Star Trek

There is some female-female flirting on Risa in the Deep Space Nine episode where Worf helps terrorists, but it involves Dax, whose low-key bisexuality was always treated as entirely stemming from being partly a Really 700 Years Old non-humanoid entity.

The fact that the depiction of same-sex relationships is "women kissing, men holding hands" makes me think more of Fanservice (Girl on Girl Is Hot after all) under the pretence of representing diversity.

Dont forget the first few eps of TNG had men in space skirts.

I recall that Roddenberry once commented on male-male relationships something like "I haven't been so lucky to have had one myself." Which I'm not so sure means he was bi as trying hard to be politically bi and frustrated about it.

Everything I have ever heard is more 'free love for everyone and more for me' type thing.

Roddenberry wasn't the problem, he was part of The '60s after all.

The problem was, you guessed it: Berman, Hurley and Paramount studio execs. They were the ones who made the gender neutral alien's actor a woman. And shooed same sex couples from Ten Forward in The Offspring. Voyager skirted the trope, but never fully committed see Discount Lesbians. Ditto Enterprise.

Yeah in hindsight the lack of such figures (even one shots) is so telling that whenever I watch Far Beyond the Stars, its hard for me not not see it as an passionate (albeit it unintended) metaphor for Trek's unwillingness in doing anything with LGBT characters.

"The Outcast" is a prime example of why it can be hard to handle these types of issues. It's one of those things that is probably better as a script than actually being filmed. Selecting gendered actors to play gender neutral aliens causes all sorts of unexpected implications. I know some people have said that because all the J'naii were played by women the ending can come across more like man hating lesbians denying one of them from "going back."

If Soren was played by a man that would have made the episode more provocative but could also have sidelined the actual story by appearing to be about Riker coming out as bisexual. The fact that Riker is heterosexual and is attracted to someone with downplayed female characteristics helps the story get to its point faster and clearer.

Back in The '80s, people were still fired for coming out and even the hint of "gay" could ruin a career. Studio execs loved Girl on Girl Is Hot even then, but as soon as anything queer was hinted at, out came "standards and practices".

A show airing in that era, Hunter had as a villainous duo, a pair of lesbians. They cast two very sexy women but they were still the murderous villains. That wouldn't fly today but was par for the course back then.

Gene was high as a kite when he started TNG but even then some things just didn't phase him. The suits however were still part of that "we can't scare the advertisers/that little old lady in Peoria" mindset.

Gene was the guy who wanted the bridge on TNG to be a conference table where the senior staff talked out their plan of action and then told the computer to make it happen while they went to their quarters to read a book or something. Or maybe that was his lawyer, some people who were there believe the lawyer he was using as a mouthpiece was either suggesting things to Gene or just passing off his own ideas as if they came from Gene.

Another interesting note: Gene wanted a one-hour pilot for TNG, the studio wanted a two-hour. It was nearly a stalemate. Gene outright refused to write a two-hour script. Eventually he came to the decision to actually give the pilot writing job to DC Fontana... and padded out her one-hour script with Q and all. He told her it was because the studio wanted his name on the script. There was no such desire from the studio. It was essentially the same trick he pulled with Alexander Courage when he wrote lyrics to the title theme that were never meant to be published just to steal half the royalties.

Sounds like Gene was an opportunist who would say anything to get in good with as many people as possible.

Fits perfectly with the whole "Men love men, women love women, more love for me" quote he said that I'm probably misquoting.

It's part of how the game is played in Hollywood. There is an entire group of people who do work on the pilot episode of a potential tv series and leave immediately after, because if you write or direct the pilot you get royalties for every episode made.

Roddenberry left the Original Series in season three because of the studio politics, and the most influence he had on the show was rewriting an episode where Spock spends an entire little speech on how amazing his IDIC pendant is... Roddenberry had started a company built to sell Star Trek merchandise and was basically trying to squeeze as much money out of the show as he could before it went under.

That royalties thing makes sense, but it still sounds shady as Hell. I get that you're the ones who created the characters being used, but if future writers take them through character growth and they become more than what you wrote, you probably shouldn't still be getting paid for it. But that's a copyright issue. That's a whole mess of law I don't wanna get tangled up in.

I recall that when Doctor Who was preparing to create UNIT, the producers had to do some complicated dance to make sure no actual writer could claim credit for creating, and thus ownership of, any of the characters in UNIT. But British royalties seem even more complicated than US.

Thing is Hollywood is still a business, doesn't matter if someone turns the show into something popular, they still based it off your earlier work and you get credit. Cause otherwise you start getting into arguments about trying to share creative percentages, ie Writer A is responsible for 25% of the character, Actor 40%, Director 30%, Wardrobe 5%, etc. It's already something of a nightmare, that would make it worse.

The thing is, despite Gene's stubbornness, clinging to "summer of love" ideas way past their sell-by date, it was Star Wars and the fans that kept Star Trek alive all those years.

We take Comiccon for granted, but Sci-fi conventions were waaay outside the mainstream back when even TNG aired it's first pilot. That Star Trek had such a pop-culture impact is what kept it going. Of course there were only 3 major networks in the US.

A really funny thing happened when NBC caught on to Star Trek's success, they tried a lot of sci-fi shows, many were bad. Some are So Bad, It's Good, others are...you'd meet your LD-50 of bad tv watching them.

Star Trek got the last laugh in syndication, TNG was beating network programs including NFL football in many markets.

Gene did that constantly. For "The Menagerie", he offered to do a second pass on the script, then took credit for the whole thing.

And then he's all shocked when Bill Shatner steals his script for Star Trek V.

edited 6th Dec '15 12:30:49 PM by hamonrye

I don't remember which came first: Harlan Ellison horning into co-ownership of whatever award it was the teleplay version of "City on the Edge of Forever" won, or Gene bounding up on stage to co-accept the award the original version won.

Probably the former, since that's a more reasonable thing to do.

Yeah...while Ellison is by all accounts not that easy to get along with, he really did come up with the original concept and a lot of what was used in the episode. He deserves at least some credit when it comes to that episode...what Roddenberry did (as well as the thing with the theme song) were pretty crappy things to do.

The Jewels of Sound were a very un-Trek concept, and the City as he conceived it would have been massively expensive and still a disappointment if they'd done it, but as a story it's still much better than the teleplay.

If for no other reason than "Bones tripped and then tripped out" is a really really bad replacement for "a drug dealer killed a stool pigeon and then ran away from the law."

I put too much work into this.

Wow, you really did put too much thought into that, didn't you? No, no. It's awesome that you tracked that for us. Anyone who wants to write time travel fanfic can refer to some of it.

At least I didn't also compose the Memory Alpha page too.

The problem with Gene's "Harlan's script was too expensive" story is that the "budget" Gene quotes kept going up. And as Sf Debris points out: if you do a period piece, expect to pay for the costumes and the props.

As for Kirk & Co. meddling in the timestream... I wonder what the new films will do, I mean it's a Star Trek staple....