Transcription
In 1964, television writer and producer Gene Roddenberry drafted a script for a science fiction series called Star Trek. The series would show a space-age starship exploring the galaxy. It would center around Captain Robert April of the USS Yorktown, which was eventually changed to Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise. After a second pilot was ordered, this was changed once again to Captain James Kirk of the Enterprise. By 1966, Star Trek had debuted, and the world of sci-fi would forever be changed.
Roddenberry, like any producer searching for a long-term project, was looking for a hit, but he also had something else in mind. He was angry about the suffering and injustice he saw in the world around him, and like other great television writers like Rod Serling, he saw the medium as a powerful tool to comment on those injustices – and to expose them. To Roddenberry, television was more than just a way to tell stories. He could comment on the civil rights movement, sometimes indirectly by showing an integrated crew working together with few, if any, references to any tension among them, and sometimes directly and overtly such as in “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” He could comment on the emerging women's liberation movement by originally having the first officer be a woman, and when that unfortunately had some pushback, he introduced several more women characters on the Enterprise. The battle between what Roddenberry wanted to do and what less progressive voices were afraid to do became part of Star Trek, and many years later, this battle changed...but before that did, Roddenberry had one more great contribution to Star Trek.
[The Next Generation theme] Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987. It starred a new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, and featured a new Enterprise. It had more women in leading roles, more to say about the modern world, and it was the perfect antidote the cynical, conservative, Ronald Reagan 80's. And then Gene Roddenberry got sick. A lifetime of amphetamines to work through the writing process, a lifetime of recreational drug use and declining health caught up to him. By all accounts, his role on The Next Generation greatly diminished after the end of the first season, and in 1991, the Great Bird of the Galaxy passed away. Roddenberry was not perfect – his detractors will undoubtedly note his alleged affairs and some of his less progressive ideas for characters that were thankfully scrapped – but whatever else Gene Roddenberry was, he was a true believer. He was a humanist, and he thought humanity had the potential to create a future like the one in Star Trek. When he passed away, someone else had to take over as head of The Next Generation and the Star Trek franchise in general...and that man was Rick Berman.
AUDIO 2 Over the years, Berman became a controversial figure both among the fans and the various casts and crews of multiple Star Trek series. He was labeled a “misogynist” by beloved Trek actress Terry Farrell, a “raging homophobe” by veteran Trek writer David Gerrold, and a lot worse by Garrett Wang. Berman was not a true believer, once telling the LA Times “I don’t believe the 24th Century is going to be like Gene Roddenberry believed it to be, that people will be free from poverty and greed. But if you’re going to write and produce for ‘Star Trek,’ you’ve got to buy into that.” Of course, nobody knows what the future will bring, but Berman did not simply suspect disagree with Roddenberry's humanist vision. He was enforced it through a series of regressive mandates, refusals of important, conscientious stories and behavior toward the cast and crew that was, by many accounts, absolutely disgraceful. Before, the battle to have Star Trek be Star Trek was that of two sides: Roddenberry with his writers vs. the more cautious, conservative network. Now, the battle was between Rick Berman vs. his writers, his crew and his cast. While Berman was a producer during the time of the creation of new Trek series like the magnificent Deep Space Nine and the criminally underrated Voyager, the evidence of his involvement and where his fingerprints are on each series seem to point to Trek flourishing not because of him, but in spite of him. The franchise had entered the era...of Berman Trek.
[title] Rick Berman taking over Star Trek was academic. In the eyes of Paramount, there were no other options. In the beginning of the Next Generation, according to Berman himself, there were two producers under Roddenberry: Bob Justman, who stayed on only for the first year, and Eddie Milkis, who left due to a disagreement with Roddenberry. Berman was inexperienced at the time, his biggest credit being a producer on a children's show on PBS. Many among the crew found working with him a challenge. Production illustrator Andrew Probert once claimed "When Rick Berman took over the show, half way through the first season, every time we showed him a design concept, his constant response was, 'No, we can't do that, because it reminds me of something that I've seen somewhere' or 'It looks like a shaver' or 'It looks like something I've seen in a furniture store.' The only thing of note that Rick Berman did before Star Trek was a show called The Big Blue Marble, a kid's show. … Rick Berman did not, in that time, and, as far as I can see from what is being produced, does not understand science fiction. My experience with Rick Berman is he does not understand what he's doing..."
AUDIO 3 One immediate impact of Roddenberry's declining health and declining influence on The Next Generation was that some modern ideas for the series were halted. During the run of The Original Series, actor George Takei asked Roddenberry for the inclusion of a gay character. Following the fallout from the interracial kiss, Roddenberry worried that a gay character would spell the end of the series and put the idea on the back burner. Star Trek was canceled shortly thereafter, providing no opportunity to revisit the idea within the series. After a few successful movies with no references to gay crew members, Roddenberry finally decided that the world was ready. At a fan convention in 1986, Roddenberry reportedly said “We should show gay people on board the Enterprise.” This was not only something he said to the fans. He reportedly said the same thing in a staff meeting for The Next Generation. In a 1991 interview with The Humanist, Roddenberry remarked on his evolution on the issue from the 60's to the 80's. “My attitude toward homosexuality has changed. I came to the conclusion that I was wrong. ... I gave the impression of being thoughtless in these areas. I have, over many years, changed my attitude about gay men and women.”
Early in the run of The Next Generation, long-time Trek writer David Gerrold wrote a script for an episode called Blood and Fire, an allegory for the crisis of the 80's and 90's. Roddenberry was initially supportive. In fact, according to Gerrold, the crisis was high on the list of topics Roddenberry himself wanted discussed in the series. Gerrold explained how the script was eventually rejected. “So that the script, somewhere in there I was 'You know what, these two characters, they could be boyfriends.' There were two lines of dialog. 'How long have you two been together?' and 'Since the Academy.' That was it. I go off to a Star Trek cruise and come back to find there has been a cluster****. Rick Berman writes that we can’t do this episode and how we are on at 4PM in some markets and mommies are going to write letters. We get half the staff saying we shouldn’t do it and the other half – those who could recognize a good story – saying 'This is a hell of a script, we got to do this and demonstrate we are the Star Trek that everybody’s been waiting for.'” By that point, Roddenberry's health had deteriorated to the point that his lawyer, Leonard Maizlish, and Rick Berman, were running The Next Generation. While Roddenberry was not completely innocent in this, Gerrold has stated that he blames Berman for the demands for rewrites and eventual rejection of Blood and Fire. According to a separate interview with Salon, Gerrold claimed “A large part of the problem was that Gene’s health was failing. He didn’t have the physical strength he needed — and he was experiencing mental lapses as well.”
AUDIO 4 This was not the only time that the subject of homosexuality was shot down by the producers of The Next Generation. What could have been the first Star Trek episode to explicitly reference homosexuality or even just orientation in general, The Outcast, was watered down considerably. The episode, written by accomplished Trek writer Jeri Taylor, told the story of an androgynous species that had only a minority of its people identify as male or female. Commander Riker becomes romantically involved with a member of the species who identifies strongly as female. Although modern eyes might view this as more akin to an allegory about gender identity, the character's speech as the end clearly identifies this episode as at least intended to be about homosexuality. The episode has...problems. For an episode subtextually about being gay, the romance is heterosexual. To his credit, the actor who played Riker, Jonathan Frakes, was said to have wanted the alien be a man and not a woman and that he be allowed to kiss a man on The Next Generation. Also, a line in the script, presumably spoken by Dr. Crusher, that uses the word “orientation” was forcibly removed. In the episode The Offspring, Data builds an android daughter called Lal. Data educates her as best he can, but Lal becomes confused when she sees two people kissing. In the script, Guinan was supposed to instruct Lal, saying “When a man and a woman are in love...” and there would be men and women sitting at tables holding hands. Whoopi Goldberg refused and said “When two people are in love.” Cast and crew decided on set that there should be two men or two women holding hands as well, but someone called the producers, and the idea was shut down hard. Defenders of Berman as showrunner as well as the other producers trot out the argument that it was a different time and that gay characters or even references to being gay was forbidden on television even in the early 90's, but that is simply not the case. There was a gay character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in a 1973 episode called My Brother's Keeper. All in the Family, in 1975, introduced not only had a gay character but a recurring gay character in drag. Cheers had an episode sympathetic to homosexuality in 1983. The Golden Girls, in the 80's and 90's, had multiple episodes with gay characters and references. Roc had a recurring gay character played by none other than Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree.
AUDIO 5 Early 90's sitcoms like Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends had episodes and characters centered around the topic as well. This is also true of dramas like LA Law and lots more. While said sitcoms and dramas were not always entirely sensitive, they still were allowed on the air with little to no fuss. There is no excuse for a series like Star Trek: The Next Generation, which had a progressive legacy to uphold, to not even be as modern as The Mary Tyler Moore Show on this subject. But this was the way of things under showrunner Rick Berman. The buck stopped with him and so did any reference to being gay.
Berman's relationship with the women cast members was, at times, adversarial. In an interview, Denise Crosby, who played Tasha Yar, told Trek Core: “Sure, I mean I thought that would be the last day and they came down with a cake and you know… But my favorite thing is when Rick Berman, the producer, came down to the set and the very first thing he did was pull off my communicator from my uniform and said, 'Well, won’t be needing that anymore!' […] You used to just stick [it on with] velcro and it was just like some weird symbolic gesture… I don’t know if he thought I was going to sell it on eBay or you know… I mean they all looked the same – it wasn’t like mine was any special thing – it was just a very strange thing – I’ll never forget that.” Berman recently lied about this, claiming that Denise Crosby gave her the badge, and Crosby set him straight on Twitter. Years after Crosby left The Next Generation, she petitioned Berman to return to the series as the daughter of Tasha Yar and Lt. Castilo from the alternate timeline. Berman had a different idea, and tweaked it, and had Crosby return as Tasha's daughter but Castilo would not be the father. Instead, Berman's vision was that the daughter, Sela, would be the result of Tasha being effectively being captured and forced to become a concubine to a powerful Romulan. So, because of Berman, the legacy of Tasha Yar is forced, umm, “servitude” – to a Romulan. There is a word for this, but if I say it, this will get demonetized. So...yeah. Gross. Crosby did the episodes, and when she asked to return, Berman denied her for unknown reasons. Marina Sirtis, who played Counselor Deanna Troi, noted that negotiating her contract with Rick Berman and Paramount was a nightmare, once stating “Women are always paid less and the negotiations are always uglier because there is some kind of feeling that we don’t deserve the same money as the boys. It was always ugly. I quit smoking for six years but what got me started again was contract negotiations with Paramount. That is how bad it was.” It apparently got worse during the Next Generation movies:
AUDIO 6 “When I was negotiating for [Star Trek:] Nemesis they literally threatened to fire me and recast Troi, well not actually recast, but they said 'We are going to fire you and hire Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager).' And I said 'Well Jeri Ryan won’t do it for that money, that is for sure.'” In fact, Ryan refused, and Sirtis was back in. The women of the Next Generation had very little to do in the movies. Guinan is only in Generations, Crusher is an afterthought in all four movies, and Troi has little to do, except in the aforementioned Nemesis in which, umm. [“It was a violation.”] Iiiiin which she is a victim and nothing more.
One actor who left The Next Generation specifically because of the producers, most notably Berman, was Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher. Wheaton was approached to be in a Milos Forman film, Valmont. This was not only a good opportunity for Wheaton but for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Having one of your actors in an Oscar winner's movie would help build the prestige of the series. Most producers would be happy to work around the actor's schedule because of this, but Rick Berman and Brannon Braga apparently shut it down hard, apparently citing Wheaton being crucial to an upcoming episode. However, when said episode was shot, Wheaton discovered that it had nothing to do with him and that in the edit, he is barely in it. This is why the Wesley Crusher character was written out. Wheaton couldn't work with Rick Berman as showrunner.
When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine debuted, much of the show was run by Ira Stephen Behr after Michael Piller left DS9 after season two to work on Voyager. Behr turned DS9 into something Berman could not understand: a series with consequences. Episodes had consequences for future episodes. New, fresh, exciting ideas could be explored, and by all accounts, Berman hated it. Ronald D. Moore, who wrote episodes for both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, once remarked upon the contentious relationship between Behr and Berman. “They were just always conservative. You were always pulling back from something. You were never given a note saying, ‘Go farther. Go wilder. This needs to be more shocking.’ It was always, ‘Pull it back. Be safer.' … I remember one particularly insane argument that (executive producer) Ira (Steven Behr) and Rick had when Nog was injured, and ended up losing a leg. There was this ridiculous extended argument that I was in a room while Ira was on the phone. We had written the draft where he had lost both legs, and Rick was just appalled. ‘We can’t lose the character’s legs!’ And we were like, ‘No, we’ve got to. We’ve got to have somebody who’s injured in this war who’s not just a guest star in the background.’”
AUDIO 7 Much of Deep Space Nine revolved around heightened tensions between the Federation and the Dominion over the course of seasons three, four and five, resulting in full scale war in season six and seven. If Berman had his way, it never would have happened. Behr didn't convince him. Rather, he lied. According to Moore, the only reason the Dominion War happened was because Behr kept it from Berman until it was too late. Much like with The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine was not permitted to be particularly gay. Elim Garak, a plain simple tailor who absolutely was not a Cardassian spy, was supposed to be a one-off character. Actor Andrew Robinson brought the character to life, particularly in his scenes with Dr. Julian Bashir. The writers loved him and decided to keep him around. Sparks flew between Garak and Bashir, they started having meals together, and grew closer and closer. Robinson confessed that this tension and this characterization was intentional on his part. For fans of the pairing, it seemed this could be building to Star Trek's first gay relationship. Yet, after the excellent episode The Wire aired, the two began to have fewer and fewer scenes together, and Garak was romantically paired with a young Cardassian woman named Ziyal. To some viewers, the characters seemed to have just drifted apart, but over the years, the cast and crew of the show have pointed the finger at Rick Berman. Interviews over the years at various cons have brought to light the fact that Berman instructed Deep Space Nine’s writers to stop giving Garak and Bashir scenes together. Andrew Robinson was reportedly told to “tone down” his portrayal.
Homosexuality and bisexuality in both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were relegated to what can only charitably be called an accidental queerness. For example, in the TNG episode The Host, Dr. Beverly Crusher breaks off her relationship with Odan when he changes host bodies to that of a woman, and in the DS9 episode Rejoined, Jadzia Dax is only attracted to a woman because back when she had a different male body, she and the woman were married, only...she also had a different body. It's Star Trek, it's complicated, but the point is her relationship is a matter of science fiction consequences that immediately go away at the end of the episode. The only other references to anything not straight is in a Mirror Universe episode in which bisexuality is product of a backwards parallel universe. If one were to be forgiving of Rick Berman, he did not have much, if anything, to do with said Mirror Universe episode. Not all problems with Star Trek from that era can be traced back to him. But his fingerprints on the regressive side of Trek from that time are hard to ignore.
AUDIO 8 Fortunately for Deep Space Nine, Ira Stephen Behr had a lot of power and was in charge of the overall flow of the series, but Rick Berman's presence caused a lot of problems, particularly for Terry Farrell, the actress of who played Jadzia Dax. These are Farrell's words from the book The Fifty Year Mission, but I have to substitute certain words with synonyms to avoid demonetization: “The problems with my leaving were with Rick Berman. In my opinion, he’s just very misogynistic. He’d comment on your bra size not being voluptuous. His secretary had a 36C or something like that, and he would say something about 'Well, you’re just, like, flat. Look at Christine over there. She has the perfect [chest].' That’s the kind of conversation he would have in front of you. I had to have fittings... I think it was double-D or something. I went to see a woman who fits bras for women who need mastectomies; I had to have that fitting. And then I had to go into his office. Michael Piller didn’t care about those things, so he wasn’t there when you were having all of these crazy fittings with Rick Berman criticizing your hair or how big your [chest was or wasn't]. That stuff was so intense, especially the first couple of years.” Contracts for Deep Space Nine were for six seasons, which meant that the main cast had to sign an extension for the seventh and final season. Farrell, whose character was very popular among the fans, wanted to negotiate, but Berman was infamous for not taking women seriously during contract negotiations. See: Marina Sirtis. Farrell continued: “Basically he was trying to bully me into saying yes. He was convinced that my cards were going to fold and I was going to sign up. He had [another] producer come up to me and say, 'If you weren’t here, you know you’d be working at Kmart.' I was, like, 'What the hell are you talking about? I had a career before this. Why the hell would I be working at Kmart? Who are you?' Just to be jerky, he’d call me in my trailer: 'Have you been thinking about it yet? Are you going to sign?' Like, right before I had a scene. It was that kind of thing. Rick Berman said I was hardballing him, and I was, like, 'I’m not. I just want to have a conversation. You’re giving me a take-it-or-leave-it offer and I’m not okay with that.' So I finally did have a conversation with him and asked to cut down my number of episodes or just let me out.” Reportedly, Ira Stephen Behr was kept out of the loop and learned about this after fact. He believes this is because Berman knew he would have had another angry confrontation with him.
AUDIO 9 Whether this constitutes a firing or quitting depends on one's perspective. Nevertheless, Farrell was gone from Deep Space Nine and Dax was “recast” by a younger actress. It's a Trill thing. Contrary to popular belief, Farrell did not leave Deep Space Nine to be on Becker. She had not signed with Becker or even had an offer at the time of her departure. She simply was, as she predicted, able to secure another acting job following Deep Space Nine. It's important to note something: Rick Berman's defenders prefer to think of him as someone who was only trying to keep the lights on and Star Trek continuing. No biases, no misogyny, no homophobia, nothing like that. But stories like his interactions with Terry Farrell and Denise Crosby paint an accurate picture of his motivations and character. By most accounts, Berman despised the style of storytelling in Deep Space Nine. Berman denies this, but it was common wisdom among those who worked with him. Bryan Fuller, a Trek writer and producer, claimed in the aforementioned book The Fifty Year Mission that Berman's mindset was syndication, and that syndication requires everything to be wrapped up by the end of the episode, which is the antithesis of character building.
Berman was more at home with a project he apparently felt closer to: Star Trek: Voyager. Berman was not only in charge of Voyager but was more hands-on with it than Deep Space Nine, even having fair amount of the writing and story credits. So, when we talk about Jeri Ryan's outfit and some other things, we need to have no delusions about who ultimately signed off on them. There was a lot of financial wrangling about rights and having to pay writers for the rights to characters and stories. Ira Stephen Behr remarked “We had done the Maquis on Deep Space Nine because they wanted to set them up for Voyager. We were doing a two-part episode; Michael Piller wrote part one and I wrote part two. Mike, or maybe it was Mike and Rick [Berman], come in and they go, 'Look, Voyager is going to be about the Federation and these guys banding together to get home on this ship... we don’t want there to be any problems, so we’re going to put Jeri Taylor’s name, Rick’s name, and Mike’s name onto the story with you.' And it’s, like, 'What? You think I’m going to f***ing sue you? You think I’m going to try and get money from Voyager because I’m writing this episode?' ... That was f***ing lame. I was p****ed off about that. To me that was, like, 'Okay, you’re basically saying you don’t trust me, or not that you don’t trust me, but that you’re putting your names on it for ownership of something that no one is going to question.' It was not a friendly franchise thing to do.”
AUDIO 10 There was also a belief that the reason that Robert Duncan McNeill ended up playing Tom Paris instead of his Nicholas Lacarno character was that the show would have to pay royalties to the creator of the character. Paris' backstory about what he did that got him expelled from Starfleet is similar to that of Lacarno. Both were involved in pilot errors with fatal results and a coverup. They are not the same character, but their backstories are so similar that the official reason, that being that Lacarno was irredeemable and Paris was not, does not add up. Not when what they did was the roughly the same thing.
Rick Berman was more hands-on with Voyager than Deep Space Nine, and it showed. According to Garrett Wang, who played Ensign Harry Kim, Berman told the cast that the human characters were to lack emotions. All acting had to be underplayed and militaristic. This was, apparently, in service of making the alien characters seem more real by contrast. During the first year of shooting, the actors were required to re-shoot scenes due to excessive emotion. If you thought some of the characters on Voyager were a little dry, this was by design. Wang wanted Harry Kim to be promoted from Ensign to show character growth, but Rick Berman and Brannon Braga refused the request. Wang also requested to direct an episode, and Berman denied this request too. Wang was the first cast member in the history of the franchise to have a request to direct refused. According to Wang, this was because he said in an interview that the show should take more risks, and Berman held on to this grudge. Wang has said of this “I was the first actor in Star Trek history to be denied the chance to direct. The irony of the situation was that, unlike my predecessors, who only wanted to direct for the sake of directing and acquiring their DGA cards, I was the only one who wanted to direct Trek and make it the best it could be, drawing upon my knowledge and experiences as a lifelong fan of science fiction. I truly believe that if I was given the chance, it would have been the best freshman effort by a Trek actor because of my passion for sci-fi. This missed opportunity has haunted me ever since.” Wang was nearly fired from Voyager at the end of the third season to make room for Seven of Nine, but he was kept on – perhaps due to being People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. Instead, Jennifer Lien was let go. While Jeri Ryan's skin-tight suit was designed by Robert Blackman, it was under the direction of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. Ryan herself confirmed that the producers wanted – no, needed her outfit to have two individual, ermm, cups, and for the outfit to hug the skin.
AUDIO 11 Ryan was forced to wear a painful corset under the catsuit that was so unbearable that she routinely passed out from the pain. Oxygen tanks had to be on stand-by. In an interview, she once lamented that she wished she could have been given the catsuit after production had wrapped so that she could personally burn it. Subsequent costumes included this number which literally underlines her chest for the audience. Star Trek: Voyager was yet another Trek incarnation that came and went without a gay character. Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Katherine Janeway, reportedly asked Rick Berman on multiple occasions for there to be gay representation on Voyager, but he refused every time.
Berman was a producer and not a writer...until Enterprise. His writing credits on the other series were between 2 and 5. But Enterprise? 37. Berman was concerned about the potential for franchise fatigue with Enterprise, and this may have had something to do with how hands-on he was with it. He didn't want the franchise to be ruined. Of course, Berman did not believe in the same correlation of Berman-to-bad that others do. So...he thought he was helping. He was not. Berman and UPN ramped up the, well, most Berman-y qualities.
AUDIO 12 Enterprise needed an excuse to constantly have the crew showing more skin, particularly T'Pol, played by actress Jolene Blalock. So, now, after every away mission, the Enterprise crew had to rub decontamination gel all over themselves. And of course, if they couldn't reach some places, they would rub gel on each other. We even got to see T'Pol's rear end, but only the top part. This was still network television after all. In season three, ratings were dropping, and the producers decided that one of the biggest changes had to be less clothes. Producers insisted that T'Pol have an even more revealing look in season three. Jolene Blalock criticized making T'Pol more risque, stating, "You can’t substitute t*** and a** for good storytelling. You can have both, but you can't substitute one for the other, because the audience is not stupid. You can’t just throw in frivolous, uncharacteristic... well, bull and think it's gonna help the ratings!" In addition to this step backward for Trek, Enterprise underutilized its only two minority actors in the main cast. Travis Mayweather and Hoshi Sato were frequently sidelined and ignored during the series. This is particularly true of Mayweather, played by Anthony Montgomery, who barely existed.
AUDIO 13 Also, again, no gay representation on the series. Once more unto the breach. Dominic Keeting, the actor who played Malcolm Reed, clearly tried to make his character gay, but the producers would have none of it. Keeting once remarked “I played him so gay ... I mean, it was always rumored that Malcolm was gay, wasn't it? It was that one line of his three-line bio, 'Shy around women,' that just shockwaved across the gay community. … I don't want to say it was dry and they didn't want to take any risks, but there was an element of that." Producers were rumored to be so concerned about Reed being perceived as gay that they forced references to Reed's unshakable straightness. Again, giving credit where it's due: I recently re-watched Enterprise from front to back, and I have a lot more affection for it now than I did during its initial run. Trip is great. T'Pol is great. Shran is the best. I have faith of the heart, but Enterprise is still the weakest of the four Star Trek shows from this era, and a lot of that must be laid at the feet of the showrunner, executive producer, and for some reason, writer of a lot of the series, Rick Berman.
Rick Berman held an office at Paramount until December of 2006. Not long after Enterprise was canceled, Berman stepped aside from the franchise so that someone else could take a crack at it. After three reboot movies of varying quality and box office receipts, Star Trek was given to Bryan Fuller and then to Alex Kurtzman. Star Trek: Discovery finally fulfilled the promise of a gay main character in Star Trek with Lieutenant Commander Paul Stammets, Dr. Hugh Culber and Engineer Jett Reno. Emperor Phillipa Georgiou appears to be pansexual, but that seems to be the norm in the Mirror Universe. I have some issues with the series, but I definitely love gay it is. Frankly, I hope season three is even gayer. And with more Tilly, please. Also, Star Trek: Picard has premiered, and you know what? So far, so good. Whether you love the new shows or hate them, it seems clear that Star Trek needed to be in other hands after so long in the grip of Rick Berman. Star Trek is taking risks again, and since risk was part of its foundation, that makes a lot of sense. Here's to the future.