Gay Sci-Fi on Long Island
One of the cool things about living on Long Island is that my friend John runs a gay sci-fi group, that meets bi-weekly to watch & discuss all sorts of sci-fi and/or comic book oriented stuff, as well as going on outings to movie openings & such. I haven’t been to the group in a while, but I made it down there this past Friday, and it was a fun night of Trek, including the infamous “Outcast” episode of Next Generation. The discussion that followed was thought-provoking; none of this is news, as Star Trek’s mishandling, (or non-handling), of gay characters has been well-documented. But what strikes me most deeply is how many of us still love this franchise, despite the apparent refusal to ever introduce a gay character into the mix. For a show that takes pride in its boundary-breaking in regards to race, and “going where no man has gone before”… it is mystifying and annoying that they’ve never had a gay character in any of the casts. (Throughout all of this, one gets the feeling that the cast of Next Generation and the other Trek series are open-minded and gay-friendly…for a variety of reasons). Well….it’s not too late. If they do ever get a new Star Trek series on the air…let’s hope they have the good sense this time to include one of our “Family”. It’s way past due, isn’t it?
(To see the Long Island Gay Sce-Fi group’s website, just click here)
There’s a fan-made Star Trek series called Hidden Frontiers available online which apparently has gay characters. Not watched any of it so no idea if it’s any good or not!
Comment by PS — June 27, 2006 @ 5:59 pm
Actually, we watched an episode of “Hidden Frontier” at the Gay Sci Fi Group night that I mentioned in the post. It was pretty good! Included several prominent gay characters & storylines. You could tell it was done low-budget, (lots of inserted backgrounds, though they worked surprisingly well). I enjoyed it, and it sure shows how wonderfully gay characters can exist in the Star Trek universe.
Comment by Administrator — June 28, 2006 @ 3:13 am