Well, Bone canonically has an ex-wife, though he could be bi. I’m pretty sure Kirk is pansexual. Scotty - well, it’s up for grabs there.
Except it isn’t quite a reboot. The premise is that Romulan Eric Bana went back in time and changed some key events such as killing Papa Kirk which made James much more reckless in his youth. Being fatherless all his life could change someone’s personality. What could have changed someone from straight to gay? That falls into the “gay is a choice” fallacy. There is a better argument that Sulu was always gay and we were just never shown it. Sulu’s homelife is never shown. In Generations his daughter makes an appearance but no mention of a spouse. Within the internal logic of the Star Trek universe it makes more sense that he is now revealed as having always been gay.
Always take anything Stan Lee says with a grain of salt. Certainly don’t take anything he says which touts his early progressiveness, disproportionate contribution to a character, or generally makes him look good, seriously without corroboration. (Not saying he’s a liar…just that his memory is more malleable than most - and just as self-serving when it’s wrong.)
He’s also claimed Pinky Pinkerton of the Howling Commandos was meant to be gay…a couple years before saying exactly the opposite.
Heh, maybe they are as well.
After all, no law says the series has to have only one gay major character.
Have we seen Bones or Scotty give any details of their love lives in the rebooted series? I honestly don’t remember.
Sure. McCoy mentioned to Kirk that he was joining Starfleet because his ex- wife “took the whole damn planet” in the divorce and all he had left were his bones.
Pansexual xenophilia, to cover all bases I assume. Had he the chance, Kirk would have done it with the Horta.
I guess that rules him out as being gay, though he could still be bi - and explains why he wasn’t chosen as the ‘gay character’.
But what about Scotty? Could he be gay in the reboot?
Edit: sorry I missed Maggie’s posts which cover the same points - my apologies!
“Dammit Kirk, you’re a manslut, not a brick-layer!” [/Bones]
Go back to TOS and watch “Wolf in the Fold”, the drugged Sulu does come across as bi at least.
Thats hot.
And hard as a … er…
Then I stand corrected on that point.
Assuming Sulu was born after the time change? A different sperm reaching the egg. Which would only require the most minute variance in the circumstances of Sulu’s conception between the two universes. Forget sexual orientation. The fact that everyone in the movie younger than Kirk retained their original gender is statistically pretty unlikely.
This was actually addressed by Roddenberry in his novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, referencing the whole Kirk/Spock flash that was popular:
Nick Fury?
no screw i
In “The lights of Zetar” (season 3, ep18), the guest star of the week is Scotty’s female human love interest.
In “Wolf in the fold” (season 2, ep14), Scotty is shown apparently thoroughly enjoying the belly dancer show (even insisting on banging on the table, even after Kirk points out that the local custom is to flick a light/lamp on and off).
Yes, but that’s from TOS. In the rebooted series, presumably, a different outcome is possible.
There’s a piece in the Economist that they don’t go far enough with this addition, since they don’t address any social issues despite the objectives of the main villain (link).
Having not seen the movie, I have to just leave that as a drive-by link drop, except to say how we’ve already seen with the first two movies how much of what made trek special has been cut in favour of standard action fare.
It sounds like they’ve firmly decided on that direction with the third movie, and that’s why I haven’t bothered to see it yet.
I’d say that’s even more important when the movie in question isn’t supposed to even be an all-American list of characters. And there definitely are times that a character looks like the holding post for the tokens: “ok guys, we need to have a half-Japanese African-American disabled lesbian, but the disability must not be visible…”