In the STD episode "Into the Forest I Go" 1x09 brilliant scientist Lieutenant Paul Stamets and the equally brilliant Dr Hugh Culber, played by the distinguished and openly gay actors Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, finally shared their first on-screen kiss.
Star Trek is famous for special first kisses, going back to the first interracial kiss of Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura in the November 1968 TOS episode "Plato's Stepchildren". Sadly, that kiss was not a romantic consensual kiss, but rather a kiss that was forced telekinetically by Parmen for the perverted amusement of his compatriots. This forced kiss undermined the purity of that breakthrough kiss, which is not to discount that the Kirk and Uhura characters would not have felt affection for each other and their fellow shipmates, or that Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner might also have felt genuine affection for each other as well as professional regard and respect. Historical accounts reflect that Shatner and Nichols were both personally color blind, as certainly Gene Roddenberry was, as evidenced by his casting, and TOS episodes like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" illustrating the absurdity of the concept of racial superiority.
Much later, in DS9, we have the first Star Trek same gender kiss between Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn in the episode "Rejoined". That kiss was billed as a lesbian kiss, perhaps for its sensational value, but was it really? In that episode, the symbionts inhabiting the two current same gender Trill hosts were formerly hosted in male and female Trill while in a former relationship. Thus since it is actually the symbionts having the relationship, more so than the Trill hosts, in the "lesbian kiss" the symbionts were just continuing to express their former love and affection for each other through the bodies that happened to be available to them at the time.
Given these last two examples, of telekinetic coercion, and gender bending symbionts/Trill love, it seems that Star Trek has a history of availing itself of bizarre circumstances in trying to break TV taboos.
In the Stamets/Culber kiss, there is the first same-sex kiss that is neither forced, nor tied to unusual circumstances. It is therefore, the first "honest" same gender kiss between willing and romantically involved partners. Star Trek did not need an excuse this time. However, as a gay man myself, I have to say I was a bit disappointed by this kiss. It was over almost before it began, and was more celebratory in the moment than romantic. It was almost an apologetic kiss, as if were any more offered, there was a fear that many in the audience would be shocked or offended.
In routine TV drama, even as mundane as daily soap operas, we routinely view heterosexual couples engaged in extended romantic exploring kisses, even clearly French kisses. Will we ever be seeing Stamets and Culber engaging in kisses of that kind in their private moments together? I'm not sure the producers are bold enough for that display of affection in a gay couple, even though it is common for non-gay couples, and even though the Jadzia Dax / Lenara Kahn same sex kiss was quite lengthy and animated and passionate (with suitably exulted and romantic musical accompaniment). That is the kind of kiss I was hoping they would have been brave enough to portray, but I think they chickened out here. Perhaps that will happen later?
Also, in mundane heterosexual romance scenes, again even in the daily soaps on broadcast TV, it is common to see couples in amorous play, cuddling naked together, or in a spooning embrace, discretely covered by bedsheets, with perhaps only bare shoulders and arms exposed. Will we ever see Stamets and Culber so embracing and sharing their affection? Are the Discovery producers brave enough for that? Is the audience ready? And what of viewing children - who in spite of ratings, will be watching?
What are your thoughts on the kiss? How did it make you feel?
One last point on the sexual orientation of Stamets, and perhaps I am being oversensitive here or reading something in where nothing was intended... At the end of "Into the Forest I Go" Stamets emerges from the spore chamber in dire distress. Now we don't yet know exactly what went wrong with the displacement-activated spore hub drive this time - whether Stamets was overloaded and burned out, or if Captain Lorca initiated some dangerous action for reasons yet unknown, etc., but it seem Stamets got somehow burned. Is there some connection between his sexual orientation, and some sort of "punishment" for that orientation? Am I reading too much into that? They made such a big deal of his sexual orientation this episode, and his distress, I just have to wonder.
One more point on symbiont / Trill gender bending. In the TNG episode "The Host", Dr. Beverly Crusher falls in love with Ambassador Odan, who she only learns later is a Trill/symbiont. When The Trill is injured and the symbiont removed, and after a brief hosting by Commander Riker, the symbiont is later transferred to a new host. When that new Trill host appears in Beverly Crusher's office, while she still feels to love she felt for Odan, she is shocked that the new Trill host is a woman, Kareel. Kareel is a lovely woman, but this is too much for poor Dr. Beverly (as Odan called her), whereupon the following touching exchange takes place:
KAREEL: Doctor Beverly, could we talk for a moment?
CRUSHER: You should be sleeping. You need to rest.
KAREEL: I've never felt better, except once or twice. My poor Beverly. This has been so hard for you. I want to thank you for your caring, for your standing by me.
CRUSHER: I congratulate you. You averted a war that would have cost many lives.
KAREEL: Yes. It seems as though everything has turned out for the best. And yes, I am still Odan, and I still love you. I cannot imagine that ever changing.
CRUSHER: I am glad that you're all right.
KAREEL: Is there to be nothing more?
CRUSHER: Perhaps it is a human failing, but we are not accustomed to these kinds of changes. I can't keep up. How long will you have this host? What would the next one be? I can't live with that kind of uncertainty. Perhaps, someday, our ability to love won't be so limited.
KAREEL: I understand.
CRUSHER: Odan, I do love you. Please remember that.
(Kareel takes Beverly's hand and kisses her wrist)
KAREEL: I will never forget you.
I suspect that a good portion of the Discovery audience may feel as Dr, Crusher does, wrestling with the limitations she feels she must place on the expression of her love, facing the prospects of intimacy with one of her own gender. Whether a symbiont is vested with a particular gender, is never disclosed. However, I think the symbiont, as an animating force of the Trill body, is in part intended to be a metaphor for a soul.
As Beverly sensitively notes, "Perhaps, someday, our ability to love won't be so limited," and I think that was a most artful way for the writers to impart the hope that we may one day be able to move beyond the current limitations in our thinking about the nature of love and its expressions.
Star Trek is famous for special first kisses, going back to the first interracial kiss of Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura in the November 1968 TOS episode "Plato's Stepchildren". Sadly, that kiss was not a romantic consensual kiss, but rather a kiss that was forced telekinetically by Parmen for the perverted amusement of his compatriots. This forced kiss undermined the purity of that breakthrough kiss, which is not to discount that the Kirk and Uhura characters would not have felt affection for each other and their fellow shipmates, or that Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner might also have felt genuine affection for each other as well as professional regard and respect. Historical accounts reflect that Shatner and Nichols were both personally color blind, as certainly Gene Roddenberry was, as evidenced by his casting, and TOS episodes like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" illustrating the absurdity of the concept of racial superiority.
Much later, in DS9, we have the first Star Trek same gender kiss between Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn in the episode "Rejoined". That kiss was billed as a lesbian kiss, perhaps for its sensational value, but was it really? In that episode, the symbionts inhabiting the two current same gender Trill hosts were formerly hosted in male and female Trill while in a former relationship. Thus since it is actually the symbionts having the relationship, more so than the Trill hosts, in the "lesbian kiss" the symbionts were just continuing to express their former love and affection for each other through the bodies that happened to be available to them at the time.
Given these last two examples, of telekinetic coercion, and gender bending symbionts/Trill love, it seems that Star Trek has a history of availing itself of bizarre circumstances in trying to break TV taboos.
In the Stamets/Culber kiss, there is the first same-sex kiss that is neither forced, nor tied to unusual circumstances. It is therefore, the first "honest" same gender kiss between willing and romantically involved partners. Star Trek did not need an excuse this time. However, as a gay man myself, I have to say I was a bit disappointed by this kiss. It was over almost before it began, and was more celebratory in the moment than romantic. It was almost an apologetic kiss, as if were any more offered, there was a fear that many in the audience would be shocked or offended.
In routine TV drama, even as mundane as daily soap operas, we routinely view heterosexual couples engaged in extended romantic exploring kisses, even clearly French kisses. Will we ever be seeing Stamets and Culber engaging in kisses of that kind in their private moments together? I'm not sure the producers are bold enough for that display of affection in a gay couple, even though it is common for non-gay couples, and even though the Jadzia Dax / Lenara Kahn same sex kiss was quite lengthy and animated and passionate (with suitably exulted and romantic musical accompaniment). That is the kind of kiss I was hoping they would have been brave enough to portray, but I think they chickened out here. Perhaps that will happen later?
Also, in mundane heterosexual romance scenes, again even in the daily soaps on broadcast TV, it is common to see couples in amorous play, cuddling naked together, or in a spooning embrace, discretely covered by bedsheets, with perhaps only bare shoulders and arms exposed. Will we ever see Stamets and Culber so embracing and sharing their affection? Are the Discovery producers brave enough for that? Is the audience ready? And what of viewing children - who in spite of ratings, will be watching?
What are your thoughts on the kiss? How did it make you feel?
One last point on the sexual orientation of Stamets, and perhaps I am being oversensitive here or reading something in where nothing was intended... At the end of "Into the Forest I Go" Stamets emerges from the spore chamber in dire distress. Now we don't yet know exactly what went wrong with the displacement-activated spore hub drive this time - whether Stamets was overloaded and burned out, or if Captain Lorca initiated some dangerous action for reasons yet unknown, etc., but it seem Stamets got somehow burned. Is there some connection between his sexual orientation, and some sort of "punishment" for that orientation? Am I reading too much into that? They made such a big deal of his sexual orientation this episode, and his distress, I just have to wonder.
One more point on symbiont / Trill gender bending. In the TNG episode "The Host", Dr. Beverly Crusher falls in love with Ambassador Odan, who she only learns later is a Trill/symbiont. When The Trill is injured and the symbiont removed, and after a brief hosting by Commander Riker, the symbiont is later transferred to a new host. When that new Trill host appears in Beverly Crusher's office, while she still feels to love she felt for Odan, she is shocked that the new Trill host is a woman, Kareel. Kareel is a lovely woman, but this is too much for poor Dr. Beverly (as Odan called her), whereupon the following touching exchange takes place:
KAREEL: Doctor Beverly, could we talk for a moment?
CRUSHER: You should be sleeping. You need to rest.
KAREEL: I've never felt better, except once or twice. My poor Beverly. This has been so hard for you. I want to thank you for your caring, for your standing by me.
CRUSHER: I congratulate you. You averted a war that would have cost many lives.
KAREEL: Yes. It seems as though everything has turned out for the best. And yes, I am still Odan, and I still love you. I cannot imagine that ever changing.
CRUSHER: I am glad that you're all right.
KAREEL: Is there to be nothing more?
CRUSHER: Perhaps it is a human failing, but we are not accustomed to these kinds of changes. I can't keep up. How long will you have this host? What would the next one be? I can't live with that kind of uncertainty. Perhaps, someday, our ability to love won't be so limited.
KAREEL: I understand.
CRUSHER: Odan, I do love you. Please remember that.
(Kareel takes Beverly's hand and kisses her wrist)
KAREEL: I will never forget you.
I suspect that a good portion of the Discovery audience may feel as Dr, Crusher does, wrestling with the limitations she feels she must place on the expression of her love, facing the prospects of intimacy with one of her own gender. Whether a symbiont is vested with a particular gender, is never disclosed. However, I think the symbiont, as an animating force of the Trill body, is in part intended to be a metaphor for a soul.
As Beverly sensitively notes, "Perhaps, someday, our ability to love won't be so limited," and I think that was a most artful way for the writers to impart the hope that we may one day be able to move beyond the current limitations in our thinking about the nature of love and its expressions.
