Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Best and the Brightest by Susan Wright

[Christopher]

My favourite part of the Moll-Jayme thing was how utterly unbothered about it being a homosexual relationship everyone was. Many people tried to say things against it (usually to dissuade Jayme) but it was always the same kind of "she's out of league", "she doesn't date" type stuff that a guy would get in a similar situation.

Yeah, the same way Kira in "Rejoined" couldn't see a single good reason why Jadzia couldn't get back together with Lenara Khan. Gender was just a non-issue. Naturally that was going to be the case in Trek's enlightened future, but it was a big deal back then for a work of fiction to show it that way.

Which gives the lie to Rick Berman's excuse that they were avoiding LGBTQ characters because they were waiting for the right story to explore the issue. The key is not to treat people's very existence as an "issue" to be debated, but just include them as characters and treat their relationships just as matter-of-factly as everyone else's, like the modern shows do with Stamets and Culber or Adira and Gray.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Yeah, the same way Kira in "Rejoined" couldn't see a single good reason why Jadzia couldn't get back together with Lenara Khan. Gender was just a non-issue. Naturally that was going to be the case in Trek's enlightened future, but it was a big deal back then for a work of fiction to show it that way.

Agreed.

Which is why "Rejoined" works a lot better for me than the earlier "The Outcast" which while it gets some points for even talking about the issue, is far more of a cop-out and would have worked a lot better if Frakes had got the male-male (or even a more convincingly androgynous) relationship he (allegedly) lobbied for.

Which gives the lie to Rick Berman's excuse that they were avoiding LGBTQ characters because they were waiting for the right story to explore the issue. The key is not to treat people's very existence as an "issue" to be debated, but just include them as characters and treat their relationships just as matter-of-factly as everyone else's, like the modern shows do with Stamets and Culber or Adira and Gray.

The only way that comment makes sense to me is that he was lobbying for one or more regular or recuring LGBTQ characters and didn't want to give into concessions to be allowed to do more half-baked concepts like "The Outcast" or the implicit pseudo-LGBTQ joined Trills.

Or he's outright lying.

I prefer to give him the benefit of mistake rather than malice on the issue.

But YMMV.

 

[Christopher]

The only way that comment makes sense to me is that he was lobbying for one or more regular or recuring LGBTQ characters and didn't want to give into concessions to be allowed to do more half-baked concepts like "The Outcast" or the implicit pseudo-LGBTQ joined Trills.

If Berman had actually wanted a regular or recurring gay character, we surely would've gotten one in the nearly two decades he was running the franchise. Heck, they potentially had one already, Garak, but Andrew Robinson wasn't allowed to play up that subtext as openly as he wanted, and was even saddled with an unconvincing romance with Ziyal to affirm his heterosexuality.

Good grief, the Berman-era shows weren't even free to acknowledge in dialogue that humans engaged in anything other than heterosexuality. Even in the late '90s and early '00s when it had become commonplace elsewhere on TV to include gay or lesbian characters, the Trek universe still acted as if they didn't even exist. Plenty of other shows did it already, so Berman's protestations that it was somehow impossible for Trek to figure it out were disingenuous.

 

[J47]

As a young gay boy, I remember absolutely loving this book as it was the first time I felt myself truly represented in Trek. It was the late 90s, and at that point I was basically limited to Dawson's Creek and Will & Grace, and seeing a gay relationship portrayed as completely normal in my favorite franchise gave me an overwhelming sense of hope for the future. It felt truly groundbreaking, in a way that "Rejoined" and especially "The Outcast" never quite achieved.

I'm glad for today's little boys and girls that Berman is no longer in charge of the franchise, and thusly holding it back from the kind of progress we've seen in Discovery and Picard on this front. And no, I don't believe anything Berman has said about "looking for the right story" - he didn't want homosexuality anywhere near his vision of Trek.