The Outcast and the limits of metaphors

[MarkusTay]

My whole point was, 'happy endings' don't make people feel bad, and people who don't feel bad don't change their minds about things. Did carol O'Connor have jerk fans? Yes... all stars do. That actually proves nothing. I am sure he got just as much - if not MORE - hate mail for the way he acted in-character. Crazy people who think TV shows are reality will always be a thing.

Star Trek has always been about making people THINK. The scify elements are just backdrop. Over the years I think it lost a lot of that (especially with the Kelvan timeline). I know I was upset at the end of the episode, and if a writer can make me feel things, then they did their job. Could it have been done better? Definitely, but in Hollywood we have this weird 'diminishing returns' paradigm going on, and as technology (explosions! CGI! Weee!) gets better, the writing falls-off, because it is no longer the primary vehicle a show or movie needs to keep an audience enthralled. And a great big part of that is this 'everything must be for everyone' attitude. It causes writers and production companies to boil everything down to the lowest common denominator, to appeal to the widest cross-section of people... making it watered-down drivel without life or depth.

P.S. - Very few people actually know why they are angry, they just take it out on the first thing they can and think that is the reason. You attack the symptom rather than the problem. Hold up that mirror and look deeper. Cheers

 

[Brennyren]

^^^ To paraphrase @DonIago's earlier comment: can you guess why I'm angry right now? Perhaps in a less patronizing manner?

 

[UssGlenn]

When creators present their work to the public, they do not get to pick and choose who watches it, and -- except with the material in the work itself -- they do not get to decide how the audience "should" respond to it. And if the audience responds in a different way, that's not the fault of the audience. And I find it hard to believe that this episode, which supposedly supported the rights of the non-straight and non-cis, was intended for everybody except the people who shared that position.

You can't control who watches, but you certainly are supposed to have a specific audience in mind when you write. Trying to write for everyone at the same time is how you get lowest common denominator drek. And if you are writing a "you should be pro-gay rights" story, aiming it at people who already support gay rights is sort of pointless.

Plus "you already have the correct opinion" stories are inherently less interesting than "you should give this topic more thought" stories.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Leonardo Davinci was gay irl. He has a sodomy charge on the record with local law enforcement.

Therefore Flint from TOS enjoys sodomy, and the Davinci hologram from Voyager enjoys sodomy.

The Internet says Abraham Lincoln was gay, so the Lincbot from the Savage Curtain was gay, so he was probably snuggling with Surak, and since Jonathan held Surak's Katra for a few days he's just a little more gay than he used to be before that too.

 

[Takeru]

The episode failed on every level because it tried to be smart, they wanted to be pro LGBTQ but ended up with an episode about a woman (played by a cis woman) falling in love with a man (played by a cis man) and the evil nonbinary government using effective conversion therapy on her ... yay?

Star Trek has always been about making people THINK.

Not really, Star Trek was usually as subtle as a sledgehammer with its messages except when it came to not being straight.

 

[Oddish]

It's easy to denigrate Star Trek for not being willing to take a stand for gay rights back in the day, but try to remember that it was a lot harder back in the 80's.

 

[Skipper]

It's easy to denigrate Star Trek for not being willing to take a stand for gay rights back in the day, but try to remember that it was a lot harder back in the 80's.

But many series even then had talked about gay and in a much less indirect way. If this was the best possible outcome, perhaps it was best to do nothing.

 

[Skipper]

Not really, Star Trek was usually as subtle as a sledgehammer with its messages except when it came to not being straight.

"RACISM IS BAD AND DRUGS ARE BAD. Here are some real RACISTS and DRUG DEALERS. To avoid misunderstanding, we will call them so explicitly and repeat over and over again that what they do is BAD.

...But for whatever reason we can't show you genuine and authentic homophobes. Please use your imagination. A lot of it."

 

[Takeru]

It's easy to denigrate Star Trek for not being willing to take a stand for gay rights back in the day, but try to remember that it was a lot harder back in the 80's.

Many series had episodes featuring LGBTQ characters even before TNG. Taxi, Lou Grant, Cheers, Dynasty, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, The Golden Girls, Night Court, Cagney & Lacey, LA Law and many others.

TNG to Enterprise didn't have LGBTQ characters because they didn't want to, nothing else stopped them.

 

[Skipper]

But I didn't, because there were no gay people, aliens and evil Mirror counterparts aside.

And I'm not even sure that one technically can call Soren "gay".

 

[Guy Gardener]

And I'm not even sure that one technically can call Soren "gay".

Same as Bortus on The Orville.

There's only one gender, even though it's a negative gender, for these frakkers to frakk.

Super gay, super normal.

Although it seems like fish, how they reproduce without touching, so they reproduce through masturbation, not sexual Congress.

Not gay?

Although there is the counter argument that all masturbation is homosexual, because if you're a dude grabbing a dick, it doesn't matter if it is your dick or someone else's dick, it's just really gay.

 

[Farscape One]

Message episodes of TOS are sometimes described as not living up to what they could have been or failures in the late 90s/early 2000s.

"The Outcast", it's been talked about in the same way for at least the last few years... probably since the early 2010s.

In 20-30 years, the relationship of Stamets and Culber and any other messages that DISCO and any of the other current shows will be held under the same banner as what I said above.

My point?

EVERYTHING that was produced in the past gets judged based on the current views of the times, and that's not entirely fair, either to the episode/movie/book/whatever or to yourself because you can put your ability to enjoy something or ability to get any insight in a stranglehold.

If I cared about what happened to the characters, or made me think about a subject, or was entertained, then the episode or movie or book or whatever did its job.

If a work of fiction can do ALL THREE things, then how can that be considered a failure?

"The Outcast" worked for me because I cared that what Soren was going through was unjust and wrong, it made me think more about something I didn't give much thought about, and it clearly entertained me because I have seen the episode many times, along with a great number of other episodes.

I'm not going to judge something made from the past with the current worldview of today. If I did, I'd likely be a much angrier person.

 

[Oddish]

^ Well said!

The culture I grew up in was pretty homophobic (it wasn't a religious thing, most Christians I've known were pretty tolerant). And when I was young, I was no better. My first lesson in tolerance came from the early part of Stephen King's "It", where a gay couple is attacked by a group of teenaged thugs, and one of them is killed. The stereotypes (dress and behavior alike) were rather appalling, but the book treated them as humans who genuinely cared for each other. As imperfect as the story was, it still changed my perspective on the subject.

A message doesn't have to be perfect to be effective.

 

[Skipper]

Another problem of the episode is that they merged the concepts of "gender identity" and "sexual orientation" like they were a single thing (Well, that's understandable. It was written by a cis-straight person in the 1990s who obviously hadn't done much research on the subject).

Soren said she identified as a female since childhood therefore was attracted to those who identify as males. It's like saying that every guy man wants to be a woman and every lesbian woman wants to be a man (or viceversa).

 

[Brennyren]

I'm not even sure that one technically can call Soren "gay".

I meant Jadzia Dax -- though "gay" isn't an accurate description of her, either. We could call her "bi," I guess, but I'm not sure even that's right; the presence and influence of the symbiont complicates the issue.

 

[Mojochi]

The episode failed on every level because it tried to be smart, they wanted to be pro LGBTQ but ended up with an episode about a woman (played by a cis woman) falling in love with a man (played by a cis man) and the evil nonbinary government using effective conversion therapy on her ... yay?

I mean that's a bit of an oversimplified & revisionist interpretation imho. The episode is about a character identifying as something taboo in their society, that the character and one of our regulars attempt to challenge and fail. The character is made to conform, which is presented as being sad, wrong and unfortunate.

It's almost a page for page remake of Half A Life, except in that one, the character ultimately chooses to agree with the objectionable thing we fought throughout, (mandatory euthanasia) which clouds how we're supposed to feel at the end more than in Soren's case, where I think it's pretty obvious that it's considered unpleasant & more forced that Soren was made to convert from who they are. Not so ironically, they tried to broach this topic by inverting the circumstance from real life, & while that was pretty obvious at the time, it was done shoddily for sure.

You can slam them for making the whole thing stupidly imho, but there really was no malice of forethought beyond just being too chickenshit to tell a story about a gay relationship, which was by & large not a unique condition at the time. They certainly are hiding behind their gimmicks to tell this story, & it's fair imho to criticize them for it some, as we'd like to think it's a show that had some balls to tell compelling & challenging drama about touchy subjects, but I mean that's really all there was to it imho.

 

[Oddish]

Dax, the symbiont, is best described as not really having a gender identity. If placed in a female body, the resultant Dax is a woman. If placed in a male body, the resultant Dax is a man.

I think that a joined Trill's sexuality probably reflects the host's inherent preference, but they might be more open-minded under the right circumstances (because they've had more life experiences).

 

[Guy Gardener]

Dax, the symbiont, is best described as not really having a gender identity. If placed in a female body, the resultant Dax is a woman. If placed in a male body, the resultant Dax is a man.

I think that a joined Trill's sexuality probably reflects the host's inherent preference, but they might be more open-minded under the right circumstances (because they've had more life experiences).

What about symbiont pools?

There's claims that caretakers and simbiont can live there peacefully for decades.

Not sure why, but I think that the simbiont pools are a conductive liquid that allows for the simbiots to talk to each other as they would a host.

The Millennium Novels claimed that the Beasties from TNG season 1's Conspiracy were cousins to the Trill Simbionts. They spawn inside people. One adult, and thousands of babies wriggling around inside.

Trill Simbionts may reproduce in a similar fashion?

Or the symbiosis commission won't let the simbionts breed like that which is why there are so few of them.

For a thousand simbionts to be born, one Trill has to die.

 

[Brennyren]

Dax, the symbiont, is best described as not really having a gender identity. If placed in a female body, the resultant Dax is a woman. If placed in a male body, the resultant Dax is a man.

I think that a joined Trill's sexuality probably reflects the host's inherent preference, but they might be more open-minded under the right circumstances (because they've had more life experiences).

Makes sense to me.

The episode is about a character identifying as something taboo in their society, that the character and one of our regulars attempt to challenge and fail. The character is made to conform, which is presented as being sad, wrong and unfortunate.

You can slam them for making the whole thing stupidly imho, but there really was no malice of forethought beyond just being too chickenshit to tell a story about a gay relationship, which was by & large not a unique condition at the time.

I agree that there was no malice, and I also agree about the chickenshittedness. (Is that a word? Spellcheck says no.) And FWIW, I even agree that the episode certainly wasn't nothing. It obviously reached some people -- hell, it touched my feelings on that first run, too.

But even at the time I wondered why nobody mentioned the existence of gay people in the Federation. Especially in the context of Soren's situation. "Hey, at one time our society couldn't accept non-orientation-conforming, or non-gender-conforming, people either! But we've learned better!" I mean, since that's what the episode was supposed to be about.

Just chickenshittedness. (That's my word now. I'm copyrighting it.)

 

[DonIago]

^Agreed, and that's why Crusher's line in "The Host" irked me as well: "Perhaps it is a human failing, but we are not accustomed to these kinds of changes. I can't keep up. How long will you have this host? What would the next one be? I can't live with that kind of uncertainty. Perhaps, someday, our ability to love won't be so limited."

I'm not saying I necessarily could have handled it any better than she did, but maybe she should try speaking for herself instead of all humanity.

Apparently it's okay for there to be non-heteronormative individuals in Trek as long as it's not humans.