In "the Host", it is VERY clear that Beverly is rejecting the new host explicitly due to her gender. She reacts with shock upon seeing her, despite being super jazzed about Odan's new body moments before. It's clear that, in the final scene, Beverly is just reaching for a more pleasant sounding excuse for rejecting her.
Because they're bi. Is it somehow super difficult for you to understand that different people may have different sexualities?
Nobody seems to have taken my hint. Let's make it official: The Beverly/Odan thing goes to TNG now. Continuing it here will result in reply bans for this thread.
We have only ever seen the Borg have sex once, in VOY Unity, and it was an orgy. Do Borg even ever have the sex with one person at a time? Seven of Nine might have been rumuging through her Fenris Rangers encampment for an 8th to cap their free sex party, and that's how she had sex a villainous stranger.
Chakotay and Riley did it while in a healing link with 5 or 6 other Borg. We saw an awkward expression on one of the Borg still connected to these lovers, as Chakotay took Riley to pound town, becuase Chuckles was taking the lot of them to pound town. Collateral bliss.
The 1990s did it plenty of times as big news already. Decades have passed; a relationship is a relationship. Sex is the most common thing and a sign of the least amount of creativity in a creative-driven genre such as sci-fi. And arguably the most common thing for any generic and cheap soap opera. Or maybe it is news. Two lesbians in the same room doesn't mean they become lovers or have an attraction just because they're both the same orientation, or one may have an attraction and - gasp - not act out on it out of respect for the other person. Just like gay guys and bis and straights and pans and the sheepherders and everyone else. I'd buy into the lesbian aspect because the attempt to ship her off with Chakotay felt forced on all levels. But I never cared for Trek regardless of who was shagging whom. Neither did some of the people doing the shagging. And some do. I'm happy for them since that particular *cough* website wasn't good enough. Or the other one. Many websites already exist. They also exist in audio, book, and certain cable channel forms. I don't know the crew of VOY so I can't say if they would support her or not. But recalling what Doctor Crusher said in INS, Many people, regardless of orientation, don't. People get hit on, or other people can be attracted and it's not mutual. Or other combinations. Life itself is a room full of herded cats - or to use the TLDR version, it is "IDIC".
Michael Chabon's latest interview with Variety goes into much more detail about sexuality. In “Stardust City Rag,” there’s an implication that Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and Bjayzl (Necar Zadegan) might have been lovers at one time. Given the history of the LGBTQ characters in your body of work, I wondered why there weren’t any more sort of explicitly queer characters this season? Well, the way that people’s identity is constructed with sexuality as a component of it, in my experience, it emerges in a much more organic [way], and not like wearing a t-shirt that says, you know, Queer Power — or the equivalent in the 24th century. We get to know these characters the way we get to know real people. It emerges in conversation when it would emerge in conversation. Like their parentage, for example. It’s really important to me who my parents were. I’m sure it was really important to you for shaping your identity. We don’t know anything about Jurati’s parents except that her father read paper books and she used to interrupt him. We don’t know anything about Raffi’s parents. We don’t know that much about Picard’s parents — even if you’ve watched “TNG.” In terms of the show, it just doesn’t come up. Well, on “Star Trek: Discovery,” it was a very big deal that Lt. Stamets, the character played by Anthony Rapp, is gay. So I think there’s a certain subset of “Trek” fandom that was excited about seeing that perpetuate on “Picard.” We’re doing it in a different way. We’re doing it in an organic way — what feels organic to me. It emerged in that scene between Bjayzl and Seven. I think it’s pretty explicit, but it’s explicit in a way that feels real. Bjayzl doesn’t say, “We were lovers.” She doesn’t say, “We were a couple,” or anything like that. She says, “We were incredibly close.” It felt, to me, natural. It felt like how somebody would talk about many years later, a relationship that was in the past. And it will continue to emerge. I think it’s a part of our understanding of Raffi’s character. In Raffi’s scene where she calls into Starfleet to try to get access for them to the Artifact, and calls that old friend of hers, I mean, to me, the implication is there too in their relationship. But she doesn’t ever say, “I’m going to call this woman that I used to go out with,” and she doesn’t say, “Hey, remember me. I used to be your girlfriend.” That the first season of Picard ends with, among other things, Spoiler a shot of Seven and Raffi holding hands and looking romantic over a game of kadis-kot (?), is indicative.
^^Put spoilers around that, please Spoiler: Season 2 Spoilers But oh yeah, Seven and Raffi are looking like they are going to be a thing in Season 2
Spoiler Dear Mr. Chabon, even I didn't catch that. And my second name is "subtext". I did catch, however, that Raffi was sort of fangirling around Seven in "Stardust..." - but I still didn't read more into it, I just jested about them being a thing. Which, nevertheless, also means... I called it first!
Yeah, same. With Seven/Bjayzl, everything about their interactions, from their dialogue and body language to the actors' line readings implied there was more to their past relationship than just friendship IMO. The other relationship Chabon mentioned, not so much. To me, that's definitely a case of being so subtle as to be almost pointless. There should have definitely been more implication there if that's what he wanted to get across. I also find this approach kind of odd coming from someone who populates his novels with many unambiguously gay/bi characters, in a manner that feels very organic but also very clearly defined.
If that was supposed to be obvious subtext, then Riker and Picard must have been a thing for 30 years+ Spoiler: Season 2 Spoiler Raffi and Seven came out of nowhere
Regarding the spoiler-tagged portion of your post... Spoiler: Spoilers: Picard Episode 10 I'm just copying what I said over in the Ep 10 discussion thread, but... Seven/Raffi wasn't really built up or alluded to in previous episodes, but then, Rios/Jurati hooked up on pretty tenuous grounds as well. In fact, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say that the reasons two damaged people like Rios and Jurati gravitated to each other (that is, feelings of emotional vulnerability and wanting a physical connection to distract from their respective realities) are the same reasons Seven and Raffi might have drifted together, especially given everything they had just been through, not to mention all their hardships over the years. They definitely share common ground, not least of all the loss of a son. I think what we're seeing at the end of this episode is the beginnings of a relationship borne out of shared circumstances and experiences, and that kind of relationship can develop pretty quickly. The fact that we haven't seen a lot of Seven/Raffi interaction doesn't make much of a difference to me because their coming together still makes sense on an emotional level. So in that sense, I don't think it's coming out of nowhere.
Oh, but I forgot to mention the very best thing about Spoiler "Saffi" : The SJW-forced-diversity crowd will have a coronary! Also, maybe a couple of fanfic will provide those 5 to 10 missing scenes for buildup...
"SJW"? Do they not literally realize that Starfleet is supposed to be social justice warriors? What do they think about Star Trek? Only a couple?
Or Time After Time, or Logan's Run, or, for Pete's sake, "City on the Edge of Forever." Romance has been part of STAR TREK since Pike and Vina because it's part of the human condition. Granted, some Trek romances have been handled better than others, but as long as STAR TREK is about people and not just hardware and space-time anomalies, you're going to have people falling for each other and sometimes getting their hearts broken.