Do you think LGBT characters will feature more prominently?

[Guy Gardener]

The Fan series Odyssey did that. Although this was a sequel fan series to Hidden Frontier which had been a lot about these two boys courting when they were junior officers reporting to Captain Elizabeth Shelby.

Of course, after the Odyssey became lost in the Andromeda galaxy, there was that guy trying to get back to his husbands sweet kisses, but we were still keeping track of the other husband in the MIlky Way who was a wreck and could not make up his mind about whether his boo was dead or he needed to yell at Star fleet some more to mount a new/better rescue mission to another galaxy faster/at all.

 

[dregj]

dam it
isn't any one ever going to kiss the own gender on star trek

 

[cultcross]

Someone already has - DS9, Rejoined. It wasn't a great LGBT episode because it made sure we had a twenty minute explanation of why they were, in fact, deep down, the genders that the gods intended. But it was unavoidably two women kissing, and the show got the requisite complaints.

 

[dregj]

forgot about that
it got criticism from queer star trek fans because the former relationship was a hetero one
and was merely being "re enacted" with two non-threatening girls.
couldn't they just have had dax fall in love with a women ?
why did they need the
sci fi hetero get out of jail free card?

 

[Guy Gardener]

That was a trick.

Nice optics.

Complicated context.

So many lesbians in the mirror Universe... No obviously gay men however come to mind.

 

[DataLore16]

I am hopeful that this will be the next threshold that Trek crosses and that it is written well and does not come off forced or hokey but is natural the way real life is though Trek has always struggled some with portraying true to life hetero marriages or relationships. DS9 probably did the best job with that but still had its share of issues.

 

[Longinus]

I don't understand the criticism towards 'Rejoined.' It is pretty obvious that Jadzia is bi. Sure, it would have been nice had it been brought up in later episodes as well, but that's not an issue with this specific episode.

 

[Guy Gardener]

She's not bi. Bi is liking both genders. Jadzia is gender blind. Gender is not an issue when she falls for a person, and from looking at her dating history, neither is species. It would never enter her mind that there would be a reason to exclude a lover on grounds of gender.

 

[hux]

That might be true for Dax but not necessarily for Jadzia. Didn't most of the Dax hosts have relationships with people of the opposite gender?

 

[Guy Gardener]

it's still the 1990s. They had to be underhanded to press an agenda of enlightenment.

In season 2, Jadzia was prepared to set Quark up with a dude.

Dude turned out to be a lady, but she didn't know that in the beginning

 

[borgboy]

I thought it was sweet how enthusiastically supportive Kira was when Jadzia was interested in Kahn - her former wife.

 

[T'Girl]

I thought it was sweet how enthusiastically supportive Kira was when Jadzia was interested in Kahn - her former wife.

Yeah, but Jadzia was the former husband from that marriage.

Cop out.

†

 

[Doom Shepherd]

Remember, for a gesture to be worth anything, it has to be...

PURE!!!

 

[Longinus]

Yeah, but Jadzia was the former husband from that marriage.

What does that matter? She's still bi.

 

[cultcross]

It mattered because instead of having an actual gay couple, they had a way out - they were straight really, they just got confused because of the symbiont thing. That was a shame, especially as a simple change in dialogue (ie making the original relationship same sex as well) would have kept the sci fi allegory of stigma while not seeming a cop out on the actual issue.

 

[Longinus]

@cultcross, to me that seems like a really strange way of looking at it. There was not even a slightest hing that the same-sex thing was a problem to either of them, which makes them bi by any reasonable standard. Beverly is really straight, that's why Odan's female host was an issue to her.

 

[cultcross]

@Longinus It's not that anyone on the show demonstrated an issue with the same sex couple, it was that they went way out of their way in the script to explain that the origin of those feelings was a straight marriage between previous hosts. It plays into the idea that homosexual attraction is unnatural or has causes which divert one away from the 'correct' orientation. I'm 100% sure the writers didn't intend that, don't get me wrong, but it's just a shame that Star Trek's long awaited gay couple were actually a straight couple in a former life and indeed in all their memories up to this point. It just kicked the can down the road when it came to portraying an unambiguous LGBT relationship on Star Trek.

 

[Longinus]

I guess I can see that angle, though it feels kinda strained reading of the situation to me. To me the message seemed to be that love does not care about gender. That's why they made them different genders in the past and the same in the present. To show that it doesn't matter, only love does. Oh well.

In any case, as I said before, it would have been nice if Jadzia being bi would have been mentioned in some other episode as well. We certainly heard about some of her dates, it would have been easy to make at least one of them a woman.

 

[borgboy]

It is frustrating that they couldn't even have one of Dax's past hosts be gay, but every one of them was established to be straight at some point.

 

[Guy Gardener]

@Longinus It's not that anyone on the show demonstrated an issue with the same sex couple, it was that they went way out of their way in the script to explain that the origin of those feelings was a straight marriage between previous hosts. It plays into the idea that homosexual attraction is unnatural or has causes which divert one away from the 'correct' orientation. I'm 100% sure the writers didn't intend that, don't get me wrong, but it's just a shame that Star Trek's long awaited gay couple were actually a straight couple in a former life and indeed in all their memories up to this point. It just kicked the can down the road when it came to portraying an unambiguous LGBT relationship on Star Trek.

It's a step ahead TNG The Host, where Beverly dumps her Boyfriend after she misplaces not one but TWO or her penises.