Star Trek: Voyager

The issue of gay characters on Star Trek used to be excellently covered by gaytrek.com, the website of the Voyager Visibility Project/USS Harvey Milk Gay & Lesbian Star Trek Association, a pressure group that was founded in 1995 to get the Star Trek producers to include a positive, ongoing gay character on Voyager.

That site now longer exists, and the gaytrek.com domain has been usurped by a porn site. The Voyager Visibility Project folded in 1998, with a final message conceding defeat and proposing a boycott of Paramount/Viacom. That message also said that www.gaytrek.com would remain up as a monument to the failed efforts of the VVP, and the callousness of the Star Trek producers and Paramount. Why Mr. Perkins has not been able to keep the site up I don't know. With the help of the Internet Archive, I have put most of their materials up on this site to make it accessible to the public again. It is an invaluable educational resource and must not vanish into oblivion.

In support of the VVP's petition drive, I wrote the following letter in May 1995:

To:
Rick Berman
At Paramount Pictures

5555 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA, 90038

Dear Mr Berman:

When Gene Roddenberry announced in 1991, shortly before his death, that the upcoming 5th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation would feature gay characters on a regular basis, I felt like a dream had come true. As a gay man and an avid Star Trek fan, Iīve always felt left out of the great vision that Star Trek is. Now, finally, there would be characters I could identify with on a personal level. But then, two months later, Gene died. It appears to me that his promise died with him.

In the last four years and six seasons of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, you have had countless opportunities to feature identifiable gay characters matter-of-factly in everyday situations, like a gay couple holding hands in Ten Forward, or a crew member making an off-hand remark about a same-sex partner. It should seem that this would not be too excessive a demand, given that all the main characters of those shows are exclusively straight. Nevertheless, you chose not to do even that much - and ignore the expectations and wishes of many gay Star Trek fans, who have contributed to your present success.

My hopes for a regular gay character on Star Trek were renewed with the arrival of Voyager - and bitterly disappointed shortly thereafter. Once again, the 24th century is for heterosexuals only. This policy of yours is the exact opposite of what Star Trek stands for: diversity, open - mindedness, acceptance of different lifestyles and ideas, a world where prejudice, bigotry and injustice have been eliminated once and for all. In the Sixties, the classic series addressed the social issues of its time. I ask you to follow in that tradition and make Star Trek again the cutting-edge of television - donīt leave the ground to Babylon 5.

I therefore politely suggest that you include a regular, fully-developed gay character on Voyager in its upcoming 2nd season - or reveal one of the already established crew members to be gay. As other TV shows in the recent past have demonstrated, this would also significantly increase your ratings.

Despite these objections, I wish you good luck for your continuing voyages into the unknown.

Sincerely

It is clear that this letter went right to the circular file, just like the many others that Mr Berman must have received on the same subject. Much more than said four years and countless opportunities later, the 24th century is still inhabited only by heterosexual beings - and I say 'beings' because the traditional family structure that Mr Berman seems to be promoting is not limited to Earth.

The Voyager crew may be stranded in the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light years from earth, but the family structures, sexual customs and gender roles they encounter always coincide with those of 20th-century America, planet Earth. Now that's a mystery that is almost as deep as the question of why everyone speaks English.

While the total and complete absence of gay characters and same-sex relationships in The Next Generation was merely unfortunate, in Voyager, it quickly became offensive. The Next Generation was not a very sexual show - most main characters were single and only occasionally engaged in intimate relationships, if at all. Voyager, on the other hand, had aggressive, in-your-face heterosexuality right from the start. "The sexual exploits of Tom Paris in the Delta Quadrant" would have been a more apt title for this show. Who could forget Tom Parris trying to get Harry Kim to agree to a double date with the Delaney sisters in Time and Again, the very first episode after the pilot? That kind of dialogue would have been unthinkable on Picard's bridge, but on Voyager, it was to become commonplace. And in subsequent seasons, we were inundated with heterosexual plots - Kes and Nelix, Chakotay and Seska, Janeway and Chakotay, Paris and Torres, not to mention Tom Paris' and Harry Kim's many crushes and one-episode stands.

Straight Sex (and mindless action) seemed to be the only answer the writers and producers had to Voyager's falling ratings - that, and introducing the new character of Seven of Nine. It was immediately apparent why Jerry Ryan had been hired for the role of Seven - probably not for her (excellent) acting ability. Seven, with her impressive anatomy, took the mating frenzy on Voyager to a new level. Ultimately, even the doctor developed a romantic interest in her, even though he is just a medical hologram and thus not a priori programmed with sexual desires. The fact that he would choose to feel attracted to a female crewmember suggests that heterosexuality is still normative in the 24th century.

Voyager's continuing total disregard for and ignoring of the true diversity of human sexuality became even more hurtful and disappointing after rumors had circulated that Seven would eventually be revealed to be lesbian. VVP and GLAAD even went so far as to announce this as a fact in a September 4, 1997 press release. Today, we know of course that it never happened. Jeri Taylor told TV Guide (March 10th, 1998 issue):

Seven of Nine is not a lesbian, Star Trek: Voyager executive producer Jeri Taylor says. The Voyager Visibility Project, a gay Trekker group, issued a press release asserting that Jeri Ryan's Borg character would reveal her preference sometime this season. But "that's completely untrue," Taylor says. The group has been lobbying for a gay Voyager character, she adds, "in my mind, quite legitimately. It is something I am absolutely sympathetic with, and I have tried several times to do it. But for various reasons there has been opposition, and it gradually became clear that this is a fight I could not win."

It would be interesting to know exactly who was opposed to the idea. It was probably Rick Berman, given that no one below him could have consistently blocked gay characters from materializing in everything Star Trek since Roddenberry's death. But, of course, the true culprits might be anonymous Paramount Studio executives, and without more information, there is no way to know for sure.

Jeri Ryan commented on the affair in the April 10, 1999 issue of TV Guide:

"There was a big petition on the Internet to have Seven be the first lesbian on Star Trek. Then somebody issued a fake press release announcing it was going to happen. Then all the fans got disappointed when it didn't. Well, not everyone. I don't know that mainstream America is ready for it. But who knows? My character is exploring all aspects of humanity -- and sexuality is certainly one of those aspects -- so it wouldn't surprise me if lesbianism is touched on. Seven would be the obvious character to explore it with. Our show is about acceptance and shedding prejudice."

One can only hope that Mrs. Ryan was forced to make these statements due to contractual obligations, because otherwise, they would reflect very poorly on her intelligence. Not offending the mainstream and shedding prejudices are mutually exclusive goals, and can't do the latter if you insist on the former. If the civil rights movement of the 1960s had waited for the white majority to be "ready" for the idea that black people, too, are citizens, black people would still be sitting in the back of the bus. Besides, a press release that is factually incorrect is not a "fake" press release.

Voyager ended its 7-year run in 2001, with Seven and Jakotay in a relationship, Neelix settled down with some dream woman he met a earlier that season and Paris and Torres married to each other. Quite impressive for a show that is "not about sex". On the other hand, opportunities to at least positively comment on same-sex relationships, attractions and desires had been plenty, but were consistently wasted (for details, I refer the reader to the Gay Trekkies' Report on the end of Star Trek: Voyager).

Of all the Star Trek shows, Voyager's record on treatment of human sexuality is the most shameful. It had more sex in it than any other Star Trek show, it was running at a time when gay and lesbian characters were becoming commonplace on TV, yet it did not even reach the Next Generation's feeble standard of inclusiveness. TNG at least avoided explicit homophobia in its dialogues, dispensing with the offensive phrase "when a man and a woman.." in general discusssions of human sexuality and substituting "two people". Voyager knew no such inhibitions. When the Doctor explained the birds and the bees to Seven of Nine, that reactionary line was back, as if the writers/producers were mocking their remaining gay audience: "Don't you get the message? You are not welcome." One almost felt surprise that they were not talking of "one man and one woman" like the anti-gay marriage amendments that religious extremists have been pushing into federal law and state constitutions all over the country.

Kate Mulgrew made some surprisingly frank comments on the subject of Star Trek and sexual orientation in early 2002. She told Metrosource that gay life has not been portrayed on Star Trek

" (..) because of its both political and potentially incendiary substance. I'm in a minority as well, as a woman. It took a lot of courage on their part to hire a woman. I think that right up until the end they were very dubious about it. It's one thing to cast a subordinate Black, Asian or woman, but to put them in leading role means the solid endorsement of one of the largest studios in the world. And that goes for a gay character as well. It requires a terrific social conscience on their part and the pledge of some solidarity and unanimity, which I think is probably at the source of most of this problem to get every one of those executives on board regarding this decision."

"The culture will force them into this decision very, very soon. I have no question about that in my mind. It can be pushed, it should be pushed and it has been pushed by every actor I know of. And, god knows, I've promoted it. At some point there will be a charge from the community if not the culture itself insisting that such a character be portrayed and be portrayed with great integrity. And I believe that that time is upon us. "

"You should know, very directly from me, that this has always been a very passionate personal conviction of mine and I have been anything but quiet about it with Mr. Berman and everybody else whose ear I could possibly grab."

" Well, one would think that Hollywood would be more open-minded at this point, since essentially the whole town is run by the gay community. It makes very little sense if you think about it. No, Star Trek is very strangely by the book in this regard. Rick Berman, who is a very sagacious man, has been very firm about certain things. I've approached him many, many times over the years about getting a gay character on the show--one whom we could really love, not just a guest star. Y'know, we had blacks, Asians, we even had a handicapped character-- and so I thought, this is now beginning to look a bit absurd. And he said, "In due time." And so, I'm suspecting that on Enterprise they will do something to this effect. I couldn't get it done on mine. And I am sorry for that.