DS9 - Rejoined

[Riedquat]

You have a rather halycon view of 1995. That was two years after the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" act started a witch hunt in the military for gay soldiers, the Supreme Court ruled that parade organizers didn't have to allow LGBT groups to march with them, and the year that Clinton finally allowed LGB people to gain security clearance - yes, before that being LGB was grounds for utter revocation of security clearance, no matter what (Transgender people would have to wait a while). Still a black mark, mind you, but not utter disqualification. This was a time when it was mainstream that being gay was a perversion, gay teachers were automatically disqualified, and murdering people for being gay still occurred and got a lot of mainstream sympathy.

I'm not in the USA; as someone else pointed out attitudes were different in different places. I vaguely recall the episode being oringally screened here (UK) but not much being made of it.

Perhaps getting more controversial there is a potential issue when it no-one cares just whether it's even right to ask straight actors to do such a kiss.

Given Terry Farrell explicitly for it and cites it as one of her favorite episodes, I do wonder at this odd desire to protect someone who doesn't want your protection.

I was speaking more generally. Would you have said the same if I expressed dislike over an expectation for an actor to take her clothes off? There's been a bit of that in the rather more recent past (Game of Thrones with her-name-escapes-me-right-now being an example).

Although Memory Alpha tells me Avery Brooks told Entertainment Tonight to go pound sand when they wanted to film the kiss, because he didn't want it sensationalized, so he made a pro-LGBT rights allegory and didn't even get any viewer boost from sensationalism. Avery Brooks, continuing to be an utter class act, and showing why Rick Berman hated his guts at the same time (not that Berman had the balls to do anything about it - this is fucking Sisko here).

Good for him, and I mean that. I believe that's the best way of dealing with such issues - make them seem entirely normal, not sensational.

[TGLS]

I'm not in the USA; as someone else pointed out attitudes were different in different places. I vaguely recall the episode being oringally screened here (UK) but not much being made of it.

If I recall, there was a Family Guy episode about abortion; Fox didn't air it, though it aired in Britain. US/UK different despite letters.

I was speaking more generally. Would you have said the same if I expressed dislike over an expectation for an actor to take her clothes off? There's been a bit of that in the rather more recent past (Game of Thrones with her-name-escapes-me-right-now being an example).

Well, depends if there was an understanding about whether nakedness/lesbianism was part of the role when hired. In all honesty, the way GoT developed, it was fairly obvious that all actresses could be asked to do a nude scene.

[nothri]

6 out of 10 is a good score for this episode. I feel like it is largely a by-the-numbers trek romance with a few good to excellent character moments that elevate it. The parts that really stand out to me are Sisco rather grimly spelling out all the reasons the relationship would be a mistake because of the taboos surrounding Trill society but ending with a very heartfelt statement that he would support Dax's decision no matter what and Terry Ferrell really giving a heartfelt performance going over the regrets of her past host and the desperation not to let go of an old flame again. I find the episode overall somewhat forgettable despite the same sex angle allegory but those moments make it worth a watch.

[ChrisTheEnby]

In The Outcast on TNG they have Riker have a relationship with a nonbinary-coded alien.... but they made sure said alien passes as a cis woman so it wasn't gay. iirc they didn't ever refer to said alien with nonbinary pronouns.....

Reading the wiki, I'm under the impression that the lexicon what have you wasn't very developed around the time of that episode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender#History

Curious your take.

Rejoined was SO CLOSE to being great, but they really played up the bigotry/"taboo" angle to an uncomfortable degree, like you can't write about queer people being queer openly and happuily, we always need to be used as a prop for tensin.... is it any surprise it ended how it did....

especially when Discovery would go on to give us a canon gay couple......... only to immediately engage in loathsome Bury Your Gays shit.

How do you feel about Trek though introducing it as an issue?

I do understand what you mean about not having a running character of such condition though.

I guess i have to remind myself i am a younger queer/trans person who discovered Star Trek through netflix and the shows are very old at this point, so i guess i don't understand the full context of the fact that "modern trek" still predates my own existance by a lot. So maybe what happened is just because DS9 and TNG etc. were just "products of their time" and may e it's a little unfair when compared to more modern shows that are as abrave as say modern shows can be more open.

Then again, it's still trobuling that the Trek shows frm this era are still "better" than what the currently airing Trek show is doing.... which is hard to say if it says more about how i'm not giving the older shows enough credit, or the people in charge of say......Discovery are just huge fuck ups when it comes to rep.

it's sad that doing the bare minimum for the time they were made is something that needs to be praised because it's better than the alternative.

[Worffan101]

I guess i have to remind myself i am a younger queer/trans person who discovered Star Trek through netflix and the shows are very old at this point, so i guess i don't understand the full context of the fact that "modern trek" still predates my own existance by a lot. So maybe what happened is just because DS9 and TNG etc. were just "products of their time" and may e it's a little unfair when compared to more modern shows that are as abrave as say modern shows can be more open.

Then again, it's still trobuling that the Trek shows frm this era are still "better" than what the currently airing Trek show is doing.... which is hard to say if it says more about how i'm not giving the older shows enough credit, or the people in charge of say......Discovery are just huge fuck ups when it comes to rep.

it's sad that doing the bare minimum for the time they were made is something that needs to be praised because it's better than the alternative.

Yeah, in 1995 it was still totally normal for a politician to openly compare homosexuality to fucking dogs, with no real repercussions. And it would continue to be for another decade at least. There has been a seismic shift in favor of acceptance of LGBT people in the last decade in the USA.

What makes Rejoined so special, and far better than the currently airing Trek (tbh "Picard" is better about this but STD SUCKS at LGBT rep), even though it's just a one-episode romance that has little to no impact on the show as a whole, is that Avery Brooks is a stand-up guy and as talented a director as he is an actor. He had the balls to treat homosexuality as completely normal and just use the allegory to hammer the message home without feeling the need to double up and make it overly anvilicious, and he had the talent to make a really wonderful, soft, loving romance episode that has a really interesting concept and a lot of feeling behind it.

Again, even though this is just a one-episode romance that was never going to affect anything, I feel more in the moment for Dax and Kahn than I ever have for Stamets and Culber, or any of Seven's emotionally unstable vaguely motherly older female love interests.

The problem with STD by the way is that Alex Kurtzman is the Emperor of all moronic hacks, and the writers' room is an unstable toxic mess that used to be run day to day by lying asshole hacks and now is run by someone who's trying to fit something coherent in between mandatory signposts wholly created by Alex "Couldn't write a good story if JRR Tolkein pre-wrote and worldbuilt it for him" Kurtzman. I'm deadly serious, Kurtzman is like the anti-talent, in that literally every single production he's ever been involved with would have been dramatically improved by removing him from the production entirely. The man has only one skill, and that is finishing movies quickly and more importantly cheaply. They're invariably shit, but they are technically finished, with great haste on a small budget.

[GreyICE]

Although Memory Alpha tells me Avery Brooks told Entertainment Tonight to go pound sand when they wanted to film the kiss, because he didn't want it sensationalized, so he made a pro-LGBT rights allegory and didn't even get any viewer boost from sensationalism. Avery Brooks, continuing to be an utter class act, and showing why Rick Berman hated his guts at the same time (not that Berman had the balls to do anything about it - this is fucking Sisko here).

Good for him, and I mean that. I believe that's the best way of dealing with such issues - make them seem entirely normal, not sensational.

Definitely some cultural things that are very specifically American here. But one thing I'll note is that Avery Brooks did NOT intend to make it seem entirely normal. It was taboo, and he showed it as taboo.

What Brooks didn't do was sensationalize "two women kissing." What was revolutionary was love - that love didn't have to be between a man and a woman, that it could be between two people regardless of gender. It wasn't "the kiss" that was taboo, but the idea of the relationship itself, and he refused to allow the relationship to be reduced down to a physical act by singling that physical act out.

I guess i have to remind myself i am a younger queer/trans person who discovered Star Trek through netflix and the shows are very old at this point, so i guess i don't understand the full context of the fact that "modern trek" still predates my own existance by a lot. So maybe what happened is just because DS9 and TNG etc. were just "products of their time" and may e it's a little unfair when compared to more modern shows that are as abrave as say modern shows can be more open.

Then again, it's still trobuling that the Trek shows frm this era are still "better" than what the currently airing Trek show is doing.... which is hard to say if it says more about how i'm not giving the older shows enough credit, or the people in charge of say......Discovery are just huge fuck ups when it comes to rep.

it's sad that doing the bare minimum for the time they were made is something that needs to be praised because it's better than the alternative.

Oh no, Jonathan Frakes wanted the non-binary alien to be played by a male actor in The Outcast, and was overruled by Paramount. No less than Woopi fucking Goldberg had to fight to have her explanation of "love" not be "love is between a man and a woman" and only the fact that it was, y'know, Woopi Goldberg - the biggest actor to ever be involved with Star Trek to that point (and I would argue ever) - made them relent and let her say a more broader and inclusive line.

So throw all the bricks you want, Paramount and Berman knew what they were doing. David Gerrold was driven off the show by homophobia for fucks sake. David Gerrold. Just aim the bricks at Paramount, Rick Berman, and to a lesser extend Gene Rodenberry and his despicable lawyer. Moore, Brooks, and the DS9 crew did what they could get away with under the studio limitations, as did the TNG crew.


As an aside, I really liked the relationship subplot in If Memory Serves. I thought it was nuanced and interesting, and I thought Wilson Cruz and Anthony Rapp did a great job with it. Although I understand if by that point you've written Discovery off, it's certainly a show that makes itself hard to love.


You have a point about Kurtzman's filmography, it really isn't inspiring. In the worst way.

[Link8909]

Oh no, Jonathan Frakes wanted the non-binary alien to be played by a male actor in The Outcast, and was overruled by Paramount. No less than Woopi fucking Goldberg had to fight to have her explanation of "love" not be "love is between a man and a woman" and only the fact that it was, y'know, Woopi Goldberg - the biggest actor to ever be involved with Star Trek to that point (and I would argue ever) - made them relent and let her say a more broader and inclusive line.

So throw all the bricks you want, Paramount and Berman knew what they were doing. David Gerrold was driven off the show by homophobia for fucks sake. David Gerrold. Just aim the bricks at Paramount, Rick Berman, and to a lesser extend Gene Rodenberry and his despicable lawyer. Moore, Brooks, and the DS9 crew did what they could get away with under the studio limitations, as did the TNG crew.


As an aside, I really liked the relationship subplot in If Memory Serves. I thought it was nuanced and interesting, and I thought Wilson Cruz and Anthony Rapp did a great job with it. Although I understand if by that point you've written Discovery off, it's certainly a show that makes itself hard to love.


You have a point about Kurtzman's filmography, it really isn't inspiring. In the worst way.

Same, while it was a mistake to kill Doctor Culber off like they did, I'm happy that he came back and they made a very interesting story about his resurrection, as for Alex Kurtzman, he seems like a good guy based on the interviews I've seen, but aside from a few scenes the cinematography in Star Trek Discovery isn't great, but I'd rather have that than Rick Berman pulling the creative leash of the writers, directors and actors of that time, the blatant sexism towards the actresses and not allowing the progressive future that is Star Trek to be progressive, while one can make an augment on the quality of Alex Kurtzman's writing or directing, I still have more respect for him for not only allowing Star Trek to be progressive, but allowing Star Trek to push more for creative and different stories and series, rather than trying to recapture the magic of The Next Generation like Rick Berman seemed to try and do with both Voyager and Enterprise.

[Riedquat]

Well, depends if there was an understanding about whether nakedness/lesbianism was part of the role when hired. In all honesty, the way GoT developed, it was fairly obvious that all actresses could be asked to do a nude scene.

Definitely true, but what we don't want is for anyone to feel they have to if they want their career to get anywhere.

[GreyICE]

Well, depends if there was an understanding about whether nakedness/lesbianism was part of the role when hired. In all honesty, the way GoT developed, it was fairly obvious that all actresses could be asked to do a nude scene.

Definitely true, but what we don't want is for anyone to feel they have to if they want their career to get anywhere.

What about lesbian and gay actors who have been doing straight sex scenes since, I dunno, Hollywood started? Where, unlike straight actors, they were almost never asked and it was a simple fact of the business? There was no risk that "they felt like they had to", they literally had to or they'd be unemployed and unemployable. And that's still in effect.

[excalibur]

The same sex romance and other implied things have actually been handled well in DS9. Remember when a female Ferengi pretended to be a dude and Dax, assuming she was talking to a dude asked if "he" was interested in Quark and assumed the "guy" was gay before the reveal that he was in fact a she.

We can speculate all we want about the Star Trek future but what has been show tells us that there isn't this underlying continuation of 20th-21st bigotry that the media seems to want to paint ONLY the western part of this planet and forget the other parts conveniently.

Also, I REALLY hope Chuck is not comparing people's bigotry to same sex relations, which are seen as 2 consent adults and pedophilia, an adult taking advantage of a child as equal subject matter