I would not have expected TOS, produced in the ‘60s, even to acknowledge homosexuality exists. But why did later incarnations avoid the issue? I can’t think of a single openly gay Star Trek character. TNG had one episode where Riker fell in love with a self-identified “female” of an androgynous race (who considered single-gender-identity a perversion); Dr. Crusher once fell in love with a joined Trill, who got killed but his symbiont survived, and when the new host turned out to be female she couldn’t handle it; and there was always a gay vibe about Garak of DS9. But apart from that, nuttin’. It’s as if homosexuality, like obesity and poor vision, is a disease which 25th Century medical science has wiped out. Or else Starfleet has a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Meanwhile, relations between humanoids of different species remain perfectly acceptable if they are of opposite sexes.
Basically, in short, a lot of people wanted it, and Gene Roddenbery finally decided that maybe putting a gay or lesbian character in Star Trek wouldn’t be a bad idea, but just after he decided that, he died, and Rick Berman and Brandon Braga, who were in charge of the franchise after his death, backed off on it because they didn’t want to deal with the controversy.
The short answer is because Roddenberry didn’t want it in his universe. The longer answer is somebody had to buy his stories. On preview, I see that I was half right, sort of.
More plot points from the serieses to consider:
Janice Lester switched bodies with Kirk, and tried to put the moves on Yeoman Rand. This was played as being creepy in the extreme.
Although Crusher couldn’t handle the idea of a physically gay relationship, the Trill had no problem with it.
In DS9, when Dax met up with a former spouse (in the body Dax was married to as a male, I believe), neither had a problem with the relationship being physically gay–it’s just not on the Trill radar among hosts, who are specially chosen and trained. However, the fact that they had been involved in a previous life meant that their relationship was absolutely forbidden.
The Intended, also in DS9, was fairly obviously in a relationship with that dimension’s Ezri, I believe (maybe Jadzia) and had the hots for her good-dimension self, but she was generally considered to be evil and kind of insane.
There was supposed to be a male gay couple on one of the ships, but that never got much play, if it ever even reached the screen.
The opposite dimension Ezri turned out to be gay (she went off with opposite dimension Leeta for a “debriefing”) and she was not evil and kind of insane.
Keep in mind, Star Trek was part of the times. It was only recently, with Will and Grace, that there’s been a popular show with openly gay “normal” characters. I think one of Alexis’ sons on Dynasty was gay, but I don’t remember much about it, and it was quite scandalous at the time.
From a French civil-service title in the Ancien Regime. Every province (pays d’etat) had an appointed royal governor (intendant d’etat). There were also lesser intendants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intendant
True for the original series, but the original series was also ground breaking in the then-contentious areas of race and gender. ST had the first televised inter-racial kiss, and having a black woman on the bridge crew was never portrayed as in anyway unusual or notable for a Starfleet vessel. It’s a little disappointing that the show’s successors were not nearly as progressive when hoosexuality moved into the limelight as the socially contentious issue of the day.
I always thought the Malcolm Reed character on Enterprise might be gay (dunno why I thought this, but that’s another matter). The ideal opportunity to bring Malcolm’s sexual orientation to light would have been the episode in which Malcolm and Trip were stranded in the shuttlepod for several days with no one but each other for companionship. But Malcolm didn’t out himself. Maybe the Enterprise was a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of place.
Putting aside whether the characters were “normal”, (and I’d also disagree that Will and Grace was the first show with openly gay main characters), Will and Grace debuted in 1998. “Star Trek: Enterprise” debuted in 2001.
Didn’t Riker fall for a hermaphrodite of some sort? I mean, it was pretty lame as a gay-themed episode but it was something. The actor polaying the alien was obviously female, and the character was supposed to be a heterosexual hiding “her” orientation, as it was considered an undesirable deviancy among her own people. IIRC she probably didn’t have conventionally female parts down there, as her race reproduced by dancing around a big pod or some other such nonsense. Maybe she had a penis-like organ? Did Riker even know? I wish I could remember.
I remember in the episode where the Enterprise came across an Enterprise that had been thrown over 100 years into the past, Reed was dismayed that his (now long dead) counterpart on the other ship hadn’t settled down with a nice girl.
The Lester Episode (“Turnabout Intruder” was the very last episode aired, at the end of season three.
The actress who played Rand had “issues”, and her personal life derailed her career. But in Season One, when Kirk was bisected into Good Kirk/Bad Kirk, Bad Kirk tried to nail her. Unsuccessfully.
I think that was less shocking than the Kirk/Uhura kiss. After all, there was no mention of black Vulcans until Voyager. I’ve heard two versions of the Kirk/Uhura kissing scene…one, Shatner actually kissed her and deliberately messed up the other takes so they’d have to use the kissing one, and two, he never actually kissed her, just brought his face close to hers and glared at Parmen.
I haven’t seen the episode in a while, so I can’t remember exactly what the scene looks like.