Star Trek is the thing where holographic projections get full legal recognition as people, but gays don't exist.
@ebel To be fair, there's not a whole lot of sexuality in Star Trek. And when there is, it tends to be cringe.
I'm an episode behind on the latest, so maybe I missed something specific. (If so don't tell me. :))
But the girl called Michael. What's going on there?
@johnribbon @ebel You kidding me?
In every series of Trek, the straightness of nearly all the characters is established within the 1st episode.
E.g. original Series S01E01, first thing they do is visit one of Bones' old gf's, and before the first commercial break, Uhura hits on Spock.
Trek has always been filled to the brim with straight sexuality.
@bgcarlisle @ebel Well yeah, if you go back to the original series in thev 60's with Kirk, etc. but from next gen on, characters feel almost asexual. When they do couple up it looks clumsy and awkward.
I think there are much easier targets than Trek.
@johnribbon @ebel In TNG, S01E01, we have a pointless scene w Troi and Riker where we find out they're romantically involved; Crusher's sexuality is made explicit in the first episode
By the end of the first season, we even know that Data, the android, is straight.
DS9, S01E01, we find out that Sisko is straight, and see him hitting on his late wife in a flashback on a beach with them both in bikinis
VOY, S01E01, We never even see Janeway's husband, but they sure gotta let us know she has one
@bgcarlisle @ebel It's maybe a legacy of this idea that you always have to establish, or hint at, some love interests in a series, even though romance always felt to me clumsy and more of an afterthought in Star Trek.
As as afterthought, it makes total sense that there would be little diversity of orientation, since otherwise (in those days) it risks becoming a talking point detracting from the story.
What about discovery so far?
@johnribbon @bgcarlisle yes it would have been a talking point at the time.
But that's not new to Trek! They had an interracial kiss in the 1960s, which for USA then was a big deal!
@ebel @johnribbon Yeah, the whole point of Star Trek is that it's a thought experiment where we ask the question, What if humanity got its stuff together, progressed past discrimination, disease and poverty, and explored the galaxy, but not in a colonial way?