Rob: This is Subspace Radio and I am Rob.
Kevin: Hailing frequencies open, Rob.
It's Kev here.
Rob: Good to see you.
We're here to talk about the latest episode of Star Trek that is out there in
the ether, and it is season three, episode four of Lower Decks: "Room for Growth".
Kevin: That title already sounds dirty to me.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: Our listeners will have probably glanced at their episode
list and seen that the topic of today is sex in Star Trek.
So welcome.
Welcome to whatever this is going to be.
Rob: It is a red letter day.
It is a red banner day.
It is…
Kevin: It's a red something.
Rob: It's red tube.
It's all tied into one.
Yes, finally.
I got a positive affirmation from Kevin Yank in our notes.
He just put, "Okay, fine."
Kevin: They did it.
Last week, I said, "Lower Decks, you know what you have to do," and they did it.
Rob: And they brought it so hardcore in this episode.
Finally, I have been so patiently waiting for this, and I assume
you have been as well, listeners.
I'm sure, Kevin, you have spent long, long hours, long evenings lying…
Kevin: You can't imagine how long.
Rob: Oh, I can have a vague idea.
But before we move on to this hot and spicy topic, let's
have a look at Room for Growth.
An episode involving an A and B plot, as always.
And so Ruthford was sent off with the entire engineering crew after
yet another disastrous possession.
Those old things.
Yes, the captain has been possessed by an ancient mask
Kevin: An ancient mask situation.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: Have you seen that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation
that that was referencing?
Rob: I had not.
Kevin: It is not the most memorable one, that.
We're talking season seven, episode 17, "Masks".
I don't mind it.
For the, the very trail end of TNG, where they were scraping the bottom
of the barrel for ideas before they hit the high points of All Good
Things, they went through a couple of weaker episodes like Masks.
Rob: There's certain cliched episodes you need to have within a sci-fi show.
So there's always the body swap episode.
There's always the sexy episode.
There's always an episode where a mask is involved in some
sort of way shape or form.
Kevin: This episode almost made my list of mixing it up episodes.
When we talked to a little while back of cases where characters became
possessed or played another character.
In Masks, Commander Data puts on a mask and becomes this God
who is uh, rebuilding the ship.
And Picard manages to, at the last minute, find another mask in the library computer
and put it on and talk Data down by role playing another God in their mythos.
Rob: So much theater.
Kevin: Data was the God of the sun, so Picard came in as the God of the moon
and said, it's time to go to sleep sun.
It's as dramatic as it sounds.
Rob: I dunno what you're talking about.
That sounds like 45 minutes of pure Star Trek gold.
Kevin: I don't hate it, but uh, not, not everyone's favorite episode.
Room for Growth, I'm seeing framed as a show about nothing.
I've seen a few people compare it to an episode of Seinfeld, where
nothing big or monumental happens.
This is a character sitcom episode.
Rob: Yeah, leaning into the sitcom-ey type of comedy elements of it.
And all those big, sweeping science fiction elements are put on hold.
And it is pretty much just a social relationship thing.
The antagonization between the Delta and the Beta teams, there.
That's a very sitcom-ey type thing to do.
And we're here to relax and we can't relax because we're engineers!
And having the – I'm jumping ahead to the ending – and to have an ending where
our heroes don't win is very much out of…
Kevin: That's very Seinfeld.
Rob: Where you've got a good sitcom where you let your characters fail.
Kevin: They reveal all their fatal flaws, and they all fail because of it.
But at least they're stuck in it together at the…
Rob: And the twist where they think they've learned a lesson,
but then they're actually betrayed.
Kevin: I'm wondering if we ever see Delta Shift again, because at the moment
where they were making nice in the swamp below Hydroponics, waiting for the door
to open, and they were becoming friends.
I was like, oh, this is a nice way to end the Delta Shift epic.
And then Delta shift says "Snooze, you lose!"
and runs through the door.
And I'm like, oh, does that mean it's back on?
Or is that just a button on the end of the story, and we've actually done
everything there is to do with Delta…?
Rob: Yeah, I mean, the Delta Shift trio were quite unremarkable in the way of…
Kevin: They are literally palette-swapped versions of our
main characters, that's the gag.
Rob: Yeah.
And, but not even in a heightened way or type of exaggerated way.
But yeah, and they have like odd tropes that would only appear
in like a sitcom or a comedy.
Things like they start, tripping balls.
Kevin: I'm in an egg.
I don't want to hatch.
Rob: That was a beautiful moment.
And I fell a little bit in love with Mariner then.
Kevin: Oh, she's brought you completely around!
Rob: Just the moment how vulnerable she was when Tendi goes, look, I'm sorry, I
got the out of your egg and then Mariner's there going, it was so warm in there.
And I went, oh, that's
beautiful.
Kevin: chin thing That is amazing that they brought that out
uh, in this kind of animation.
Rob: I'm.
Pretty much on the Mariner Starship now it was a beautiful moment.
Kevin: I also noticed, that the references have started to shift
from references to Star Trek canon into references to Lower Decks canon.
Rob: Yes.
And that, yeah, that's always a good shift when you are, you've created your own…
Kevin: Yeah.
Your own bubble.
Rob: …own bubble.
Kevin: I don't think they'll ever get away from that entirely, but
when they come into the swamp in hydroponics, did you see the little
skeleton stuck beneath the branches?
That was a dead Doopler from the episode An Embarrassment of Dooplers
in season two, episode five, when the ship got overtaken by all of
those replicating life forms, that was one of them stuck under there.
I had to look it up.
I can't take credit for knowing that at a glance, but yeah, the site gags
the references, like last episode, someone said shenanigans, and then
there was immediately a pile of references to previous episodes.
And I, I love that this show is standing on its own two feet.
Now I, I don't need this to be the show of references.
Rob: So yeah, we've talked about it, but we haven't said whether,
did you enjoy this episode?
Kevin: Oh!
Yeah, I loved this!
I love this episode for the fact, if we had not already talked about what
a stereotypical Lower Decks episode is, I might this week be making the
argument for this being one of it.
Earlier in the season we said the stereotypical thing that stood out to
us about Grounded was that something big and momentous happened off screen
while our characters were here in the background and we stayed in the
background with them while that went on.
This episode did something I would argue might be even more
stereotypically Lower Decks.
It told a story in the quiet moments, the mundane moments, the
most of the time in which nothing exciting happens on a starship.
Rob: And it's very much the case of the Cali class ship is the
lower deck of the Federation.
So we've been dealing with the lower decks on a ship, like with Boimler and Mariner,
but this was an episode where not even the Cali class are at that higher level.
So even the captain's dealing with mundane stuff like her
engineers just won't take a break.
So it was very much the ultimate sitcom sci-fi.
So it's what I love about Red Dwarf is like just, you know, scumbags in space.
You know, they're the lower echelon of humanity, let alone, sci-fi tropes,
which for me is always endearing.
I always, the American style of sitcom is always about who's the quickest wit who's
the smartest, who's the most attractive.
Where comedy for me, I much prefer that more relatable sense of
struggling and how, sometimes you don't get everything your way.
Kevin: The story of the engineers being told to relax is on the one hand, I
think it's perhaps the weaker part of this episode, just in pure entertainment
value, but it does tell, I would say an insightful story about burnout.
Like the way to treat burnout is not to take away the thing that gives someone
a purpose for showing up to work.
Rob: And it did supply two of my favorite gags as well.
So when the captain screams at one of the engineers, "Shut up Meredith!"
And also later when Ruthford finally comes in with all the engineering crew
and goes, stop right now what you're doing and the dog, the puppy looks at it.
And he goes, "Oh no, not you little puppy.
Keep on puppin!"
So…
Kevin: Let's talk sex.
Rob: Look, not only do we have the subtle attempt, but it's still a little bit of
objectification of two of our female crew…
Kevin: Yeah, not sex.
Just maybe sexualization, but not actual sex.
I think there is, there's interesting stuff to say
about actual sex in Star Trek.
Rob: Yeah.
There was, of course the reveal of Ransom's kink.
Kevin: Kink or survival technique for what sounds like
a very traumatic episode in the
Rob: Wow.
You're very beautiful.
Kevin.
I like how you, look, no kink shaming here, okay, let's—
Kevin: No, I am not judging him for…
Rob: No, no.
And that's what I— I say it's a kink, you say it's a way of dealing with trauma.
And I really enjoy that, that we've created this safe environment.
Kevin: Horses for courses.
Rob: But yes— Is it Trilvia?
Kevin: Churro-livia.
Rob: Churro-livia.
Yeah.
Hilarious.
But the big thing is we had the entire holodeck fantasy of our
doctor and our chief of security.
Kevin: T'Ana and Shaxs, they have been the, in the margins, will-they-won't-they
recurring story for a while now.
We've overheard them professing their love for each other.
Rob: In their little scene of The Naked Now homage, she was
just attached to his naked body.
Kevin: Yeah.
And this one pays it off and it's fun because our characters
are both repulsed, but also are, they're like, oh, good for them.
I'm glad they got there.
They're happy for them.
Rob: And there's a beautiful line where he says I died and we didn't
even, we haven't even talked about it.
Kevin: Uh, there, there is a whole bunch of stuff.
Rob: Put those away Diane.
Put those away.
Kevin: Oh god, Diane is her kinky sex name?
It's in 15 seconds that this show really runs away with it.
And it's like back to back lines.
"You love crime play."
I love the idea that crime is such a foreign concept in the Star Trek
world that they do it as a kink.
They play it on the holodeck as a kink.
Rob: And that's what I really love at that moment where they walk
in and they can't even pronounce bank, which I, I, I find A bahnk.
Kevin: Here in the bahnk.
But yeah, I would dare say we're about to talk about sex in Star Trek as a
whole, but right here in Lower Decks, the comedy cartoon, I would argue is the most
healthy, sex positive, grown up look at two adults having sex that we have ever
seen in the entire franchise history.
Rob: Look, especially within recent years, especially within a lot of
the new iterations of Star Trek, they haven't really been able to identify
the healthiest way to present it.
It's been forced in or pressured in, or made more of a statement as opposed
to just blending it into the story.
Um, whereas with this, it was very much a case of they went all in.
It's called crime play.
It is all this, but it is healthy.
There's they're stopping what they're doing.
They're talking it through, led by the male wanting to initiate
the conversation, which is, mixing up the gender stereotypes.
Kevin: She's going, "We'll do the nasty on the counter and make the hostages watch."
Rob: Exactly.
But no, there was no frustration in her or anything like that.
It was just a case of all right, this is what we need to work through.
And it was done in this really healthy, positive way.
And it was effectively getting them back on track to…
Kevin: They worked through it.
And then Delta shift told us later they were making something.
Rob: They were makin somethin!
So yeah, I have a very particular view of it, but what's your, Kevin, what's your
view of sex within the Star Trek universe?
Kevin: I like to pick moments.
And I'll take us to a first moment.
And I am quite confident it is the earliest moment that we will touch
on today, because it is way back in Star Trek, the original series.
Rob: Yeah, okay.
Kevin: Captain Kirk obviously had a reputation with the ladies.
We often see him seducing people or being seduced.
And it's all great, but it is usually little more than a suave
seduction ending in a kiss.
This episode I'm thinking of though is the first time that, although only
implied, it was made very clear to anyone paying attention that the deed was done.
Rob: Is that what the episode's called?
Kevin: It should have been.
This is season three, episode 13 of Star Trek, the original series, Wink of an Eye.
Rob: So this is right near the end of its original run.
Kevin: Yeah, a famously weak season.
And even, I would say this is a stronger episode in season three.
It is worth watching.
It has an interesting sci-fi idea in it, and our characters are mostly themselves.
Uh, in this episode, the ship gets taken over by aliens who
have accelerated to such a speed that they move imperceptively.
Like, our characters can't see them, they move that fast.
And anyone who drinks the water on this planet gets accelerated
to their speed as well.
The aliens want to take over the ship, putting it into deep freeze
and use the crew of the Enterprise as breeding stock, because their
race is sterile, a side effect of their transition to high speed life.
And so Kirk, obviously, is targeted first as the most attractive,
eligible bachelor on the ship.
Rob: Of course.
Kevin: The female leader of the species accelerate him to their
speed and immediately starts macking on him, and going "What?
Forget about your ship!
They'll be fine without you.
Come to my bedroom!"
On the one hand, like it's a little rapey in, in our modern standards.
But on the other hand, it's also very empowering to this female leader where
she has a member of her crew that is obviously in love with her, but they
can't propagate the species together.
And so when he says, "Why do you have to fall so head-over-heels
for this Captain Kirk?"
She said, "Allow me the dignity of liking the person that I have
to choose in order to do my duty."
And it is really great to see like, way back in the sixties, this female
leader own her sexuality, even in this kind of twisted sci-fi story.
Now, the moment that makes this episode especially worth talking
about though, is that at a certain point Kirk pretends to give in and
come around to her way of thinking.
And he starts making out with her in his quarters and it gets pretty hot and
heavy, and then it fades to commercial.
And when they return from commercial, he's sitting on the edge of
his bed, putting on his boots.
And this is how they slipped implied sex past the censors.
Apparently like this is a famous thing that if the censors had been paying
attention, they would've struck that.
They would've said not even implied in our primetime television
here, but they got it past.
And I would say, when I first saw this episode, I was young enough
for that to go right over my head.
But this is the clearest time and earliest time that our captain
got it on with an alien female.
And it was right there for anyone paying attention.
Rob: There you go.
And there's some positive things in there as well, especially from a quite loaded,
and that's my understatement of the year, loaded era of, perceptions of women and
minorities and all that type of stuff.
So to have a strong female positive approach—
Kevin: The character and the act, neither of them are shamed.
If anything, they are celebrated and empowered in this
story, which is really cool.
Rob: And especially like considering if you rewatch The Cage, the rejected pilot,
there's a fantasy moment where Pike is with the Orion, green-skinned dancer,
and it implies that he's like in the frontier, trading off exotic slave girls.
And you're going ah, right.
Okay.
This is very unhealthy.
So to have, within that same decade, an episode of the actual series,
once it's got up showing that type of positivity is a really good thing.
Kevin: But this still nevertheless falls prey to the pattern that I see for most of
Star Trek history, where Star Trek needed to be a PG show that kids could watch in
the family room, and therefore sex had to be abstracted or implied or worked around…
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: …a way that the kiddies would be oblivious to it.
Rob: Yes, but it doesn't, but it also, it's still leaned into quite a lot.
Kevin: It was still there, and it was a plot point.
Rob: This is a good place for me to come in.
I've always looked upon sex within Star Trek as weird.
That like Star Trek doesn't know what to do with sex.
It's a family show, but we also want to explore deeper themes, and
cross many concepts and theories of science and all that type of stuff.
But when it comes down to, just, getting it on, they're
not sure what to do with it.
So it's either like The Naked Now or The Naked Time or stuff like that, where
it's this disease and it's this threat.
And if you're exploring your sexuality or your inhibitions are being
lost, this is something dangerous.
And so like a zipping down of the uniform is a sign of the whole society
of the Federation is falling apart.
And if you do it, you die.
Sorta like the tropes of a horror movie: you have sex, you die.
If you stay a virgin, you live to the end.
Or you go into the mirror universe, where they're all in tight leather,
and they're sexually liberated and they're in the evil universe.
So like in Deep Space Nine, Kira Nerys in the parallel universe is
like the ruler of the ship, and she has multiple lovers and it's implied
that she's a little bit bi as well.
Kevin: It's a bit like smoking.
You know, for a while there, if a character was smoking, you knew
immediately they were the villain of the movie and it's the vice of it…
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: …thing that they fixated on.
Rob: Yes.
So, it always was implied that it's, yeah.
It's either a plot point or it's an awkward gag at the end, where Paris and
Janeway have evolved into futuristic slugs and they possibly had sex, but they're
not aware of it, but they kind of are.
And so it's that weird type of dynamic and I'm there going, is there
anything healthy within the Star Trek universe when it comes to sex?
Cuz then when we talked about Deep Space Nine, it's all caught up in nineties
politics, which is, if you look at it, sexual politics in the nineties
were still incredibly conservative when it came to representation.
And so ooh the big controversial moment where we have a same sex kiss between
Dax and her former lover or something, they put in so much sci-fi babble
about going well in that particular version the incarnation was a male
and all this type of stuff and all the type of layers upon layers instead of
just letting it be a healthy thing.
It's let's not talk about sex, but when we do it it's something nasty or evil.
Kevin: You mentioned The Naked Now, and I do wanna touch on that, because
I think that is probably the most memorable character beat based around sex.
Data losing his virginity to Tasha Yar.
And it is played so many different ways, every time they come back to it.
The actual event in The Naked Now is so cringy, because yes, they
are both or at least Tasha is incapacitated with this drunken…
Rob: She slicked her hair back.
Kevin: Oh, she's licked her hair back.
She showed her under boobs and… and she, she welcomes Data into her den, checking
if he is fully functional along the way.
But the, the most awkward part of it is the speech of vulnerability
she gives first, saying, I had to stay just ahead of the rape gangs as
I was growing up as a little girl.
And now what I want in my partner is tenderness, is safety and in a way, like
I can almost see what they were going for.
It is sweet that this woman who has sexual trauma in her past would need the safety
of, effectively, a sex toy that would do her no harm and would give her exactly
what she asked for with no judgment.
Data would be the safest partner for someone who had
sexual trauma in their lives.
It's almost there, but they play the sexual trauma for titillation, I feel.
There is no more charitable an audience for Star Trek than me, so I want it to
be okay, but rewatching that yesterday I was like, nah, it is not okay.
She comes in in a state of undress, in a state of sexualization, and
immediately talks about her rapers.
When they remastered this show, I wish they could have done a
couple of rewrites in the process.
Rob: There's two words that you don't really want to have combined
in any conversation, let alone Star Trek, you don't want the words
rape and gang mentioned in any way.
Kevin: No.
Not in a scene that ends the way that scene ended.
Certainly.
Rob: Yeah, that's done at the start of a scene into tenderness.
Like even within this modern incarnation of Star Trek starting with Discovery,
there's been implications of one of the characters who was a Klingon and
has gone through horrible surgery to become human and implications
there about sexual dynamic there and manipulation and harassment.
So yeah, getting to Lower Decks the relationship within a holodeck
program in black and white has finally shown us a healthy approach to all
different types of relationships that don't just have to be monogamous
within our view of a man and a woman.
Kevin: I don't necessarily need to see a couple having healthy sex
in order to believe that they do.
I don't need it to be shown.
Rob: No.
Kevin: But when they use sex as a plot point, you're right.
Their batting average is a little low in terms of when does it seem
healthy and realistic versus when is it just a little off kilter?
When are the writers just a little afraid to go there or
just a little weird about it?
Rob: Yeah.
Like it's the creation of the Betazoid race, and their culture, and how very
much sexually liberated they are.
Like the wedding ceremonies are done naked from what I remember.
Deanna Troi's mom, obviously played by the great Majel Barrett, and her
appearances on Deep Space Nine for me were really interesting because my
favorite character obviously is Odo.
And so his evolution over seven seasons is always great to watch, but her
first appearance, I believe it's season one, she perceives Odo from the point
of view of she's attracted to him.
And she brings out a side of him that, he hasn't even really been aware of.
He's got feelings for Kira, but his sexuality is something he hasn't
really explored or understood.
And so to have a strong, confident, older woman who is confident in her sexuality…
Kevin: Do they ever get over the line where that is not smirked at, by the
rest of the cast, the rest of the story?
Rob: I believe in the first, there is that moment where they're trapped in
the hyper lift, and he has to change his form, and there's this beautiful moment
of vulnerability, where he is falling apart and he's gotta maintain control.
And she just goes, let yourself go and I will protect you.
And it's a beautiful, tender but almost sensual moment as well.
Kevin: They let her be a well rounded character.
They let her be…
Rob: And he is vulnerable to her and she is the strength and holds him together.
And it's a sensual moment.
And they come back to that cuz Odo does start exploring his sexuality
and what his… there's so many possibilities with his body, Kevin.
And there's a beautiful moment when him and Kira finally get together.
When they finally kiss for the first time and you get up and cheer and clap.
It's so beautiful.
But there's a moment where he fills her with warmth and light and fills her
whole, the whole space with his essence.
I think that's a great moment of, it's not purely carnal, it's a
sensual thing, which you don't really connect with Star Trek, sensuality.
There's beautiful, sensual moments and playful, joyful moments with Riker
and Troi in Insurrection, you know, when they're in the bath together and
she's shaving him, that's really hot.
Kevin: I'm such in two minds of that because I think, on the one hand
they accomplish something there of, they let two adults be intimate,
flirty, erotic with each other.
And it is fun and it is sexy and it is hot.
I was watching it with headphones on earlier this week and Jess, my partner
was sitting on the sofa next to me and she was going, this is hot and I
can't even hear what they're saying.
Rob: That's a good sign.
Kevin: At the same time, they once again found a way to work around
the acknowledgement of the act.
Riker and Troi never actually commit the sinful act of having sex.
They have a bath together.
They shave each other.
They giggle about it like school children…
Rob: Well, we don't, we don't, see much of… We don't see much of him shaving her.
Kevin: That's true.
Well, you know, I use my imagination.
Rob: It's implied.
Kevin: I can't believe I said that.
That's hilarious.
Rob: That's, that's gotta be a deleted scene somewhere.
Kevin: It's in the cut.
It's in the cut.
I wanted to come back to Data, though, because that episode, The
Naked Now, it ends with Yar stepping up to him and blushingly saying "It
never happened," and the next time it's acknowledged is after her…
Rob: After her death where the image of her shows up and he, I dunno who
he's talking to, but he says we were…
Kevin: We were intimate.
This is in The Measure Of A Man where he is, his humanity is on trial.
And he's got the little hologram of her, which is the same pose in uniform
that she appears in her funeral.
So we assume it is a gift to mark her passing, but it is never
addressed, this strangeness of the last words on the subject we hear
from Yar herself is, I regret it.
It never happened.
I'm embarrassed.
And, suddenly, it becomes a cornerstone of Data's feeling of growing humanity.
It is the closest, most intimate relationship he's had in his life.
And on the one hand, it is sweet.
But when you lean into it, it is also potentially creepy.
I think, we were all young enough once where we were madly in love with
someone who did not return our feelings.
And there, there is that moment where you grow up enough to let go of it and
realize it's not just about your feelings, it's about their feelings as well.
And if I continue to impose myself, what I want on this person who does not want
the same thing, there's a line there that shouldn't be crossed and Data seemingly
crossing it posthumously is something that I am not entirely comfortable with when
I allow myself to look at it up close.
Rob: Yeah, and it's very much a trope of drama that lasted for decades,
and it's only start— I think there's even examples of it, I think I can
remember, from like The Office in the early noughties, of that whole type
of situation, where two characters get intoxicated and the end of the
episode, "sting" or "gag", and I'm doing inverted commas, is it never happened.
Kevin: We're never talking about this…
Rob: And that's the full stop gag to end the episode, then we restart the
series seven days later with a whole…
Kevin: Yeah, and it can put those two characters into a
will-they-won't-they state of, maybe they do re-acknowledge it later.
Maybe they realize it was the start of something, it wasn't something shameful.
But Tasha Yar never got that opportunity.
Unless we tell ourselves that they figured something out offscreen, like after that
moment there was stuff going on off screen between them, that caused her to bequeath
a holographic image of herself to him on her death, that allowed him to claim that
connection for the rest of his, his life.
Rob: That's a lot of heavy lifting that we have to do as fans.
Kevin: It is.
So it's a, another example of the writers going a little skewy when it
came to sex, like not tackling it head on and being clear and saying these
people enjoyed what they did together.
Instead it was like, these people will never speak about it again, because it is
shameful, unless one of them is dead, so they can never make that mistake again.
And now it's allowed to be sweet.
Rob: Again.
Yeah.
Again, it's that case of the it's the.
The trap that Star Trek is stuck into.
It's so procedural, it is so closed off within that televisual follow
the 45 minute structure then reset.
So that arc of a character growing is denied because we have to be back
at square one for next week, so that they can overcome the next scientific
challenge, or the next engineering challenge, as opposed to developing
this strong, healthy relationship first, and then the other stuff will come.
Kevin: The button on Data's story in my books comes in Star Trek First Contact
when he is seduced by the Borg queen.
And uh, they again have what could be construed as implied sex off
screen, where there is a scene where they end kissing and then they come
back and Data is changed for the experience that he has just had.
Rob: And she's blown on his new flesh patch.
Kevin: Exactly.
But that's going back to the sinfulness, like the idea that sex is brought
by the villain as a temptation.
Rob: And it is definitely played in that way of, come over to the dark side,
we have sex and pleasure over here.
Where we can shave each other and we can blow each other's patch.
They're my two favorite phrases that we have come across tonight.
Kevin: Deep Space Nine, I think, started to get it right when
Dax and Worf got together.
The episode Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places is
when they finally get together.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: They have sex in the holosuite, and come in all bruised and battered
into the infirmary afterwards.
And Julian's like, I don't wanna know.
I'm just gonna treat you.
But it is a celebrated, healthy first step in two people who end up loving each
other wholeheartedly getting together.
And it feels like, finally, we're here!
We can have our heroes have sex and acknowledge it later.
And it is okay.
Rob: And then they kill her off
Kevin: They do!
Rob: And then Worf has awkward sex with Ezri, and it back to being weird again.
Kevin: You're right, it does get weird again.
Rob: And then she gets together with Julian and then it's just weird again.
The curse of season seven, dropping the eight ball sometimes.
Kevin: Two steps forward.
One step back, I…
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: …on that front.
Rob: Then I go into sort of like stuff like with Voyager— I'm just
jumping around, like in Voyager…
Kevin: I'm going to Voyager as well.
Rob: I always refer to, it became a common thing with when I did my binge
of Voyager in my past life, it was the reoccurring gag of Chakotay is a dawg.
Kevin: Is he, now?
Rob: Chakotay is always on the prowl, and there are some
episodes where it gets awkward.
There's an episode where Chakotay and Janeway are trapped on a planet for,
Kevin: Oh yeah.
They live out a whole life together.
Rob: And it's implied the whole will they, won't they.
But then they get back on the ship, and again we have to reset.
Even though we are on this journey to get back, we have to follow
that procedural type thing.
And then right at the end, they cram in this awkward, oh yeah, and Chakotay
and Seven of Nine are doing something.
And I'm so glad they haven't followed that up, because it was so hamfisted,
and so unconvincing, and you go…
Kevin: Yeah.
I can see why— The idea that these people who are trapped together on a
ship, they will end up pairing off.
It was established like from the very first episode.
That promise was there.
The fact that it was so awkward in practice,
Rob: Because there was nothing.
Because there was nothing between the two of them.
It was always like, it was alwa— What I loved about it was Seven of Nine
was always paired with either the doctor or Janeway or the young girl.
Kevin: Naomi Wildman.
Rob: That's right, Naomi Wildman.
And did you channel your best Jeri Ryan while you—
Kevin: I closed my eyes and I imagined Jeri Ryan saying Naomi Wildman.
Rob: Yeah, so it just was so crowbarred in there going, they have
shared like three lines over three years, and now we're expected to
believe that these guys are flirting.
And no, convincing at all.
Kevin: What's interesting around sex in Voyager for me is Janeway, the woman at
the top, who is the first female captain.
And she's established as if not married, then at least in a long-term…
Rob: Long-term relationship.
I don't think they're married, her and Mark.
Kevin: They have a dog together.
So in my books, they're married.
Rob: …a dog and they're sharing coffee.
Kevin: That's right.
Yeah.
That immediately, they defuse her as a sexual being early on by
giving her someone back home that she, as the captain who must be the
paragon of virtue, she's trapped in needing to be true to Mark back home.
Rob: And also she is trapped within that hairdo, which is so tightly bunned and up.
Kevin: They get there eventually, though.
She has a few awkward flirtations with prime ministers of
planets along the way, but…
Rob: The weird holosuite episode where she said you know, the famous line…
Kevin: This is what I'm talking about.
Delete the wife.
Yeah.
That's uh, Fair Haven, season six, episode 11.
That was definitely on my list.
Again, nothing actually happens on screen, but the moment of Janeway
claiming her sexuality and saying, what, who am I gonna sleep with?
Everyone reports to me.
I'm gonna use the holodeck, and I'm gonna like it.
And it is great.
You can see Kate Mulgrew relish the line reading and
going, yeah, we're going there.
Get used to it.
Rob: Oh, that whole scene, where she's just looking at the hologram
program and just saying, I'm gonna bend this man to my will.
I'm gonna make the man that I want.
Kevin: That's right.
Rob: Delete the wife, ah, it's hot.
It's weird, but it's hot.
Kevin: Weird.
It is good weird.
Like, they get to good weird.
Rob: It's very unhealthy obviously.
But at that moment, it's yeah.
Kevin: It was the nineties.
Rob: Yeah.
So it's just those Lower Deck crew members who have to clean out the holosuites.
Kevin: That was Rom's job on Deep Space.
Rob: Of course.
Oh yeah.
A holodeck ones that Quark has.
Oh god, that would, yeah, that is pure filth.
Yeah, that is not a good job.
Kevin: We didn't even talk about Kirk and Spock.
Rob: Oh man.
Don't even get me started on all the, the slash fiction out there about so
many pairings within that star, oh, we didn't even touch on Bashir and
Kevin: Garak.
Rob: Garak, yeah.
Kevin: The strongest love affair in all of Star Trek.
Rob: Yeah, and so much so like fans have written scripts that have been
read by the actual actors where Bashir and Garak are married.
Kevin: I love it.