Pre-2009 Star Trek and LGBTQI+ representation: simple disinterest or active hostility?

[Ricky Spanish]

There is some cross party support for banning TikTok for differing reasons. Concerns about national security and so forth. I think there might be some room for argument there. I don't use TikTok myself though I'm aware of some of the issues. A debate about that might not be necessarily a bad thing. TikTok is a foreign private company with ties to a rival national government.

It would just be flooded with Chinese agents and bots. It is a ban that would accomplish nothing.

I would just like to add that hate speech is banned in many European countries (including mine) and strangely we have not fallen into some infernal dystopia. Indeed, on average most European countries are freer than the United States in almost all indicators.

We have all kinds of hate crimes on the books, including those that cover speech.

How federal law draws a line between free speech and hate crimes | PBS NewsHour

But while the Constitution gives latitude to hate speech and offensive rhetoric, court decisions in the last century have carved out notable — though narrow — exceptions to free speech guarantees and authorized prosecution for language deemed to fall out of bounds.

Comments intended as specific and immediate threats brush up against those protections, regardless of a person’s race or religion. So do personal, face-to-face comments meant to incite imminent lawlessness, such as a riot.

Hate speech laws don't stop elements that want to cause chaos. Or else, Europe wouldn't be seeing a resurgence in Far Right politics.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

It was about his episode "Blood And Fire".


TrekMovie: Let’s talk about “Blood and Fire” – the AIDS allegory that you wrote and the obstacles you ran into trying to get it produced.

David Gerrold: I don’t blame Gene as much as I blame Rick Berman for that clusterfuck. Others have confirmed it. They have said that in their experience Rick Berman was a raging homophobe, which makes the whole thing even more bizarre. Because, before Rick Berman came on the show, he had written a three-page memo on ‘here are some of the stories we could tell, some of the issues we could address’. And number three on his three-page memo was AIDS and how we should do something about AIDS. So now Gene and I appeared at a Star Trek convention in November of 1986 and somebody asked “will there be gay people aboard the Enterprise?” And Gene – to give him credit for knowing the right thing to say at the right time – said “yes, it is time, we should show gay people on board the Enterprise.” This got a lot of applause. So then he repeated it in a staff meeting and balled out one of the producers and said “no, it’s time” So I figured if Gene said it in a staff meeting, then he truly means it. So it was time for me to get a script assignment and I started to do “Blood and Fire,” because I wanted to do something so far removed from funny. I wanted to show I could do something horrifying. Here is something about this disease that is so awful that we are not allowed to rescue anyone from that other ship but we don’t find out until after our away team has already beamed over so now we have to try. So the story wasn’t about AIDS as much as it was about the fear of AIDS. People had stopped donating blood because they were so afraid of AIDS.

TrekMovie: There was tremendous amount of misinformation out there at the beginning.

David Gerrold:So I wanted to do a story that involved blood donorship and the whole story was structured that we would need blood donors from the Enterprise to show that the crewmembers were not afraid of donating blood. I even wanted us to put a card at the end of the episode saying you can donate blood, contact your local Red Cross. I figured if blood donorship went up after the episode it would get news. It would not only demonstrate how big the audience was and be good PR for the show, but also raise blood donorship. So it was a win-win. So that the script, somewhere in there I was “you know what, these two characters, they could be boyfriends.” There were two lines of dialog. “How long have you two been together?” and “Since the Academy.” That was it. I go off to a Star Trek cruise and come back to find there has been a clusterfuck. Rick Berman writes that we can’t do this episode and how we are on at 4PM in some markets and mommies are going to write letters. We get half the staff saying we shouldn’t do it and the other half – those who could recognize a good story – saying “this is a hell of a script, we got to do this and demonstrate we are the Star Trek that everybody’s been waiting for.”

So Gene’s lawyer sits on Gene’s face for a while – he was another homophobe – and said “you have to take the gay characters out.” And so I give half the lines to Tasha Yar, because if we still get the episode on the air, the point will still be made. And we go through rewrite after rewrite after rewrite and the script doesn’t get any better and I see what is going on and I don’t want to be trapped in an office where we have hypocrites running the place. I can’t deal with this, my health was already starting to suffer. So I started taking vitamins and nothing is getting better and I said “I can’t deal with this hypocrisy” and then I hear a rumor that they are planning to fire me. So I am thinking “they really don’t want to go there.” And then I get offered a really nice deal over at Columbia. So I tell Gene I want take the deal at Columbia and to please not renew my contract. He and I part pretending to be amicable and a week later my agent calls me and says “why are people saying you got fired from Star Trek?”. I bring in a stack of everything I had. We go over to the Guild and the Guild looks at it and files a grievance that says “you have this kid doing producer level work and you were not paying him producer level wages and the Guild.” The Guild examines the “created by” and “developed by” credentials to see if I am entitled to those because of the amount of work I did and that Gene didn’t. So I ended up making six figures off of that little thing, because Gene and the lawyer set out to screw me. Dorothy made at least as much because she got jumped on her credits too. And the lawyer was also telling people “Dave is mentally ill too.” They paid for that. He repeated that to a reporter for the LA Times and my lawyer called him and said “what kind of car do you drive?” and he said “what do you mean?” and he said “because David is going to own it when we get finished suing you.” That ended that particular bit of slander, but I know for a fact that Gene set out to destroy my career for television because while there is no official black list, if you say “so and so is difficult to work with” you won’t get work.

If this were a court of law, Gerrold would be seen as a hostile witness.

 

[The Left Hand of Evil]

I don't think you'd see CNN be banned. There is some cross party support for banning TikTok for differing reasons. Concerns about national security and so forth. I think there might be some room for argument there. I don't use TikTok myself though I'm aware of some of the issues. A debate about that might not be necessarily a bad thing. TikTok is a foreign private company with ties to a rival national government.

But CNN is a US cable network. That would fly in the face of the First Amendment without any doubt. I know liberals get hung up about Fox News and conservatives about CNN and MSNBC and so forth. But I would not support any kind of ban or legislation against any US media company. No politician would be able to ban a network. It wouldn't likely get the needed support in Congress and even if it somehow did it would be shot down in court rather quickly for an obvious first amendment violation. I consider them all opinion networks (I stopped going to any of them for actual 'real' news years ago). And they all have a right to exist and state their opinions under the First Amendment. I know they like to pretend they are news networks but I don't think anyone really believes that anymore.

None of them should be banned but frankly all press passes should be revoked when comes to Press Briefings at the White House. Might as well have the National Enquirer and Maxim magazine reporters asking the President or Press Secretary questions for how legit any of those places are when it comes to being real places to get news.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

None of them should be banned but frankly all press passes should be revoked when comes to Press Briefings at the White House. Might as well have the National Enquirer and Maxim magazine reporters asking the President or Press Secretary questions for how legit any of those places are when it comes to being real places to get news.

See, you say this, but I don't think you realize what kind of true nightmare it would be, and a disservice to the American public.

 

[The Left Hand of Evil]

See, you say this, but I don't think you realize what kind of true nightmare it would be, and a disservice to the American public.

It would for certain, anger people. Would create the debate as to what then is the "Real Places" for news. Also maybe pointless in the end since those places are like radio and on the way out since most people get their news from the internet anyways. The only upside is maybe make other places stop giving into sensationalism if they want to be respected. Plus by going after both CNN and FOxNews you could at least make it not seem like your targeting just one side.

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

Or maybe Misc?
Cudos to everyone here though, for keeping it civil...

Definitely Miscellaneous.

I tend to somewhat dismissive of the term "homophobe". I've been called a homophobe for the most passive possible things. Essentially anything other than "I 100% agree with everything anyone in the LGBT community says at all times with absolutely no dissenting comment whatsoever" can get "homophobe" launched at you. I once got called "homophobic" elsewhere because I said I didn't like the Klingons in DSC... I guess because there's gay people on the show? I don't even know.

This. I know homophobia from personal experience. I know how it is born, I know how it feels, the thoughts it manifests, the stories and jokes it inspires, what feeds it, and what kills it. And a lot of behaviors that get branded as homophobia, or hate speech, or intolerance... aren't.

Same thing with racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, Islamophobia, and any other hating or exclusionary behavior. The notion that "you hate me because I'm different" is quite real, but the panic button gets pressed way too often. As a related example, I got accused of being a woman hater because I said that in some ways, Chakotay was a better captain than Janeway was.

As for if Berman was one? There's no way to determine that from the evidence. Yes, ENT and VOY remained all-straight. And yes, when asked, he waffled about it, which does raise questions. But that's all it does: questions are not proof. If he had negative feelings about gays, or any other LGBTQ sub-group, he obviously kept it to himself.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

I simply don't know the man. I don't know his values. So I'm not going to ostracize him for what he may or may not have done.

He really wasn't a creative man. He was brought on to keep Roddenberry on time and on budget.

 

[Michael]

DS9 doing a tribute to TOS by using Gertold's episode? Of course, he would be fine with doing a cameo. I doubt many people would have said no to doing a cameo on a show doing such a tribute to their own work.

I don't think Berman was really involved with that one other than overseeing the money side. He was mostly hands off with DS9, which is part of the reason why Behr won as many fights as he did for the show.

I‘m not saying that Gerrold shouldn‘t have done the cameo. I thought what we were trying to do here is look at all the available information objectively, each bit of it adding a tiny piece to complete a full picture. That’s why I mentioned it.

From the interview Gerrold made it sound like at the end of his time on The Next Generation it became a question of principles (“I don’t want to be trapped in an office where we have hypocrites running the place”). So it’s at least a little interesting that ten years later he again worked with much of the same group of people, even if only briefly. Doesn’t mean that he still thought that some of them were problematic, hypocritical or homophobic.

I've been called a homophobe for the most passive possible things.

In what kind of world is something only then legitimately homophobic when it’s expressed “actively” or deliberately? Surely something can be a thing without someone intending it to be that thing. I’d argue that’s how most stuff that’s sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist etc. is expressed.

He really wasn't a creative man.

Now that’s what I would consider an unreasonable statement. The guy wrote or co-wrote 53 hours or television on four shows he produced, three of which he co-created. There’s literally hundreds of behind-the-scenes recounts of how he thought up or influenced countless creative aspects of all these shows. Yet you want to say he wasn’t a creative man? You don’t have to like the guy, and I’m certainly not his biggest fan, but this seems unnecessarily harsh and just doesn’t make sense from a logical perspective.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

It should be noted that Gerrold would later return to Berman-Trek in 1996 to do a cameo as a background extra in “Trials and Tribble-ations”. So the experience he had with it at the beginning of The Next Generation certainly didn’t keep him from wanting to do that. It’s debatable how much Berman was really involved with that, of course.

Well, to hear David Gerrold tell it, Gerrold basically backed Berman into that. Here's what Gerrold told StarTrek.com in 2011:

I kept calling them and saying, “Hey, I hear you’re doing a Tribble thing.” Rick Berman kept saying, “No. No, we’re not. If we do, we’ll call you.” All right. No big deal. One day I called again and he said, “No, David, if we do something, we’ll let you know.” I said, “Oh, okay. What should I say to the New York Times reporter who's going to call me back in a half hour? He's preparing a big story about the 30th anniversary of Trek and the DS9 Tribble episode.” There’s this long, uncomfortable pause and finally he says, “OK, what do you want?” I said, “Well, it might be very good press to acknowledge the guy who actually created the tribbles. I think it’d be fun to be an extra.” So I came in and I was an extra for a day or so, and it was great fun.

I look it at this as Gerrold basically protecting his interests, as the DS9 team was preparing an entire episode built around the Tribbles episode Gerrold had written 30 years before, and using a large amount of footage from it. It's not a bad idea to remind the folks at Paramount that you're still out there and you deserve to get paid for your work. It sounds like if Gerrold hadn't made those calls, Rick Berman would've been perfectly happy to leave David Gerrold out of the loop entirely. But Berman also had the sense to realize that it was good publicity to keep the original writer happy and have him on set to say nice things about the tribute episode to all the reporters covering it.

It's also worth noting that Gerrold originally wrote the part of Ensign Freeman for himself to cameo in the original Tribbles episode. Gerrold was a theatre arts major, and he gave the character one line in the lineup after the barfight ("I don't know, sir"). While Gene Coon was initially okay with this, he eventually decided that young Gerrold was too skinny to be an Enterprise crewman, and put series stuntman Paul Baxley in the part instead. (David Gerrold's birth name is Jerrold David Friedman.) So Gerrold ended up getting his cameo as an Enterprise crewman part 29 years later, playing with one of the Tribbles from the original episode! (Not counting his appearance in TMP, of course.)

 

[Michael]

Well, to hear David Gerrold tell it, Gerrold basically backed Berman into that. Here's what Gerrold told StarTrek.com in 2011:

I look it at this as Gerrold basically protecting his interests, as the DS9 team was preparing an entire episode built around the Tribbles episode Gerrold had written 30 years before, and using a large amount of footage from it. It's not a bad idea to remind the folks at Paramount that you're still out there and you deserve to get paid for your work. It sounds like if Gerrold hadn't made those calls, Rick Berman would've been perfectly happy to leave David Gerrold out of the loop entirely. But Berman also had the sense to realize that it was good publicity to keep the original writer happy and have him on set to say nice things about the tribute episode to all the reporters covering it.

It's also worth noting that Gerrold originally wrote the part of Ensign Freeman for himself to cameo in the original Tribbles episode. Gerrold was a theatre arts major, and he gave the character one line in the lineup after the barfight ("I don't know, sir"). While Gene Coon was initially okay with this, he eventually decided that young Gerrold was too skinny to be an Enterprise crewman, and put series stuntman Paul Baxley in the part instead. (David Gerrold's birth name is Jerrold David Friedman.) So Gerrold ended up getting his cameo as an Enterprise crewman part 29 years later, playing with one of the Tribbles from the original episode! (Not counting his appearance in TMP, of course.)

Thanks for pointing all of this out! Nice bits of background info.

 

[Skipper]

Since there is still some doubt that perhaps there was some pressure from the studios not to include gay characters, I report this from an interview with Moore.

"Tell me why there are no gay characters in Star Trek. This is one of those uncomfortable questions I hate getting when I was working on the show, because there is no good answer for it. There is no answer for it other than people in charge don't want gay characters in Star Trek, period... That's one of the great things about Paramount. Paramount left us alone. They always left us alone. They let Next Gen do whatever it wanted. God knows it let Deep Space Nine do whatever we wanted. It lets Voyager do whatever it wants. The studio is not the problem here. The studio is going to let you go wherever you want to go, as long as they believe that this is quality, as long as they believe it's good work. You've just got to come up with something good."

However, I think that at least this much must be established in this discussion: not including gay characters was a clear and precise decision on Berman's part. He received no pressure in this regard. He said it, everyone who worked with him said it. Then obviously the reasons behind his choice can be discussed, but not the fact that the lack of LBGTQI+ representation falls completely on his shoulders.

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

In what kind of world is something only then legitimately homophobic when it’s expressed “actively” or deliberately? Surely something can be a thing without someone intending it to be that thing. I’d argue that’s how most stuff that’s sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist etc. is expressed.

Maybe. But if a person says they didn't like DIS because they didn't like the redesigned Klingons... maybe a random accusation that they really didn't like it because of homophobia is out of line.

 

[Michael]

Maybe. But if a person says they didn't like DIS because they didn't like the redesigned Klingons... maybe a random accusation that they really didn't like it because of homophobia is out of line.

Definitely. That part is absolute nonsense, if that’s how it went down.

 

[evilchumlee]

Definitely. That part is absolute nonsense, if that’s how it went down.

Almost exactly, on two different occasions (different accusations). I'm going to paraphrase one conversation, but the structure and general idea are spot on.

Me: I really don't like the DSC Klingons.
Other: Oh why is that a problem now?
Me: The design doesn't make sense, it's not how Klingons look.
Other: That's the problem you have? You have that problem now?
Me: Yes... because they don't look right.
Other: Right. It has nothing to do with the fact that a black woman is the lead in this show. Sure.
Me: What? I didn't say anything about that, i'm talking about the design of the Klingons.
Other: Of course you are. It's just funny that this is the show you complain about, with a black woman lead. It's clear what you are saying.
Me: ...i'm saying I don't like the Klingon design.
Other: -something about a dog whistle-

Another very similar conversation occurred, just sub out the racism implication with homophobia.

It's honestly not an uncommon thing now. I didn't like the movie "The Marvels". To some, OBVIOUSLY it's because i'm a fragile cis white man who can't handle female leads and spread my toxic views. In reality, I just thought the movie had weak writing and a weak villain and was just generally uninteresting. I didn't like "Wakanda Forever", racist. I LIKED "Thor: Love and Thunder", somehow ALSO racist. It's getting tiring. I'm starting to learn to just shut up and accept being an evil cis straight white man who is a stain on this Earth and feel ashamed for having been born with the skin color and sexual orientation I was born with. Society tells me I am bad, i'm starting to believe it.

 

[1001001]

I'm starting to learn to just shut up and accept being an evil cis straight white man who is a stain on this Earth and feel ashamed for having been born with the skin color and sexual orientation I was born with. Society tells me I am bad, i'm starting to believe it.

 

[Tim Walker]

I'm an aging cis/het white male, but I liked the strong females in Alien and Prey, Ripley and Naru. These characters were well written, and they were convincingly strong. Indeed, Ripley was the first hero to me after the last season of TOS.

What ever the back ground of the leading characters, the best ones are the result of good writing!

Can't emphasize this enough....

BTW, Naru's given back ground was Comanche. Seemingly having little in common with me. But with good writing one can identify with a character based on our common humanity.

 

[evilchumlee]

Nah, it would just be nice to be judge by the content of my character, rather than the color of my skin.

I'm a cis/het white male, but I liked the strong females in Alien and Prey, Ripley and Naru. These characters were well written. As were the stories.

What ever the back ground of the leading characters, the best ones are the result of good writing!

Can't emphasize this enough....

Same. "I hate female characters". Except Ripley. And Sarah Connor. And Janeway. And Kira. And Xena. And Scarlet Witch. And Jean Gray. And Wonder Woman. And Black Widow. And Furiosa. And Selene. And Lara Croft. And The Bride. And Katniss Everdeen. And Aeon Flux. And Starbuck. And Samantha Carter. And Leia Organa. And Jyn Erso. And Ahsoka. And Fennic Shand. And Laurie Strode. And Micchione. And Maggie. And Carol. And the like, thousand other ones that don't immediately spring to mind.

I honestly, sincerely, do not care about a characters gender, race, or sexual orientation. It's all irrelevant to me. I care about how well written the character is.

 

[Tim Walker]

Regarding race...I like Geordi La Forge. So this evil white man likes a character who happens to be black, and who wears a sensory device over his face. (Let us not over look characters who are handicapped).

BTW, I'm fine with the physical appearance of the Discovery Klingons. They look more or less humanoid, but definitely a different species from us. One thing I can think of to enhance them is to borrow the Klingon costumes from Into Darkness.

 

[fireproof78]

I honestly, sincerely, do not care about a characters gender, race, or sexual orientation. It's all irrelevant to me. I care about how well written the character is.

Yup, same.

BTW, I'm fine with the physical appearance of the Discovery Klingons. They look more or less humanoid, but definitely a different species from us. One thing I can think of to enhance them is to borrow the Klingon costumes from Into Darkness.

Definitely agree.

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

I don't know all the female characters that @evilchumlee mentioned, but the ones I do know, yeah. I agree. But most of those characters are strong enough that they can exist alongside strong and capable men without being diminished. As an example, Ben Sisko is a major bad- who can even pummel Jem'Hadar and Klingons, but Kira holds her own beside him.

One counterexample, and also a time I had the "racist" card played on me was when I said I thought it was stupid that the live action "Little Mermaid" decided that NO, Eric couldn't save Ariel's life at the end, even though she'd saved his several times by that point. No no no no no! To empower Ariel properly, Eric had to be emasculated. I thought that was ing stupid and still do. But when I said that, some prick wasted no time in whining "YOU HATE THUH NEW ARIEL BECUZ SHEEZ BLACK!!" Uhhh... no. I actually think the more exotic look fit the character better. But the movie's excessively woke attitude did not.