Okay, so it's no secret that I love science-fiction. The novel I'm still writing for NaNoWriMo¹ is sci-fi, my favourite TV show of all time is Babylon 5, my favourite novel is Dune, and I've watched at least some of every incarnation of Star Trek (my favourites are The Original Series and Deep Space Nine). It's probably safe to say, in fact, that sci-fi is my favourite genre. So, I want to take a moment to talk about Star Trek. Not the new movie, which I can enjoy as long as I pretend it has nothing to do with any other Star Trek and overlook the plot holes big enough to drive the Enterprise through, because I've already discussed my issues with it and more or less moved on. No, I want to talk about the fact that, in all these years, they still haven't had queer people and the few times they've come close, they've managed to cop-out at the last minute.
DS9 is an easy example of where they totally could have gone there... and didn't. You see, right at the very beginning of Season 1 the character Garak is introduced. He comes up to Doctor Bashir, introduces himself and proceeds to hit on him in a slightly sketchy way for the duration of their short conversation. It's totally there. In fact, it was supposed to be. Andrew Robinson, the actor who played Garak, has said so. However, the show's producers saw that first meeting and told him he was playing the character too gay and needed to knock it off. The hitting on Bashir thing doesn't totally go away, and Garak gets all the best lines, but it does lighten up and I'm pretty sure the fact that Garak and Bashir have fewer conversations as the show progresses is due largely to the fact that there was a lot of chemistry that could be easily interpreted as flirting. Then, because Andrew Robinson is awesome, he wrote a Garak novel (there are a lot of Star Trek novelisations, if you live under a rock without used bookstores and hadn't noticed) that says straight up that Garak is bisexual. Lovely man, Andrew Robinson.
They also almost went in the queer-friendly direction in Enterprise. Originally, one of the officers (I don't remember which one, I'm not a huge fan of this series) was supposed to be gay and there were going to be little nods to it like references to a past relationship and whatnot. It wasn't going to be a focus, or an issue within the show, just a positive inclusion of a queer character. Then they decided not to, gave him an ex-wife or something like that, and ditched the whole thing. And that annoys me so much. Just... fail. So much fail. Babylon 5 went there back in the mid-90s, with a lesbian sub-plot for part of the series, because JMS is bad ass and does things like that (the Pope is also a woman), but out of all the Star Trek series and films and novels (except Andrew Robinson's), no one will include a visible queer character anywhere.
I still love DS9 and TOS, and Voyager and TNG are also awesome (Enterprise is so-so), but it bothers me that they could pretty easily take that one step and just won't do it. I hold out hope, though, that one day they will.
Related, but on a different note, if I look half as fierce as Nichelle Nichols when I'm in my 70s, I'll be ecstatic. And, if you watch TOS, you'll notice that Uhura's legs are in the background of so many shots on the bridge. I'm pretty sure they framed shots specifically so her legs would be visible, even when she has nothing to do with the interaction in the foreground. I'm serious.
I'll just go back to rewatching B5 (albeit slightly out of order, because I wanted to watch The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father and that's from season 5) and keep my fingers crossed that Star Trek will get with it.
But first, I need to go turn in my application to graduate. That'd be a smart thing to do.
¹ National Novel Writing Month. I wrote 50,204 words between November 1 and 29, winning the challenge with one day to spare, but the novel is still only 2/3 of the way through. I'll get there eventually.
