More of Ike Eisenmann

Speaking of Ike Eisenmann, most Boomer boys are so fixated on his beefcake scenes in Return from Witch Mountain (1978), or maybe his superlative performance as a racist in tight jeans who has a change of heart on The Jeffersons  that they don't remember a decade of buddy-bonding and tight jeans.

1. The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon (1976), an ABC Afterschool Special about the friendship between shy, retiring Duffy (Ike) and outgoing school hunk Peter (Lance Kerwin).

2. The Fantastic Journey (1977), which had nothing to do with either of the two similarly titled movies (one about shrinking scientists, and the other about a dog and cat finding their way home).  This one was a precursor of Lost, about people from various times and places trapped on an island in the Bermuda Triangle.  Ike played the teenage Scott Jordan, who hung out with the mysterious Varian (Jared Martin).  There was also a prissy gay-coded villain, played by Roddy McDowell.

3. The "High Explosive" episode of Chips (1978), with Ike as a country boy who fires a pellet gun into traffic.  He's just aching for some hand-on-shoulder big brothering from Ponch (Erik Estrada), and favors us with several shots of an amazing aptitude beneath the belt.

4. The "Phantom of the Roller Coaster" episode of Wonder Woman (1979).  Roller coaster enthusiast Randy (Ike), who again wears extremely tight jeans, buddy-bonds with David (Jared Martin again), without realizing that David's disfigured twin brother is the sinister "phantom."

5. Preston, Scotty's nephew, in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982), whom Kirk calls "a tiger," and who dies trying to save his fellow crew members.

"Star Trek: Discovery: Any Gay Characters or Bicep and Bulges?

I've seen every episode of the original Star Trek series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, over 500 hours of television, plus several of the Star Trek  movies.  I've watched the "struggling to be human" character development of Spock, Data, Odo, and Seven of Nine.  I know where Klingons go when they die, what religious holidays the Bajorans have, and how to get a Ferengi aroused.  

After all that, do I really need to watch Star Trek: Discovery?

The contemporary series, on CBS All Access and Vudu, is set about a decade before Kirk and company started exploring their strange new worlds in the Original Series, But instead of self-contained encounters with parallel Earths and omnipotent aliens, Discovery has an ongoing plot arch with a complex mythology.  I've read the plot synopsis on wikipedia, and it's clear as mud: something about a Klingon prophecy and mirror universes.

But I'll still watch a series if it has 1) gay characters or 2) beefcake.

Gay Characters: Check.  Paul Stamets (gay actor Anthony Rapp), a fungus specialist, is married to medical officer Hugh Culbert (gay actor Wilson Cruz).  Hugh succumbs to "bury your gays" in Season 1, but comes back in Season 2.

Beefcake: 

1. Jason Isaacs (top photo) as the mysterious Captain Lorca, who has an agenda of his own (who doesn't?).

2.-3. Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz aren't bad.  

4. Shazad Latif as Voq, an albino Klingon going undercover as a human.

5. The extremely gifted-beneath-the-belt Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, captain of the Enterprise before Kirk took over.  He appeared as a prisoner of omnipotent aliens in the pilot of the original series.

6. Ethan Peck as Spock, chief science officer on the Enterprise.

7. James Frain as Sarek, Spock's father.

There are a lot of characters from the original series, like comic relief flim-flam man Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson).  But will we see any biceps and bulges?

Not many: According to Entertainment Weekly, the series tries to stay away from shirtless scenes.  It's about the mythology, not about the bare chests. 

Deal breaker.  Let Discovery spin into its own complex, fully-clothed mythology.  I'll go back to the original series, with Kirk getting his shirt ripped off in every episode.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Boldly Going Where No Heterosexual Has Gone Before

Science fiction has been notorious for promoting an exclusively heterosexual future, insisting over and over again that gay people do not exist.  The Star Trek tv series have been the worse offenders, and Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) the worst of the lot, trying over and over again to be as heteronormative as possible, ignoring countless blatant opportunities for inclusivity.

The premise: On a far-off space station (but only about a day's flight from Earth), United Federation of Planets is assisting the planet of Bajor, which has just won its independence from the brutal Cardassians.  Meanwhile a wormhole opens up to the other side of the galaxy, bringing new possibilities for exploration, plus the threat of the Dominion.

The politics get complicated, and rather boring.  And all of the characters, bar none, are heterosexual:

Odo (Rene Auberjonois) is a changeling, a liquid in his natural state, capable of adopting any form he wishes.  He usually adopts the form of a humanoid male -- who is attracted to women.

Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) is a trill: a symbiont named Dax "joined" to a humanoid host.  Dax has lived in seven hosts before; its last was Curzon, an elderly man very, very interested in ladies.  Now that it's living in a female host, however, it's very, very interested in men.

The possibility of same-sex desire intrudes in a few episodes, briefly:

1. The Ferengi, space capitalists/Jewish stereotypes, do not allow women to go to work, so Pel (Helene Udy) disguised herself as a man to become a waiter at the bar/restaurant run by Quark (Armin Shimmerman). "He" falls in love with him, and seeks the advice of Dax, who is not surprised by what she thinks is same-sex desire.

Later "he" grabs and kisses Quark.  They are interrupted in media res by aliens, who assume that they are a same-sex couple.

Quark responds to the same-sex advance by ignoring it.

Pel: "I kissed you."

Quark: "No, you didn't."

2. Dax and her boyfriend Worf (the Klingon from The Next Generation)  go to the pleasure planet Risa, which seems to be a gigantic tropical brothel, with scantily clad women walking around saying "Everything we have is yours."  Dax reunites with a woman "he" dated as Curzon.  They get altogether chummy, even though Dax is now female, and Worf suspects that they are involved.

3. In a parallel mirror universe, the counterpart of Bajoran Major Kira Nerys is slinky, seductive, and  predatory, hinting that she's bisexual.

And some gay-subtext bromances.

1. Garak (Andrew G. Robinson), the only Cardassian left on the space station, is a fey, androgynous tailor who seems to be hitting on Dr. Julian Bashir.  Then they settle in for a romantic friendship, as each pursues hetero-romances.

Robinson later stated that he played the character as bisexual and in love with Bashir, but it was "a family show," so he couldn't be open about it -- can't let those kids know that gay or bi people exist!

2. Jake, son of the station commander (Cirroq Lofton), and Nog, Quark's nephew (Aron Eisenberg), are teenage best buds who have a quasi-romantic relationship.

By the way, after Nog joins Star Fleet, take a look at him in his uniform.  You'll soon find out why they generally film him from the waist up.

Beefcake is practically non-existent.  None of the main cast are ever shown shirtless.  Occasionally one of the women hooks up with a muscle man.

Lieutenant Manuele Atoa (Sidney Liufau) performs a Hawaiian fire-dance at Dax's pre-marital party.


Of all the Star Trek series, I like Deep Space 9 the least.  Instead of exploring strange new worlds, it's internecene politics.  Instead of boldly going where no man has gone before, it retreads the same old tired "no gays in space" mantra.

The Top 3 Hunks of "Star Trek: Voyager"

I'm being forced to watch Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001):  the aptly-named starship goes off in search of Maquis rebels, when both are zapped to the other side of the galaxy, 70,000 light years from home.  The crews are quickly integrated, and they sent out on the 40 year long journey back.  En route, they encounter various species that are depressingly identical to us.  Some of the murder-mystery episodes  could be sent in modern day Los Angeles with almost no changes in dialogue.

No gay characters or references to same-sex desire, or even many gay subtext.  When fans suggested one, the actors vehemently denied it.  I still remember a TV Guide article in which Jeri Ryan, who played the ex-cyborg Seven of Nine being humanized by Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), yelled that "Middle America" wasn't ready for gay characters.  This some 20 years after a gay character starred on Soap.

Heterosexist "when a man and a woman fall in love" rhetoric occurs with depressing regularity, and one of the male characters is an annoying horndog who actually dates twins, "The Delany Sisters."  Remember when Fonzie used to date the Del Rubio Triplets?

Well, what about beefcake?  One of their favorite hangouts is a Caribbean resort holodeck program, where the speedo-clad men are hidden in the background, behind the bikini babes.  And the main cast:

1. Robert Beltran (top photo, although he looks more buffed in his Starfleet uniform) as Chakotay, one of the Maquis rebels who becomes second in command on Voyager.  A Native American, he is always talking about ancestral wisdom and going on vision quests.  He's got a thing for Captain Janeway.

2. Robert Duncan McNeill (second photo) as Tom Paris, a young pilot who was sprung from a New Zealand prison to serve on Voyager (I'm not sure what his crime was).  When he's not piloting, he's having sex. He states that he fought to get a gay-themed episode, and when he directed an episode, he hired gay actor Scott Thompson, but was forbidden from making the character gay.

3. Tim Russ (left) as Tuvok, Star Trek's first black Vulcan character, who is always talking about his wife and kids back home, and getting hit on by alien babes ("I've never met anyone like you before.  So...logical.").''

That's all the shirtless photos I could find.  But the 1990s was before Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and selfies, so we can't expect a lot.

Here's the rest of the main cast.  See if you think any of them are cute:

4. Garrett Wang as Harry Kim, an ensign just starting his first job when he's zapped across the galaxy.  Tom Paris big-brothers him and tries to get him laid.  This might suggest a gay subtext, but they're too girl-crazy.

In 1993, Wang played a gay Chinese teenager who shoots his lover in the stage play Porcelain: he notes that playing a gay character "was controversial" at the time.

5. Ethan Phillips under a ton of makeup as Neelix, the ship's morale officer, cook, and comic relief.

6. Robert Picardo (older, chunkier, and balder) as an emergency medical hologram who has to transcend his programming to become the ship's full time doctor.  He also learns about human relationships and hooks up with any number of hologram and alien babes (apparently male holograms have penises).

7.  Manu Intiraymi as Icheb, a Borg  boy adopted by the Voyager crew later in the series.  He hangs out with the son of the omnipotent alien Q, and in a 2015 interview states that it would have been cool to have a gay romance blossom.  But gay teenagers?  In 2000?  No way!

8. Alexander Enberg as Ensign Vorick, a Vulcan crewman who appears in 9 episodes, mostly to get a crush on chief engineer B'Elanna Torres.  Who knew that Vulcans got crushes?

Enberg, who ranks at 51,510 on the website Man Crush Monday, played a gay character in the stage play Big Love (no connection to the tv series).





9.  We're getting down to the 3-, 2-, and 1-episode appearances now, with characters named German S. S. Officer and Leonardo Da Vinci, and lots of aliens with k in their names: Brok'Tan, Donik, Korok,  Kejal, Kelis, Rettik.  Does K make someone sound alien?

I've been working on this for 1 1/2 hours, and it's time for breakfast.  So let's finish up with singer and voice artist Hamilton Camp, who played a Ferengi.  I'd date him.

The 1970s Debacle of "Mrs. Columbo"

Columbo (1971-1979, and many movies thereafter) turned the whodunit on its head.  Instead of a two-fisted man's man detective, Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) is frumpy, disheveled, disorganized.  And the viewer knows who the murderer is; the fun is seeing Columbo outwit them with his scatterbrained persona ("Just one more thing...I can't understand how...")

Columbo often mentions his wife, a frumpy, disheveled, middle-aged housewife cooking pasta fazool in the kitchen and saying "Bring your sweater, it's cold outside."

So, the suits at NBC thought, wouldn't it be fun to have Mr.s Columbo solving some murders of her own?

Who did they cast as the frumpy, disheveled, middle-aged housewife cooking pasta fazool in the kitchen?  Glamorous, elegantly-attired  24-year old soap star Kate Mulgrew, later to become Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager and Red on Orange is the New Black

WTF?  There is no way on Earth that Kate Mulgrew could be the Mrs. Columbo described in the series. Al Molinaro from Happy Days would make more sense, and have a lot more chemistry with Peter Falk.

Fortunately, Mr. Columbo never appeared in the series.  That would have been a painful interaction.

Mrs. Columbo premiered on February 28, 1979, a Thursday night, up against Barnaby Jones (an old person solves crimes) and Family (angst).

The plot was hackneyed: Kate overhears her neighbor plotting to murder his wife (Didn't I Love Lucy it, and before that My Favorite Wife on radio?  )

Next episode: the author of a book on perfect murders is accused of murder.  Why is Kate investigating this?  Why not call her husband, who, you know, is like a real detective?

After two episodes of horrible ratings, the suits realized that they had made a mistake, and tried to divest Mrs. Columbo from Columbo.

On March 15th, 1979, the show was suddenly called Kate Columbo, and a line added to the script explaining that Kate was divorced from Lt. Columbo.  That was fast! 

The plot: A ventriloquist's dummy is commiting murder.  Seen it!

The ventriloquist is played by Jay Johnson, who starred in Soap.

Two more episodes of atrocious ratings (a caterer plans to murder her husband, a psychic is accused of murdering her husband), and the show was yanked.

The suits reasoned that the problem couldn't be the cliched plots and horrible writing.  It must be Columbo. 

So when the show returned on October 18. 1979, it was called Kate the Detective.  No mention of Columbo, and Kate has a new ex-husband. Philip.  She works for a newspaper, which gives her an opportunity to actually investigate cases rather than overhearing someone plotting murder.  And 1970s hunk Don Stroud joins the cast as Lt. Varick, a police officer for Kate to bat ideas off of.

Did that help the ratings?  Nope.  Maybe the fact that Kate wasn't actually a detective?

After five episodes, the show was retooled again, and appeared on November 22nd (Thanksgiving Day) as Kate Loves a Mystery. Better -- maybe a sort of Murder, She Wrote?

Nope.  A candidate for Congress is accused of murder, but didn't do it.  A psychologist conducting sensitivity training classes is accused of murder, but didn't do it.

How about we just call the whole thing off?

Three more episodes of Kate Loves a Mystery aired.  13 episodes total under 4 titles.  That's got to be a record.

Kate Mulgrew is a gay ally: "I'm flattered to be a lesbian pin-up," she says in 2017.  "Lesbians loved Janeway."

No other gay connection that I can find.  But wasn't the whole debacle wacky?

See also: Peter Falk: When Columbo Played Gay

The Borg Twins, Kurt and Cody Wetherill

I've been watching Star Trek: Voyager.   Dreadful stuff.  A Star Fleet ship is zapped across the galaxy, 70,000 light years from home, and have to find their way back. They come across many species that are identical to humans in language, culture, and physiology, except for little things on their foreheads.

Earth today has far more cultural diversity than the galaxy as a whole.

I hate Seven of Nine, the most annoying of the endless "learning to be human"  characters.

But I sort of like Azan and Rebi (Cody and Kurt Wetherill), the twins who are rescued from the automaton Borgs wearing the male equivalent of Seven's bunny suit. They spend six episodes in 2000  learning to be human (that is, entering a school science fair and hearing ghost stories).

Cody and Kurt were born in Wyoming in 1986,  and then moved to Battle Ground, Washington.

They were originally planning to become tennis pros, but they got bit by the acting bug in 1998,and were soon cast as 12 year old Mitchel and Michael Loring in the pilot of Safe Harbor (1999). They did not make it into the series, as Aaron Spelling felt that there were already enough twins on tv.

Then came Voyager; small roles as Chet and Russell Lucre against Michael Angarano in The Brainiacs.com (2000); and Philip and Victor Kiriakis on a 2001 episode of Days of Our Lives.

And that's all.

But sometimes a short acting career is better than a long one; it gives you a chance to be a kid and a star.







They graduated from high school and majored in film studies at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. 

For their senior projects, Kurt wrote, edited, and produced Rock Bottom (2006), about a homeless man who meets a woman; and Cody wrote, edited, and produced Garden of Weedin' (2007), about a gardener.

Then they returned to Hollywood for some behind-the-scenes work, as production assistants, cinematographers, and so on: Meteor, Family Holiday, Be My Friend, and The Amazing Race (2006-2009).

Now they're back in Portland, where they own CinePrints, devoted to movie and tv posters.

Cody is on Facebook, but he mostly likes bands I've never heard of and may be married to a woman.

Or maybe they're gay.

Star Trek

Star Trek (1966-69) represents the beginning of a franchise that eventually encompassed 6 tv series, 12 movies, and an infinite number of tie-in novels, comic books, games, and toys. But at the time I didn't notice.   Either my parents watched something else, or it aired past my bedtime, so I only watched when I slept over with a friend who was a fan.

And I didn't have a lot of friends who were fans.  I didn't see most episodes until reruns started appearing in the 1980s.

I only remember one moment of joy: in the 1966 episode "Naked Time," the space explorers contract a virus that makes them act irrationally. Navigator Sulu (George Takai), imagining that he is D'Artagnon of the Three Musketeers, rushes down the corridor, sword in hand, his chest hard and bronze and gleaming.  

And later, cured, he returns to the room he shares with Ensign Chekhov (Walter Koenig).  Chekhov, already in bed, rises on one elbow.  "Are you ok?" he asks.  "I was worried."  "I'm ok now," Sulu says, sitting next to him.  They smile.

Like the smile shared by Rich and Sean in The Secret of Boyne Castle, it became an iconic memory of my childhood.  I wanted that smile more than anything.

Except the scene never happened.  Chekhov wasn't even in the episode, and he and Sulu were never shown sharing a room.  I invented the memory.

So, what are we left with:

1. A universe where heterosexual desire is a constant.  Remember when they meet early explorer Zephram Cochrane (Glen Corbett), trapped on a planet with an alien energy cloud.  It's female, and in love with him.  

2. An endless supply of alien babes for Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to smash his face against: "Kiss?  What is kiss?"

3. Some beefcake: Kirk got his shirt ripped off in many episodes, occasionally Kirk or another character (such as Frank Gorshin) bulged, and occasionally an alien dude, such as David Soul or Michael Forest,  wear a revealing outfit.  

4. No significant buddy-bonding.  Some people see a spark of homoerotic desire between Kirk and Spock (Leonard Nimoy), but I don't see it.

5.  No gay characters, ever.  Ok, we can forgive the 1960s series, but what about The Next Generation, Voyager, or Deep Space Nine?  Obviously this is a world where gay people are unknown and unwelcome. No wonder my friends and I spent our time watching something else, or listening to The Monkees.  

Battlestar Galactica: Star-Fighting Boyfriends

On Sunday nights in the fall of 1978, Boomer kids who were too young for All in the Family sat watching Battlestar Galactica, the beginning of a mythos that would last for three decades and rival Star Trek in scope and complexity.

The brief plot: in a distant part of the galaxy, the Twelve Colonies of Mankind have been destroyed by the evil Cylons.  A ragtag band of survivors, led by Commander Adama (Lorne Green) on the last surviving warship (the Battlestar Galactica), head out into space to seek the last human colony. . .Earth.

The beefcake was handled by the cute Star Wars uniforms. The bonding was handled by Commander Apollo (Richard Hatch, below) and Lieutenant Starbuck (Dirk Benedict, left).

In spite of their quests after girls, gay Boomer kids and the writers of slash fiction knew that they were romantic partners.

Teen magazines were content with gushing articles and semi-nude photos.

There were dozens of other characters. Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, Randolph Mantooth, and Ed Beghley Jr. showed up.  Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space played Lucifer, leader of the Cylons (this was the heart of the Cold War, so good vs. evil were clearly drawn).

Ratings problems and howls of "plagiarism" from 20th Century Fox, owner of the Star Wars franchise, led to the cancellation of Galactica after just one season.  But it returned for Galactica 1980, set on Earth, with Kent McCord (left) and Barry Van Dyke (right) as the star-fighting romantic partners.

And in 2004-2009 as Battlestar Galactica, a re-imagined series with a female Starbuck.  And a prequel, Caprica (2010).

And feature films, comic books, a web series, over 20 novels (some written by Richard Hatch), video games, action figures, toys.

Just before the end of the 2004-2009 series, a couple of characters were outed, but not on screen, on a webisode. A bone thrown to gay fans, but more than they ever got from Star Trek. 

The Top 10 Beefcake Stars of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

I watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) when it first aired, and now we're going through on Netflix.  It has some interesting episodes, when it isn't bogged down with negotiating peace treaties between two planets where everybody looks and acts just like us.

But it is ridiculously beefcake-free.  On the original series, you could count on Kirk or another crewman getting ripped out of his shirt every couple of episodes, but on Next Generation, the cast is uniform-bound.  The most you can hope for is a leisure suit cut in the middle, which they generally wear on shore leave on Risa the sex planet.

It becomes all the more frustrating when you notice the parade of hunks.  Apparently the casting director had an eye for the men, and hired Playguy-quality supermodels to play ensigns, science officers, aliens, and miscellaneous "blink and you miss them" uniform-class background players.

Here are the standouts in the episodes we've watched during the last few weeks.

Sorry, finding shirtless pics of less-well known actors from 26 years ago is not easy, so we'll have to make do with a face shot and fantasy.

1. "The First Duty" (March, 1992).  Wesley Crusher and his friends cause a fatal accident at Star Fleet Academy.  Robert Duncan McNeill  (later Tom Paris on Star Trek: Voyager) as Locarno, the upperclassman who is prompting him to lie about it. (Left, he takes off his shirt for some reason).

2. "The Perfect Mate" (April 1992).  A woman arrives on the Enterprise who adapts perfectly to be the perfect mate of every man she encounters (every man is heterosexual, of course).  So she's horny with Riker, intellectual with Picard, and a dynamo with some visiting miners.  With K.C. Amos (John Amos' son) as somebody or other.

3. "I Borg" (May 1992). Jonathan Del Arco stars as a young Borg (member of a collective species), who comes aboard the Enterprise and learns to become an individual (they really like that individual thing on Trek).  He likes Geordi LaForge a lot, giving the episode a gay subtext.

Jonathan Del Arco is gay in real life, and now works with GLSEN  in anti-bullying initiatives.

4. "The Inner Light" (May 1992).  Picard is zapped into a weird village with some ancient, some modern technology, and lives there for 30 years, while everyone tells him that his life on the Enterprise was a fantasy.  Then he returns.  It turns out to be a very weird way of making sure that the ancient culture is remembered.  How about sending some books instead?  With Patrick Stewart's son Daniel as Picard's ancient-world son, Batai.

Daniel Stewart is primarily a stage actor, but he returned to tv on an episode of Blunt Talk, playing the son of Patrick Stewart's character again.  He is not married.

5. "Time's Arrow" (June 1992).  Data is zapped into the 1890s San Francisco, where out-of-phase beings are killing people to feed on their energy in the present.  Um...yeah, it doesn't make any more sense when you watch it.  But he gets to hang out with Mark Twain and Jack London (Michael Aron).

6. "Man of the People" (October 1992).  Ship counselor Troi gets zapped with something that makes her baser instincts take over, so she tries to seduce every man on the ship, including an unnamed blond ensign (J. P. Hubbell).  She also turns mean during her counseling sessions, and gets older, finally walking around in a Cruella DeVille costume.

7. "Schisms" (October 1992).  Riker is having a bad day. With Scott Trost (left) as Lt. Shapely.  Um...I mean Lt. Shipley.

8. "Rascals" (October 1992).  The crew is zapped into the bodies of children.  With David Birkin as a teenage Captain Picard.

9. "Relics" (October 1992). Scotty from the original series shows up and worries that he's become a useless relic.  Also there's a Dyson Sphere, and a cute bartender (Ernie Mirich).

10.  "The Quality of Life" (November 1992).  A robot becomes sentient.  With John Copage as a science officer.