Spoiler notice: This blog will discuss characters and plot points in various Star Trek shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Discovery. 

When we began working on our QueerSpace project, especially our second episode that explores queer worldbuilding in science fiction literature , I immediately began wondering about Star Trek and its history with including LGBTQ+ characters and storylines. 

To be honest, I expected Star Trek to be at the forefront of LGBTQ+ inclusion. After all, Star Trek : The Original Series (1966-1969) is so well known for being a leader in terms of gender and racial integration — featuring an initial cast of men and women of different races working together. But it turns out this environment of inclusion did not extend to queer identity. I sat down with space history curator and the Museum’s resident science fiction (and Star Trek) expert Margaret Weitekamp to learn more and explore Star Trek ’s history with LGBTQ+ stories and characters. 

According to Weitekamp, part of the reasoning behind Star Trek 's groundbreakingly diverse cast was to signal that the show took place far in the future: “To have a truly integrated group of men and women and aliens of different races working together, we must be centuries from where we are now.” But that representation then had a profound effect in its contemporary moment.

This makes the delay in introducing LGBTQ+ characters even more pronounced. Surely this future society wouldn’t be exclusively heteronormative and cisgender?

The first openly gay characters in the Star Trek television universe weren’t introduced until the first season of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017. (Although it is worth noting that in the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond it is established that the Hikaru Sulu of the Kelvin Timeline, portrayed by John Cho, is gay — a nod to George Takei, who originated the role of Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series and publicly came out as gay in 2005.) 

Two men embrace

Star Trek: Discovery ’s Paul Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber, portrayed by out actors Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, are the first openly gay characters and the first gay couple portrayed in the central cast of a Star Trek tv show. “They don’t start with some big reveal,” Weitekamp explains. “They introduce each character in his professional role, doing his professional stuff, and then there’s this great intimate moment of them standing next to each other, brushing their teeth, just like any couple would.” 

There is one disappointing moment where it seems that Discovery is playing into the “bury your gays” trope with the (spoiler alert!) murder of Hugh Culber. But fear not, he is brought back to life (this is still sci-fi, after all). The team behind the show insist that his short-lived death isn’t a “bury your gays” moment , with executive producer Aaron Harberts saying in an interview with IndieWire : “It was essential that this crime not be gratuitous. It had to push the story, and it had to come from character and emotion. Culber is killed because he’s the smartest person on the ship. He’s not killed because he’s gay. He’s killed because he’s a threat…”

Person works on computerized glass screen

Later on in Star Trek: Discovery , a non-binary teenager named Adira is introduced, portrayed by non-binary actor Blu del Barrio. In a scene in season 3, Stamets, not yet aware of Adira’s pronouns, refers to them as “her,” and Adira corrects him, saying, “‘They,’ not ‘she.’ I’ve never felt like a ‘she’ or a ‘her.” I would prefer ‘they’ or ‘them’ from now on,” which Stamets accepts in stride. When we discussed Adira’s coming out scene, Weitekamp was especially impressed by a moment later in the episode when, with Adira asleep at their workstation, Culber and Stamets have a conversation, both referring to Adira using their correct pronouns without hesitation. Seeing those scenes in succession really shows how simple it should be to respect a person’s identity: Stamets didn't know, now he knows, and now he'll use the right pronouns.

Through Adira we also meet their boyfriend Gray, a transgender Trill portrayed by Ian Alexander, the first trans actor in Star Trek history. As Adira and Gray’s story unfolds, “they really present Stamets, Culber, Adira, and Gray as a kind of queer family of choice,” Weitekamp said.

Three people standing

With Star Trek: Discovery , the franchise made huge strides in introducing LGBTQ+ characters, casting queer actors to play them, and making those characters fully-realized and their experiences authentic.

But it took a while for Star Trek to get there. So what took so long? And was the absence of queer characters as conspicuous as it seems today? 

“It’s really in the 1980s that people start to ask questions about same-sex relationships and that kind of representation in Star Trek ,” Margaret shares. In the mid- to late-1980s, a group of science fiction fans formed a group called the Gaylactic Network with the truly incredible slogan, “Out of the closet and into the universe.”

“As various groups of gay and lesbian science fiction fans, like the Gaylactic Network, start to push that they wanna see more positive representation, Star Trek seems like a really likely place because it had been so out in front in terms of positive depictions of African Americans, Asian Americans, women in leadership roles,” Margaret explains. “So they really start pushing for some way of seeing this addressed.” 

There are conflicting accounts on whether Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry promised that there would be an out gay character in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), but ultimately there isn’t. Instead what we see are a few allegories to queer experiences, most notably in the Season 4 episode “The Host” and the season 5 episode “The Outcast.”

In “The Host” (1991) Dr. Beverly Crusher falls in love with a Trill named Odan. The Trill are a humanoid species joined with a symbiont who can pass from host to host with little concern for the presenting gender of their Trill host. After the symbiont Odan’s host body dies, he is eventually transferred to a new host — this time with a female body. Although the new Odan professes love for Crusher, she rejects the overture from Odan as a woman, saying “Perhaps it is a human failing, but we are not accustomed to these kinds of changes… Perhaps, someday, our ability to love won't be so limited.” 

And then there’s Star Trek: The Next Generation season 5 episode 17, “The Outcast” (1992). When I spoke with Weitekamp, she told me this is an episode that she frequently used for classroom discussion when she was teaching. It’s quite fascinating to examine the episode in terms of what it hoped to accomplish, how it was perceived at the time, and the way we interpret it today.

The episode features the J’naii, a humanoid race that has no gender, believing that they have evolved past it. Will Riker meets a member of the J’naii named Soren and their chemistry and attraction is clear. 

Soren confesses to Riker that she secretly identifies as female and the J’naii eventually realize this and arrest her. In order to return to her society, Soren must undergo “psychotectic treatments” to remove her gender identity and make her androgynous once again. Riker sets out to rescue her, but it’s too late. “The heartbreaking thing at the end,” Weitekamp explained, “is the character comes back and says essentially ‘I'm so much happier now that I'm a part of the way society is supposed to be.’ She’s clearly kind of brainwashed.”

This whole episode was intended as an allegory for the way that queer people are often treated by their communities. Soren’s identity is called a “perversion” and she is referred to as “deviant.” The psychotactic therapy is a stand-in here for conversion therapy.

And while this episode was very clearly Star Trek ’s foray into a “gay rights” episode, it left many disappointed. After all, the couple at the center of this big moment in Star Trek history was unmistakably heterosexual. Right off the bat, Weitekamp notes, it’s immediately evident that all members of this adrogynous race — including Soren — are played by female actors: “They very clearly cast a woman as this androgynous figure. So you, the viewer, are not made uncomfortable or made to confront an actual same-sex relationship.” Actor Jonathan Frakes, who played Riker, has since spoken on the subject , saying that the show wasn’t bold enough with their casting in the episode and that it would have been more effective if Soren had been played by a male actor, to really push boundaries.

It’s also fascinating to look at this episode, 30 years on, in the way it approached gender identity. In 1992, it used gender identity as an allegory for homosexuality, but watching it today, you can’t help but wish it could have treated the idea of being non-binary not as an allegory but as an idea to explore respectfully in and of itself. This may have been many viewers’ first exposure to non-binary individuals, yet they are presented as the bad guys, trying to oppress others. And their non-binary identity is telegraphed by removing their personality and emotion, implying that a binary gendered identity is what makes someone lively and interesting. 

Although we cannot change the past, what we can do is continue to establish science fiction as a realm that is welcome to people of all backgrounds because, after all, the future — real or imagined — is what we make it. It’s gratifying to see the strides that Star Trek has made in Star Trek: Discovery and I hope it continues on this show as well as across other Star Trek properties. And who knows, maybe someday we’ll revisit the J’naii and see that storyline play out in a more satisfying way.

We rely on the generous support of donors, sponsors, members, and other benefactors to share the history and impact of aviation and spaceflight, educate the public, and inspire future generations.  With your help, we can continue to preserve and safeguard the world’s most comprehensive collection of artifacts representing the great achievements of flight and space exploration.

  • Get Involved
  • Host an Event

Thank you. You have successfully signed up for our newsletter.

Error message, sorry, there was a problem. please ensure your details are valid and try again..

  • Free Timed-Entry Passes Required
  • Terms of Use

an image, when javascript is unavailable

‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ EP Mike McMahan On That TNG Cameo and LGBTQ Characters in Season 2

By Adam B. Vary

Adam B. Vary

Senior Entertainment Writer

  • Michael Jackson Biopic Team Touts ‘Unbiased’ Look at Pop Star; ‘Leaving Neverland’ Director Calls Script Draft ‘Startlingly Disingenuous’ 2 days ago
  • Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau and Pamela Adlon Delight SXSW With ‘Raw’ Pregnancy Comedy ‘Babes’ 5 days ago
  • Colman Domingo Explains Why He Attended the SXSW Premiere of ‘Sing Sing’ the Same Weekend as the Oscars (EXCLUSIVE) 6 days ago

Star Trek Lower Decks

After 10 irreverent, often wildly weird episodes, “ Star Trek : Lower Decks” concluded its inaugural season as the first animated “Trek” series in 47 years with two striking salutes to “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

( Warning: The rest of this story contains spoilers. )

The first “TNG” callback: The crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos run afoul of the Pakleds, a dimwitted alien species that have grown alarmingly lethal since we last saw them on the Season 2 “TNG” episode “Samaritan Snare.” Ne’er-do-well ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsom) and by-the-book ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) have to team up with Mariner’s hard-charging mother, Capt. Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), to defeat the Pakleds.

The second “TNG” callback: Just when it seems like the Cerritos has escaped, three more Pakled ships arrive and threaten to destroy the ship — until the U.S.S. Titan, led by Capt. Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) swoops in to save them.

The arrival of Riker and Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirits) marks the strongest connection yet for “Lower Decks” to the fabric of the larger “Trek” universe.  Variety spoke with “Lower Decks” creator, showrunner, and executive producer Mike McMahan about the major effect Riker’s appearance will have on the series, the show’s relationship to “Trek” history, and why McMahan says the show will be better about LGBTQ representation in Season 2, due to premiere in 2021.

Let’s start with the very end of the season: Will the Titan be a main location next season now that Boimler has transferred to that ship?

Yep. We’ll see the Titan next season because Boimler is off the Cerritos, and we’ll be seeing Capt. Riker again as well. Boimler has been talking about moving on to bigger and better all first season, and now we’re going to see what happens when he gets what he wants.

Would that suggest that Marina Sirtis will also be on the show?

The stories that are on Titan are really more revolving around Riker and Boimler. However, I loved Marina and we loved working with her first season. The stories didn’t go that way, but I definitely need to get her back, because she was a blast to work with.

Will we see more “Next Generation” cameos as well?

That, my friend, I will not tell you, I would say, feels like a pretty good chance of it.

With Boimler getting promotion and transferring to the Titan, you really do seem to be tackling a question I’ve wondered about this season: How can this be a show about the lower decks if the main cast starts to get promoted?

Yeah, it’s tough. The theme of the show is where do bridge crews come from? What happens when you start ranking up? What did you learn as a lower deck officer that you start taking there? That’s all stuff that we tackle second season, and hopefully beyond.

Other than Troi and her mother Lwaxana on “TNG,” I can’t think of another time we’ve really seen a mother-daughter relationship explored as much on “Trek” as we see with Mariner and her mom, Capt. Freeman. What made you want to put that at the core of your show?

Well, I knew that I wanted the character of Mariner to be this vibrant, questioning of authority-type character. And I wanted the captain of the Cerritos to really seem like a “Star Trek” captain. So there had to be a reason that Mariner wouldn’t be drummed out of Starfleet every episode. The intrinsic mother-daughter relationship – kind of basing it on when my sister was younger and would throw down with my mom occasionally — like, nobody can get under somebody’s skin like their child or their mom.

Another thing about that relationship is that Boimler is often really flummoxed by how well connected and knowledgeable Mariner is, but he doesn’t know that it comes from the fact that Mariner has been essentially born into Starfleet, which is something that Mariner doesn’t always seem quite aware of or grateful for. Were you meaning to explore privilege with that dynamic?

You know, not really. I don’t think it’s a wrong interpretation of it. But the thing about privilege is that some people have it, some people don’t. But everybody has their own story as well. There’s an episode in the first season where you meet Mariner’s close friend, confidant, and probably lover from the Academy days, who literally says, “You used to be the best of us, you were going to be a captain, what happened to you?” There’s a whole other show that has happened to Mariner before we meet her on the Cerritos that she references every once in a while that hasn’t caused her to lose faith in the idealism of the Federation, but in the system itself. Seeing how she grows from that event and then slowly over time finding out things that expand our understanding of why she is how she is, that’s kind of more important to me than the other aspects of it. But yes, there is a part of it that, you know, her dad is an admiral. Her mom is a captain. Not only does that mean that she is kind of Starfleet royalty, but also what does that mean of their expectations of her and her abilities, and that always comes with its own kind of package of trouble.

It sounds like you weren’t necessarily trying to explicitly subvert the idea of privilege, especially as we’ve been in our world talking about it quite significantly in just over the last six months or so.

From my point of view, it was more about experience. Mariner at one point was like Boimler. She was the wide-eyed person who hadn’t gotten enough experience, and at some point, when you have a dream of what you want to do for a living and then you actually go work at it and see how the sausage is made, you either decide one of two things: Do you fit into the system, or do you make a new system? Boimler doesn’t know that yet, and Mariner does.

You also just mentioned something about Mariner that I didn’t really pick up on during the show: Her friend, Capt. Amina Ramsey, was her lover when they were at the Academy?

Yeah. We weren’t explicit about it, because most of the relationships in this show are familial or friendship love. It’s not physical love. That character showing up, the story we’re telling about them has nothing to do with any previous relationships they’ve had. For me and for the writers as we were making this, we didn’t intentionally mean for anybody to be strictly heteronormative or straight or cis. Every Starfleet officer is probably at the baseline bisexual, in a way. That being said, I am not the most amazing person at writing those kind of stories. I think we get a little bit better about it in the second season.

You’re right that no one on the show is exactly explicitly straight, but no one is explicitly LGBTQ either. It sounds like that’s something you’re digging into more for Season 2?

It is. It’s something I think we need to be better about. If there’s anything I can say about inclusiveness — whether it’s about sex or gender or race or anything — is that I know that I can always learn more and be better about it, and I’m always trying to do that. This is one of those cases where we could have done a better job of explicitly stating the things that the writers always knew about Mariner. It seeps in there in little ways, which even irritates me even more, like you start off the season with Mariner saying, “Whoa, she’s like the hottest girl on the ship, are you nervous?” —  that’s one of her first lines. That doesn’t put a stake in the ground, which I wish we had done a little bit more explicitly. It’s always a learning experience. We’re going to be trying to be better about it. And we are more explicit about it in the second season.

You obviously are bringing a level of comedy and irreverence to “Star Trek” that hasn’t been there before, but it also feels like you’re using this show to answer some questions you have about “Star Trek” as a fan. Like, what did ever happen to the Pakleds, the dim-witted aliens from “The Next Generation”?

Yes, absolutely. We didn’t want to set up early in the show that every episode was going to be like, “Hey, here’s a legacy character, and hey, here’s a planet we’ve been to before.” But we do want that to be involved in the show, and part of that was that every episode, it was like, what are the most “Star Trek” episodes we can make? And for the finale one of the themes that we hadn’t hit on for the season yet that explicitly was metaphorically saying something about problems and the world right now. We needed a villain that kind of matched the re-rise of fascism, this thing that we thought we’d nipped in the bud is back! That’s why he wanted to take a character that was kind of a joke from the TNG episodes and say, what if, because they were a joke, people didn’t take them seriously enough, and they got too powerful, and now they are actually dangerous and people are paying with their lives for not taking them seriously?

When the season started especially, some fans took issue with how irreverent the show was about “Star Trek.” Was that surprising to you?

No, not at all. I mean, fans are taking issue with every season of “Star Trek” that has come out since the original series, and they didn’t watch TOS until it was in syndication. If fans hadn’t taken issue with everything, I would have been blown away. And also, I’m a “Star Trek” fan. The thing that was scary to me was that you have stuff that works like “Galaxy Quest” and “The Orville” —  they’re just not “Star Trek,” which is fine. They’re almost “Star Trek.” My challenge — this was my chance to get to make a “Star Trek” that I was proud of. And I really honestly felt like, listen, I’m going to do the best show that I can possibly do on a day-to-day basis, that really fulfills the joy and the sanctity that “Star Trek” has to me. That’s never going to please everybody. They might not be fans of animation. They might not be fans of adult animation. They might not be fans of my type of adult animation. I can’t really control that.

You can’t really be irreverent if you don’t have true reverence for your subject, and “Lower Decks” clearly comes from a place of deep awareness of “Star Trek” — it’s packed with so many “Trek” references.

It almost feels like we were a group of kids that were out at night, and somebody left the door in the candy store open, and we all went running in and filled bags of candy and ran off like thieves in the night. When we knew that we had the “Star Trek” name on the show, that changed the kind of storytelling you can do. In any sci-fi show, sci-fi is happening all the time. I worked on “Rick and Morty” so for so long; you need the show to be populated with sci-fi stuff, and eventually you’re looking at a list of made-up words. “Oh, it’s the Glasnars! What did we say the Glasnars were about?”

For “Lower Decks,”   there’s 700 episodes and 13 or something movies! When we needed these characters to be referring to stuff in their sci-fi world, we just pulled our favorite moments, and because there were so many “Star Trek” geeks working on the show, there was never a moment where somebody was like, “Alright, I better start digging through guidebooks or Memory Alpha.”

Were there any references you were most excited to get onto the show?

For me, my favorite thing is probably the Exocomp [i.e. the sentient robot introduced on “TNG”] in the finale. I love the Exocomps. I think the actual model of the Exocomp, the physical model, is somehow both ludicrous and insanely adorable at the same time. Because you can tell in the original episode they’re being held up with fishing line, I had the artists design the way the Exocomp moves, to sway a little bit when she’s on fishing line. The idea of painting a Starfleet uniform onto a little Exocomp just really tickled me. I know that’s a really nerdy answer and it doesn’t have a lot of weight to it but, that’s the kind of silly like thing that brought me a lot of joy that made it worth having to explain to some producers what an Exocomp was! It’s a deep cut, but it’s not to me.

More From Our Brands

Watch kacey musgraves perform acoustic number ‘the architect’ on ‘fallon’, home of the week: a $25 million estate in the florida keys has two private beaches, burkle selling nwsl’s wave to levine leichtman family in $113m deal, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, station 19 season 7 premiere recap: a crushing reveal, a joyful twist and a hookup we never saw coming, verify it's you, please log in.

Quantcast

Star Trek home

  • More to Explore
  • Series & Movies

Published Nov 28, 2021

Star Trek’s Queer Fluidity is Giving Fans the Brighter Future They Deserve

Why wouldn’t queer fans feel connected to characters that made them feel included?

Star Trek

StarTrek.com

If you’re an avid Star Trek fan, you might’ve heard this question before: Star Trek ’s kinda gay, right?

That’s something a good chunk of the Star Trek fandom has been asking for years, but it’s not just some slash-fiction fantasy. It speaks to a greater sexual and gender fluidity that’s been a constant presence in Star Trek for decades, and it’s been powerful enough to inspire and influence countless queer Star Trek fans.

In Andrew Robinson’s interview with That Shelf for the Deep Space Nine retrospective documentary, What We Left Behind , he described his character, Garak’s, sexuality as, “something that can happen with anyone. And there’s Doctor Bashir... who’s a good looking young man, and I thought, it’s sexual attraction that brings [Garak] to Doctor Bashir as well as the subterfuge of being a spy.”

Garak’s only canon romantic pairing in the show was with Ziyal, a fellow Cardassian, but Robinson saw and played the character very differently. He understood this unilateral fluidity in Garak. Robinson’s even been known to call Garak, “omni-sexual”.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -

Despite the fact that Star Trek didn’t feature out members of the LGBT+ community until more recent years, sexual and gender fluidity has always been a staple of the series. That’s including one-off episode species like the non-binary J’Naii to main characters like Jadzia Dax, whose symbiont made her gender and sexuality much more transient. Even when it comes to Trek ’s in-universe fashion and culture, everything is much more gender neutral, opening up an entire galaxy for queer fans to see a place for themselves, no matter where on the spectrum they land.

Fans were drawn to Trek ’s subtle nods to LGBT+ representation, which was unlike few other franchises. After all, Star Trek didn’t have “very special episodes” about the queer community. Instead, Roddenberry created a diverse galaxy where it felt like people of the LGBT+ community might be able to live, accepted as they are. They didn’t need to be explained, they just were diverse people and cultures with their own stories.

This has led to collected communities of fans that revel in the queerness and the futuristic representation that Trek gave them.

Examples of these collected communities include Tumblr tags and Discord servers, where queer fans collect to commune and enjoy Trek from their queer perspective. These communities celebrate queer episodes like “Rejoined” and “The Outcast”, as well as the various characters they identify with.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -

The truth is that, before the past handful of years, queer people simply didn’t see themselves that often on TV or in movies. And that’s just talking about the better-known identities; others were practically mythic. Star Trek is different because of its open fluidity, though. There is a lot of room for interpretation in which fans can see themselves.

Hannah, an asexual member of a queer-centered Star Trek Discord, describes her view on Star Trek representation: “As an asexual person, representation in media can often be hard to come by... The character that I relate to most when it comes to romance is Odo. His gripe with “humanoids’ obsession with mating rituals”, while funny at first, is often what it feels like being asexual”.

Hannah goes on to dissect his relationship with Major Kira Nerys, saying, “It’s only after many years of close friendship with Kira that he becomes romantically involved with her. Seeing that sort of romantic representation on screen really meant a lot to me.”

This sort of “representation as interpretation” is hardly a new phenomenon in Trek . It all began with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock themselves. “Not in front of the Klingons”, indeed.

Few other series in the ‘60s showed a male friendship that was affectionate and tender without someone turning it into a taboo or a joke. No wonder the LGBT+ community latched onto Spock and Kirk as queer icons. Whether they were gay or not, they had an openness to their identities that made a significant impact during a time when queer people openly protested against unlawful oppression and traditional gender roles .

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

One specific example of Kirk and Spock’s influence is in the Star Trek fanzine, Grup (named after the term used for “grown-ups' ' in TOS’ season one episode, “Miri”). In 1972, Grup started to circulate, exploring more “grown-up” stories about the fandom’s favorite starship. In its third issue, Grup published one of the first popularized narratives of Spock and Kirk as a romantic couple, “A Fragment Out of Time”.

The tenderness of their bond, whether intentional or not, was a rare outlet where queer people could see something that looked like the romances they themselves experienced. Spock and Kirk’s relationship inevitably became something precious and important to them.

The queer side of Star Trek fandom is full of stories like that: looking up to Riker as a bisexual icon, supporting the romantic subtext of Garak and Dr. Bashir’s relationship, relating to Seven of Nine awkwardly trying to fit into the mold of heterosexuality .

That kind of representation matters deeply to fans questioning their own gender or sexual identities: getting to be themselves, and having people accept them as such.

Why wouldn’t queer fans feel connected to characters that made them feel that way?

And these assumptions are not just fan conjecture. Andrew Robinson (Garak), Alexander Siddig (Dr. Julian Bashir), Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax), Jonathan Frakes (William Riker), and many other Star Trek actors have all discussed their perception of their characters’ sexuality being something much more fluid. Even Gene Roddenberry himself planned to add a gay character to TNG’s main cast in the show’s fifth season . That is, until his untimely death put his progressive idea on ice.

But Roddenberry’s death didn’t stop Star Trek ’s queer representation from being as important as it is. After all, most other queer portrayals in entertainment are based in tragic history or the complex present. Star Trek , in itself, is a vision of a better future. No matter how much war they face or enemies they have to outsmart, no Trek character even bats an eye at the concept of complex sexuality. That is the kind of future the queer community dreams of, one where they can be themselves, fearless and supported.

Stamets and Culber in

Nowadays, Star Trek is a lot more open about its queer representation. In the 2016 film, Star Trek Beyond , Hikaru Sulu was revealed as the first openly gay Trek character, with a husband and daughter . In Star Trek: Discovery , Emperor Georgiou is pansexual, Paul Stamets and Hugh Culber are an influential gay couple running the engineering and medical departments, and Michael Burnham (in name and character) is seen by many queer fans as very gender-fluid, even if she uses she/her pronouns.

To see these characters, past and present, be loved and valued in their work and personal relationships is a detail that has changed many queer lives for the better. It turns Star Trek into a rare haven where members of the LGBTQ+ community can see a future for themselves that is even brighter and more inclusive than they could have ever dreamed. Star Trek ’s lack of explicit queerness in its first decades can’t take away the implications of its own inclusive future.

A Timeline Through the Star Trek Universe

Stephanie Roehler (they/she/he) is a freelancer who loves to write about video games, books, movies, TV shows, comics, and especially Star Trek.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are currently streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the U.K., Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 are also available on the Pluto TV Star Trek channel in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave. Star Trek: Discovery is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Stay tuned to StarTrek.com for more details! And be sure to follow @StarTrek on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram .

Get Updates By Email

Screen Rant

Star trek: a queer history of the franchise.

While the Star Trek franchise has only added explicitly LGBTQ+ characters in the last 4-5 years, it has had ties to queer themes from the beginning.

The Star Trek franchise has always been known to push the boundaries of what is acceptable on mainstream television, and one of the ways it has done this is with explorations of LGBTQ+ themes. Star Trek: The Original Series kicked off the franchise in 1966, in a decade where a lot of social norms were in flux. The topics of race, gender, and sexuality were all being brought to the forefront of the public consciousness, and  TOS began the tradition of using episodes to hold a mirror up to the social and political issues of the day. Following in the footsteps of  TOS ,  every  Star Trek  captain and crew have since continued the trend of addressing pertinent real-world topics.

It is worth noting that, while TOS was a trendsetter in its storylines about race and gender politics, the show never had any explicit representation of queer characters, and neither did Star Trek: The Next Generation . During the time it was airing, there were a considerable number of established rules about what was and was not regarded as acceptable to show on network television. TOS got away with a lot that the network may have not wanted it to show, as did subsequent shows in the franchise, but it is only in the last four to five years that any explicitly LGBTQ+ characters have become part of the increasingly diverse  Star Trek franchise .

Related: Discovery Season 3 Makes Star Trek's TOS Message Relevant Again

This fact may seem like it refutes the idea that  Star Trek  has any kind of queer history. While explicit representation is very important, however, the  Star Trek  universe has historically not needed to be overtly queer in order to still be tied to the LGBTQ+ community. Whether through LGBTQ+ actors, the exploration of sociological and political themes, or by garnering the interest of queer fans who have felt a connection with certain characters, Stark Trek has a thread of queerness that can be followed throughout the majority of its shows and movies.

Star Trek: The Original Series

As stated previously, TOS  did not feature any LGBTQ+ main characters, but George Takei, who portrayed Helmsman Hikaru Sulu , came out as gay in 2005, years after the end of the show's run. Since then, Takei has been a visible and active member of the LGBTQ+ community and champion of LGBTQ+ rights, for which he is known by even younger generations of sci-fi fans. Sulu was one of the main characters on TOS , and to know now that he was portrayed by a gay man who has always championed queer issues makes both Sulu and Takei very important figures in Star Trek's queer history.

Additionally, TOS saw the creation of a fan community that became drawn to two characters for what they perceived as the characters' queer subtext, namely Captain James T. Kirk and his First Officer Spock. The fandom that sprung up around Kirk and Spock is credited with the origins of "slash". Slash is when fans create fanworks such as writing or art that depict two male or two female characters from a specific piece of media in a same-sex relationship. The name slash comes from the backslash that is often added between the two characters' names to denote them as a couple (i.e. "Kirk/Spock"). Despite never being a couple on the show, Kirk and Spock were portrayed as one by fans in a number of fanzines that were passed around via mail during the 1970s, the precursor to current online fan communities. Whether the queer subtext between Kirk and Spock was intentional or not, the two characters are inextricably linked to the LGBTQ+ community for people who know their fandom history.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Similar to TOS , Star Trek: The Next Generation , which ran from 1987 to 1994, had no explicitly LGBTQ+ main characters. One episode of the series, however, stands out as a compelling allegory for queer issues. Season 7 episode 17, titled "The Outcast", tells the story of the Enterprise crew encountering a group of aliens called the J'naii from a planet where binary gender does not exist. The J'naii all identify as gender-neutral, and anyone who harbors feelings of being either male or female is considered deviant and sick by society. During the course of the episode, Commander Riker works very closely with a J'naii named Soren, who reveals to him that she feels as though she is female. True to Riker's romancing skills , the two become close and begin a romantic relationship, but when they are discovered Soren is immediately put before a hearing to decide her fate, where she makes an impassioned plea for herself and people like her to be treated better by J'naii society. "It is not unnatural." She tells her people. "I am not sick because I feel this way. I do not need to be helped. I do not need to be cured."

Related: Lower Decks Proves TNG Era Is The Best Version Of Star Trek

Soren's speech during her hearing is a powerful and poignant message about the plight of those deemed different from the rest of society, and for those in the LGBTQ+ community watching this episode of The Next Generation when it first aired in 1992, her words must have hit home in some very meaningful ways. Sadly, they were not enough to save Soren from undergoing treatment that "cured" her inclinations towards femininity. A tragic end such as this one was the long-time norm for most queer characters on television and in movies, but despite this, the show still uses "The Outcast" to push the boundaries with regards to gender and sexuality, showcasing the plight of LGBTQ+ people during the early 1990s.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Arguably, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the first show in the Star Trek franchise that had a main character who could be read as queer, in the form of Lieutenant Commander Jadzia (and later Ezri) Dax. Dax is a joined Trill , which means that she shares a body with a slug-like symbiont. While Trills have a lifespan similar to humans, the symbionts they coexist with are extremely long-lived and share multiple bodies across multiple lifetimes. More importantly, although Trills do have binary gender, the symbionts are not placed in exclusively male or exclusively female bodies, meaning that Dax has lived lives as both men and women.

Jadzia identifies as female, but the Trill as a race seem to have no issues with switching gender identity, or similarly, with same-sex relationships. "Rejoined", the sixth episode of  Deep Space Nine   season 4, shows Dax rekindling a relationship with Lenara Kahn, the wife of one of her past hosts. Although Dax used to be in a male body when she was married to Kahn, both are in female bodies when they reunite. Ultimately, the two women are barred from resurrecting their relationship by a different taboo in Trill society, one that prevents joined Trill from "reassociating" with past lovers lest they be ostracised. This taboo can be read as another allegory for the real-life discrimination LGBTQ+ couples face, but the show does not treat the fact that Jadzia and Lenara are women as a big deal. "Rejoined" was the first Star Trek show to depict a same-sex kiss, a big step forward for representation in the franchise.

Additionally, like TOS , Deep Space Nine is another example of a show where fans took an interest in two same-sex characters because of their queer subtext. The characters of Doctor Julian Bashir and Elim Garak, a Cardassian tailor were the subject of much speculation by the fandom, and interest in them as a couple remains high to the day. This interest, unlike what sprung up around Kirk and Spock, was also somewhat supported by both actors and the writers during the show's run. Andrew Robinson has said he deliberately played Garak as attracted to Bashir, and some of the creative heads including producer Ira Steven Behr expressed interest in exploring the idea of a romance further, although the idea ultimately never came to fruition.

Related: Star Trek DS9: How Dax Became A Trans Icon

The Reboot Films

The reboot films are the next stop on Star Trek's queer timeline, mostly because Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise were largely devoid of queer themes. The reboot, however, picks up the thread in 2009, following alternate timeline versions of Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the TOS  Enterprise crew. Similar to the show that inspired them, the films feature an openly gay actor as part of the main cast: Zachary Quinto, who was cast in the role of Spock in Star Trek (2009). Quinto   has also been publicly out as gay since 2011 and is a strong advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and issues, much like George Takei.

Besides having a queer actor, the reboot films are arguably the first time an explicitly queer character becomes part of the Star Trek franchise. As a nod towards Takei, the creative team behind the third film,  Star Trek: Beyond , chose to have their version of Sulu be in a same-sex relationship. The relationship is revealed at the beginning of Beyond , in a small scene that garnered both praise and criticism from fans. Some felt that the scene was too brief, and did not depict enough of the relationship to be called representation. George Takei even agreed with this, saying that while he appreciated being honored in this way, making Sulu gay betrayed Gene Roddenberry's original vision for the character. Despite this, Sulu and his family did mark another step in the right direction.

Star Trek: Discovery

Star Trek: Discovery is one of the most recent additions to the franchise, and also the show that has the most LGBTQ+ representation to-date. Star Trek: Discovery , premiered in 2017, has a total of five explicitly queer characters as part of the main cast. Engineer Paul Stamets and ships Doctor Hugh Culber were introduced as Star Trek's  gay couple in the first season, and actors Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, both part of the LGBTQ+ community themselves, have garnered praise for their portrayals of the characters. Meanwhile, the character of Jett Reno joined the crew in season 2, played by openly gay stand-up-comedian Tig Notaro. Discovery also boasts two newer queer characters as part of the cast in season 3; Adira and Gray are non-binary and transgender respectively and are played by actors who share their characters' gender identities.

This massive influx of queer characters is jarring when looked at against previous representation in the franchise, but it is also indicative of the time in which Discovery was created. During the twelve-year gap between the end of Star Trek: Enterprise and the beginning of Discovery ,  the amount of LGBTQ+ representation on television skyrocketed. Where other shows in the franchise existed in an age that was still reluctant to depict queer themes on-screen, Discovery  has no such qualms by virtue of airing in the 2010s. This has allowed the show to fulfill the full promise of one of Star Trek's  best-known mottos: infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Related: Star Trek: Discovery’s Most Important Retcon Is Stamets and Culber

This can be best observed in Adira and Gray's story arc in  Star Trek: Discovery season 4. Back in season 3, Gray gets killed during an attack on the ship, and Adira volunteers to join with Gray's Trill symbiont Tal, causing Adira to gain the memories of not just Gray, but every previous Trill host to Tal. After Adira and Tal are properly joined, Adira Tal continues to talk to Gray as an entity that only they can see. In  Star Trek: Discovery  season 4, Dr. Hugh Culber uses the technology that created Jean-Luc Picard's synthetic body to give Gray's consciousness his own body, allowing Adira Tal and Gray to reunite in the physical world. Through Gray and Adira Tal's still-developing relationship,  Star Trek  not only advances transgender and non-binary representation, but also explores non-traditional relationships and the continued evolution of queer identities.

Star Trek: Picard

Like Discovery , Star Trek: Picard is a recent addition to the franchise, and further contributes to queer representation by diving deeper into the sexual orientation and gender identity of two classic characters. This can be seen in the final episode of Star Trek: Picard  season 1, which revealed that Seven Of Nine, a fan-favorite character first introduced on Star Trek: Voyager , is queer. In Star Trek: Picard , Seven was shown sharing an affectionate moment with another main character, Raffi Musiker, during which the two women held hands and exchanged a meaningful look. Directly after the episode, actress Jeri Ryan expressed that she thinks Seven is pansexual. While fans have yet to see any more of Seven and Raffi's relationship, the emphasis put on their small scene suggests there is definitely more to come.

The decision to reveal more about the sexuality of an already established character like Seven of Nine lends further credence to the idea that there have always been queer themes in the Star Trek franchise. Star Trek has never shied away from their message of a utopic future for everyone, no matter how they look, how they identify, or who they choose to love. From the very beginning, way before characters like Seven of Nine could be openly gay, the franchise has helped LGBTQ+ people see themselves as they would like to be seen, and while this has only gotten easier as society has become more accepting, Star Trek has been part of a queer television legacy from the beginning.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

Star Trek: Lower Decks protagonist Beckett Mariner has been confirmed as bisexual by series creator Mike McMahan. As McMahan explains, Mariner's close friend Capt. Ramsey was Mariner's lover during her days at Starfleet Academy. There are more hints about Mariner's bisexuality in  Star Trek: Lower Decks  season 1, as seen in the sexual tension between Mariner and Jack Ransom, and Mariner mentioning that she dated an Anabaj, who seem to be predominantly female. According to McMahan, he and the writers didn't intentionally write any of the characters as straight, cisgender, or heteronormative, citing how all Starfleet officers are most likely, at the baseline, bisexual. In  Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 , McMahan follows through on his promise to more explicitly depict Mariner as queer, as seen when Mariner says  “Oh I'm always dating bad boys, bad girls, bad gender non-binary babes, ruthless alien masterminds, bad Bynars.”  Moreover,  Star Trek: Lower Decks  was the first animated  Star Trek   series, which means that it boldly advances queer representation in spaces where none of the live-action series and movies have gone before.

More: Star Trek: Is The Phrase "To Boldly Go" Grammatically Incorrect?

The Queer Legacy of Star Trek

Column: star trek: discovery is just the latest iteration of the franchise to push boundaries., rejoined and re-coded on ds9.

Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell, right) is reunited with old flame Lenara Kahn (Susanna Thompson, left) in DS9's "Rejoined."

More on Star Trek: Discovery

The outcast of next generation.

Soren (Melinda Culea) from TNG's "The Outcast"

Stigmatized Vulcans on Enterprise

Enterprise's T'Pol faces down the Vulcan establishment in "Stigma."

Star Trek: Discovery Easter Eggs - Episode 9: "Into the Forest I Go"

Here are all the Easter eggs, references and nods we could find in Season 1, episode nine of Star Trek: Discovery, “Into the Forest I Go.” <strong>Full spoilers follow for the season to date!</strong>

In This Article

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

IGN Recommends

Epic Boss Tim Sweeney Emailed Gabe Newell to Call Valve 'Assholes' Over Steam Fees

  • Craft and Criticism
  • Fiction and Poetry
  • News and Culture
  • Lit Hub Radio
  • Reading Lists

gay star trek episode

  • Literary Criticism
  • Craft and Advice
  • In Conversation
  • On Translation
  • Short Story
  • From the Novel
  • Bookstores and Libraries
  • Film and TV
  • Art and Photography
  • Freeman’s
  • The Virtual Book Channel
  • Behind the Mic
  • Beyond the Page
  • The Cosmic Library
  • The Critic and Her Publics
  • Emergence Magazine
  • Fiction/Non/Fiction
  • First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
  • Future Fables
  • The History of Literature
  • I’m a Writer But
  • Just the Right Book
  • Lit Century
  • The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan
  • New Books Network
  • Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
  • Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
  • Write-minded
  • The Best of the Decade
  • Best Reviewed Books
  • BookMarks Daily Giveaway
  • The Daily Thrill
  • CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

gay star trek episode

Why Did It Take So Long for Star Trek to Embrace Queer Characters?

"it’s bewildering yet predictable that prior to the 21st century, trek only used analogies to talk about queerness.".

Star Trek fandom is made up of several generations, and not all of those generations communicate effectively with one another. “Star Trek Twitter” freely uses the word “Trekkie,” even though older Trekkers shame them on that one. Gatekeeping from historical know-it-alls is a problem in Trek fandom, just as much as it is with Star Wars trolls. And often, much of that gatekeeping simply comes from a “get off my lawn” mentality from older generations.

But one area the smart Trek fan generations are united in is this: It took way too long for the franchise to get its act together with LGBTQ+ representation, and even the fans who didn’t live through those years are aware of that painful truth. The outcry over Dr. Culber’s death wasn’t just about the possible perpetuation of a harmful trope; it was a collective groan from queer Trek fans who, as a community, had been waiting for healthy, happy gay characters in Star Trek since Gene Roddenberry promised they would appear.

In 1986, just after the existence of The Next Generation had been made public, fans at conventions started asking whether we’d finally see gay people in Starfleet. At a 20th-anniversary convention in Boston, a representative of a gay Star Trek fan club—the Gaylaxians—confronted Roddenberry directly about the issue. Franklin Hummel, a librarian and member of the Gaylaxians, wanted to know “if there would be a gay character on the new show.” Roddenberry gave a half-hearted promise, responding, “Sooner or later, we’ll have to address the issue. We should probably have a gay character.” Sooner turned out to be later. Much later.

Closeted for much of his early career, George Takei tells a story of Gene Roddenberry swimming toward him at a pool party in Los Angeles, during the run of The Original Series. Takei hit him up with the idea of tackling gay rights and, according to the story, Roddenberry was open to the idea but was too afraid of the series getting canceled over a “firestorm.”

“‘The times will change as we move along,’” Takei remembers Roddenberry saying. “‘But at this point, I can’t do that.’” Assuming this conversation took place when Takei remembers it happening—sometime between 1966 and 1968, it’s notable Roddenberry was talking about this kind of representation at all. Then again, any straight man working in the arts—like Roddenberry—would find himself working alongside gay people.

In fact, the man who designed the costumes for Star Trek , William Ware Theiss, was gay. That said, we don’t really need to pat Roddenberry on the back here too much. Despite what he said to Takei, putting a gay character in TOS at all was almost certainly never on the table. But the fact that George Takei even had this chat with Roddenberry in the 1960s is saying something.

We tend to give Star Trek a lot of credit for pushing racial boundaries on TV, but the truth is, the Civil Rights movement was a very public, massive social movement happening while the show was being produced. The NAACP existed in the 1960s. GLAAD did not. And just to put it in perspective, the Stonewall riots happened on June 28, 1969, three weeks after Star Trek aired “Turnabout Intruder,” its final episode. So, again, assuming this story from Takei is legit, Takei pushing Roddenberry into a “gay rights” story line was a hundred times edgier than any of the other boundaries Trek broke during TOS .

Roddenberry may have been a risk-taker when it came to race issues on TV, but in the 60s, he was also participating in a movement that was fashionable for white liberals to support. This doesn’t detract from the accomplishments of The Original Series , but it does make you think about that tricky pop culture sci-fi mirror. Social change can be amplified by pop culture, and in that way, Star Trek is one of the best signal boosters of all time.

Pre-21st-century Star Trek certainly showed a lot of bravery, but when it came time for gay characters to possibly appear in The Next Generation , that era of Star Trek failed to provide a meaningful mirror. When Roddenberry launched TNG , he promised his writers that writing about AIDS and homophobia would happen on his show. And why not? Star Trek: The Next Generation was a syndicated program and, as such, had fewer rules from Paramount about what they could and couldn’t do. If a local station didn’t want to carry the series because it depicted gay people, that was their business. And yet, with all that freedom, Roddenberry didn’t do it.

Infamously, “Trouble with Tribbles” writer David Gerrold wrote a script called “Blood and Fire” for TNG , which would have depicted gay crew members on the Enterprise while also tackling a kind of 24th-century version of HIV. Although Roddenberry claimed to support the script, the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself seems to be the person who shot it down, allegedly saying the script was “a piece of shit.” Gerrold mostly ascribes these viewpoints to Roddenberry’s manic behavior and substance abuse during the early years of The Next Generation , once recalling that “I don’t know how much [Roddenberry] drank because I never saw him sober.”

Others suggest that Roddenberry’s canceling of “Blood and Fire” can be attributed to his aggressive lawyer and puppeteer Leonard Maizlish. When Herb Wright was assigned to rewrite “Blood and Fire,” he learned that much of the negative notes supposedly written by Roddenberry originated, more likely, with Maizlish. And in 2014, David Gerrold himself blamed the “clusterfuck” on homophobia deriving from longtime Trek producer Rick Berman.

Still, regardless of whose fault it was, the fact remains that “Blood and Fire,” a Season 1 Next Generation episode set to depict gay people in the 24th century, never got made. [i]  In the 2003 Enterprise episode “Stigma,” the Trek franchise asserted a vague HIV analogy; what if mind-melds were considered taboo among Vulcans at a certain point in history? Not only was this episode two decades after the dust-up involving “Blood and Fire,” it also failed to portray any gay characters.

In fact, after The Next Generation debuted in 1987, across four different Trek series for 18 years, all the way up to the year 2005, there was not one explicitly gay character from “our” universe. In Deep Space Nine , it was insinuated that series regulars Kira (Nana Visitor), Ezri Dax (Nicole de Boer), and Leeta (Chase Masterson) were all bisexual. Oh, wait a minute. Their evil duplicates from the Mirror Universe were bisexual! In the regular universe, they were not. These bisexual baddies also reinforced negative stereotypes that LGBTQ folks have looser morals, simply by virtue of being not straight. In terms of progress, Mirror Universe bisexual characters were more out, but not exactly good role models in the way other Trek characters are.

Although characters on The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , Enterprise , and Voyager were often coded or read as queer by the fans, none of the Trek series actually managed to depict an overtly non-straight character without some kind of twist or metaphor. Because of this fact, you can start to understand why Trek fans in 2018 felt like they’d had the rug pulled out from under them with Culber’s fake-out death. It’s bewildering and yet, somehow, predictable that prior to the 21st century, Trek only used analogies to talk about queerness.

For queer fans like S. E. Fleenor, this meant finding characters that were “coded” as queer. When I asked Fleenor about Seven of Nine’s queerness, they pointed out: “We can hold creators, including Gene Roddenberry, responsible for refusing to embrace queer and trans characters and story lines as more than subtext. Their queerphobia and transphobia outside the world of Star Trek had a huge impact on the world created within the narrative.” To their point, even with TNG , some of the attempts at writing toward gay rights issues ended up sending a mixed message.

Perhaps the most divisive episode of The Next Generation is the 1992 episode “The Outcast.” Written by Jeri Taylor, the episode introduces a single-gender alien species called the J’naii. On this planet, gender is considered “primitive,” and if individuals claim to have gender leanings one way or another, they are required to undergo “therapy,” which basically brainwashes them into the cultural norms of the planet.

Watching “The Outcast” today is a mine-field, partly because Riker admits to the guest character Soren (Melinda Culea) that he can’t figure out what pronouns to use if people aren’t either male or female. The most overtly heterosexual character on the ship of course falls in love with a nonbinary alien who, as it turns out, wants to declare their gender as female, which is forbidden by her culture.

Arguably, Taylor’s gay allegory was well-intentioned, but the writing feels directed at heterosexuals. Because a gay allegory was written for a straight audience, many of the queer people in the audience at the time were understandably offended. “We thought we had made a very positive statement about sexual prejudice in a distinctively Star Trek way,” producer Rick Berman said in 1992. “But we still got letters from those who thought it was just our way of ‘washing our hands’ of the homosexual situation.”

Jeri Taylor went on record saying “The Outcast” was intended as an “outspokenly . . . gay rights story.” But was it? Although the contemporary reputation of “The Outcast” is very mixed, the episode has gained some renewed praise in the 21st century. Writing for Star Trek.com in 2020, Nitzan Pincu points out, “By giving Soren the chance to rebel against her oppression, the episode voices a queer plea to free sexual ‘others’ . . . Her reprogramming illustrates the dehumanizing effect of conversion therapy, which was little known outside of the gay community at the time the episode aired.”

Even when Trek failed to provide real representation, “The Outcast” can be read as a case for allyship. As Pincu mentions, Worf initially presents a bigoted attitude toward the nonbinary J’naii, but by the end of the episode, he’s the one who decides to go against orders and help Riker rescue Soren. If the goal of “The Outcast” was to make antigay straight families uncomfortable in 1992 and give kids something to think about that broke through the sexual dogma they’d been taught, then the episode was successful.

I was 11 when the episode aired, and I specifically remember it challenging my assumptions about who Riker was allowed to crush on. The episode may not be remotely progressive by 21st-century standards, but Jeri Taylor’s heart was certainly in the right place. It may not be a moment to applaud, but I dare anyone to find another action-adventure series aimed at families, airing in 1992, that depicted the hunkiest straight dude in the universe falling in love with someone who is clearly queer, and in terms of a contemporary reading, clearly a trans character. Most of Soren’s conversations with Riker at the top of the episode are about pronouns. It’s clunky in 2022, but in 1992, you’d be hard-pressed to find another big TV show in which characters were having frank conversations about which pronouns they preferred.

___________________________

phasers on stun!

From Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World by Ryan Britt. Copyright © 2022 by the author and reprinted with permission of Plume Books.

[i]  In 2008, “Blood and Fire” was made as a fan film “episode” by James Cawley’s series Star Trek: Phase II , later rebranded as Star Trek: New Voyages . David Gerrold wrote and directed the piece, which retooled his TNG script into a TOS setting. In this version, Kirk’s nephew Peter Kirk was gay. It enjoyed in-person screenings at Star Trek conventions but existed almost exclusively online as a nonprofit fan film. In 2008, Paramount and CBS had to implement more draconian policies about fan films, meaning “Blood and Fire” probably couldn’t have been made today.

  • Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Ryan Britt

Previous Article

Next article, support lit hub..

Support Lit Hub

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

gay star trek episode

Follow us on Twitter

gay star trek episode

Secrets of the Book Designer: On Typography, Painting, and Finding That Single Visual Moment

  • RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

gay star trek episode

Become a member for as low as $5/month

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

  • Backchannel
  • Newsletters
  • WIRED Insider
  • WIRED Consulting

John Scott Lewinski

Gay Star Trek Episode Finally Beams in at 'Phase II'

Poster_baf_hayes1

The new online episode ( "Blood and Fire" ) goes live tomorrow and features a story by former Trek TV writer David Gerrold. While executives shot down the story as too controversial for broadcast originally, Phase II adapted the script for its re-created Original Series world.

The story features the nephew of James T. Kirk in a gay relationship with an Enterprise crewman as the ship faces an AIDS-like contagion and a threat from the Klingon empire. It would seem Kirk would oppose California's Prop. 8, as the captain evidently agrees to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony for his nephew -- if NCC-1701 survives.

Image courtesy Phase II

  • Star Trek's Barrett-Roddenberry Dead at 76
  • Star Trek Tweaker Talks Perils of Remastering Original Series
  • Star Trek Comics Arrive for iPhone, iPod
  • New Star Trek Will Be Younger, Faster, Louder

Meet the Disney Imagineer Building You a Real-Life Holodeck

Marah Eakin

The 48 Best Shows on Disney+ Right Now

Jennifer M. Wood

The 16 Sci-Fi Movies You Need to Watch Before You Die

Elizabeth Minkel

The 35 Best Shows on Hulu Right Now

Megan Farokhmanesh

Give Us an Xbox Handheld Already

Den of Geek

Star Trek Beyond and LGBT Representation in the Trek Franchise

Following the recent news from Star Trek Beyond, we look at Star Trek's track record when it comes to queer issues and characters

gay star trek episode

  • Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)
  • Share on Twitter (opens in a new tab)
  • Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)
  • Share on email (opens in a new tab)

Many Star Trek fans are celebrating following the news that, in the upcoming movie Star Trek Beyond , Sulu is confirmed as being in a long-term relationship with another man. This kind of queer representation has been a long time coming for the Star Trek franchise.

The Original Series wasn’t afraid to tackle social issues, with a racially diverse cast and episodes dealing – literally or allegorically – with women’s rights, racial divisions and the futility of war, but the later installments in the franchise have shied away from taking the obvious next step of including queer characters.

In 1991, Gene Roddenberry made a statement on his plans to include gay characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation , but following his death shortly afterwards, the production team were slow to follow up on his promises. Throughout the 1990s, fans were engaged in letter-writing campaigns asking for gay characters, some of which were endorsed by actors appearing in the franchise, but the response from Paramount was at best dismissive and at worst outright hostile.

The Outcast , a fifth-season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, at least made a sincere attempt at tackling queer issues. When the crew encounter a genderless species (who also don’t traditionally have romantic or sexual relationships), Riker falls for one of them – an individual named Soren who’s grappling with her femaleness and her attraction to men, Riker included. The episode gets plenty wrong – conflating having no gender with asexuality, using a character who is essentially transgender as a metaphor for gay people without really realizing that was what they were doing, and assuming that androgynous people would automatically wear drab clothing and have bad haircuts (a quick Google Images search of “nonbinary style” will show you how far off the mark that is).

Ad – content continues below

Plus there’s the fact that the romance still plays out between characters played by a cisgender man and a cisgender woman – Jonathan Frakes pushed for Soren to be a man, feeling that this would make the message of the episode clearer, but this idea was ultimately rejected for being too “unpalatable to viewers.”  The Outcast could have, and should have, gone a lot further. But Soren’s heartfelt speech at her hearing, in which she defends herself and those like her, is stirring and beautiful, and still speaks to queer audiences today.

The Outcast is just one part of a pattern visible across the Star Trek shows of the 1990s and 2000s, of attempting to tackle queer issues but falling short of the mark, or of backing away from dealing with them at all. Plans to have a same-gender couple holding hands in Ten Forward , in the background of a scene where Guinan explains the concept of romantic love to Data’s daughter Lal, were nixed at the last minute. When Doctor Crusher fell in love with a male ambassador from the joined Trill species who later moved to a female host, the episode hinted that in other circumstances they could have continued their relationship, but ultimately Beverly couldn’t handle the idea of a lover who looked different from one day to the next.

The ill-fated AIDS-allegory episode Blood And Fire , written by David Gerrold, would have featured actual human gay characters, but it was shot down at the script stage. There was speculation that Seven of Nine might be a lesbian, but those ideas were never realized, and Voyager reinforced the idea of heterosexuality-as-default in countless other small ways across all seven seasons.

Deep Space Nine fared a little better in some respects, with possibly the most positive and unembarrassed portrayal of queerness so far seen in Star Trek .

In the fourth-season episode Rejoined , Jadzia Dax – the latest host of the long-lived Dax symbiont – encounters a woman called Lenara Kahn. Two earlier hosts of the Dax and Kahn symbionts had been in a (male-female) marriage, and in the episode Jadzia and Lenara make an ill-fated attempt to rekindle their relationship. This episode does plenty right – none of the characters are surprised at the idea of a same-gender relationship, and the tension comes from the Trill taboo around reassociating with lovers from past lives, allowing the episode to comment on some of the difficulties of queer relationships while still making it clear that same-gender attraction is normal in Star Trek ’ s future.

What’s more, Jadzia and Lenara even got to kiss onscreen – an important moment for queer kids growing up in the ’90s, including the one writing this article. Even the sad ending – and the furious reaction from some viewers – didn’t ruin the excitement of seeing a main character on Star Trek kiss another woman.

Having established Jadzia’s bisexuality, though, the production team more or less forgot about it for the rest of the show’s run – except for her flirting on Risa with her previous host Curzon’s old lover Arandis, in the fifth-season episode Let He Who Is Without Sin… Both times Jadzia was attracted to women, it was connected in some way with her previous male hosts. While that doesn’t invalidate her sexuality – she’s still the first queer regular character in Star Trek – it is a shame that her story was never taken further than that, especially given that joined Trill have the potential to be so fascinating from a gender and sexuality perspective.

Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Deep Space Nine did do a little better than its sister shows in terms of casual background queerness – Jadzia isn’t thrown by the idea of gay Ferengi, Bashir and O’Brien happily plan a baby shower for a pregnant male colleague, several characters in the Mirror Universe are queer – but they missed just as many opportunities as The Next Generation and Voyager . Odo’s identity was generally presented as uncomplicatedly, male, and heterosexual, in spite of his origins as a blob of goo with no concept of gender or sexuality. In Garak’s first appearance he unmistakably flirted with Doctor Bashir, but actor Andrew J. Robinson was asked to dial back that aspect of his performance in subsequent episodes (not that this stopped the army of Garak/Bashir shippers). And the Mirror Universe, for all that it did present interesting queer versions of several of the main cast, played into uncomfortable stereotypes about bisexuals with Intendant Kira, as well as leading to concerns that most of the queer representation in Star Trek was kept separate from the main universe, in a darker and more morally ambiguous alternate timeline.

Deep Space Nine also featured possibly one of the most offensive explorations of queer issues even seen in Star Trek – the episode Profit And Lace , in which Quark has to pose as a female Ferengi in order to take his trailblazing mother Ishka’s place in sensitive negotiations, is a solid 45 minutes of offensive stereotypes about women in general and trans women in particular. After Deep Space Nine ’s comparatively decent record on queer issues, it was a disappointment to many queer fans.

The first season of Enterprise premiered in 2001, when lesbian Tara Maclay was appearing in Buffy The Vampire Slayer , Queer As Folk US was airing, Dawson’s Creek had recently featured a kiss between two men, and Will And Grace was going strong. But in spite of increasing pressure from fans – and indeed from actors in other parts of the franchise – Enterprise still had no queer regular characters.

The show’s handling of issues to do with gender and sexuality was generally clumsy and occasionally deeply offensive – a man being pregnant was played as over-the-top comedy, Tucker and Reed made transphobic jokes on a night out, and a storyline about a disease passed by a subculture of mind-melding Vulcans was a deliberate AIDS allegory but didn’t actually discuss or include queerness in any way. While Star Trek has a long and honorable tradition of using allegory to comment on current issues, fans had expected that by now there would be straightforward depictions of queer characters and concerns as well as metaphorical ones.

Enterprise ’s one genuine attempt to explore gender was Cogenitor , a second-season episode about a species with a ‘third gender’ treated as an underclass. While the episode had some interesting ideas, it was simplistic in its understanding of the issues it touched on, and the potential queerness of the storyline was smothered beneath the episode’s main point about non-interference with other cultures.

The one really bright spot in Star Trek ’s portrayal of queer characters to date is the expanded universe of novels. In the years since Enterprise finished airing, multiple queer characters have had starring and supporting roles in tie-in books. Lieutenant Hawk, a minor on-screen character in Star Trek: First Contact , was written as a gay man, but references to it were removed from later versions of the script. The novel Section 31: Rogue , by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin, restored that aspect of his identity, and from there the books have built up a respectable roster of queer characters. Ranul Keru, the Trill partner of the doomed Lieutenant Hawk, serves as chief of security on the Titan. Jeri Taylor’s Pathways, which explores the life stories of the crew of Voyager, features a background gay couple and a gay Starfleet Academy roommate for Harry Kim. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers novels feature a gay couple, and the DS9 relaunch books feature a lesbian couple.

The DS9 relaunch also expanded on a canonical throwaway line about Andorian weddings to create a rich and detailed vision of an Andorian society with four sexes which interact in complex and fascinating ways, and novels set on Cardassia following the Dominion War featured Garak’s ‘close friendship’ with Kelas Parmak, a relationship that skirts so close to being canon that it’s basically the Xena and Gabrielle of the Star Trek tie-in universe. While the books have yet to feature new bisexual or transgender characters, they’re miles ahead of onscreen Trek ’s efforts so far.

All that could be about to change, though. Many fans are hoping that the revelation of Sulu’s sexuality is just the beginning. One gay main character would have been pushing the envelope for The Next Generation , but now, well into the twenty-first century and with queer characters increasingly visible in film and television (egregious mortality rates notwithstanding), if Star Trek wants to maintain its reputation of being ahead of the curve on social issues, it needs to do better than that.

Fans are hopeful that Bryan Fuller, the showrunner of the new Star Trek series set to land in early 2017, who is gay himself, understands that and is ready to explore the full range of possibilities. We don’t just want one gay character. We want to see well-rounded gay, lesbian and bisexual characters who have more going on than their sexuality. We want to see human (and Vulcan and Klingon and Trill…) transgender, nonbinary and asexual characters – not just alien species that have a different concept of gender than the human status quo. We want to see queer characters of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, queer characters with disabilities, queer characters of all sizes and body types. We want to see a portrayal of the Star Trek universe that – much like Russell T. Davies’ Doctor Who – casually includes queer characters and relationships in small but noticeable ways.

Perhaps we can’t have all of that at once, but the mood in the fandom right now is optimistic that we might at least make a good start. And the news that Sulu is happily married to a man in Star Trek Beyond feels to me like an exciting step in the right direction.

This article first appeared on Den of Geek UK .

Llinos Cathryn Thomas

Llinos Cathryn Thomas

Jonathan Frakes Doesn't Think Star Trek Went Far Enough With The Next Generation's LGBT Episode

Star Trek: The Next Generation The Outcast

In the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Outcast" (March 6, 1992), the crew of the Enterprise aids a species called the J'naii in locating and rescuing a missing shuttlecraft. The J'naii are a genderless species, claiming to have evolved past specific gender identities. In their society, any expression of maleness or femaleness is considered darkly taboo, and gendered sexual contact has been criminalized. Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) spends a great deal of the episode working with a J'naii pilot named Soren (Melinda Culea) and the two bond. Soren will eventually reveal that she feels more female than genderless and that she is attracted to Riker. When Soren's gender identity reaches the other J'naii officials, she is threatened with the sci-fi equivalent of a conversion camp.

By today's politics, "The Outcast" feels clumsy in its attempts to discuss gender identity. It can, however, be commended for even attempting to tell a trans story in a mainstream sci-fi context as early as 1992.

"The Outcast" was a response to a concern that "Star Trek" didn't feature enough explicitly queer stories and that queer characters rarely appeared in the franchise. Only very occasionally would the Enterprise encounter an androgynous species (the Bynars, for instance) or allude to the fluid nature of gender (Data's child Lal is permitted to select their own gender and appearance in "The Offspring"), and there was hardly ever any explicit references to queer sex. "The Offspring" was the franchise's attempt to redress that failing and it only partially succeeded.

In the oral history book "Captains' Logs" edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Frakes went on record saying that "The Offspring" wasn't nearly queer enough.

Trek's fraught queer history

"Star Trek" is often touted for its progressive attitudes and themes of multiculturalism, but when it comes to LGBTQ characters, it's often fallen short. Some apologists might argue that the franchise's future was so welcoming to queer people that their sexuality was no longer mentioned, but in never mentioning queer people, they are being explicitly erased. When it came to relationships, "Star Trek" was frustratingly heteronormative. On "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) was perhaps the first kinda-queer representation in the franchise. Jadzia was a humanoid woman with a long-lived sentient worm living in her stomach that gets reimplanted in a new host every 70 years or so. The symbiote — Dax — had been male and female in its life, and many queer and trans viewers appreciated the character's fluidity.

When it came to "The Outcast," it was pushed especially hard by writer and supervising producer Jeri Taylor. She was clear in her desire to write a sci-fi version of a queer rights story. In the early '90s, Taylor felt that those kinds of stories weren't common enough on network TV. She was quoted in "Captains' Logs" as saying:

"It came out of staff discussion. We had wanted to do a gay rights story and had not been able to figure out how to do it in an interesting science-fiction, 'Star Trek'-ian way. It came up with the idea of turning it on its ear and I really wanted to do it because, partly, it would be controversial and I welcome that. The idea of any drama is to touch people's feelings and engage them, whether you make them laugh, cry, angry."

But, Taylor was quick to point out, she isn't queer, and may have been underqualified to write such a story.

Not gutsy enough

One could say that "The Offspring" doesn't hit as hard as it does because of its casting. The J'naii are supposed to be genderless, but Soren was played by a cis female actor. Ultimately, when Riker and Soren kiss, audiences are just watching a cishet man and a cishet woman kissing. The themes are queer, but there's technically no queer kiss on camera. Frakes felt that the episode would have been stronger if Soren had been played by a cis male actor (this was long before Paramount casting directors would have thought to seek nonbinary performers):

"I didn't think they were gutsy enough to take it where they should have. [...] Soren should have been more obviously male. We've gotten a lot of mail on this episode, but I'm not sure it was as good as it could have been ... if they were trying to do what they call a gay episode."

In other words: make it gay, you cowards.

"The Outcast" has been the subject of a lot of discussions, and a 2001 article in Salon recorded some fan reactions nine years after its airing. Some queer viewers noted that the strictly enforced genderlessness of J'naii society could be traced as a parallel to bigoted right-wing monsters like Rush Limbaugh. In both cases, there was a call to erase alternate sexualities from the spectrum and force people to rid themselves of queer sexual desire.

Others felt a little disappointed that "Star Trek" had to dabble with sci-fi symbolism at all. Why must gender fluidity, nonbinary people, and queer sexuality all be couched in metaphor? Why not just ... tell a queer story? It felt like an evasion.

The old guard of straight guys

Would Frakes have kissed a male actor on camera? In "Captains' Logs," writer Brannon Braga thought so. Male-male kisses were staggeringly uncommon on TV in 1992, so it would have been considered a "daring" move for a straight actor to make. Braga agreed with Frakes, though, that "The Outcast" could have gone much further:

"The risks were what Jeri did with the gems of the episode, like talking about sexual organs on the shuttlecraft. I felt they could have gone further [and] Picard could have been less passive. Riker's a big boy and he sparks conflicts in ethics among the characters. To get someone in there [who's] a catalyst for conflicts among our characters is a rare thing."

The fact remains that "The Next Generation" was overseen by a bunch of old cishet men who didn't realize they hadn't included any queer characters on their show until viewers wrote in to point that out to them. Producer Michael Piller recalled talking to show creator Gene Roddenberry — shortly before he died in 1991 — about the possibility of including a queer character on the show, and Gene only considered depicting two men holding hands in a scene.

Producer Rick Berman felt it was a fine story about intolerance. He also admitted "The Outcast" was ultimately a half-measure:

"It did not satisfy certain [people in] the gay and lesbian community because it was not what they were asking for, which was to introduce a gay or lesbian character in a normal and acceptable way as one of the members of the crew. But I think it did deal with the issue of intolerance towards sexual orientation and it met that objective well."

"Star Trek: Discovery," meanwhile, has five queer main characters.

  • The BIG Sci-Fi Podcast
  • Con Pod: A Star Trek Convention Podcast
  • Deflowered: A Star Trek Podcast

Deep Space Pride: A Gay Star Trek Podcast

  • Discovering Trek: The Star Trek Universe Companion
  • The Divine Treasury: A Star Trek Collectibles Podcast
  • Drawn to Trek: A Star Trek Animation Podcast
  • Five Year Mission: The Podcast
  • PoliTreks: A Star Trek Podcast
  • Rewind: A Star Trek Podcast
  • SyFy Sistas
  • Trek Geeks: A Star Trek Podcast
  • With The First Link
  • Black Lives Matter

gay star trek episode

WEEKLY ON FRIDAYS

Welcome to Deep Space Pride! Mike Thurlow and Johnson Lee are two self-professed gay geeks who love to obsess over Star Trek - join us as we talk about some of our favorite episodes, revel as yet another new series is announced, and ramble on about some off topic content. And maybe once in a while, we'll simply talk about living as two gay guys in New York City.

gay star trek episode

All Episodes

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride 114 – The One Where We Recap 2023

It’s been almost two months, but we’re back! Hopefully you all won’t have to wait until March for our next episode.

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride 113 – The One with Lower Deckers in Caves

Who wants to start a new podcast with Johnson about Apple TV+ shows?

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride 112 – The One with the Lower Decks Season 4 Premiere

Star Trek Day was amazing this year and totally worth watching, right!? Given that there’s going to be a dearth of Star Trek on the horizon doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of Star Trek to talk about! Between discussing Star Trek Day (which Mike…

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride #110: The One with the SNW/LD Crossover

To be honest, we also wouldn’t mind spending time with hot Spock. But maybe with less creepy smiling. We fast forward past a few SNW episodes to talk about...

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride #109: The One Where We Catch Up

We learn about Mike’s day in court! Just as dramatic as any Star Trek courtroom episode. And we’re back bitches! After an extended break (not Johnson’s fault), we catch...

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride #108: The One With Kelvin Wood

We are continuing our series of having guest hosts on Deep Space Pride, with folks from the LGBTQIA+ community! This week we chat with Kelvin Wood, Star Trek enthusiast...

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride #107: The One With 1701 A Blerd Story Creator Matt Jennings

We’ve returned from a short hiatus with a special guest! This week we have Matt Jennings, fellow Star Trek fan and member of the LGBTQIA+ community. As a multi-talented...

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride #106: The One Where We Preview Picard Season 3

The Picard Sportsball Trailer! Star Trek Picard Season 3 is right around the corner, and we’re here for it! We chat about the trailer that premiered during the NFL...

gay star trek episode

Deep Space Pride #105: The One with Davey Willett from the Treksperts Quiz Podcast

Happy 2023 everyone! On our first episode of the year, we have a special guest – Davey Willett, the host of The Treksperts Quiz podcast. Mike and Johnson were...

10 Times Star Trek: The Next Generation Went Woke

4. gender trouble.

Star Trek TNG Woker

In the fifth season of  Star Trek: The Next Generation , viewers will see more of shipboard life in some episodes, which will, among other things, include gay crewmembers in day-to-day circumstances.
What it came down to was Roddenberry had been barraged by letters and had discussed with us before his death the possibility of having two men hold hands in some scene, which was totally irrelevant to the issue of homosexuality. I didn't think, nor did Rick [Berman], that was an appropriate way to do a story that addressed the issue of sexual intolerance.

Jack Kiely is a writer with a PhD in French and almost certainly an unhealthy obsession with Star Trek.

TrekMovie.com

  • March 14, 2024 | Connor Trinneer And Dominic Keating On “Disrespectful” ‘Enterprise’ Finale And Eagerness For More Star Trek
  • March 14, 2024 | Interview: Wilson Cruz On Dr. Culber’s Arc In ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5 And Who Is Chief Medical Officer
  • March 13, 2024 | ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Cast Pitches Musical Episode And Another ‘Strange New Worlds’ Crossover
  • March 13, 2024 | Interview: Sonequa Martin-Green On The “Big Thing” In ‘Discovery’ Season 5 And Her Potential Star Trek Future
  • March 12, 2024 | ‘Starfleet Academy’ May Not Arrive Until 2026; Alex Kurtzman Talks Bringing In New Star Trek Fans

Interview: Sonequa Martin-Green On The “Big Thing” In ‘Discovery’ Season 5 And Her Potential Star Trek Future

gay star trek episode

| March 13, 2024 | By: Joe Andosca 44 comments so far

The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery arrives on April 4. Paramount+ held a world premiere event at SXSW in Austin on Monday, where TrekMovie had a chance to speak briefly to series star Sonequa Martin-Green on the red carpet about the new season and where she would like to see Michael Burnham appear next.

You have explored many different sides of Michael Burnham to really evolve the character over previous seasons. So, as both an actress and a producer, was there anything you asked to explore in season 5?

I didn’t have to ask to explore anything, because what we do, where we go, and what we do is beyond what I thought could ever happen on this show. I wish I could say more, but it would spoil it. But yes, I mean, I was able to be a lot more involved in the post process this time around as well, especially now being an executive producer for season 5. So I feel like we did everything I could have dreamed of.

gay star trek episode

Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham in Star Trek: Discovery season 5 (Paramount+)

You have previously talked about a “ big thing ” in season 5…

So can you give us a clue? When should we be looking for it? Is it a person, place, or thing?

Um, let me see, what can I tell you? Is it a person, place, or thing? I’ll tell you, it’s all three. It’s all three. And it’s all across the whole season.

You have also recently said you are up for doing a Trek crossover …

Of the current shows do you have a preference – Strange New Worlds , Lower Decks , Prodigy?

Oh, my goodness. And there’s even the Section 31 movie. We are limited in our timeline, right? All of those you just mentioned, we wouldn’t really be able to do scientifically speaking because we’re in the 3190s now. But yes, I think that we would be down. I would, and I think I can speak for us all, we would be down for any of them. We are proud of all of our children from the mothership of this new latinum age of Trek.

Or maybe something new, like the Academy show…

Yes, exactly. That could be wonderful. A movie even, like that would be so much fun.

gay star trek episode

More to come from SXSW

TrekMovie has more interviews and coverage from the SXSW 2024 premiere and panel discussion so check back later for more exclusives.

The fifth and final season of Discovery debuts with two episodes on Thursday, April 4 exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Austria. Discovery will also premiere on April 4 on Paramount+ in Canada and is also expected to be broadcast on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada. The rest of the 10-episode final season will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays. Season 5 debuts on SkyShowtime in select European countries on April 5.

Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

Related Articles

gay star trek episode

Discovery , Interview

Interview: Wilson Cruz On Dr. Culber’s Arc In ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5 And Who Is Chief Medical Officer

gay star trek episode

Discovery , Review

Early Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Flies Into A New Adventure In Season 5

gay star trek episode

Conventions/Events/Attractions , Discovery

‘Discovery’ Panel Hints “Something Special” In Season 5, Gorn Gong Show, And More Star Trek Cruise Day 7

All Access Star Trek podcast episode 175 - TrekMovie - Mark Altman interview

All Access Star Trek Podcast , Discovery , Interview

Podcast: All Access Gets Inglorious With Mark Altman To Talk 300th Episode And Star Trek Franchise Future

“ We are proud of all of our children from the mothership of this new latinum age of Trek.”

This has got to be one of the nerdiest sentences I’ve read this month. Love it.

LOVE IT !!!

So much love. So much pride. So many tears of joy and happiness.

Agreed. I wish we got more positivity like this all the time. When our world seems to be falling apart, it’s great to see this from those involved in Star Trek.

I agree, but you know Emily was being sarcastic don’t you?

That’s the beauty of it — she thought she was being sarcastic but she actually got it 100% right!

Sometimes you don’t post what you want, but you post what is needed.

I actually think that Sonequa Martin-Green does a good job of portraying a human who (1) is culturally Vulcan, and (2) is re-introduced into human culture. It makes sense that someone in that situation whisper when more emoting is called for, or over-compensate by emoting when it’s inappropriate.

The problem is more that every other damn character does the same thing.

I love her. Can’t wait for the season to start.

Sonequa Martin-Green has been a fantastic addition to the franchise and her character quickly became one of my favorite in Trek and also one of my favorite captains.

Yeah, and here are my personal captain rankings — and I will mention that Picard has dropped a couple slots due to his non-TNG-like actions in Picard season 3:

1. Kirk 2. Sisko 3. Pike 4. Burnham 5. Picard 6. Archer 7. Janeway 8. Dal Rei 9. Freeman

I will also note that my Top 5 are all pretty close (all a great captains), but there is then a large drop-off between 5 and 6 — so my bottom four (6-9) I have significant issues with.

Just curious — are your rankings for specific, e.g., original characterizations (Shatner), or across all (like all Kirks, all Pikes, etc.)?

I was thinking of original Kirk here and the current Pike.

But I’m not sure that would alter the rankings all that much if I considered all of them, although perhaps I would drop Kirk a slot or two if I included Kelvin Kirk

Martin-Green is a great actress. I could see that beginning with her tough character in The Walking Dead. She emotes well.

Is she one of my favorite characters in the franchise? Well, no. I’ve been trying to figure out what I like and don’t like about Discovery and, from reading the reviews of season 5, I think I can articulate it now. The cast of characters is a bit too emo, emotional, whatever. That’s one thing. The other, I think, is just that I’m not enamored with all the characters, but, hey, I always hated Neelix and found Kes cloying on Voyager as well and never ever cared about Chakotay and Kim.

I like Burnham well enough, but I don’t think she is a great captain. She lets her personal feelings and insubordination always get in the way. Those are flaws, and, I guess the flip side is that Discovery has definitely made use of those flaws. Should she have been awarded a command due to her being right about some of her actions or them having beneficial results? I think that’s debatable. The questions the Federation President had were pertinent.

As for the other major criticism, that is, the “wokeness” of Discovery, what does being woke even mean? Is it diversity in general or only diversity in LGBTQ? I’ve never been totally clear on that. I think it was great to have a black woman captain, or a chinese woman with the wonderful Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiu (now, she was a great captain). I think it’s very nice that Trek added a gay couple too, but for my money, I think Stamets and Culber are a bit bland compared to the hilarious Jett Reno, who I love. She should be a regular.

I really don’t like Adira at all. The character just doesn’t work for me.

There’s a lot though, that I really love about Discovery. I love the production and the action, which, I guess, was inspired by the Abrams films. The show looks great! I love the writing, I really do. Even Season 4. I know some people complained about it, and, again, I don’t like my ST too emo, but I thought the anomaly stuff and those fascinating gas beings, were great! I have a PhD in AE and essentially did a dissertation on aspects of molecular structure, more of an applied physics topic, so I love the science in sci-fi, so I had no problem with the storyline they were tackling in season 4. Was it my favorite? No, seasons 1 and 2 of DISCO were the best imo, and I guess I didn’t care much for the resolution of the Burn being a Kelpian kid. That was way to deux ex machina and unsatisfying. In that sense, I thought the season 4 resolution was better.

Also, in general, I like most of the characters. I loved Geourgiu (and Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno), and now she’s gone. She was, imo, the one great ST character in the bunch, the Empress was the best. But most of them, except for Adira, I like.

But this show, despite it’s production and action, imo, just didn’t make the heights of TOS, TNG, and DS9. If you care about sfx and production and the accompany action set pieces, if that’s all that’s important to you or what you emphasize, then DISCO clearly outshines those earlier series. I guess I put more emphasis on the spirit of the narrative and the characters, and those first 3 ST series, I think just ultimately aced it in that department.

Is DISCO better than Voyager? Well, Voyager had more characters I disliked (Neelix, Kes, Kim), but had some characters I really liked and loved (Janeway, Seven, the Doctor, Paris, Torres). I think I’m going to have to go with Voyager.

I never saw more than 3 or 4 episodes of Enterprise and I’ve only seen the first 3 episodes of Picard, so I can’t judge them yet.

“Wo-ke” is a term used by the weak-minded as a defense mechanism to avoid having to show diverse groups the common courtesy they deserve in our modern society.

Absolutely, buddy.

So, it’s every element of diversity the far right doesn’t like, right? Generally, it encompasses race and LGBTQ+, right? What about religion?

I’m a Dem, but I was never clear what the woke complaint encompassed. I got the sense that it was black and LGBTQ Americans.

I think it can be all the above. That’s why I stated my personal definition of it at a high level — my definition is wholly mine, but I think it fits.

It includes religion and non black people of color. And also neurodiversity.

Which religions? And what is neurodiversity?

We’re Jewish and have seen the word “woke” applied to the existence of Jewish characters or the idea of them existing. Islam is another one.

Neurodiversity means people that are autistic/have ADHD/any kind of mental disorders (and personality disorders) as opposed to not having them. We’re autistic and have dissociative identity disorder. Characters that would have either of them would have their existence declared woke, even if it’s just the stereotype and stigma that we’re inherently dangerous.

So, it sounds like woke is just everything that isn’t white, Christian (Catholics and Mormons too or not?) and non-disabled.

Speaking of religion, I wish ST would have some human religious characters. Yes, I know that the Klingons and the Bajorans are proxies for that and that probably the vast majority of fans take Roddenberry and Braga’s view that all the humans of ST’s time are atheists and/or agnostics, but I’d like to see folks sitting down and celebrating their commonalities and differences in civil and kind ways just like all the other differences in ST. I read that the creator J. Michael Straczynski had religious human characters in Babylon 5.

Our first reply got hit with waiting for approval.

In short: yes. We used to collect LEGO sets until it got hit with accusations of being woke because a minifig had a prosthetic leg. (Didn’t stop by our own choice, just the person helping us buy the sets.) And as for Catholics and Mormons, entirely depends on the group making the accusations.

And Vulcans. Assuming you left them out because you didn’t know. But they’re very Jewish coded (Google Judaism and Vulcan culture, there are a lot of articles and blogs written about it.) so for us Spock eating pork in Charades was one of the most disappointing moments in all of current Trek (because removing the Vulcan DNA wouldn’t remove his faith/beliefs, etc., it’s not inherited! It’s learned.)

So the assumption that Trek makes where the defaults are either agnostic/atheist or Christianity is just as frustrating to us as it is to you.

Race example:

Casting Khan with a white English guy

”Stop complaining and being wo-ke!”

Superman cast with a black actor

“Superman isn’t black! Stop with your wo-ke agenda!!!”

Wo-ke means nothing accept to be a buzzword to try and silence people.

That is pretty silly; Larry Summers and Yasha Mount had a much more substantive, and less conclusory, discussion of this point in the latter’s blog, Persuasion, recently.

As far as I’m concerned “wo-ke” means I got out of bed already.

Thanks for this discussion. It’s just clarified what I thought of the woke accusation. Can I summarize woke as anything that isn’t WASP? That goes along with the Ivery insipid) reverse discrimination that Trump is claiming from “racist” black women DAs.

The prosthetic lego figure thing is ridiculous. It’s beyond silly anyone has a problem with that. A lot of these culture wars are just silly and divisive.

And yes, Gritizens, I know about how a lot of Vulcans was directly from Nimoy’s Jewish faith. I love that.

I admit, I’m never going to be comfortable seeing 2 guys (or gals) kissing each other and the like, but I believe these folks are good people and deserve all the rights I have, including the right to pursue happiness on their own terms without fear or persecution. I’ve told my kids that too. I don’t get the trans folks at all either, but I’m willing to try to keep an open mind that this is a real thing and maybe some people have to undergo drastic measures for their mental health. I can’t imagine parents of kids with gender-disphoria and what they have to deal with. I don’t get it, but I know, as a parent, you do whatever you can to love and help your kids. They become your life. So I’m never going to judge what these parents have to do.

A person, place and thing?

Hmm… Ok, well the “place” is the 24th century ship I am assuming. The “person” I’m guessing was either frozen in status, pulled a Scotty transporter status trick, or could live that long? “Thing”, still no clue but I have my ideas. Red Matter, Iconian technology, something about that founding race from TNG’s “The Chase”…

Love or hate the show, you cannot argue that Sonequa Martin-Green has not been an absolutely EXEMPLARY ambassador for Star Trek, and I will miss her as the face of this newest generation very much.

I only saw the first 3 seasons before Paramount yanked Discovery out of my country (am I in an undiscoveried country?). But I liked the actress very much – perhaps a bit more than I liked the character who was forced by the scriptwriters to cry in seemingly every episode. She’s quite charismatic and should have been written a little more realistically and a little less weepily.

I think I feel the same way. A bit less emo would’ve served the character well. Sonequa Martin-Greene is fantastic, though. She’s a wonderful actress and they got the right person as lead.

She has. She’s been the spokesperson more than Kurtzman. And Shatner/Stewart are touch acts to follow in being leaders of a new generation.

Yeah please just don’t suck this season. That’s all I ask. But this is Discovery so that’s a very big ask lol.

She seems like a lovely person though.

Yes was going to say, SMG does seem like a genuinely nice person, and I’m sure she sets a wonderful example for younger female fans of the shows she’s been in.

I’ve enjoyed all the DISCO seasons, with seasons 1 and 2 being my favorites. I love the production and the writing and I think it was really refreshing to have more flawed characters like TOS. Berman-Trek was getting stale. ENT looked to me lie TNG v3. I also generally like the DISCO characters, except for Adira, too. I’m good with the show. I enjoyed it. It’s at least on par with Voyager imo.

Season 2 is still my favorite personally. It was still deeply flawed but if I ever wanted to rewatch a season it would probably be that one.

There were plenty of flawed characters in the Berman era though. I guess you mean TNG which I would agree. But DS9, Voyager and Enterprise has plenty.

And while I love TOS I never seen any of the main characters as flawed either. They were all straight laced characters. What was Sulu or Chekhov s flaws exactly? The only thing I can think of with Scotty is that he liked his drinking but that’s not really a flaw either. Kirk had inner struggles and defied orders at times but literally every episode ended basically agreeing he did the right thing. I don’t see Kirk poisoning a planet or stealing another ship’s warp core to complete a mission.

But I hear this all the time and I just don’t get it? No one came off hateful, questioned orders, had any addictions, had issues with other crewmen, did questionable things on the ship, nothing. Maybe they aren’t perfect but they are not really flawed either.

Regarding Kirk, I think if you watch the first year you’ll see a number of instances of the character expressing considerable self-doubt, per Roddenberry’s description of him in the official Writer’s Guide. Unfortunately, that was more or less dropped in later seasons.

I have been a staunch opponent of Discovery, and of the character of Michael Burnham, since the show started. Just really, really disliking everything that I read about it.

But darn it if Sonequa’s infectious enthusiasm and just general goodwill toward the franchise isn’t slowly winning me over. :-) It’s hard to keep rejecting a show whose lead is so winsome and enthusiastic!

It’s definitely Q!

I don’t think it is but I would totally be for it if it was.

That would make sense given the timeline and the last time according to DISCO Q wasn’t seen since the 24th/25th centuries. But I’m not sure how a Romulan Warbird would fit into that tho.

But if it is Q that would def be a story I need to see!

So…Ego the Living Planet signed with Paramount+?

gay star trek episode

Star Trek: Discovery Doubles Down On Being Itself In The Final Season, (And I'm Finally Okay With That) [SXSW 2024]

W atching the world premiere of "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5 in a packed theater at the SXSW Film Festival is enough to give even the most cynical Trekkie a case of the fuzzies. Supporting characters earned applause as they entered. Big action beats elicited vocal appreciation. Even small gags brought big laughs. I watched and listened as a "Star Trek" show that has sometimes left me, a lifelong follower of the franchise, frustrated and annoyed held its intended audience in the palm of its hand. That intended audience? Well... "Star Trek" fans who happen to love "Star Trek: Discovery," I suppose. I don't want to put anyone in a box, but this show has to be someone's favorite iteration of "Star Trek," and it was clear the audience was full of those folks.

I don't think I will ever fully love "Star Trek: Discovery," which has undergone massive overhauls during its five-season run but has stuck to several fundamental guns that don't quite work for me. But I've made peace with that, and this screening allowed me to crystalize exactly why — because this isn't my "Trek," but it's probably your "Trek," and that's fantastic. Everyone deserves their a "Trek" series that speaks to their heart and soul.

Every "Trek" fan brings their baggage, and that baggage informs what they want out of a "Trek" show. And for the folks that have embraced the warm, flashy, "heart dangling on the sleeve with such force that you might as well brace for an aerial spray" ethos of this show, the first episode of the final season doesn't course correct. It doubles down. This is a "Star Trek" that bravely decided to be its own self, and to continue being that show for viewers who love it even as others (loudly) complained. I admire the gumption. Despite the chaos that drove the show's infamously uneven first season, no one will accuse the show of not having a strong identity at this point.

Read more: The Main Star Trek Captains Ranked Worst To Best

Getting Touchy-Feely On The Bridge

I've always connected to "Star Trek" as a workplace show first and foremost , a franchise about doing your job, and doing it expertly, in space. Give me the calm, measured bridge crew meetings of "The Next Generation," with their incomprehensible technobabble and measured professionalism any day of the week. For me, it's still weird to watch the crew of "Discovery" so actively talk about their feelings, to treat each other like best buds at a slumber party, and to regularly weep and offer shoulders to cry on. "Aren't these people supposed to be work colleagues ?" I'll grumble to myself, knowing that Captain Picard would absolutely not tolerate the casual shenanigans of Captain Michael Burnham's touchy-feely crew.

But I look at Burnham's crew and I get it. They're the most diverse "Trek" crew in history, and it's not even close. All "Trek" has folded its progressive viewpoints into the fabric of its storytelling (and it's been that way since 1966), but "Discovery" had the nerve to remove the obfuscation altogether. Non-white characters and gay characters and non-binary characters share the bridge together. It's clear "Discovery" feels a responsibility to these characters and their identities, and by extension, the younger fans watching their first "Trek" show in the age of streaming. Let them share their feelings. Let them cry. Let them be buddies who are always there with a compliment in a moment of darkness.

The people for whom these portrayals are intended need that sense of connection, of these diverse people living in a future where they can be comfortable and happy with their identities, more than I need "Star Trek" that feels like the shows I grew up with.

Boldly Going Into A Big Trek Mystery

And yes, the first episode of season 5 is heavy on the feelings, just about all of them warm and gushy. There's romance, BFFs, and even figures of authority being far kinder and more understanding than they would in other iterations of "Trek." But it's also big on action, scope, and adventure, building to a set piece that will make fans who look for the hard science in their "Trek" cock their head but it sure looks cool as hell. In the Q&A following the premiere, showrunner Michelle Paradise described this season as the "adventure season," and you can tell. There's a bounce to this season, a spring in its step that even those who haven't fully embraced the show can't help but appreciate. A small taste of some "Original Series" space western spirit.

There's a lot to talk about, and therefore a lot to spoil, so I won't go further. But fans looking for more direct connections to past iterations of the franchise will be pleased (or at least they'll appreciate the swing) when the crux of the show's overarching storyline comes into focus. Perhaps for the first time, the fully serialized nature of "Discovery" will work to its advantage. They're digging up a "Trek" storyline that has been lingering for a long time, and it's massive enough to perhaps warrant something beyond a two-part episode.

At this point, I admire "Discovery" more than I like it, but I love that other people love it. And I love that it's clear the show will only grow in stature as the years go on. It's taken too many big swings. It's been brave when it could have cowered. It took fans a long time to embrace "Deep Space Nine" as prrrobably the best series in the franchise . It took fans even longer to recognize that "Enterprise" is a vital building block of the franchise, even in its abbreviated state. "Star Trek: Discovery" is its own loud, proud thing. Not my cup of Earl Grey, but the final season is clearly going out on its own terms. And I love it for that.

Read the original article on SlashFilm .

sonequa martin-green, star trek: discovery

  • The A.V. Club
  • The Takeout
  • The Inventory

Discovery Will Be the First Star Trek Show in 50 Years to End Without a Jonathan Frakes Appearance

At least he's been behind the camera plenty enough over its five seasons, which is at least an honorary frakes appearance..

Image for article titled Discovery Will Be the First Star Trek Show in 50 Years to End Without a Jonathan Frakes Appearance

When you think of the most important people in Star Trek history, in terms of actors at least you might look to the legacies of people like William Shatner or Patrick Stewart. But the real answer to that question is probably Jonathan Frakes , who has been a part of pretty much all televised Trek since the ‘70s — and when Discovery ends in a few months, it’ll break the trend of his influence, at least in front of the camera.

Since starring as William T. Riker in The Next Generation , Frakes has made a guest appearance in almost every Star Trek series since, either as Riker or a facsimile of him, or his villainous transporter clone brother Thomas (responsible for the greatest fake beard reveal in television history, thanks to Deep Space Nine ). Just three series have gone without an on-screen Frakes appearance so far— Discovery , Prodigy , and Strange New Worlds —and now we know at least one of them never will.

When asked by Den of Geek at a recent appearance during SXSW whether or not Frakes would make an on-screen appearance in Discovery ’s final season, co-creator and producer Alex Kurtzman offered a very resoundingly flat “No.” It’s not surprising considering that, as Discovery is now so far into Star Trek ’s future, Riker is extremely dead at this point. At least it will always have a special connection to Frakes through his role as a similarly consistent Trek director—Frakes has been regularly directing episodes of Discovery since its first season, and will direct the penultimate episode of the show in season five. But it does indeed mean the end to a decades-long trend of making Frakes one of the most consistent Trek actors in the franchise history, and there’s something oddly sad about that.

Prodigy and Strange New Worlds both still have time to have their own Frakes appearances— Prodigy is set in 2385, while Riker was still in active service even after the birth of his son Thaddeus, for whom he would step back from active duty to try and help treat when he was diagnosed with mendaxic neurosclerosis in the run-up to the events of Star Trek: Picard . Strange New Worlds (which like Discovery has a Frakes connection through directing ; he shot the show’s fantastic crossover with Lower Decks , “ Those Old Scientists ”) being pre-original Trek would make a Riker appearance very difficult, but Frakes could still play some role, whether it’s an ancestor or an entirely new character.

We’ll have to wait and see—and behold what Frakes cooks up as his parting gift for Discovery— when season five begins streaming on April 4 .

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel , Star Wars , and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV , and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who .

Watch the bittersweet trailer for 'Star Trek: Discovery's final season (video)

The end is nigh when Paramount+'s flagship space fantasy series returns April 4 for a 10-episode run.

It's been a long and somewhat bumpy road for Paramount Plus' " Star Trek: Discovery " since it first touched down on the streaming platform back in 2017 as the first "Star Trek" small screen enterprise in 12 years. It's taken a couple of seasons to moderate its tone and style but it seems on track to bring it all home safely starting on April 4, to stick the landing and satiate most temperamental fans.

Now with the turbulent events of season 4 in the rear view mirror after finally confronting the Dark Matter Entity, it's time for one last heroic mission for Captain Michael Burnham and her valiant crew into the cold inky abyss of deep space to try and locate a powerful treasure as this latest sentimental trailer explains. (Check out our Star Trek streaming guide to see when and where to catch the latest Trek shows.)

Watch Star Trek on Paramount Plus:

Watch Star Trek on Paramount Plus: <a href="https://paramountplus.qflm.net/c/221109/175360/3065?subId1=hawk-custom-tracking&sharedId=hawk&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paramountplus.com%2F" data-link-merchant="paramountplus.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Get a one month free trial 

Get all the Star Trek content you can possibly handle with this free trial of Paramount Plus. Watch new shows like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and all the classic Trek movies and TV shows too. Plans start from $4.99/month after the trial ends.

Here's the official synopsis:

"The fifth and final season will find Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well — dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it."

"Star Trek: Discovery's" season five cast contains Sonequa Martin-Green (Captain Michael Burnham), Doug Jones (Saru), Anthony Rapp (Paul Stamets), Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly), Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber), David Ajala (Cleveland “Book” Booker), Blu del Barrio (Adira) and Callum Keith Rennie (Rayner).

In this final preview for the endgame season, USS Discovery captain Michael Burnham acknowledges that "It has been a helluva journey, but everything ends someday." As the entire crews gathers for one last adventure, Starfleet's Kovich (David Cronenberg) warns that "the greatest treasure in the known galaxy is out there. It's more important that you can imagine."

That's the basic launch point of a cosmic scavenger hunt to locate a puzzle box that looks like something right out of director Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element," and is described by Burnham as "one of the greatest powers ever known," while various competing factions attempt to claim this priceless universal artifact for themselves, including imposing foes L'ak (Elias Toufexis) and Moll (Eve Harlow).

 —  Brash new 'Borderlands' trailer takes fans to the abandoned planet of Pandora

 — 'Spaceman' sees Adam Sandler shine as a cosmonaut in crisis in Netflix's somber sci-fi film (review)

— Star Trek's Seven of Nine returns in new novel 'Picard: Firewall' (exclusive)

Paramount Plus' sci-fi series is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. Alex Kurtzman, Michelle Paradise, Heather Kadin, Aaron Baiers, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Sonequa Martin-Green, Frank Siracusa, John Weber, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth serve as "Star Trek: Discovery's" executive producers, with Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise as co-showrunners.

"Star Trek: Discovery's" fifth and final season debuts on Paramount Plus on April 4, with a two-episode premiere, followed by new episodes each Thursday.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Get the Space.com Newsletter

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Jeff Spry

Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.

'Constellation' season 1 episode 6 review: Haunted houses and new perspectives

Watch an exclusive clip from the gorgeous new 4K release of 'The Abyss' (video)

FAA grants license for SpaceX's March 14 Starship launch

Most Popular

By Daisy Dobrijevic March 13, 2024

By Elizabeth Howell March 13, 2024

By Andrew Jones March 13, 2024

By Joe Rao March 13, 2024

By Keith Cooper March 13, 2024

By Tariq Malik March 13, 2024

By Robert Lea March 13, 2024

By Robert Z. Pearlman March 12, 2024

By Mike Wall March 12, 2024

By Samantha Mathewson March 12, 2024

  • 2 Canon EOS R8 vs Sony A7C II: Which should you buy?
  • 3 Dark Energy Camera captures record-breaking image of a dead star's scattered remains
  • 4 Sky-Watcher 200P EQ5 telescope review
  • 5 Scientists find black hole spaghettifying star remarkably close to Earth

116 episodes

Welcome to Deep Space Pride! Mike Thurlow and Johnson Lee are two self-professed gay geeks who love to obsess over Star Trek - join us as we talk about some of our favorite episodes, revel as yet another new series is announced, and ramble on about some off topic content. And maybe once in a while, we'll simply talk about living as two gay guys in New York City.

Deep Space Pride: A Gay Star Trek Podcast Trek Geeks Network

  • TV & Film
  • 29 DEC 2023

The One Where We Recap 2023

Somehow, we all made it to the end of 2023! That means other than catching up on Star Trek news, we're here to talk about all the things that stood out for us this year. Despite the ups and downs of the franchise, 2023 was a great year for Star Trek - we chat about some of our favorite episodes and moments. Of course, a year end recap wouldn't be complete without a look ahead; other than the upcoming election cycle (sarcasm), what else are we looking forward to? Join us and find out!

  • 1 hr 18 min
  • 30 OCT 2023

The One with Lower Deckers in Caves

With the cadence at which we're recording these episodes, there's a lot to catch up on! But mostly about everything else besides Star Trek because there's a a dearth of new Trek episodes on the horizon, and - oh right - the actor's strike. Maybe that's why we spend the majority of the episode chatting about our lives and everything else we're watching that's not Star Trek! Once we finally get to it though, we discuss "Caves," the most recent episode of Lower Decks Season 4 we've seen. This most recent entry is essentially an homage to Berman-era Trek cave sets, and perhaps a wink and a nod to Shades of Gray. We also spend a bit of time looking back at the season so far -- and what does Mike McMahan have in store for us for the finale?!

  • 1 hr 27 min
  • 15 SEPT 2023

112 - The One with the Lower Decks Season 4 Premiere

Star Trek Day was amazing this year and totally worth watching, right!? Given that there's going to be a dearth of Star Trek on the horizon doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of Star Trek to talk about! Between discussing Star Trek Day (which Mike watched and Johnson did not), Very Short Treks, and United We Trek, there's actually a lot going on in the Star Trek universe - and that's BEFORE we even get into Lower Decks! That being said, we spend a bit of time talking about "Twovix" and "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee." We're glad to say that the show hasn't missed a beat, and it seems like Mike McMahan heard our feedback and finally gave everyone promotions (we're willing to take all the credit). It's incredible how much this show can pack into less than 30 minutes of television - whether it's all the Voyager references you could want, or a new character that would make the perfect plush toy.

  • 1 hr 14 min
  • 25 AUG 2023

The One with a Musical and a Season 2 Finale

The near end of summer also means that Strange New Worlds Season 2 has come to an end - with Season 3 airing in... 2025? We discuss this and other news items - which honestly isn't a lot considering the SAG/AFTRA strike. In fact, after Lower Decks Season 4 and Discovery Season 5, there might not be much new Trek for a while - how will we survive!? But that is a tomorrow problem! In today's episode, we're here to talk about the last two episodes for SNW S2, the musical episode "Subspace Rhapsody" and the finale "Hegemony." Mike and Johnson share their thoughts, and definitely become animated in discussing their different views on these two episodes. Do we want more musicals? Do we want more Gorn?! Listen and find out!

  • 1 hr 31 min
  • 31 JUL 2023

The One with the SNW/LD Crossover

We fast forward past a few SNW episodes to talk about a recent favorite, "Those Old Scientists!" Mike and Johnson are both huge fans of this episode, which features Boimler and Mariner visit the Strange New Worlds crew. From the constant references to physical comedy, this episode is somehow able to blend the spirit of both shows successfully. We're huge fans! But first some news items, which includes a look at the final season of Discovery, a trailer for the next season of Lower Decks, and the announcement of a musical episode of Strange New Worlds!? Mixed feelings on that one.

  • 30 JUN 2023

The One Where We Catch Up

And we're back bitches! After an extended break (not Johnson's fault), we catch up on what's been going on in our lives the past couple of months. Will listeners be surprised that we're alive? We then move onto talking about the latest Star Trek news - there's a lot to wade through, including the cancellation of Star Trek Prodigy. We then chat about the first two episode of Strange New Worlds Season 2, "The Broken Circle" and "Ad Astra per Aspera." One of these days we'll also wrap up our discussion of Picard Season 3!

  • 1 hr 46 min
  • © 2024 Coconut MediaWorx LLC. Deep Space Pride and the Trek Geeks Podcast Network are not endorsed, sponsored or affiliated with CBS Studios Inc. or the Star Trek franchise. All STAR TREK trademarks and logos are owned by CBS Studios Inc.

Top Podcasts In TV & Film

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5's Start Feels Bittersweet, And Really Drives Home How Much This Show Reminds Me Of Voyager

I don't want the ride to end.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 feels like the show's best season yet, and that's incredibly bittersweet. I was only given the first four episodes to screen of the upcoming Star Trek show , but it's clear that the final adventure of the Sonequa Martin-Green-led series is primed to be the best of the run. While watching, I couldn't help but feel it's bittersweet and be reminded of the same feelings I had when watching Voyager Season 5. 

I think in the years to come, a lot of comparisons will be made to both shows, especially since they're both available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription . Beyond the fact that they're both shows with women as captains of vessels, Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 nails the comparison, similar to how I felt when watching the Season 5 episodes of Voyager . As a note, this is a spoiler-free analysis of the final season, so don't worry about having any bits tarnished before the big premiere on April 4th. 

Both Discovery And Voyager Hit Their Stride Late In The Run

If I've had any criticism regarding Star Trek: Discovery since its beginning, it was that it often suffered from uneven storytelling. Seasons 1 through 3 delivered on building anticipation and delivering some great episodes, but it always felt like the ending never quite lived up to the expectation of what was being built towards. Many times I was left feeling that the show reached a climax weeks ahead of the season finale, and the rest was good, but not quite as thrilling. 

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, in my opinion, was the first time one of this show's seasons appropriately built toward a satisfying ending that peaked at just the right time. Now imagine that same vibe in Season 5, except it's balls-to-the-wall right out the gate. As promised, the series is delivering on action in Season 5 , but as Doug Jones told CinemaBlend, it's not sacrificing the parts people love about Discovery in the process. This is the perfect blend of action and emotion, and there's even some episodic fun likely inspired by Strange New Worlds ' success . 

It feels like Discovery finally nailed its formula in Season 5, which is exactly how I felt about Star Trek: Voyager . The show gets a big boost with Jeri Ryan joining as Seven of Nine in Season 4, and then by Season 5, we have strong stories with her, The Doctor, Janeway, and everyone else. There's an argument often made that Season 5 of Voyager is the peak of Star Trek storytelling, even if other shows like The Next Generation were more consistently solid. 

That feeling is the same here with Discovery , in that when this show is good, it's phenomenal. Discovery didn't re-invent itself to find this formula either, it just found what will ultimately be the ideal framework for serialized storytelling in the franchise going forward. There's no denying some fans felt it stumbled along the way, but I'm confident they'll be fully on board with this incredible, thrilling adventure that puts them in search of a powerful artifact. 

The Strength Of Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Will Have You Wishing We Had More Adventures

The massive downside of Star Trek: Discovery 's incredibly strong start to Season 5 is that for every thrill you have, it'll be in the back of your head that this show is ending. I can't tell you the number of times in the first four episodes that I said to myself, "Damn, if they just had another season or two." I very much have the feeling that the show is going to end its run on top and leave audiences begging for a follow-up and when to expect it.

The Doctor murdering people will haunt my dreams.

At the same time, I do have to wonder if Discovery would've kept this strong momentum or struggled in the same way in successive seasons as Voyager did. Voyager Seasons 6 and 7 certainly weren't bad if you overlook the weird Chakotay and Seven romance, but there's no denying Season 5 was the peak. I can't say  Discovery  would've followed the same pattern as  Voyager , but I can say that if it did, I would've gladly watched the next two seasons and sooner had the show ended like that than get this abrupt ending. 

The good news is that while Star Trek: Discovery will end as a series, the story is never truly over for these characters. Assuming the final scene shot that gave Doug Jones closure isn't the entire crew dying in a violent explosion, there will be opportunities in the future for this crew to appear in other projects and adventures. We also already have the first spinoff movie in development, with Star Trek: Section 31 's production kicking off , so it's not like the franchise is shying away from developing new projects based on it. 

And just to reiterate, these are just my thoughts and feelings on the first four episodes of Star Trek: Discovery Season 5. Paramount+ did not provide the remaining six episodes of the season so far, though based on what is set up in these episodes, I'm optimistic the quality will continue throughout the rest of the season. There are some big surprises in store for viewers that make themselves known from the first episode, and it's the kind of surprise that, again, makes you wish there were just more episodes for more moments like this to happen. 

Star Trek: Voyager has yet to get a movie, though I'd argue now is the perfect time for one. Star Trek: The Original Series , however, ended up getting six movies years after its cancellation. I can't say for sure what's possible in the modern streaming market, but I would wager that if the fans want it and the cast is available and willing, there are going to be opportunities in the future to bring back the Discovery crew for movies set in the 32nd century. For now, we have ten more episodes to enjoy, and I think fans definitely will like them. 

Star Trek fans can stream the first two episodes of Discovery Season 5 when they premiere on Paramount+ Thursday, April 4th. Keep with CinemaBlend in the coming weeks as we talk more about the upcoming season and share all we learned from the cast in our interviews about the past, present and future of Discovery !

CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER

Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News

Mick Joest

Mick Joest is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend with his hand in an eclectic mix of television goodness. Star Trek is his main jam, but he also regularly reports on happenings in the world of Star Trek, WWE, Doctor Who, 90 Day Fiancé, Quantum Leap, and Big Brother. He graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Radio and Television. He's great at hosting panels and appearing on podcasts if given the chance as well.

'I Was Really Jealous:' Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard Gets Real About Season 4 Disappointments With Mike, And Why Season 5 Is The ‘Opposite’

Critics Have Seen Apples Never Fall, And They Have Mixed Opinions About Annette Bening’s Mystery Miniseries

Fans Of Reacher Star Alan Ritchson Are Just Now Realizing He Was On American Idol Years Ago, And They're Just As Shook As I Am

Most Popular

By Alexandra Ramos March 12, 2024

By Jason Wiese March 12, 2024

By Alice Marshall March 12, 2024

By Sarah El-Mahmoud March 12, 2024

By Dirk Libbey March 12, 2024

By Mick Joest March 11, 2024

By Daniel Pateman March 11, 2024

By Heidi Venable March 11, 2024

By Hugh Scott March 11, 2024

By Sean O'Connell March 11, 2024

  • 2 Critics Have Seen Apples Never Fall, And They Have Mixed Opinions About Annette Bening’s Mystery Miniseries
  • 3 Star Trek: Discovery's Wilson Cruz Finally Answered The Nagging Question Fans Have Had About Culber The Entire Series
  • 4 Lindsay Lohan And Irish Wish Cast Explains Why Romantic Comedies Continue To Be So Beloved By Fans
  • 5 Former Halloweentown Disney Channel Star Kimberly J Brown Is Getting Married, And Her Pal Lacey Chabert Sweetly Threw Her Shower

IMAGES

  1. Star Trek Unveils First Non-Binary and Trans Characters

    gay star trek episode

  2. 'Star Trek: Discovery' Makes History With Franchise's First Gay Male

    gay star trek episode

  3. Star Trek: Discovery airs first gay male kiss in franchise’s history

    gay star trek episode

  4. 'Star Trek' Introduces Its First Gay Couple to the Universe

    gay star trek episode

  5. Star Trek: Discovery delights as gay couple get a surprise reunion

    gay star trek episode

  6. Star Trek: Discover: See First Photo of First Openly Gay Character

    gay star trek episode

COMMENTS

  1. Sexuality in Star Trek

    The 1968 episode "Plato's Stepchildren" is often cited as the "first interracial kiss" depicted on television, between James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), but the reality is not so straightforward.William Shatner recalls in Star Trek Memories that NBC insisted their lips never touch (the technique of turning their heads away from the camera was used to conceal ...

  2. Star Trek: Why Jonathan Frakes Was Right About TNG's Most LGBTQ Episode

    Published Jun 30, 2021. Star Trek actor Jonathan Frakes thinks TNG was too timid with an episode that could have pushed the franchise's LGBTQ+ representation farther forward. Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Jonathan Frakes thinks one of the show's episodes wasn't bold enough with its LGBTQ+ representation, an opinion that rings truer than ...

  3. For Pride Month, We Celebrate Star Trek's Gayest Moments

    2. Jadzia Dax. Sulu's brief fatherly moment in Star Trek Beyond may have been the first instance of an openly gay character on Trek, but there is no denying that Jadzia Dax was the first openly ...

  4. Your Guide to Queer Identity and Metaphor in Star Trek

    Even after his death, it took another 28 years for the first gay character to appear in StarTrek 's television series (although yes, novel tie-ins, comics, fan works, and other non-canonical media featured a markedly improved number of LGBT Starfleet officers). Instead, queer identity was mostly relegated to the world of metaphor, rumor, and ...

  5. The Outcast (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

    Star Trek: The Next Generation. ) " The Outcast " is the 117th episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is the seventeenth episode of the fifth season. In this episode, Riker falls in love with Soren, a member of an androgynous race which finds gender specificity unacceptable.

  6. 10 Biggest LGBTQIA+ Moments In Star Trek

    This Pride Month, enjoy some of the most important LGBTQIA+ moments in Star Trek's history. 10. The Trill Do Not Care About Gender-Based Relationships. CBS. The Host was the episode of The Next ...

  7. Star Trek and Queer Identity

    And while this episode was very clearly Star Trek's foray into a "gay rights" episode, it left many disappointed. After all, the couple at the center of this big moment in Star Trek history was unmistakably heterosexual. Right off the bat, Weitekamp notes, it's immediately evident that all members of this adrogynous race — including ...

  8. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Casts Its First Nonbinary Character For

    Big Sky and Queer as Folk star Jesse James Keitel has landed a guest spot on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' seventh episode.As revealed by Variety, Keitel, who is a trans woman, will play Dr ...

  9. 'Star Trek: Lower Decks': TNG Cameos, LGBTQ Characters for ...

    The first "TNG" callback: The crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos run afoul of the Pakleds, a dimwitted alien species that have grown alarmingly lethal since we last saw them on the Season 2 "TNG ...

  10. Star Trek's Queer Fluidity is Giving Fans the Brighter Future They

    Despite the fact that Star Trek didn't feature out members of the LGBT+ community until more recent years, sexual and gender fluidity has always been a staple of the series. That's including one-off episode species like the non-binary J'Naii to main characters like Jadzia Dax, whose symbiont made her gender and sexuality much more transient.

  11. Star Trek: Picard

    The very first openly gay Star Trek character didn't come until 2017, when Star Trek: Discovery introduced married couple Paul Stamets ( Anthony Rapp) and Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz). But now ...

  12. Star Trek: A Queer History Of The Franchise

    The reboot films are the next stop on Star Trek's queer timeline, mostly because Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise were largely devoid of queer themes. The reboot, however, picks up the thread in 2009, following alternate timeline versions of Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the TOS Enterprise crew.Similar to the show that inspired them, the films feature an openly gay actor as part of ...

  13. The Queer Legacy of Star Trek

    Hawk, a supporting character played by Neal McDonough in Star Trek: First Contact, was intended to be openly gay, but those allusions were cut. Star Trek: Discovery Easter Eggs - Episode 9: "Into ...

  14. Why Did It Take So Long for Star Trek to Embrace Queer Characters

    And just to put it in perspective, the Stonewall riots happened on June 28, 1969, three weeks after Star Trek aired "Turnabout Intruder," its final episode. So, again, assuming this story from Takei is legit, Takei pushing Roddenberry into a "gay rights" story line was a hundred times edgier than any of the other boundaries Trek broke ...

  15. The History of Queer Representation in Star Trek

    In 2011, Brannon Braga (longtime Star Trek producer, and showrunner for Voyager and Enterprise) told magazine AfterElton that he regretted never including a gay character in the main cast of any ...

  16. Gay Star Trek Episode Finally Beams in at 'Phase II'

    The advanced fan film website Star Trek: Phase II is resurrecting a homosexual story line deemed too risky for The Next Generation's TV run. The new online episode ("Blood and Fire") goes live ...

  17. Star Trek Beyond and LGBT Representation in the Trek Franchise

    In the fourth-season episode Rejoined, Jadzia Dax - the latest host of the long-lived Dax symbiont - encounters a woman called Lenara Kahn. Two earlier hosts of the Dax and Kahn symbionts had ...

  18. Long-Suppressed Gay Star Trek Episode Comes Out

    To make the episode, Gerrold teamed up with the fan crew behind Star Trek: Phase II, a web series that's intended to be the fourth season of the original series.He dusted off his gay-themed script ...

  19. Jonathan Frakes Doesn't Think Star Trek Went Far Enough With ...

    By Witney Seibold / Feb. 25, 2024 8:45 am EST. In the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Outcast" (March 6, 1992), the crew of the Enterprise aids a species called the J'naii in ...

  20. Deep Space Pride: A Gay Star Trek Podcast

    Welcome to Deep Space Pride! Mike Thurlow and Johnson Lee are two self-professed gay geeks who love to obsess over Star Trek - join us as we talk about some of our favorite episodes, revel as yet another new series is announced, and ramble on about some off topic content. And maybe once in a while, we'll simply talk about living as two gay guys ...

  21. Deep Space Pride: A Gay Star Trek Podcast on Apple Podcasts

    Deep Space Pride: A Gay Star Trek Podcast on Apple Podcasts. 116 episodes. Welcome to Deep Space Pride! Mike Thurlow and Johnson Lee are two self-professed gay geeks who love to obsess over Star Trek - join us as we talk about some of our favorite episodes, revel as yet another new series is announced, and ramble on about some off topic content.

  22. Blood and Fire (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

    This episode was noted for its inclusion of two openly homosexual crew members, which would have been a first in Star Trek history. Years later, an AIDS allegory would be included in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Stigma". Filmed as an episode of Star Trek: New Voyages

  23. 10 Times Star Trek: The Next Generation Went Woke

    In the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, viewers will see more of shipboard life in some episodes, which will, among other things, include gay crewmembers in day-to-day circumstances.

  24. Interview: Sonequa Martin-Green On The "Big Thing" In 'Discovery

    The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery arrives on April 4.Paramount+ held a world premiere event at SXSW in Austin on Monday, where TrekMovie had a chance to speak briefly to series ...

  25. Star Trek: Discovery Doubles Down On Being Itself In The Final ...

    And yes, the first episode of season 5 is heavy on the feelings, just about all of them warm and gushy. There's romance, BFFs, and even figures of authority being far kinder and more understanding ...

  26. Discovery Will Be the First Star Trek Show in 50 Years to End ...

    Prodigy and Strange New Worlds both still have time to have their own Frakes appearances—Prodigy is set in 2385, while Riker was still in active service even after the birth of his son Thaddeus ...

  27. Watch the bittersweet trailer for 'Star Trek: Discovery's final season

    "Star Trek: Discovery's" fifth and final season debuts on Paramount Plus on April 4, with a two-episode premiere, followed by new episodes each Thursday.

  28. Deep Space Pride: A Gay Star Trek Podcast on Apple Podcasts

    Deep Space Pride: A Gay Star Trek Podcast on Apple Podcasts. 115 episodes. Welcome to Deep Space Pride! Mike Thurlow and Johnson Lee are two self-professed gay geeks who love to obsess over Star Trek - join us as we talk about some of our favorite episodes, revel as yet another new series is announced, and ramble on about some off topic content.

  29. Star Trek: Discovery Season 5's Start Feels Bittersweet, And Really

    Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, in my opinion, was the first time one of this show's seasons appropriately built toward a satisfying ending that peaked at just the right time. Now imagine that same ...

  30. Brent Spiner, Annie O'Donnell return in new 'Night Court' pics

    Night Court star and producer Melissa Rauch discussed the return of the characters from the original 1980s series. Brent Spiner and Annie O'Donnell played Bob and Judy Wheeler in several episodes.