Spoilers Dr. Hugh Culber Despite Yourself Spoilers!

Just for counter to your example, they managed to kill other black characters on TOS and the series survived...

They killed A gay character, not THE gay character.

 

Indeed. This is a bit like if they had killed Uhura in the middle of the first season.

 

Nope, it would be like if they killed a lesser black character that Uhura was dating...

 

Yes! In an early thread I stated that if we had a poll wanting to know which character we would rather have as a neighbor, I would vote Dr. Culber because he is the friendliest and seems the fairest and most ethical to me. The only caveat I made was if it was a high crime neighborhood I'd want Lorca, because Mr. Pistol under the Pillow would scare off any bad guys.

But they clearly wrote him in a way designed to make us like and care about him and his welfare. In an ensemble of many gruff and dark personalities, he was consistently friendly and professional.

 

There are very few series built around tough and gruff characters where being the moral voice of reason leads to a long survival time.

 

I get what you're saying, and if this were 10 years ago I'd agree with you. However, just because Star Trek is late to this party doesn't mean they need to write gay characters any differently than heterosexual characters, since Star Trek TV hasn't had an openly gay regular character in a relationship before now. Don't handcuff the writers of Discovery because past Star Treks writers didn't broach the subject with their regular characters.

I think gay relationships (just like interracial relationships) are too common on TV and in films today for those characters and their storylines to be treated any differently than characters in a heterosexual realtionship.

TV stopped making interarracial couples a "special thing to have special storylines" a little while ago, and now interracial couples are so common that their storylines no longer NEED to be about the fact that they are interracial. If gay couples and gay characters are also no longer given special treatment by writers, they too will be no longer considered by viewers as anything other than just like any other character/relationship -- which should be the goal.

 

No, because here the existence of the actual couple is the important thing.

 

Is it? whole conversation was about how it was important that we had positive and important gay characters. Now the characters don't matter, and the important thing is whether they are getting laid? Why is their relationship status more important than whether the characters exist at all?

 

Probably my favorite Culber scene in the whole series was when he lets Lorca have it with both barrels. Although I was almost afraid Lorca would kill him after that...

 

Indeed. But luckily it didn't.

 

One of the two main show-runners who makes those decisions, Aaron Harberts, is openly gay.

The Visitor is seen by many as one of the best DS9 episodes ever, perhaps even one of the best for the whole Star Trek franchise. And it's about Jake Sisko dealing with the loss of his father who's trapped in another dimension for decades. It's about the bonds of love which transcend time and space. It's also about how grief changes you as a person. I think that's the kind of story they may be aiming for with Stamets and Culber. I could be completely wrong, of course. But I find that more compelling than a simple cheat where he's magically resurrected/revived due to spores or a random nurse finding him in the nick of time.

I think having Culber and Stamets in a similar scenario to The Visitor would be awesome and heartbreaking if executed well. Since the writers ran the storyline (whatever it is) past GLAAD first and got their blessing, I am content to trust them & wait and see how the story plays out. It may still turn out to be badly executed and a bad decision over all, but we haven't even yet seen how what happened to Culber will affect the rest of the crew - especially Stamets. It's early days. All we know is that he's not 100% dead, he will be back in some form, and that it seems that the writers want to continue the Stamets/Culber love story in some way, but with a meta-physical or sci fi twist.

Besides, there are countless Trek stories of people being in another dimension or out of phase or temporal synch etc. trying to communicate with regular characters as a plot point. It's never treated like actual ghosts or spirits of the dead. Even the awful Sub Rosa story with Crusher didn't go that far. What makes you think it will be different in this instance? Or, even more importantly, why can't they explore what death is, what it means to us as individuals and a species, is that a verboten topic? Heck they already went deep into the whole God is at the center of the universe thing as a major movie plot-line.

ETA: direct quote from

http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/star-trek-discover-despite-yourself-1202657617/

“So everybody hold on,” Harberts said. “Some really phenomenal stuff is coming, and if you think that the out gay showrunner and his more-than-supportive writing partner and friend of more than 20 years are just going to kill a gay character to be done with a gay character, you’re wrong. And if anybody thinks that you would hire two of the best gay out actors working today in Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz and put them on ‘Star Trek’ just to sort of throw them away, you would also be very, very wrong.”

 

That, plus it seems that

Spoiler

Culber will not stay dead

So it's not like

Spoiler

the gay relationship will be gone from the show

 

Even though Wilson Cruz himself says it isn't?