Star Trek TNG: The Outcast

[Padma]

I'd forgotten about seeing this episode, it was so long ago - and what an impact it made on me at the time. Watching it again I found it very moving in a very different way from when I was still more in denial.

It's a fascinating twist-take on a situation familiar to all here, in different ways - a planet of androgynous people, where the few who find themselves feeling male or female are hounded down and "cured". I find it interesting that Jonathan Frakes wasn't happy with it, felt it could have been stronger, and that his protagonist/love interest should have been made to look less obviously female and more male. She was very gorgeous, though (Melinda Culea, more well known for the A-Team) .



I'm working my way through TNG at the moment, and I've been surprised by how many storylines have genderqueer issues in them. One where Data makes his own android, and gives it the choice of whether it wants to be male or female. One where Doctor Crusher is in love with a man who proves to be just the host body for the personality she's fallen in love with, who eventually gets a new host body that's female, and the Doctor can't deal with this (though for her it's not a gender/sexuality issue - she says that what she can't deal with is "too much change"). And then this one I've just watched. Considering this was back in the early 90's, it's all pretty well handled. Good on them.

[Sarah Louise]

I remember both shows.  As well as one where Captain Kirk's essence was transfered into a female body and her essence into his body.

[tekla]

They were always kind of visionary on the scripts for something that was pitched as Wagon Train to the Stars,  Lots of the original ones had awesome scripts that I would love to see redone with real F/X, and you know, real actors too.  The City on the Edge of Forever comes to mind, might be nice to film all 3 of the scripts for it.

[mechakitty]

"I am female. I was born that way. I have had those feelings, those longings, all of my life. It is not unnatural. I am not sick because I feel this way. I do not need to be helped. I do not need to be cured. What I need, and what all of those who are like me need, is your understanding. And your compassion. We have not injured you in any way. And yet we are scorned and attacked. And all because we are different. What we do is no different from what you do. We talk and laugh. We complain about work. And we wonder about growing old. We talk about our families and we worry about the future. And we cry with each other when things seem hopeless. All of the loving things that you do with each other - that is what we do. And for that we are called misfits, and deviants and criminals. What right do you have to punish us? What right do you have to change us? What makes you think you can dictate how people love each other?"

Best quote ever. I love that episode. Just updated my blog with an entry about this (see my signature).

How ridiculously prescient was this quote for 1992? 1992!

The Trek writers were smarter than they probably realized.

[Padma]

Yes, including the chilling certainty with which the judge responded by just saying something like "well, it's good that you admit your sickness so freely, it'll make it easier for us to cure you..."

Melinda was amazing as Soren, it's a shame she didn't have someone less 2-dimensional than Jonathan Frakes to play this opposite. She was a star in this.

[mechakitty]

Agreed. Actually, Jonathan Frakes is amazing in the right episodes (oh don't get me started...kind of a Trek geek here). I think the fault lies with the episode itself. I mean, the concept is definitely ahead of its time and very daring for prime-time television in '92. I just simply don't buy Riker and Soren's romance, and I think that has more to do with the way the episode was written than Frakes' acting. It feels rushed, but I guess there's not really much that can be done about that given the time constraints.

I also feel like it would have worked better with another actor, or actress even (come to think of it, a cis-female in that position of falling for the androgynous Soren like, say, Troi, would have been great and even more daring). Riker is just too much of the cliched ladies' man, and it's clear this is a "love of the week" as opposed to a real "I've fallen deeply in love" kind of thing that the show tries to convey. It doesn't work.

[Padma]

Agreed - it's very hard to take his strength of feeling seriously, because he doesn't play it very well, and then it's all over and time to fly off to the next planet, frown and... titles. I think she does a very good job, though.

And the thing that stood out for me is that the rest of her people are not being malevolent, just sort of pitying and profoundly certain of their rightness and her "sickness", and that felt all too familiar (and harder to respond to than basic phobia).

[mechakitty]

Definitely resonates when you consider Michele Bachmann's quote about how we need to have "profound compassion for people with sexual identity and gender identity disorders." UGH.

[Padma]

Yes, I've never been more annoyed than by a Christian ex-girlfriend's matronising "compassion" for me when I came out to her as non-heterosexual*. That whole "hate the sin, not the sinner" thing... ecch - anyway, let's not turn this into a hate thread!

I have this great friend, and whenever I'd see him and say "I'm really angry with so-and-so", he'd always respond with "Oh, you poor thing - it's really painful being angry, isn't it? I hope you get over it soon..." which is annoying but too true to ignore .

*PS happy ending, she spent some time working at a Christian retreat centre where she met a gay catholic man who helped her let go of her "compassion" and just do unjudgemental love instead.

[tekla]

keep the second friend

[Padma]

I'm trying to - oddly/sadly, he's the one friend I have who's responded badly to me transitioning. Working on it.