"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.

The "Krypton" tv series: As Heavy as Kryptonite

In Superman's first appearance (Action Comics #1, 1938), we first heard that the Man of Steel came  from the planet Krypton (named after an element on the Periodic Table) just before it blew up.

Through the years of the Golden and Silver Age, we learned a few more details, and occasionally visited, but not often.   Krypton remained a shadowy, mysterious place, where extremely muscular people in capes lived in stark white crystal palaces under a red sky, and were named after the Hebrew word for God.  It was a dream world.  It was Heaven.

The new tv series Krypton (2018-) is set in Heaven.

Except it's a horrifying dystopian society.  No crystal palaces, no capes. And it stars Superman's grandfather.

Huh?

Actually, it starts with Superman's great-great grandfather Val-El, who is executed for treason under Magistrate Daron-Vex.  His son, daughter-in-law, and grandson Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe, top photo) are banished.  Later Daron-Vex decides to marry off his daughter to Seg-El, which will allow him to return to the ranks of the aristocrats.

Meanwhile Seg-El meets Adam Strange  (Shaun Sipos, left), a time-traveler from Earth, who tells him to find the Fortress. He means Superman's Fortress of Solitude  (wait -- wasn't that on Earth), where Seg-El finds his grandfather's research indicating that an alien from the future will threaten the planet.

At ths point I'd be looking askance at Adam, but Grandpa means another alien, Braniac (Blake Ritson, below).

The High Council also wants to know about this research, and interrogates Seg-El's parents about it.  They are killed,leaving Seg-El and Adam on the run from the law.  Fortunately, Seg-El's buddy, comic-relief bartender Kem (Rasmus Hardiker) is willing to hide them.

Whew.  And that's just the first episode.

It gets murkier and murkier.  Seg-El and his Scoobies (including his girlfriend Lyta and a hologram of his grandfather) work on finding Braniac (who is wandering around Krypton inhabiting people) and form an alliance with future villain General Zod, who happens to be Seg's son from the future (not Jor-El). Meanwhile the Black Zero Terrorists, the Vox Conspiracy, and who knows what else have problems of their own.

The end game is making sure that Seg marries the right woman and gives birth to Jor-El, who will give birth to Superman, who will save Krypton...um, I mean go to another world after Krypton is destroyed.

I just got through one episode.   There is a nice Seg-Adam gay subtext, and according to Shaun Sipos, Episode #6  contains a hint that Adam is bisexual in order to "ruffle some feathers," 

In 2018, do you really need to hint around?  And why will a bisexual character upset people?  We've had plenty of gay ones.

I'm not waiting around to find out.  The mythology is too hefty to bear.

C-.

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.  

UFO: the Shirtless SHADO Warriors

Before books like Whitley Strieber's Communion (1985) and Budd Hopkins' Missing Time (1988) popularized the idea of aliens grabbing people from their beds to perform scientific experiments on, the  tv series UFO (1970-71), part of the 1970s British invasion (The Prisoner, The Tomorrow People, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), had a similar premise: in the near future, the worlds' governments become aware that aliens are abducting people to harvest their organs.  They set up the secret organization SHADO to combat them from a fake movie studio, a submarine, and a base on the Moon.

Oddly, everyone at SHADO headquarters, men and women both, wear see-through shirts, so there was a huge amount of beefcake for a science-fiction series.

At first the protagonist was former American astronaut Edward Straker (Ed Bishop).

In the second episode, lone wolf British test pilot Paul Foster (Michael Billington) witnesses a SHADO operation, and is given the choice of signing up or being killed.  Foster decided to join, and Michael Billington soon became the standout star, and a favorite of teen magazines.

In the third episode, Foster is brainwashed by the aliens into attempting to kill Straker.  Later Foster is captured by the aliens, and Straker has to come to the rescue.  The grudging love-hate relationship continued  through the series, and provided fodder for many slash fiction stories.

Only 26 episodes were aired, but there were two novels, comics, toys, action figures, a board game, and eventually a video game. And from 1975 to 1977, the same universe was used for Space: 1999, in which the Moonbase (and the moon with it) is swept away from the Earth's orbit for interstellar adventure.

Later Michael Billington played two-fisted heroes on many British tv series (The Onedin Line, Spearhead, The Collectors) and attended innumerable fan conventions.  He never married. He died in 2005, five days before his UFO costar Ed Bishop.

Beefcake on the Route of the Interrupted Journey

This post has been moved to Small Town Beefcake

Barney Hill: Alien Abduction or Sexual Assault?

There haven't been a lot of alien abduction stories recently, but for about ten years, they were all the rage.

People having weird "missing time" experiences or strange screen memories, going to a therapist, and uncovering years of abductions, painful medical procedures, and forced sexual acts orchestrated by groups of greys, praying-mantis beings, and humans.

Contrary to popular myth, the average abductee is a well-educated, wealthy young woman trying to deal with a history of traumatic abuse.

Unfortunately, the accounts try to heterosexualize the abductees whenever possible, reducing gay hints to "two women on a camping trip" or "two men sitting in their car."

The first well-publicized alien abduction case involved Betty and Barney Hill (left: James Earl Jones, who played Barney in a tv movie. Or at least, when I searched for "James Earl Jones" on google images, this is what it showed me).

  They were a middle-aged, middle-class couple, well educated, and active in politics: the local civil rights committee, the Unitarian Church and the NAACP.  They were interracial in the racist 1960s, but if you were careful, you could avoid most of the prejudice.  They got occasional stares, and some of their relatives wouldn't talk to them, but they had never been assaulted, yelled at, or turned away from a hotel.

On the night of September 19, 1961, they were driving home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire after a delayed honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls and Montreal.  Around 10:30 pm, they saw a bright light on the road ahead.  It got closer and closer, until they saw that it was a gigantic flying object about 60 feet across.  They could see beings through a row of windows: short humanoids wearing shiny black suits with matching caps and weird snake insignias.

One gave Barney a coquettish, over-the-shoulder smile, so intense that it frightened him.

A suggestion of sexual desire?

The next thing they remembered was arriving at home, two hours later than expected.  They showered extensively, feeling unclean.  Their clothes were ruined, as if they had been torn off.

Later Betty began having vivid dreams, and under hypnosis she and Barney both recalled stopping for a road block, being taken from their car and brought aboard the spaceship, and being subjected to medical procedures.

 Betty had extensive conversations with her captors, one of whom spoke English (or used telepathy). They showed her a star map, and offered to give her a book (but the offer was rescinded later).

Barney didn't interact with them, and mostly kept his eyes closed, but he said that the aliens moved "with the cold precision of German soldiers."  In another session, he elaborated: "He looks like a German Nazi.  He's a Nazi."

The alien who smiled at him looked like "a redheaded Irishman," which made Barney nervous, due to his past experiences with racist Irishmen.

 Barney had a long tube inserted up his rectum, and a device placed over his penis to extract semen (but, he said, he experienced no arousal).

(Left: Barney's bulge).

The case was written up in Look magazine, then in a bestselling book, The Interrupted Journey (1966).  Barney died in 1969, but Betty became a lifelong advocate of the alien abduction phenomenon, dismissing other explanations, insisting that they encountered beings from another world that night.


What other explanations have been suggested of the Hills' experience?  Other than fatigue and leading questions by the hypotherapist, the most cogent is an encounter with a motorcycle gang -- the bright lights, the uniforms -- who stopped them, questioned them, and subjected Barney but not Betty to a sexual assault: something over his penis, something inserted into his butt.

They both felt unclean afterwards, and showered and wanted to burn their clothes, but Barney seemed more traumatized.

But why would your mind transform a sexual assault into an alien abduction which was just as traumatic, but would subject you to scorn and derision for the rest of your life? 

Maybe, for some guys in 1961, an alien abduction was easier to accept than being anally entered and having "semen extracted" by men.

I read The Interrupted Journey around the end of grade school or the beginning of junior high, and I was fascinated.  Not only by the abduction:

1. You never saw black men and white women together on tv, in movies, or in real life.  I didn't know that interracial relationships existed.  If they were possible, what other desires were erased, hidden from view?

2. This was the first time I read the word "penis," anywhere.  It felt liberating and rather naughty to be thinking of Barney's penis.

3. Barney's experience, however much he denied it, was obviously sexual.  And it occurred at the hands of men, or male beings.  If same sex acts could occur in an alien abduction, certainly they could occur in real life!

People of Earth Update: Homophobia Rears its Head

I was home alone all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so I binge watched the second season of People of Earth.

Not a good idea.

In case you haven't heard about it, People of Earth is a comedy about a journalist writing an article on an alien-abduction support group.  Gradually he realizes that he has also had an abduction experience.  And that aliens are real: a confederation of greys, Nordics, and reptilians are working to take over the Earth.

The second season gets considerably darker.  Spoiler alert: the focus character dies.

Who kills the focus character?  That's unconscionable!

The aliens' new mission supervisor, Eric, a micromanaging floating cube, orders the deaths of all of the support group members.

And the gay content goes south.

The gay farmer of Season 1 is gone, replaced by an  FBI agent investigating the murder.  She gradually realizes that she...well, you know.

There are three hetero-romances. Well, four, if you count the guy dating the robot.  But she's just pretending to like him to get information.

And remember Jeff (Ken Hall), the grey who is in love with the reptilian Kurt (Drew Nelson)?  Eric the Cube finds a video of him kissing Kurt while he was in a regeneration chamber, and uses it to blackmail Jeff.

A gay guy getting blackmailed?  That's horribly homophobic.








What, exactly, is the attitude toward same-sex relations in the alien society?  Jeff's coworkers seem to be fine with it, and encourage Jeff to tell Kurt how he feels. But Eric uses it for blackmail.

And when Jeff finally does tell Kurt, he is mystified, as if it is nonsense, as if same-sex romance can't even be conceived of.

He's killed before Jeff can explain what "gay" means.

(Ken Hall is in the center.)

The whole thing is played as a big, giant joke.  Oh, look, a gay alien!

Meanwhile hetero-romances are played to the hilt, with kissing and "come back to bed."

The season ends on a dozen cliffhangers.  And, since the series was renewed for a third season, then cancelled at the last minute, we will never know what happens.

So we're left with heterosexual couples kissing and a gay guy getting blackmailed.

See also: People of Earth.

The Brazilian Boy Stripped Naked by Aliens

Alien abduction stories today often involve have a sexual component: the harvesting of eggs or sperm from the abductee through a mechanical device, or forced sexual activity.  But the convention began long before the abduction era, during the first UFO "flap" (sudden surge of sightings), with the experience of Antonio Vilas Boas.

About 1:00 am on October 16, 1957, the 23-year old farmer was working near Sao Francisco de Sales in Minas Gerais province, Brazil (working at night because it was too hot during the daytime).  Suddenly his tractor stalled, and a huge glowing "star" appeared.  An egg-shaped spaceship landed, and some humanoids resembling classic greys came out.

He was terrified and tried to run away, but after a struggle, they subdued him (apparently the technology to paralyze humans, found in later accounts,  hadn't been invented yet).

 They dragged him onto their spaceship, stripped him naked, and rubbed him all over with a thick clear liquid.

Then they took him into another room and took two blood samples (from his chin).

Finally they put him in a third room by himself and pumped in some red gas.  A naked female humanoid appeared (the picture he drew makes her look like a blond Jessica Rabbit).

He immediately became aroused -- due to the aprodisiac qualities of the gas, he thought -- and they had sexual intercourse.  Afterwards the humanoids led the female away, gave him a tour of the ship, and let him go.

The technology to wipe memories hadn't been invented yet, either, so he remembered everything.  After complaining of nausea and other symptoms of radiation exposure, he reported his experience to to Dr. Olavio T. Fontes of the National School of Medicine, who also happened to be a UFO researcher.  His story appeared in newspapers and UFO journals throughout Latin America, and in 1965 appeared in the U.S., in the Flying Saucer Review.  

Vilas Boas later became a lawyer in the city of Formosa.  He married and had four children.

Researchers point out evidence that the story was a hoax -- it appeared during a UFO "flap" in Brazil, and similar stories were appearing in the media -- he never recanted it.

You're probably wondering, heterosexual intercourse, man with four kids. Where's the gay angle?

I first read the story  in some paranormal magazine at my aunt's house when when I was 13 or 14 years old.






1. I had studied Spanish (not Portuguese), but I had never met anyone from Latin American before.  It was fun imagining a muscular, hung Brazilian farmer.

2.  A man being stripped naked, while other men rub things on him and insert things into him, seemed strangely provocative.

3.  This was the first time I actually read about anyone being "aroused."  I knew what arousal was, and I could easily imagine it,without the presence of the female humanoid.

People of Earth: Gay Subtexts, Gay Characters, and Grays

I love alien abduction stories.  I read all of the greats: Intruders, Communion, Secret Life, The Interrupted Journey.  The problem is, they're from the 1970s and 1980s, with a few from the 1990s.  Since about 2000, there haven't been any.  So a sitcom about alien abductions seems rather anachronistic.

Still, it's fun in a nostalgic way.  Reporter Ozzie Graham (Wyatt Cenac) travels to Beacon, New York to do a human interest piece on an alien abduction support group, and begins remembering his own abduction experience. So he moves to town, gets a job on the local newspaper, and joins the group.









Other members include the standard template of who Hollywood thinks gets abducted: the mousy widow; the sexually frustrated housewife; the taciturn farmer; the obsessed alien researcher; the sassy black woman who thinks this just happens to white people.

We discover that the aliens actually exist.  A bickering trio is orbiting above Beacon, in charge of the abductions: the blond Nordic Don (Bjorn Gustafsson); the classic bug-eyed gray Jeff (Ken Hall), and the reptilian Kurt (Drew Nelson).

Ozzie's boss, Jonathan (Michael Cassidy), is also a reptilian, and has been supervising him since he was abducted as a child.  The reptilians are working toward the goal of taking over the Earth, but it's a 200-year project, nowhere near completed.

Beefcake:  Michael Cassidy (left) is very attractive, and Bjorn Gustafsson (top photo) has a Nordic androgynous look.  The other characters are mostly nondescript.


Bonding:

The connection between being an abductee and being gay is made often: a secret that you're afraid to tell your family and friends.  The group even hosts a "coming out" night where you must bring a family member and tell them about your abduction.  The farmer Ennis (Daniel Stewart Sherman) brings his son, who complains "First you tell me you're gay, and now this?"


There are various gay-subtext buddy-bonding relationships:

1. Between Ozzie and obssessed alien researcher Gerry (Luka Jones), who is desperate to become his best friend.

2. Between Ozzie and Jonathan (Michael Cassidy), a reptilian who has been supervising him since his abduction as a child.  Ozzie gets suspicious and asks "Are you in love with me?"  Jonathan denies it. Apparently interspecies relations are taboo in their society.  Gay and straight, not a problem.

3. When Jonathan goes rogue (leaving the reptilians to side with the humans), he moves in with Officer Glimmer (H. Jon Benjamin), a police officer "in the know."  Everyone assumes that it's a gay relationship.

4. After Kurt is killed in an auto accident, Jeff is heartbroken, and vows vengeance.  Other characters suggest that he was in love with Kurt, but he denies it.

Overall, worth the trip.

Update:  I just binge-watched the second season.  It does get considerably darker.

See also: The Interrupted Journey of Betty and Barney Hill.

Roswell: Aliens and Beefcake

Most people think of Roswell only as the site of the alleged 1947 flying saucer crash. 

Actually, the town seems rather embarrassed by the paranormal enthusiasts. It doesn't try to capitalize on aliens -- no logos, no statues, no tie-in businesses (I guess you could call Stellar Coffee a tie-in).   The International UFO Museum is small and cramped, with boring exhibits (mostly texts) and pictures and statues of standard gray aliens.

The only nod to aliens is the UFO Festival every July, with 38,000 people drawn from 43 states, 16 countries, and dozens of solar systems.  The 2018 festival will feature an Alien Chase 5K, a costume contest, a car show, and a lecture by Travis Walton, whose abduction inspired the movie Fire in the Sky.

Roswell hopes to draw tourists with it rich non-alien history and culture.  The Roswell Museum and Art Center, founded in 1937, features southwestern and Native American artists.  It's only nine blocks north of the UFO Museum, and a better way to spend an hour.

Also only two blocks south of the New Mexico Military Institute, a combined high school/ junior college that draws students from 43 states. 

They have Open House events on Saturdays, and the McBride Museum and the athletic matches are open to the public.  Or you can call the Admissions Office for a tour.  Tell them you're writing an article on Roswell.

The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, three blocks eat of the New Mexico Military Institute, is a bright, airy space devoted to the work of local artists. 

There are also three high schools and Eastern New Mexico University, with the standard wrestling and swimming events, and several gyms.

Come for the aliens, stay for the beefcake.

Top Beefcake Stars of "Star Trek: Enterprise"

I just sat through the excruciatingly dull Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, all about the internecene squabbles of Bajorans, Cardassians, Klingons, Trills, and sundry other alien species that look and act human except for little things on their heads.  No gay subtexts to speak of, and not a wisp of beefcake.  Hard to find shirtless pics of any of the actors, on or off-screen.

Now we've moved on to Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005), set a century before the classic 1960s series, when humans are first starting to explore their section of the galaxy.  Everything is very primitive, and there are still no gay people in space, but there are plenty of gay subtexts, as well as ample beefcake.

Sci-fi and shirtless-scene veteran Scott Bakula plays Captain Jonathan Archer


Connor Trinneer plays chief engineer Trip, who has an annoying Southern accent and "good old country boy" mannerisms, but a nice chest.

You always need a soft-spoken guy with a British accent.  That's Dominic Keating as Malcolm, ship security officer.

Ensign Travis (Anthony Montgomery) is the ship's navigator.  A "boomer," born in space, he also provides a lot of gay subtexts.

For instance, in the Season 1 episode "Fortunate Son," the ship helps repair a stranded freighter, and hunky second-in-command Ryan (Lawrence Monoson) all but melts into a puddle of romantic yearning over Travis. But on their date, Travis says the wrong thing about freighters, and Ryan walks out on him.

Ship doctor Dr. Phlox (John Billingsley) is the standard cheerful, androgynous, gay-coded alien who cruises men and women but mostly men.  Of course, they heterosexualize him by giving him a girlfriend, but still....

Matt Winston (yes, that's a full frontal) plays Daniels, a time-traveler from 3064 AD working on a Temporal Cold War and being awfully interested in the hunky captain.

Thy'lek Shan, an Andorian who dislikes both humans and Vulcans, is played by Star Trek regular Jeffrey Combs, who is cute regardless of how much time he spends in makeup.

And I'm just halfway through the first season.