Kind of surprised we've never had a throuple in modern Trek, but I guess post-Discovery in the Trump mandate era, chances are close to zero. I think they did it in a novel once, but my memory is hazy.
Ok, just to be clear, was it implied that literal orgies were happening in "Naked Now" or am I being malicious?!?
- Thread starter Skipper
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DS9 retconned in a taboo against genetic engineering (contradicting TNG: "Unnatural Selection," where it was legal if not without controversy). And while it's not exactly a taboo, there was a lot of prejudice against AIs like Data and the EMH.
A couple of the post-Nemesis novels contradicted each other about who Geordi La Forge was romantically involved with (one used Leah Brahms, the other an original novel character), so one or two of the later novels handwaved it by making them a throuple.
Of course, Denobulans have multiple marriages by default.
About Captain's Holiday
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At first, the TNG writers were very excited by this episode, though the installment still had to be approved by Gene Roddenberry. "Rick [Berman] says, 'You've got to go in to see Gene'," Ira Steven Behr continued. "So I go in and he's very nice." Despite liking the inclusion of the pleasure planet, something Roddenberry was keen to see in the episode, however, was copious amounts of erotic activity taking place in the background of the scenes set on Risa, particularly between same-sex partners. Remembered Behr, "He says, 'I like the idea of the pleasure planet and I want it to be a place where you see women fondling and kissing other women, and men hugging and holding hands and kissing, and we can imply that they're having sex in the background.' Huh, really?!" Behr was briefly flummoxed on how to politely tell Roddenberry that such scenes would never make it past network censors. "I'm going, 'Oh, man, I'm in the freakin' Twilight Zone.' I go back to Rick. He goes, 'Pft, pay no attention to that, just get the captain laid.'" (William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge)
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I have no idea what they mean by "network censors," considering TNG was syndicated. I assume it was simply shorthand for "whoever gets to decide whether this thing can air."
That can't be an accurate account of the event, since TNG was a syndicated show, not a network show. Of course, FCC rules did apply to commercial syndicated shows, but in my experience, they were able to push sexuality further than network shows could. If DS9 was able to do "Rejoined," I find it hard to believe that TNG couldn't have gotten away with a few brief shots of same-sex makeouts in the background without running afoul of the FCC. And Roddenberry did say the sex would only be implicit. It sounds to me like Behr overreacted. At least, they could've briefly shown some same-sex background extras holding hands and flirting and achieved the intent Roddenberry wanted. But of course Berman would never have allowed that. (He had a much looser hand over DS9, because he was focused on TNG and then VGR.)
Considering it's been over 30 years, I think he simply means, "Someone who ultimately decides whether this thing can be filmed or not." It could have been Berman, it could have been some producer.
For example regarding the episode The Offspring I found this on Memory Alpha
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In one of the scenes with Guinan tutoring Lal about Human sexuality, a script line was changed in order to turn a strictly heterosexual explanation into a gender-neutral version. Research assistant Richard Arnold recalled, "According to the script, Guinan was supposed to start telling Lal, 'When a man and a woman are in love…' and in the background, there would be men and women sitting at tables, holding hands. But Whoopi refused to say that. She said, 'This show is beyond that. It should be 'When two people are in love.'" It was also decided on set that the background of the scene show a same-sex couple holding hands, but "someone ran to a phone and made a call to the production office and that was nixed," continued Arnold. "[Producer] David Livingston came down and made sure that didn't happen."
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That's my point, that claiming it was network censors must have been incorrect. If they meant something else, they should've said something else. A good copyeditor would've caught that error.
And really, they were never called Censors. It was Standards and Practices, right? Sloppy.
Broadcast Standards and Practices, or BSnP
S&P is what they're called, censorship is part of their job. This is not an error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Standards_and_Practices
Also, S&P is a name used for network departments, which, again, would not be applicable to a syndicated show. The FCC would have been responsible for prohibiting the broadcast of obscene material, or of "indecent" or "profane" material except during late-night hours, but otherwise it would have been up to individual stations to determine their own standards of appropriateness.
Case in point: Just two weeks after "Captain's Holiday" debuted, TNG's syndication-package sister show War of the Worlds: The Series featured an episode where the evil aliens inserted harmful subliminal messages in a perfume commercial that was startlingly racy for 1990 television, showing a nude man and woman in bed together and touching each other suggestively, with their naughty bits concealed solely by their poses. My local station in Cincinnati refused to air the episode, but the station in neighboring Dayton did show it, so I was able to watch it through 50 miles' worth of broadcast static.
So I have a hard time believing that censorship fears were Berman & Behr's reason for not showing background extras holding hands and kissing. At worst, I would've had to watch the episode from Dayton.
Just some thoughts, but just because it's the future, doesn't mean it's imbued with what you think will be social norms hundreds of years from now, and just because you don't see it doesn't mean people having orgies, blow jobs in the off-screen bathroom, having casual sex with co-workers, doing other assorted naughty stuff. As Freud said: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
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Oh, it was an interview in a documentary. And the interviewer was Shatner.
The reference to "network censors" was not part of Behr's directly quoted words, but comes from the Memory Alpha page's summary.
Thus, it should not be assumed to be what Behr or Shatner actually said. It's just something some random Memory Alpha contributor put in. (I was erroneously assuming it came from a book, which was why I said a copyeditor should've caught it.) I'd edit out the error myself, but since I don't know Behr's verbatim words, I couldn't trust that my correction would be any more accurate.
One of the most basic rules of defensive newsreading is always to be aware of the difference between an interviewee's directly quoted words and the interviewer's (or a third party's) summary or interpretation of them. The latter is often inaccurate or biased.
Oh damn, I forgot all about them! And the notes for Romulan marriages made for Picard season one, which never made it to the show (but I kinda wish they went with, and made Picard part of a thing with Laris and Zhaban instead of killing the latter off)
"Eh. Too tame"
I don't recall it being an implication. It seemed pretty obvious to me.
he'd call his lawyers to get a cut.
Is that what we're calling it these days?
Maybe this is just semantic ,but if something isn't explicitly inferable, isn't it implicit by definition? The word "orgy" is never used (and obviously one isn't shown).