the m0vie blog

This February and March, we’re taking a look at the 1995 to 1996 season of Star Trek, including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Check back daily Tuesday through Friday for the latest review.

For a show that is supposedly about an enlightened and utopian future, Star Trek really doesn’t have the best record when it comes to gay rights.

Many fans laud the work that the franchise did in popularising the Civil Rights anxieties of the sixties, offering memorable and distinctive parables and the futility of racism while offering one of the first interracial kisses to air on national television. Fans of the franchise are quick to celebrate these triumphs as an example of Star Trek holding up a mirror to contemporary society and championing the causes of equality and social justice. It is part of the mythmaking that Gene Roddenberry baked into the foundation of the Star Trek legend.

Of course, the reality is more complicated. As important as it was to have a racially diverse crew on the bridge of the classic Enterprise, that idea came from the studio rather than Roddenberry. The show defended and vindicated the Vietnam War just as often as it criticised and opposed it. The interracial kiss in Plato’s Stepchildren might had more meaning if it weren’t an example of telepathic mindrape by sadistic aliens, or if it had aired before I, Spy had broadcast its own interracial kiss.

As much as fans like to believe Star Trek is progressive and enlightened, the franchise does not have as strong a track record as its advocates would contest. This is particularly true of the depiction of homosexuality in Star Trek. In the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, David Gerrold’s script for Blood and Fire was scrapped. Richard Arnold claimed that it was because the script was terrible; but this was the same season that produced The Last Outpost, Angel One and The Neutral Zone. It seems “terrible” is a relative term.

There were other examples. During production of The Offspring, there are accounts of David Livingston sprinting down to the sets to stop a shot of a same-sex couple holding hands making it into the episode. When the show finally decided to do an allegory for homosexuality, it was careful to cast a female performer in the role of Riker’s love interest to be sure that the audience did not get the wrong idea. The mirror universe episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are populated with gay stereotypes and clichés.

No matter how alien the creatures in Star Trek might get, sexuality tends towards heterosexual. In Metamorphosis, Kirk and Spock only realise that the Companion is attracted to Cochrane once they deduce the creature’s gender. Odo’s pseudo-sexual relationship with other Founders is typically expressed in relation to the character known as the Female Changeling. (Chimera does try to fix this.) Although there have been allusions to Andorian marriages featuring four partners, Star Trek: Enterprise presents the relationships as decidedly normative.

What little queer content exists seems to have slipped in under the radar. There is a decidedly homoerotic undertone to Amok Time. In The Offspring, Data allows Lal to assign her own gender and Whoopi Goldberg defined kissing as something that happens when “two people” (rather than “a man and a woman”) fall in love. In Rules of Acquisition, Jadzia Dax suspected that Quark’s newest employee had a crush on the rogue trader; Dax was just surprised to discover that the waiter in question was a woman in disguise who was trying to subvert the Ferengi patriarchy.

All of this serves to make Rejoined the most successful Star Trek episode to deal with the topic of homosexuality. This is not to argue that Rejoined is perfect or flawless. It is a science fiction show that aired in 1995, and there are some uncomfortable subtexts to the whole story. At the same time, its heart is in the right place. Rejoined is a beautiful piece of work, because it represents a rare example of the franchise trying to live up to its own publicity. In doing so, it serves to emphasise how frequently (and easily) the property has allowed itself to fall short.

Rejoined aired in 1995. Twenty years later, there is still discussion about the possibility of actually putting a gay character in a version of Star Trek that could air on television. In an interview in January 2014, Robert Orci addressed the franchise’s spotty record on the topic. “It is an ensemble and there is lots of people to represent so no one point of view should hog it,” commented the then-director of Star Trek Beyond, suggesting that fans should not get their hopes up about seeing any queer representation in a franchise that lauds its civil rights credentials.

This was one year before Ireland became the first country in the world to recognise same-sex marriage by popular decree and the Supreme Court enshrined the right in the United States Constitution. Star Trek missed the opportunity to be a trailblazer on the subject, to incorporate the idea of freedom of sexual identity into the utopia promised by the franchise. Twenty years after Rejoined, the franchise is dragging its feet on the topic. It is no longer possible to be trailblazing, but it is possible to be representative.

Rejoined is not overtly about homosexuality, in the same way that The Trouble With Tribbles is not overtly about the Cold War or A Taste of Armageddon is not overtly about the media handling of Vietnam. However, it is a vital part of the subtext of the episode. In fact, it so essential to the episode that Rejoined builds to the image of two actresses kissing. Even divorced from the science-fiction fantasy setting of Star Trek, that was a powerful image in October 1995, two years before Ellen came out.

At the start of Rejoined, Jadzia Dax is reunited with Lenara Kahn. Lenara is the new host of the Kahn symbiont. When the Dax symbiont lived inside Torias, the Kahn symbiont lived inside Nilani. Torias and Nilani were married, and the two symbionts enjoyed a loving relationship. Due to the circumstances of Trill biology, the two symbionts have found themselves living within female bodies. It is all a bit less complicated than it sounds when it is articulated like that; a science-fiction metaphor for that oldest of tropes. Rejoined is a story about forbidden love.

In the documentary Charting New Territory, writer Ronald D. Moore explained that the metaphor was so apparent that the actual framework of the story was irrelevant:

To the audience, you’re playing out this metaphor of a taboo that you’re not supposed to be involved with somebody. And the audience looks at these two women who are in love together, but the show will never ever comment on it. Because it’s really about this Trill taboo. It’s about this completely other issue. But the idea of homosexual love is going to stare the audience in the face, no matter what they do. We never have to mention it in the show.

It is impossible to watch Rejoined without understanding the underlying allegory. This is a story about two women who love each other, only to be told that their love is a “taboo.” What else could it be?

The script to Rejoined is quite candid about this. Nobody objects to the fact that Jadzia and Lenara are both women, but the objections framed by the Trill characters are all instantly recognisable as the stock rhetoric employed by homophobes in these situations. Nobody actually calls it “unnatural” or “indecent”, but the subtext is there. “They’re very friendly today,” Pren observes. “They had dinner last night. Alone.” When Bejal asks what exactly Pren is saying, Pren replies, “I shouldn’t have to say anything.”

Even in conversations with Lenara, Bejal is careful not to appear openly bigoted or reactionary. He is never accusatory, even as he presses the issue. There is something akin to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy at work here, an attempt at a silent erasure of a sexuality considered to be deviant. “I don’t want to ask you anything, but I’m beginning to wonder if I should,” Bejal explains, as if Lenara’s sexual desires have caused him some discomfort or inconvenience. “You tell me nothing’s going on, then nothing’s going on. I just want to hear you say it.”

It is not too different from the sort of rhetoric that was typically used to justify keeping gay characters off the Star Trek franchise. The logic used by individuals opposed to featuring gay characters would frequently insist that characters romantic and sexual lives were their own, and that would be distracting or pandering to write them into the show, that viewers should just accept that there are gay people in the future and that they shouldn’t be too bothered that they never actually see any, because what people do in their own time is their own business.

It’s probably the strongest argument in favour of keeping gay characters out of Star Trek, because it is only implicitly homophobic rather than explicitly homophobic. It is still a terrible argument from a logical standpoint. Such arguments ignore the fact that romantic and sexual lives of  heterosexual characters are given ample development. If Kirk can make out with alien space babes, why couldn’t a gay character have orientation-appropriate hook-ups? If Bashir and Ezri could wake up in bed together, why not Bashir and Garak?

Despite the fact that the language used was careful not to appear too bigoted or too provocative, the underlying point remains the same. The reason that there were no gay characters in Star Trek was because none of the highest-ranking individuals wanted them there. As Ronald D. Moore noted in his infamous exit interview:

“Tell me why there are no gay characters in Star Trek,” says Ron Moore. “This is one of those uncomfortable questions I hate getting when I was working on the show, because there is no good answer for it. There is no answer for it other than people in charge don’t want gay characters in Star Trek, period. This stuff about, ‘How would you know? Maybe there are lots of people walking through those corridors that are actually gay. What would you have us do? Show them holding hands? That would be ridiculous. Our regulars don’t hold hands,’ which its own kind of a sad commentary on the state of human relations, that they can’t even hold hands. Just think about what it would say to have a gay Starfleet captain. It would mean something in Star Trek. It would mean something in science fiction. It would mean something in television. Why isn’t Star Trek leading the way anymore, in the social, political front? Gene always said, whether this is true or not, that he saw Star Trek as a way to explore social issues, without the networks catching on. Because it was all couched in space aliens, and ray guns, and space opera type stuff, it gave him a chance to explore these other issues.”

As with any element of any story, gay characters do not appear by accident or fluke; they are also not absent by accident or fluke. They are either there or not there based on the choices of the production team – writers, executives, producers.

It seems entirely appropriate that acknowledging the attraction between Jadzia and Lenara would end with them “exiled from the Trill homeworld.” After all, it seems like any potential LGBTQ characters have been exiled from the canon. They might appear in tie-in fiction or spin-off merchandise, but the franchise has never comfortably acknowledged any of its characters might be homosexual. As if to offer a case a point, the character of Lieutenant Hawke could only be identified as gay in tie-in fiction, published after his death in Star Trek: First Contact.

In some ways, Rejoined can be read as a response to the closing scene of The Host. In the episode that introduced the Trill to the Star Trek universe, Beverly Crusher could not continue a relationship with the symbiont she loved once that symbiont was placed in a female body. (As if to underscore the possible homophobic subtext of it, Beverly was more comfortable – if still weirded out – when the symbiont was placed in Riker.) It seems like it is not what is inside that matters when it comes to love. Rejoined essentially reverses this, suggesting love is more than skin deep.

There are a number of legitimate criticisms to be made of the allegory at the heart of Rejoined. The most obvious is that the relationship at the heart of the story is still grounded in heteronormative relationships. Jadzia and Lenara rekindle the marriage between Torias and Nilani. As M. G. DuPree notes in Alien Babes and Alternate Universes:

But of course, as LGBT viewers and others are quick to point out, this was not strictly speaking a lesbian kiss at all. It was the expression of lingering sexual attraction from a heterosexual marriage, and far from being a celebration of lesbian sexuality, the encounter was a kind of repudiation of it – Dax and her/his former life are draen to each other in spite of their current bodies, and alternative sexuality is represented as a kind of willful ignoring of the physical rather than an embracing of it.

This is certainly a legitimate criticism of the episode. It might have been a more convincing commentary of homosexual relationships without the past life section of the story, or if the past life relationship had been a same-sex relationship. It does undercut the episode’s moral slightly.

There is also an argument to be made that the taboo featured in Rejoined makes a reasonable amount of sense, as opposed to homophobia. “Well, the whole point of joining is for the symbiont to accumulate experiences from the span of many lifetimes,” Bashir explains. “In order to move on from host to host, the symbiont has to learn to let go of the past, let go of parents, siblings, children, even spouses.” This is a reasonable argument on its own terms, but the depiction of Trill culture on Deep Space Nine suggests there may be other good reasons for the taboo.

While ostracising those “deviants” and refusing to allow the symbionts to find new hosts seems harsh, particularly in light of the revelations made about Trill society in Equilibrium, it is understandable that the inhabitants of Trill might feel deeply uncomfortable with a functionally immortal upper class who mingle repeatedly and excessively in the same incestuous circles. Imagine what would happen if a new host could slip comfortably into the life and position held by the old host? How would that impact on opportunities and social mobility for “unjoined” Trill?

Scripts like Invasive Procedures and Equilibrium made it quite clear that Trill has a very strong class-based society. There was a firm delineation between the “joined” and the “unjoined”, with Trill children encouraged to apply for “joining” so that they might merge with symbionts that have been jumping between hosts for centuries – if not longer. It is quite clear that there are very few symbionts, despite the large number of applicants. Being “joined” is something of a status symbol, and it is interesting to argue whether Trill society is designed to exploit the “unjoined.”

In these circumstances, it might be a good idea to prevent all that power and experience from coalescing and reinforcing itself time and time again. After all, studies suggest that wealth and power tend to be drawn towards wealth and power; influential and successful families tend to accrue more influence and success. Imagine the possibilities if the people controlling that wealth and power were capable of living forever. The class structure on Trill would become completely disproportionate and impossible to conceal.

While the social consequences of this taboo might be unreasonable and even malicious, there is a certain internal logic to it. It makes a great deal of sense, given what we know about Trill culture. But then Rejoined is not really about Trill culture, because Trill culture does not actually exist. The literal reading of the episode is very much secondary to the thematic and moral reading of the show. This isn’t a show about the rigid class structures of an alien society, this is a story about true love.

Which is why it is so important that Rejoined builds to the kiss between Lenara and Jadzia. That puts the issue in stark terms. Strip away all the world-building and technobabble, clear away the make-up and the sets; the scene is about two women having the freedom to express their love for one another. It has been suggested that Rejoined was only the fifth lesbian kiss to air on American broadcast television; some affiliates in the southern states actually cut it from the broadcast, demonstrating the power of the scene.

That excuses any of the awkwardness of the metaphor. As Becky Chambers pointed out, Rejoined was an episode that told its audience that there was nothing wrong with two women who loved each other expressing that love:

I did not see Rejoined when it aired in 1995 (to put things in perspective, Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997). I must have seen it some time in high school, as a rerun. The metaphor about cultural taboos was lost on me at the time. What had me rapt that no one on the show had a problem with Dax falling head-over-spotted-heels for a woman. Gender was a total non-issue. There wasn’t so much as a “I’ll be in my bunk” (that reference didn’t exist yet, but you get the gist). What I got out of that episode was that in the United Federation of Planets, a place that had captured my imagination since I was in preschool, you were free to kiss whoever you wanted. That was a wonderful, affirming feeling.

Even as it is impossible to ignore some of the problems with structuring Rejoined as a metaphor for same-sex attraction, it is also unfair to deny the very real and substantial impact that the episode had on people who watched it.

It is an example of the same logic that makes Uhura such a vital character. There are a lot of problems with how classic Star Trek tended to portray Uhura, but the character did a great deal of good. For all the issues with scripts like The Changeling, Uhura did inspire women like Whoopi Goldberg and Mae Jemison. If even one gay child saw that kiss and learned to accept themselves because of it, or felt a little less excluded because of it, or even just hoped that there might be a more understanding world somewhere ahead of them, then it is all worth while.

The kiss is what makes Rejoined the best gay allegory that Star Trek has ever constructed. The writing is great, the performances are wonderful, the ending is honest. But actually having two women kiss each other on screen without sensationalising it or exploiting it? That took real courage from all involved at the time, making it impossible for anybody to deny what the show was actually about. It was a moral courage that was sorely missing from the final scene of The Host or that was deliberately undercut by the casting of The Outcast.

On the DVD special features, actress Susanna Thompson recalls just how hard director Avery Brooks worked to protect the two actresses while shooting that scene:

I know that some TV news magazine wanted to come in and shoot the day we were filming the kiss, and he kept them away. Which I thought was very interesting. He was the one who said that it also paralleled the taboo in the story. That Trills were not ever to be rejoined again. And what does society do in terms of their judgment when they view you going against their code, their laws their morals? And then here was all the sensationalism in our world, the viewing us doing this episode. It was interesting.

It is a credit to all involved in every stage of the production that the kiss made it air, and made it to air in a way that didn’t feel tacky or cynical or crass.

Of course, Deep Space Nine would never quite have the same reach and penetration as the original Star Trek. The kiss between Jadzia and Lenara would never have the same impact that the kiss between Kirk and Uhura had, even if the handling of the kiss was a lot more sensitive. While it was still controversial to depict a same-sex kiss on television in 1995, it was not entirely unheard of. It had been four years since L.A. Law had aired network television’s first lesbian kiss in He’s a Crowd. Friends was three months away from a lesbian wedding.

However, none of that really matters. It doesn’t matter whether the show was first. It doesn’t matter whether the show was trendsetting. Those are just details waiting to get spun into a mythology. It does matter that the show had the courage to do it at a time when it was still a risky creative decision, and that the show did it with a great deal of dignity and pride. If only fandom had responded in kind; the show prompted a surprisingly strong backlash from viewers. There are all manner of stories about viewers ringing up the studio with complaints.

Interviewed by The Official Poster Magazine, Ira Steven Behr reflected on the irony of the situation with his typical bluntness:

“I know they [Paramount Pictures] got a lot of negative feedback, which only goes to prove a point I always believed in, which is that science fiction fans and Star Trek fans are much more conservative than people want to believe, and this whole Gene Roddenberry liberal Humanistic vision is truly not shared by a significant portion of them.”

Behr is entirely right. There is a very strong streak of conservatism in mainstream genre fandom, as the furore over the 2015 Hugos demonstrated.

That conservatism tended to express itself in both narrative and political terms. This is most obvious in the production of Enterprise. Not only was the last Star Trek show launched as an excuse to take the franchise back to its roots (narrative conservatism), but it also featured the least diverse cast in the history of the franchise (political conservatism). After an African-American captain and a female captain, the franchise returned to a white male all-American captain leading a predominantly white and predominantly male crew on old-fashioned adventures.

In many respects, Behr’s stewardship of Deep Space Nine can be seen as a rejection of that conservatism. Sure, the writer made his share of mistakes – Profit and Lace, anyone? – but he instilled in the show a skepticism and cynicism around the complacency that had built up around the franchise. Star Trek was so proud and so assured of its own progressive liberal credentials that the franchise was at risk of being just as self-satisfied and stale as Behr’s vision of the Federation.

Deep Space Nine genuinely challenged this complacency. It was frequently provocative and cheeky. Episodes like Rejoined and Chimera are perhaps the most obvious example of this rebellious liberal tendency in matters of sexual orientation, but this also reflected in the show’s interrogation of Federation morality and foreign policy as an exploration of contemporary American values. In narrative terms, the Dominion War was an episode that shook the very idea of what Star Trek could be to its core.

Rejoined is very much an episode of Star Trek that could only have come from Deep Space Nine. It is a tremendous accomplishment, even as it serves as a reminder of how far the franchise has yet to come.

You might be interested in our reviews of the fourth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:

• The Way of the Warrior
• The Visitor
• Hippocratic Oath
• Indiscretion
• Rejoined
• Starship Down
• Little Green Men
• The Sword of Kahless
• Our Man Bashir
• Homefront
• Paradise Lost
• Crossfire
• Return to Grace
• Sons of Mogh
• Bar Association
• Accession
• Rules of Engagement
• Hard Time
• Shattered Mirror
• The Muse
• For the Cause
• To the Death
• The Quickening
• Body Parts
• Broken Link

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Dax, deep spac enine, ds9, equality, Jadzia Dax, kahn, lenara kahn, lesbianism, lgbt, liberal, progressive, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, tolerance, utopianism |