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 10 Nowhere Boys

Nowhere Boys, on Amazon Prime and Vudu, is an Australian teen supernatural drama about four boys who get lost in the woods on a school field trip,  When they return, everything is different.  A disabled brother can walk.  A single mom is married.  One boy doesn't seem to exist at all.

With the help of various allies and love interests, they figure out that they have somehow become lost in a parallel world.  It sounds like a science fiction premise, but it is actually supernatural.  Getting home requires magical spells and fighting demons.

The four boys are:
1. Popular it-boy Sam (Rahart Adams).

2. Goth Felix (Dougie Baldwin)

3. Nerd Andy (Joel Lok).  I don't see any gay subtexts, but at least he doesn't get a girlfriend.

4. Jock Jake (Matt Testro)

In Season 2 (2013-14), the boys discover that they can now control the four elements (air, water, fire, earth).  Now they must travel between the two parallel worlds.

5. For instance, Jake's father Gary (Damian Richardson) is a cop in the alternate world.  Somehow the Mega-Demon arranges for them to encounter each other, but if they make physical contact, the world will explode.

In Seasons 3 and 4, at least five years has passed -- one of the students is now a teacher, and the four original boys are the subject of a stage play.

This time several kids and their principal are zapped into Empty World, where all of the people have vanished (along with most of the food).  The main group consists of:

6. Luke (Kamil Ellis), a science fiction nerd who keeps saying  "This is just like that episode of Next Generation where Dr. Crusher..."  He doesn't get a girlfriend.

By the way, Kamil belongs to the Wiradjuri, the largest Aboriginal tribe in New South Wales.











7. Popular Heath (Joe Klocek, left)


It-girl Nicco
















8. Drama queen Jesse (Jordie Race-Coldrey).   He gets a boyfriend.

9. Outsider Ben (William McKenna).

10. Principal Blake (Nicholas Coghlan) arrives in Empty World a year before the others, and the isolation has driven him daffy.  And maybe a bit evil.

Not a lot of beefcake photos available.  But everybody does't need to have their pecs and abs on display all the time.  There's nothing wrong with looking like the Boy Next Door instead of a 28-year old fitness model.  In fact, after a diet of Riverdale and its clones, it's a pleasant change of pace.

Handmaid's Tale Season 2: Bleed, Scream, Cough, Repeat

"Torture Porn" is the unofficial name for a genre of fiction designed not to scare you, but to hurt you.  You have to endure reading about or watching people undergoing horrible ordeals of pain and degradation, pain and degradation, with no moments of happiness, no humor, no hope, nothing but agony.  The person being tortured is not necessary the fictional character, but you, the viewer.

A literary example that springs to mind is "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," by Harlan Ellison, in which a sentient computer takes over the world and kills all humans except for a group it keeps alive to torture.

A tv example is the second season of The Handmaid's Tale, the adaption of Margaret Atwood's novel.

In the first season, we learn about a dystopian society, Gilead, today's fascist America multiplied by a thousand, except instead of white supremacy, it's built on religious fundamentalism and patriarchy.  June (Elisabeth Moss) has been conscripted as a Handmaid, forced to have a child for a member of the ruling class whose wife is infertile.

Episode 1: The handmaids are being punished for an act of civil disobedience, refusing to stone an errant handmaid to death.  They get electric shocks.  They are burnt on a gas stove.  But June escapes, with the help of her boyfriend Nick (Max Minghella) and other members of the Resistance.  First she has to cut a microchip out of her ear.  Blood, agonized screams, burnt flesh.  Pass the popcorn.

Episode 2:   It's rather an inept Resistance. June  is brought to the deserted office of the Boston Globe and left there for two months. We spend the entire second episode there, watching June be bored.   Oh, wait -- we visit the Colonies, radioactive wastelands where "unwomen," political prisoners, recalcitrant Handmaids, and lesbians, live in concentration camps, dig up toxic waste, and die of radiation poisoning. Cough, cough.  And in flashbacks, we find out what happens to the gay people: the men are hanged, and the women, if fertile, become handmaids; otherwise it's the concentration camp.  Are we having fun yet?

Episode 3:  Finally!  June is picked up to go to a safe house,but it is compromised, so she goes home with Resistance fighter Omar (Yahna Abdul-Mahteen), a closet Muslim.  He'll take her to an airfield that night, and she'll get on a plane to Canada.  But Omar and his loving family never return from church -- they've probably been discovered and executed --  so June gets to the airfield herself  (is that a good idea?).

But just as the plane is about to take off, the Gestapo arrive and shoot the pilot and other passenger, a gay man.  He bleeds out.  Oh, and in a flashback, the handmaids are shown a film of the Colonies -- cough, cough -- and one of the Unwomen  is June's mother.  Talk about unlikely coincidences.

And June goes back to being Offred, the handmaid.   Pain, degradation, tongues cut out, fingers cut off, strangulation, vaginal bleeding, dying babies, executions of various types.  Isaac (Rohan Mead) and his girlfriend are chained together and drowned.   Even the Commander (Greg Bryk, top photo), one of the architects of the new society, is targeted.  June is covered in blood more times than I can count.   Meanwhile, at the concentration camp...cough, cough.

And I'm wondering, why am I watching this?  I have the complete Seinfeld series on DVD.

Other than the unrelenting agony, the series hasn't thought out how the society works very well.  Margaret Atwood didn't really need to, since she was writing through June, who didn't know what was going on.  But the tv series expands far beyond June to various players and parts of the society, and they are nonsensical.  For instance, in one scene, all of the Econowives (apparently regular women who haven't committed any crimes) get on a subway by themselves at 5:00 pm on a Sunday night (in a New England winter, although it's broad daylight), and get off at the last stop.  Where are they going?  We don't know.

How do the lights stay on?  How are good manufactured?  What happened to the world's economy when the Midwest turned into radioactive waste?,

To be fair, the cinematography is striking, especially the overhead shots.  And it's sort of fun seeing ruined landmarks, like the Boston Globe headquarters, deserted.

But I don't watch tv shows about the Holocaust.

See also: The Handmaid's Tale, Season 1