20 Most Cringeworthy Star Trek: The Next Generation Moments

10. "Tell Me About Your Sexual Organs" From The Outcast (1992)

Oh, what the hell, let's do this. Next Gen's 'special episodes' weren't limited to diatribes against alcohol and drugs, as we'll talk about later. Oh, no. They also spoke out against intolerance of sexual difference. Problem is, they were doing this in 1992, and apparently the show's producers believed that having a gay or lesbian character even in a guest role would be too much for mainstream America. (They still felt this way in the early 2000's, if Enterprise is anything to go by.) So Jeri Taylor came up with one of those high concept alien races that don't really make sense if you think about them too long, the J'Naii, who are all neuter and who have taboos against identifying as one gender or the other. A bit like a radical feminist retreat, really. Naturally, Riker, who gets attached to anything remotely female, takes a shine to one of the J'Naii, Soren, who just happens to consider itself more female than neuter. (It could've gone the other way, of course, but that really would be going where no man has gone before in Trek terms. Jonathan Frakes, bless his furry chest, was reportedly open to having a male actor in the role of Soren, in order to better make the point of the episode, but when do actors get a say in these things?) And then, in the course of their mutual attraction, Soren asks him about his sexual organ. No, really - here's the direct quote: "Commander, tell me about your sexual organs." Granted, this is meant to be an uncomfortable moment - but for Riker, darn it, not for us. He can handle it better than we can. The discomfort, we mean, not his... aw, forget it. Perhaps she was just trying to confirm he didn't truly have a dog's tail.