these allegories.
Teacake asked for examples. Jeri Taylor had Janeway go to the beach with Mark's wife to sun bathe. Clearly the woman, Taylor, is unhinged and not in touch with the reality of reality or the reality of Star Trek. I won't be mean, just teach me what you believe are the most LBGT subtextuous episodes were?
Well, I wrote an entire book on the subject, which I won't belabor here, and I also gave a sample list of episodes about queer subtext. But, for example, "Dark Frontier" seems to me a very queer episode in its exploration of different forms of female sexuality, fetishism, and styles of femininity. Of course, the queer elements of these dimensions of the episode are only some of the elements. But what about an episode like "Demon," in which copies of Tom and Harry can no longer survive in their "normal" environment and must form a new, separate reality/existence? Again, I am talking about allegory, not an explicit representation. I am also talking about, as in "Dark Frontier," forms of play with gendered identities.
Dude if this is about allegory then of course VOY is, in the eyes of the viewer, potentially chock full of it is as is any story about aliens and alienation. Aliens and alienation grabbed all the proto-basement nerds by their little lonely hearts when TOS started, Spock was poster boy for a generation of introverts who didn't fit in. If you want to make that about sexuality issues, go for it. But it wasn't written that way deliberately other than some heavy handed half attempts such as the Riker ep and Fusion.
But that's not specifically about gender, it's about alienation in general, as Star Trek has always been to a large degree. It could just as easily be about being a racial or religious outsider. It just happens that LGBT people are the main group whose inclusion and rights are at the center of the cultural debate in the present day. But that doesn't mean a story about alienation would've been meant to be about them specifically at the time it was written. Look at X-Men. These days it's seen largely as a gay metaphor, particularly in the Bryan Singer movies. But considering that it was created in the 1960s by the sons of Jewish immigrants, it's pretty clear that its original intent was to be an allegory for ethnic, religious, and class discrimination. Oh, and teacake, it was "Stigma," the followup to "Fusion," that was the AIDS/gay allegory. "Fusion" itself was more of a rape allegory.
The obvious rape allegory seems to have missed the attention of the caption writer for the TrekBBS episode Guide. So in Fusion T'Pol gets meldraped by a thug who Archer knocks on his ass, and then half a season later in Stigma we find out that T'Pol got meldAIDS from the Thug, which was in reality a PSA for real AIDS with a phone number in the corner of the screen for any one who wants to donate towards AIDS research, and then 2 seasons later T'Pol is told that she was overacting and that what she thought was meldAIDS is really Meldsniffles, and she is cured in early season four. (Facepalm.) But what is really important is if Meld = Sex, then Spock had sex with a lot of dudes.
And Wrath of Khan/Search for Spock too. Meld does not equal sex. "These days sex doesn't even equal dinner and a movie."
But did she want him to do that? How desperate was Valeris to get caught so that she could to be with Spock in any way that she could? Besides, capturing the woman, and outsmarting her "masters" plan was (filtered for alien effect) alarmingly arousing, since her interest in the most perfect suitor available would by stymied if he was some idiot she could dupe with a little common misdirection. Remember in Red Sonja, she vowed that she could only ever sleep with a man that could beat her in combat? She wanted it to be nonconsensual, which is a double negative which... Not rape.
I think it's clear from all her baiting and banter that getting Spock in the head sack was her objective from the beginning. But does Spock realize this? Because if he does consensually engage in the dueling play that leads to the payoff that's cool but if he is oblivious to her agenda then it is Spock that has been mind raped.
You ever wonder if Kim Katrall asked Shatner or Nimoy if they wanted a guest spot on Sex and the City? Kirk asked the question, Valeris lied, Spock melded, Spock got Kirk the answer he wanted. Kirk didn't order the meld, but Kirk didn't have to give the order, so Spock melded with the lieutenant because he knew that kirk needed him to do it, which is as good as an order. Just following orders. Although... Rereading the transcript, Did Valeris almost recruit Spock (to Section 31)?