Gay character at last?

[USS Triumphant]

Believe me. This is not a 'quick' dismissal. We have only had this exact same conversation about 5,058,309 times now.

The problem, at least for me, is that this exact same subject has been talked in about a million different threads, with the exact same million responses for countless years on this and other forums.

Sorry, I didn't realize that was the problem. This is actually the first thread I've participated in on this subject in quite a while. Given Jeyl's Lieutenant status, I would guess the same is even more likely to be true there.

Still, seems like a valid topic to me. As valid as 5,058,309 variations on drawings of Connies.

 

[miraclefan]

Will there FINALLY be a gay character in TREK at last? I don't care, if there IS fine. If there ISN'T fine. I just want a GREAT trek movie. Is that so hard to ask for?

 

[Borgminister]

like to hear Kirk explain to McCoy that he knows the (male) captain of another ship pretty well because they used to date - without any strange looks from McCoy about "teh gay". Or something similar.

RIP Trek.

 

[USS Triumphant]

RIP Trek.

Why? I think it has been well established that Kirk will jump anything in a skirt. And what did we have in Season One of TNG? Guys in skirts!

 

[Borgminister]

RIP Trek.

Why? I think it has been well established that Kirk will jump anything in a skirt. And what did we have in Season One of TNG? Guys in skirts!

No, no. What I mean is, I don't believe the general public will flock to a new Star Trek movie with an openly gay Captain Kirk.

At any rate, again, there are no gay characters in this new movie, so the question is moot, at least here.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I dunno - who is "canonically" gay in Batman? Superman? James Bond?

The reason the examples are relevant is that all of those are also very middle-of-the-road, mainstream entertainment franchises whose owners are disinclined to rock the boat. What trekkies sometimes ignore is that Paramount views Star Trek in the exact same way.

As someone pointed out uptopic, there are multiple examples of gay characters in licensed Trek fiction and of course it's long been an established area of interest in fan fiction. Those manifestations of Trek that are in the hands of enthusiasts who believe in Trek's social importance - more or less - feature this kind of thing. It's probably pretty much a forelorn hope, as long as Trek has the potential to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars for Paramount, to see any significant treatment of it in a movie or tv series at this point.

Even Roddenberry talked a good game in this regard and then failed to perform - fans have a variety of excuses for that ("he was gonna, but he died first") but it's a fact. He had the opportunity; he passed to avoid risking alienating any significant part of TNG's
"family viewer" base.

 

[miraclefan]

I dunno - who is "canonically" gay in Batman? Superman? James Bond?

The reason the examples are relevant is that all of those are also very middle-of-the-road, mainstream entertainment franchises whose owners are disinclined to rock the boat. What trekkies sometimes ignore is that Paramount views Star Trek in the exact same way.

As someone pointed out uptopic, there are multiple examples of gay characters in licensed Trek fiction and of course it's long been an established area of interest in fan fiction. Those manifestations of Trek that are in the hands of enthusiasts who believe in Trek's social importance - more or less - feature this kind of thing. It's probably pretty much a forelorn hope, as long as Trek has the potential to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars for Paramount, to see any significant treatment of it in a movie or tv series at this point.

Even Roddenberry talked a good game in this regard and then failed to perform - fans have a variety of excuses for that ("he was gonna, but he died first") but it's a fact. He had the opportunity; he passed to avoid risking alienating any significant part of TNG's
"family viewer" base.

^ That's very true. No Family viewers= no ratigns, no ratigns= dead trek, simple as that.

 

[M'Sharak]

Well, I for one am a little disappointed in the quick dismissal of this subject. Yes, it's a very tough issue to tolerate and handle with care in forums like this, but this is Star Trek. Difference should be welcomed, not "I'm tempted to close this damn thing."

Sure you can say that books have gay characters in them, but that's not really an honest substitute thanks to this whole canon nonsense. Anything that's not on film, whether it be games with the official cast, books, audio novels with the actual cast or non-paramount associated fan-made films with veteran Star Trek writers attached are thrown away as non-canon and forgotten. That line of thinking sounds like gays shouldn't be in anything that matters in Star Trek which doesn't really fit into what Star Trek is trying to reflect.

Believe me. This is not a 'quick' dismissal. We have only had this exact same conversation about 5,058,309 times now.

The problem, at least for me, is that this exact same subject has been talked in about a million different threads, with the exact same million responses for countless years on this and other forums.

Sorry, I didn't realize that was the problem. This is actually the first thread I've participated in on this subject in quite a while. Given Jeyl's Lieutenant status, I would guess the same is even more likely to be true there.

Still, seems like a valid topic to me. As valid as 5,058,309 variations on drawings of Connies.

It is a valid topic and, while the idea of gay characters in Star Trek seems not to be a problem for a lot of people, discussions about whether there should be or whether there need to be gay characters in film or television Trek have a long history of not ending very well, even at TrekBBS. We tried one in this forum a few months ago and it got kind of ugly and had to be closed.

Since the OP's question of whether there will be a gay character in this movie has been answered with this post:

Not this go-round, it would seem:

http://trekmovie.com/2008/07/15/orci-kurtzman-no-gay-characters-in-star-trek/

I'm going to call it complete and close this.

I'd like to think that there could be a civil and productive discussion (in an appropriate forum) of the inclusion of gay characters in any future Trek outings which might transpire, but I'm not overly optimistic at this time; it remains too sensitive a subject for some.