Best gay-themed Star Trek Next Generation episode?

[Deja Q]

Of the following list:

[rickrok66]

1. OT - Star Trek Voyager

I recall two gay themed episodes:

One where 7/9 and the Doctor switched bodies. 7/9 really showed how interesting the Doctor is.

There was an episode that showed a discrimination against a species that consisted of light particles. There were a lot of the same prejudices and slurs used against gays.

[YankeyMCC]

2. It always struck me that SF provided an excellent method of

pointing out the ridiculousness of worrying about people being homosexual. Particularly Star Trek with it's riot of intelligent life all intermingling sexually.

When there are people marrying, having sex with, cohabitating etc, etc... with other species doesn't that really put worrying about two human males living and sleeping together in a rather silly light?

Not that it isn't silly now but that Star Trek environment puts it in higher level of silliness. :)

I suppose there's a parallel to intermixing of people from different human cultures and ethnic groups but in SF we're talking about whole new species, but then hatred and deliberate ignorance is rarely logical I guess.

[Downtown Hound]

13. You ever see the original episode

where there were two warring factions of a planet that had virtually driven each other to extinction? What was their great war all about? The fact that one side had faces that were black on the left side and white on the right one. The other had black on the right side and white on the left one. What a great analogy for how ridiculous all of our racial conflicts really are.

[Deja Q]

3. I should have added "Encounter at Farpoint"

Q finds a certain group of people inferior...

With Picard saying "If we are to be damned, let's be damned for who we really are." If that's not gay-themed, what the hell is? :rofl:

[Orrex]

4. The Outcast was IMO a lowpoint of the series

Not at all because of the subject matter but because of the execution. The metaphor was so obvious and heavy-handed that it was like being shouted at for an hour. Also, I didn't believe for an instant that Riker would have been attracted to her. Better to link her with a character with less of an established romantic history, against which the metaphor seems even more forced and artificial.

But you ask a good question--I'll need to think about it some more.

[Deja Q]

10. Did you know Jonathan Frakes was reported saying he'd have preferred

that the love interest for him be male?

:thumbsup:

[Orrex]

11. I did not know that!

Frakes is very cool. When I was at Penn State, my roommate met him while Frakes was in town for some Trek-related event or another. Frakes was entirely friendly and approachable, and my roommate wasn't even a big fan of the show. Very cool.

Still, even though I admire Frakes' attitude, I still don't accept that Riker would have fallen for the character. The only canonical precedent I can find is in Angel One from ST:TNG Season One, wherein Riker willingly dons the culturally-approved male attire, rendering him somewhat more "effeminate" than Mistress Beatta, with whom he must negotiate.

Otherwise, Riker seems to select his paramours from the same catalog as Kirk, with the possible exception of Min, of course...

[Orsino]

5. The best? The one they never made...

...where even one gay relationship is presented with no fanfare, demonstrating the supposedly advanced Federation values.

Yeah--bit of a sore spot for me. Dr. Crusher, IIRC, had a one-off (single episode) romance with a male who was somehow transformed into a female, whom she dumped after a bit of hemming, hawing and teasing. It's as close as Trek got to being gay-friendly, and it didn't seem very friendly to me.

Oh, well. They weren't stoning gays--just pretending that gays don't exist.

[ContraBass Black]

6. I read somewhere that Harry Kim was gay or bisexual

Though they were never upfront about it.

EDIT: Never mind, that appears to be hogwash.

[IndianaGreen]

7. DS9's Garak, played brilliantly by Andrew Robinson

He was my favority recurring character in DS9.

[Orrex]

8. But wasn't he in love with Dukat's daughter?

I haven't seen DS9 in years, so my memory may be faulty.

[IndianaGreen]

9. He had a certain attraction to Dukat's daughter

but I saw that relationship as being more like one between an older and wiser gay man and a young ingenue. He also liked Dr. Bashier a lot too!

In real life, Andrew Robinson married co-star Nana Visitor.

[theHandpuppet]

12. Um... I think you need to recheck your facts

Nana Visitor was married to fellow DS9 actor Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashir) from 1997 to 2001. They had a son in 1996, named Django El Tahir El Siddig.

Andrew Robinson has been married since 1970 to Irene Robinson. They have a daughter, Rachel Robinson, who appeared in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor." Irene has two sons from a previous marriage. The couple also have two grandchildren.