As I said; this doesn't make a lick of sense. Since Soren couldn't possibly ignore that she'd sooner or later be brainwashed, she would have asked for asylum and with Riker's support she would have gotten it. The story is based on a series of improbable events, coupled with unlikely sexual dictates. Now if they can even alter how a person feels vis a vis another which has nothing to do with sexuality then it's a mental dictatorship and is exactly the form of government someone would be legitimized to ask to be protected from by the federation.
The Outcast
- Thread starter Taelon
- Start date
Dealing with that kind of situation is rarely so easy as you make out. It's easy to say, "Soren should have done this, Soren should have done that..." but being persecuted by society for being born different is an extremely difficult thing to go through. That's not a plot-hole, that's just you disagreeing with the way a character conducted themselves. Soren lived for years with this. A decision had been made to hide it away and live the best life possible.
Saying that Soren should have simply asked for asylum off the bat is akin to telling a gay person to just move to another country.
There are laws in the U.S. that discriminate against gay people. There are over SEVENTY countries where homosexuality is illegal. Some of them have the death penalty. This planet is just as bad as J'Naii.
I am a defender of LGBT rights. I want this to be clear.
Now let me ask you something TOSk, can you give me one instance of one gay character that isn't otherwise perverted in the ENTIRE FRANCHISE?
The only instances of gay people ever acknowledged are in the mirror universe, IE the evil universe. If that isn't a blatant show of bigotry then I don't know what is.
This episode is not about gay rights. It's a badly written story that is so full of holes that it makes me wonder if it hasn't been done this way on purpose.
If ST wanted to make an allegoric story about gay rights, they should have started by cleaning up their own backyard.
Now let me ask you something TOSk, can you give me one instance of one gay character that isn't otherwise perverted in the ENTIRE FRANCHISE?
The only instances of gay people ever acknowledged are in the mirror universe, IE the evil universe. If that isn't a blatant show of bigotry then I don't know what is.
This episode is not about gay rights. It's a badly written story that is so full of holes that it makes me wonder if it hasn't been done this way on purpose.
If ST wanted to make an allegoric story about gay rights, they should have started by cleaning up their own backyard.
You keep saying that, but all the "holes" are either answered within the episode itself, easily inferred, or just character choices you disagree with. (The latter is, of course, totally fine. We're all here with our opinions, but that's not the same thing as a plot-hole.)
In so far as the story takes the problem and pulls it out in the open, then yes it is. I will admit the story is somewhat less gay rights and more general "human" rights. But the subject applies to gays as well, the themes of lack of complete gender expression freedoms, having to conceal important aspects of yourself.
I'm not defending Trek's bad record with gay characters on tv and movies, but there are a few positive examples of acceptance and a handful of sort of gay characters.
It's implied that Jadzia Dax is bisexual. She has a relationship with Kahn, whose symbiote's previous host was in a hetero marriage to a previous host of Dax. It's based on a past hetero relationship, but the two women want to be in a relationship and are only stopped by the severe penalties for the taboo of their society, which is reviving a relationship from a symbiote's past. Years later Worf sees another woman (played by Vanessa Williams) as a romantic threat with Jadzia, more evidence of Jadzia's bisexuality. It's open to interpretation though. Nobody was more disappointed than me that Trek didn't have a more directly realized gay character, but they were different times. The new movies have continued to fail in this regard and I can't defend that.
Kira is completely supportive of Jadzia's relationship with Kahn, and years before that Jadzia was supportive of what she thought was a male Ferengi in love with Quark - which wound up being a female Ferengi passing as male because of the oppressive sexism of Ferengi society.
For all it's failings, I think Soran's speech about the oppression she's faced and the difficulties of her life are very touching and a clear parallel to the plight of gays. Riker's defense of her is powerful. I think it's important to acknowledge the strengths of the episode as we have explored the weaknesses of it pretty well. I can tell you as an out young gay man at the time this came out, it meant a lot to me and other gay Trek fans. Trek failed us by not doing more, but at that time this was still pretty groundbreaking.
There are a lot of gay characters in Trek lit, including main regular characters in series like Titan, New Frontier and Vanguard.
In so far as the story takes the problem and pulls it out in the open, then yes it is. I will admit the story is somewhat less gay rights and more general "human" rights. But the subject applies to gays as well, the themes of lack of complete gender expression freedoms, having to conceal important aspects of yourself.
This episode was a product of its time. It's important to realize the immense changes in American culture that have occurred over the past twenty years, especially in regards to civil rights for the LGBTQ community. Although it is not a perfect episode, it was groundbreaking in its own way.
I see where you're coming from and I am not saying that you are completely wrong for thinking that. I don't think it's actually implied that Jadzia is bi. and even if it was, there's enough deniability put into that implication to make it tenuous at best. Sure Jadzia and Denara sort of kiss for a little while but it never reach the point where you can't say that it's only two former lovers reminiscing their time together. For example they've showed us post coitus Jadzia and Worf often enough to make you wonder if this wasn't meant to be a platonic relationship. After all, everyone who's been there knows, that there's much more to love than sex. Romeo and Juliet never consummated their love, yet they are the most famous lovers of all times. The incident with Worf in Risa is even more dubious, IMO.
I agree that Jadzia's bisexuality is nebulous and open to interpretation overall, but I do think the kiss shows that Kahn and Jadzia's relationship will be physical if they were together. The kiss makes it as clear as they possibly could in that context. The symbiote and past hetero marriage of their symbiote's previous hosts muddy the waters considerable, but ultimately it's still two female characters in a love story.
I always thought Romeo and Juliet was an awful love story for many reasons, the lack of time they knew each other, Romeo's established history of fleeting romantic obsession, etc. Do Romeo and Juliet definitively never consummate their relationship? Off topic, but I'm not sure I knew that. I've read the play in school and seen a couple of movie adaptations. That may be where I've gotten the wrong idea, as I vaguely recall the DiCaprio version had a sex scene if I'm not mistaken.
It is important to keep in mind how much things have changed in the last couple of decades. Things have changed so much since TNG's era in terms of social acceptance, legal rights, media representation, etc. As quaint and limited as The Outcast seems now, it was still a little bit groundbreaking and controversial at the time.
I always thought Romeo and Juliet was an awful love story for many reasons, the lack of time they knew each other, Romeo's established history of fleeting romantic obsession, etc. Do Romeo and Juliet definitively never consummate their relationship? Off topic, but I'm not sure I knew that. I've read the play in school and seen a couple of movie adaptations. That may be where I've gotten the wrong idea, as I vaguely recall the DiCaprio version had a sex scene if I'm not mistaken.
It is important to keep in mind how much things have changed in the last couple of decades. Things have changed so much since TNG's era in terms of social acceptance, legal rights, media representation, etc. As quaint and limited as The Outcast seems now, it was still a little bit groundbreaking and controversial at the time.
I agree. This is a rapidly developing subject, and fiction will struggle to keep up with it.
If they really wanted to make a statement AND make up for past negligence they should have made it a planet that was prejudiced against homosexuals. It would have given them a chance to show that they were OK with it. Maybe Data could have made a remark like "In the Earth there used to be similar discrimination in the past but we got over it by the year blah blah blah... THAT I would have admired but not this clumsy attempt that doesn't resist any kind of analysis no matter how shallow.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda, and all that.
Star Trek has never displayed prejudice towards homosexuals, so I
am uncertain what they have to "make up for".
As far as I can tell the episode certainly can handle scrutiny, as it has been subjected to that scrutiny on numerous occasions, and hasn't been relegated to the dustbin along with other more notorious episodes.
Never talking about it is prejudice enough. What if they did the same with race? What if there were no Asians whatsoever for example? How long do you think it would take for people to notice? But do that with gays and it's perfectly alright...
Homosexual characters were not explicitly EXCLUDED from the Trek universe. The nature of homosexuality does not allow for specific comparison to racial exclusion. For example, if there were no black characters, you could confirm that Trek was excluding them.
But a person who is homosexual does not appear any different from anyone else, and therefore any number of background characters could easily have been LGBT. While none of these were featured, there is no evidence they were excluded.
In addition the definition of prejudice is
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience
or
dislike, hostility, or unjust behavior deriving from unfounded opinions
I cannot find such prejudice towards homosexuals within Star Trek.
But a person who is homosexual does not appear any different from anyone else, and therefore any number of background characters could easily have been LGBT. While none of these were featured, there is no evidence they were excluded.
In addition the definition of prejudice is
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience
or
dislike, hostility, or unjust behavior deriving from unfounded opinions
I cannot find such prejudice towards homosexuals within Star Trek.
The problem with religions is that they evolve, there are many variations of Christianity for example that didn't even exist a hundred years ago, or were almost forgotten or different somehow. Plus if you mention ONE religion, you're sort of obligated to mention them all in the long run, you could end up doing that an nothing else. So it was wise of them to invent a religion (Bajoran) and make it a symbol of all religions. It's a completely different thing with the homosexual, one mention of any kind of same sex relationship would be considered a moral victory by all LGBT people alike.
Once again, never talking about it is exclusion enough. In the real world Gay relationships come up in regular conversation all the time.
They talk countless times about heterosexual relationships, they talk about alien sex with three genders, they talk about inter species marriages, they talk about someone who grows buds. And never ever even one mention of a gay relationship? Homosexuality is far more likely than any of these things, except for the heterosexual relationships. It would be like talking about all the guests at a party except the ones with blond hair. Don't you think people would notice? Of course they would!
Yeah, but then this would never have been an episode of television in 1992. Which is the point of doing an allegorical science-fiction story in the first place.
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