Does Stamets have a partner/husband?
- Thread starter borgboy
- Start date
No clue, but it was said that one person would be gay. So who knows. Starships of this era did not have families on board unless both people served on the same ship.
Yeah if they both serve, which does not always mean on the same ship. I don't think we have enough information at this time to know any of that.
One thing most Star Trek incarnations never really dealt with was the idea that crew members are away from their families, such as is the case in real life with the crew of a Navy ship.
They touched upon it a little in Voyager with Janeway being away from Mark, and Tuvoc being away from his family, but only a little -- and mostly because of the specific situation with Voyager being so far from home.
I always thought Star Trek should have at least one crew member (in the main cast) who sometimes struggles with the real-life difficulties of being away from a husband, wife, domestic partner, and/or children. Stamets could be that character in this incarnation of Trek.
They touched upon it a little in Voyager with Janeway being away from Mark, and Tuvoc being away from his family, but only a little -- and mostly because of the specific situation with Voyager being so far from home.
I always thought Star Trek should have at least one crew member (in the main cast) who sometimes struggles with the real-life difficulties of being away from a husband, wife, domestic partner, and/or children. Stamets could be that character in this incarnation of Trek.
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As a former sailor, I'm all for this. I didn't experience this myself (aside from brothers and mom) and I certainly saw this a lot of this and photographed reunions as part of my job in the Navy.
Same. I would like to see him single at the start and maybe have him explore relationships from time to time like any other character would on a star trek series.
My only concern if Stamets were to have a husband back home, he's then cut off from romantic entanglement plots (which can be great or awful) and we'd lose that character development. Also, that COULD be construed at "we're willing to have a gay character as long as we don't have to deal with that aspect of his life." In all the Star Trek series after TOS, I think nearly every character has had their own flirtation episodes. I'm not suggesting in any way that I want Discovery to be a soap! I would just like to not have Stamets locked out of something from the get go.
This is a bit of a catch 22. On the one hand there is the stereotype of the promiscuous gay man that they will be accused of playing into if they give him casual relationships (even if he has no more than the straight crew), the other option is that he's monogamous, and they are accused of avoiding the subject. I'm not seeing a third path.
There could be a sort of third path if they took this opportunity to directly, but not heavy-handedly, compare the equal promiscuities of straight and gay characters.
I guess the third path is to avoid actual sex scenes, which Star Trek doesn't show anyway. There's literally only been one same-sex kiss in the franchise before. Not that I'd expect anything in the same caliber as "City on the Edge of Forever" (not because of low expectations for Discovery, just that episodes that good are rare) but if Kirk were to replaced with Stamets and Edith Keeler was, say, Edwin Keeler, that wouldn't play into a promiscuity stereotypes without HUGE leaps of illogic. lol!
Write a couple. I don't see the need to write a gay relationship when the best ways to write any same-sex couple is just to write a relationship. I find it odd that gay relationships on TV need to be one of the two options while straight couples have a wider variety.
Write a loving, caring relationship and that's what you'll get. It doesn't have to be a stereotype or tick a box.
I really don't think that they will handle it in such a subtle manner. I have the suspicion we will finally get the gay character we wanted for so long.
I'm not sure I can follow you there. You are saying the writers would be accused of avoiding the subject of promiscuity among homosexuals if they have a monogamous gay character? I have a hard time believing this would be a critique that comes up so often it would be even worth talking about.
Why are we suddenly talking about sex scenes?
I thought the topic was whether Stamets should have a husband/partner or changing relationships with different guys.Yes. A million times this.
I'd really like to see Stamets have an ongoing relationship with someone onboard the Discovery itself - whilst an absent partner could be an alternative route, to some extent it neutralises the sexuality of the character unless we have a regular communication to remind us of his same sex relationship then, to the majority of the audience in a heteronormative society he might as well be heterosexual. Given we know virtually nothing about Captain Lorca - my hope would even be that we have a Lorca/Stamets combination, with Stamets seemingly outside of the command crew (Saru is Science Officer, Nambue is the Chief Medical Officer) it would certainly be a reason for him to be a regular character in the same vein as Kassidy Yates in later DS9.
Why are we suddenly talking about sex scenes?
My reference to avoiding sex scenes was as a way to address UssGlenn's comment that, "On the one hand there is the stereotype of the promiscuous gay man that they will be accused of playing into if they give him casual relationships (even if he has no more than the straight crew)"
Yeah, there's always someone. But I honestly don't believe there will be a significant number of people complaining about a monogamous gay relationship.
I'm still unsure why giving Stamets “casual relationships” does mean sex scenes. In the context of a television series, what has one thing necessarily to do with the other?
The third option could be as I mentioned in a post above. What I mentioned in a post above is that Star Trek never really had a character in the main cast who was shown to often struggle to deal with the real-life difficulties of being away from a husband, wife, domestic partner, and/or children. I say "real-life" because this struggle to deal with being away from loved ones is a real thing for sailors on long deployments (and also deployed soldiers, for that matter).
Granted, this does deal with monogamy, which is your second path, but I think in this case they could deal with monogamy in a way that does note "avoid the subject" of a homosexual relationship. Rather, having a character struggle to deal with being away from a domestic partner (a partner from either a heterosexual relationship or a homosexual relationship -- it doesn't matter) in fact puts that relationship in the forefront by including as part of that character's overall story.
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