A Brief Guide to Star Trek (31 page)

This was the problem with
Star Trek
in the eyes of the LGBT community, the majority of whom simply wanted the series to introduce an otherwise unremarkable gay character or two. Instead, the series attempted to produce ‘issue’ stories, written (or more often ‘constructed’) by people who did not have a clear understanding or any personal involvement in the issues.

One person who did understand from his personal experience of being gay was David Gerrold, writer of
The Original Series
episode ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’, who’d also been involved in establishing
The Next Generation
. He’d developed a storyline for an early episode entitled ‘Blood and Fire’, an allegory about the then-prominent explosion of AIDS among the gay community. The outline featured a clearly gay male couple and the effect on them of alien bloodworms, and Gerrold was confident of getting it made as at the time Roddenberry was saying positive things about how the new show should continue the diversity of
The Original Series
. Returning from holiday, Gerrold found that his story was not to be made after all, as Roddenberry’s idealism had run up against the reality of broadcasting business concerns. Paramount felt that as the show was syndicated and could be seen in the afternoon in some markets, such subjects were not suitable for ‘family entertainment’. This incident was a major contribution to Gerrold’s leaving the series early in its run.

Some progress was made on
Deep Space Nine
with the first romantic same-sex kiss in the episode ‘Rejoined’, further exploring the nature of the co-joined Trill. In the mirror universe episodes the alternate Kira Nerys, the Intendant, is clearly bisexual. Even the once comic Ferengi got in on the act, with the female Pel disguising herself as male to progress in society, but falling in love with Quark. The bartender rejects Pel’s advances – even when he discovers she is female – on the
grounds that having a female business partner is frowned upon in Ferengi society. In ‘Profit and Lace’, Quark is himself surgically altered to become female in an attempt to enlist the help of a powerful businessman in reshaping Ferengi society. In this guise the show depicts
Star Trek
’s first male same-sex kiss, although Quark’s exact gender status is ambiguous at that point. Sometimes the issue was addressed in throwaway lines, such as the comment that a character in the episode ‘Field of Fire’ has a ‘co-husband’ as well as a wife, although the sexual implications of this are not explored.

Deep Space Nine
writer Ron Moore suggested in an interview from 2000 that an executive on the show was against exploring the issue of sexuality. ‘There is no answer for it other than people in charge don’t want gay characters in
Star Trek
, period . . . 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 it’s good work.’

The problem with the invisibility of homosexuality among Federation crewmembers in
Star Trek
, and especially in
The Next Generation
, is that it leaves the viewer with the impression that by the twenty-fourth century it has somehow been ‘cured’, ‘corrected’, ‘bred out’ or otherwise banished. Some of the key people involved expressed their embarrassment and disappointment that their shows had failed on this front. Speaking with
The Advocate
in 1995, Patrick Stewart said: ‘It would be very appropriate if
The Next Generation
movies made it their business to have gay characters.’ Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Kathryn Janeway, claimed to have been trying to move things forward on
Voyager
, but admitted to having failed, hoping that perhaps the next show,
Enterprise
, might be more successful. ‘I’ve approached [Berman] many, many times over the years about getting a gay character on the show – one whom we could really love, not just a guest star. Y’know, we had blacks, Asians, we even had a handicapped character – and so I thought, this is now beginning to look a bit absurd. And he said, “In due time.” And so, I’m suspecting that on
Enterprise
they will do something. I couldn’t get it done on mine, and I am sorry for that.’

The issue of homosexuality on
Star Trek
was back in the spotlight in 2005 when Sulu actor George Takei publicly confirmed his own homosexuality. Although Takei had never hidden the fact – it had been an open secret among
Star Trek
fans since the 1970s, and he was active in various LGBT organisations – his move brought further attention to
Star Trek
’s failure to tackle these issues in a satisfactory way. Takei said: ‘[LGBT people] are masculine, we are feminine, we are caring, we are abusive. We are just like straight people, in terms of our outward appearance and our behaviour. The only difference is that we are oriented to people of our own gender.’ After all, for black and Asian actors later involved in the series, seeing characters like themselves portrayed in earlier episodes had confirmed they had a place in the future of
Star Trek
. To many gay fans, it seemed as though they did not.

Deep Space Nine
’s successor,
Enterprise
, did not significantly advance the issue, despite suggestions that regular character Malcolm Reid (Dominic Keating) might be depicted as gay. At a convention in Portland in 2002, Keating confirmed the idea had been briefly discussed and quickly rejected. Eventually, in 2011, Brannon Braga admitted that those involved in
Star Trek
in the 1990s might have a different view of the topic today. ‘[There was a] constant back and forth about how do we portray the spectrum of sexuality. There were people who felt very strongly that we should be showing casually two guys together in the background in [
Enterprise
bar] Ten Forward. At the time the decision was made not to do that. I think those same people would make a different decision now. I have no doubt that those same creative players wouldn’t feel so hesitant about a decision like that.’ Whatever the producers may have felt on the subject, it is clear that in terms of progressive depictions of sexuality on television,
Star Trek
in the 1990s failed to take the kind of leading position expected of such an apparently forward-looking show.

Deep Space Nine
had never enjoyed the
Star Trek
televisual space to itself – its entire run was accompanied by the last two seasons
of
The Next Generation
and the first five years of ‘back to basics’
Star Trek
show,
Voyager
. This allowed the series to do its own thing within the shadow of those other shows, something storyteller Ira Steven Behr took fine advantage of, but it also resulted in it being overlooked by some
Star Trek
fans and critics. It was also the first
Star Trek
series to fail to graduate to movies, and it may have had trouble retaining more casual viewers thanks to its heavily serialised nature, especially from the fourth season through to the end. However, within all these restrictions, the show offered a space for storytellers like Behr and Ron Moore to take a fresh look at
Star Trek
and move the franchise in a different direction.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
cannot be faulted for its ambition and was a concentrated attempt by a new generation of young writers and producers to do something different with the
Star Trek
legacy within the shadow of Gene Roddenberry’s creation. It may have been a series that was simply too complex for episodic television to cope with, and it may have tried to follow too many story strands and too many characters across seven years, but the world of
Star Trek
would be far duller without it. Created in reaction to the Roddenberry utopianism of
The Next Generation
and the ongoing
Star Trek
movie series,
Deep Space Nine
took risks unlike any other
Star Trek
TV show or movie had done before.

‘Voyager
had a different dynamic because we were not speaking everyday to Starfleet and we had a female captain. That set this show apart from the others . . . It had the core belief of
Star Trek
in terms of excitement and action and in terms of the provocative ideas that
Star Trek
has always been known to present
.’ Rick Berman

Just as the creation of
Deep Space Nine
had been a reaction against the successful storytelling traditions of
Star Trek
and
The Next Generation
, so the creation of
Voyager
was both a reaction against
Deep Space Nine
’s more static and darker take on
Star Trek
and to the fear that
The Next Generation
fans and more casual viewers were missing a starship-set
Star Trek
show.
Deep Space Nine
would become increasingly serialised and darker with the Dominion War arc, but the hope at Paramount was that
Voyager
would recapture some of the forward-looking optimism of the 1960s original. The show came amid a slew of late 1990s recreations of 1960s icons, including movies based on old British TV series (
The Avengers
,
The Saint
), a big-budget revamp of
The Wild, Wild West
and a series of films based on
Star Trek
’s old Desilu stablemate,
Mission: Impossible
. Everything old was new again, and so it was with
Star Trek: Voyager
.

The fourth
Star Trek
television series was the second to be created without the direct involvement of Gene Roddenberry. Despite that,
Voyager
would be (initially at least) an attempt to
return
Star Trek
to basics, with a diverse crew of a starship exploring the unknown. The show was co-created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor, who would bring much to the creation of
Star Trek
’s first female leading character. It would be Brannon Braga, however, who would emerge as the prime storyteller, driving
Voyager
forward to the past.

Voyager
– which had various working titles during development, including
Far Voyager
,
Outer Bounds
and
Galaxy’s End
– was an attempt to return
Star Trek
to its traditional mission to ‘boldly go where no man has gone before’. This was achieved in an extreme way, with a Federation starship propelled to the far reaches of the galaxy, and the journey home likely to take longer than a human lifespan. TV shows had adopted this idea before, from
Lost in Space
(the clue is in the title), to
Space: 1999
, but
Voyager
would use it in a unique
Star Trek
context. As well as the survivors of the Federation crew, the ship would be carrying Maquis rebels who would be forced to function as part of the crew if they were all to survive, a sure source of character conflict.

Unlike
The Next Generation
and
Deep Space Nine
,
Voyager
would not debut in syndication but would help launch the United Paramount Network (UPN), the long-sought dream of a network of independent stations under the Paramount banner, which had dated right back to the mid-1970s development of
Star Trek: Phase II
. Finally, in 1995, that ambition would be achieved and
Voyager
would be the flagship show.

The Intrepid-class
Voyager
would be a smaller starship than the various incarnations of the
Enterprise
, dedicated primarily to scientific exploration. On a mission to locate a missing Maquis vessel lost in the galactic ‘badlands’,
Voyager
and the Maquis ship are thrown across the galaxy thanks to the intervention of an alien being dubbed the Caretaker. Now seventy-five years’ journey time from home, the two crews join together and attempt to find a way back to the Alpha Quadrant.

The set-up promised much, not least a degree of
Deep Space Nine
’s trademark conflict among the ship’s surviving crew, due to their diverse origins. However, the show quickly folded the
Maquis rebels (including Native American First Officer Chakotay and half-human, half-Klingon chief engineer B’Elanna Torres) into the Federation crew and any differences were smoothed over. The character of Tom Paris, initially a wayward troublemaker, was quickly reformed and fitted back into acceptable Starfleet norms. Areas ripe for exploration and many storytelling opportunities were quickly squandered by the fledgling series closing down these avenues so soon.

However,
Voyager
broke new ground by following up
Deep Space Nine
’s African-American captain with
Star Trek
’s first female series lead in Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Producer Rick Berman saw the decision as a breakthrough for
Star Trek
. ‘When it came time for
Voyager
, we knew we had to do something different. The decision was to develop a show that had a female captain’, he said on ‘Braving the Unknown: Season One’, an extra feature on the
Voyager
season one DVD. ‘The feeling was that the best direction for us to go – in terms of trying new things, being socially responsible, which
Star Trek
has always been – was to go for a female captain.’ Jeri Taylor admitted that, ‘The search for the captain was a long and difficult one. This is the person that gets the white-hot glare of publicity as the first female ever to head [a]
Star Trek
series and she had to be just right.’ Berman added, ‘We didn’t want to just create a captain and cast it with a female. We wanted to create a female captain who was somewhat more nurturing and a little bit less swashbuckling than Captain Kirk, a little bit less sullen than Captain Sisko, and a little bit more approachable than Captain Picard. And Kate [Mulgrew] delivered a feminine nurturing side and, at the same time, a sense of strength and confidence.’