Gays aboard Enterprise trekking into the future

Keay Davidson, San Francisco Examiner

[Two slightly different versions of this article were printed in The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec, September 22, 1991) and The Ottawa Citizen (September 17, 1991).]

Gays and lesbians are about to go boldly where they've never gone before. They'll be portrayed as citizens of the 24th century in the fall season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Not as outcasts. Not as deviates. Not as eccentrics. Just as ordinary men and women living in a distant century when one's sexual orientation is a matter of total public indifference and isn't merely "tolerated" by the "politically correct." But there'll be none of the "are they or aren't they?" hand-wringing that accompanied a kiss between women on L.A. Law. Rather, viewers will catch the occasional sight between phaser blasts and interstellar chases of two men or two women doing something, that unmistakably says: "We're homosexual and who cares?"

"Dealing with this issue is an important thing to do," said Star Trek executive producer Rick Berman. The syndicated program's fall season starts this week and gays and lesbians should appear sometime later in the autumn season.

"Viewers will see more of shipboard life in some episodes, which will, among other things, include gay crew members in day-to-day circumstances," said the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry. Paramount Television's decision to portray gays and lesbians is the latest sign that the show, now in its 25th year, remains close to the political edge.

The show's politics reflect its historical roots. It was born as Star Trek in 1966, in the bright afterglow of President John F. Kennedy's Camelot - a vision of a kinder, gentler society that was only half-realized by his successor's push for civil rights and a war on poverty. A generation of baby boomers grew up watching the crew of the starship USS Enterprise - although controlled by white males, Capt. James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock - tackling science-fiction versions of issues inspired by the '60s. Another theme was: the eternal tension between logic, epitomized by Spock, and emotion, epitomized by ship's doctor Leonard McCoy.

Sexually, the old show had a pre-women's rights mentality. Its famed opening line, "to boldly go where no man has gone before" , seems like a double entendre, since Kirk seduced countless women in countless worlds.

But a hint of things to come appeared in one of the last episodes, aired before the show was cancelled in 1969. A woman who hated the social constraints placed on females used a gizmo to switch bodies with Kirk. Kirk got his body back, but not before the show portrayed the woman's rage with a startling sympathy.

In 1987 the show was revived as Star Trek: The Next Generation, with a new crew in a new century, and a new vow to go where "no one has gone before."