10 Times Star Trek Dared To Be Different

6. Allegorical LGBT

"Star Trek is strangely by the book in this regard," Kate Mulgrew, who had fought for the inclusion of a gay character on Star Trek: Voyager to no avail, told Out In America in 2002. Indeed, until very recently, Trek had only ever allegorised over any LGBT themes. The script, like the book, was always already heterosexual. But, at least in places, Trek did dare to try.

With all the will in the world, you can't be bolder than the network executives around you. A happily, openly gay character on television in the 1960s would have been next to unthinkable. Most of the metaphor in The Original Series had to be what the viewer could read and write in to Kirk SLASH Spock.

By the late 1980s/1990s, the inclusion of an openly LGBT character would have been bold enough to make a big difference, but big enough to cause a fuss. Episodes such as The Host and The Outcast edged in the right direction but still couched their discussion of sexuality and gender identity in layers of alien analogy. In Rejoined, the franchise got its first same-sex kiss, though it was still wrapped up in repression, and grounded in a heterosexual relationship.

Later, in Stigma, Star Trek: Enterprise broached the topic of HIV/AIDS and homophobia via intolerant Vulcans and those of them who would mind-meld. Whilst successful as a discussion of discrimination, the episode kept its queerly coded character — Yuris — in the margins in favour of a story about T'Pol.

The real difference to show any difference came only in 2017 with Stamets and Culber, Rapp and Cruz, out and proud.