During the week beginning November 17, both Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine had episodes that toyed with the theory of polymorphous desire, yet Paramount is no nearer to having genuinely lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters. Deep Space Nine's Dax is a Trill who once inhabited a male body but now lives in Jadzia, a female host body. Jadzia Dax had one of the most passionate same-sex kisses ever to appear on prime-time television in an episode last November when Dax was reunited with a female lover of Dax's past male "host." Now, though, Jadzia Dax is in a relationship with the male Klingon, Worf, and rarely expresses any same-sex desires. In the November 17 episode, "Let He Who Is Without Sin...," while on a vacation pleasure world, Dax briefly flirts with a pleasure hostess (Vanessa Williams) whom Dax had been involved with while inhabiting a different male host. On "Warlord," the November 17 Voyager, the mild-mannered female crewmember Kes is possessed by an ancient alien warrior after his host body dies. While possessed, Kes tries to regain the warrior's throne, assuring his wife that he will always love her in spite of his new female body, and that the wife will always have a place with him. In the Kes body, he also marries the son of a warrior and proposes that the three of them (Kes, the warrior's wife, and the warrior/Kes's new husband) forge a new relationship together.
Both episodes are intriguing in their gender-blending, and progressive in terms of challenging our conventional concepts of gender and identity. However, once the science fiction smoke and mirrors are cleared away, there are still no adequate lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters on Star Trek. Dax's standard desires are embodied by characters who happen to be the opposite sex of the host bodies. And while Kes had a one-episode bi-trans whirl, audiences could rest assured by the end of the program that any non-heterosexual activity was purely temporary, and, in fact, a "possession." Paramount has continued to ignore the wishes of series creator Gene Roddenberry and over 5,000 forward-thinking trekkies by creating a future where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are the only invisible members of the Federation.