This article is part of Pride Month Picks, a collection of pieces that aim to highlight queer representation across games, television, film, books, and more throughout June.
In the first season of Star Trek: Picard, it’s established that Seven of Nine is queer. This is a character who had previously ended up with a guy, and was clearly created as a sex object for straight dudes in the audience. But now, she’s got a girlfriend. And she doesn’t have to be sewn into her outfits anymore either.
Seven was an immediate fan favourite upon her 1997 debut in Voyager. I mean, look at the costume. It’s so goddamn tight that actress Jeri Ryan passed out twice because it restricted blood flow. It worked – Voyager got its much-needed popularity boost, even though it was a pretty transparent attempt to win over straight male viewers who made up much of the Trek fanbase back then. However, Seven also found herself with a very different and more wholesome following: the gays.
As soon as Seven was unveiled, the Voyager Visibility Project shot into action. This group, which actively pushed for Star Trek writers to make up for the series’ creator Gene Roddenberry’s regret that he hadn’t added a queer character, claimed Seven for the gays. They wasted no time, distributing a press release about how Seven could be the first regular Trek character who forms a long-term gay relationship. They also shared a petition to make this happen, making it clear that Seven should be queer and how big a step forward for representation it could be.
And it didn’t end there. The site where much of this campaigning took place, GayTrek.com (don’t look it up now – it’s porn) is full of discussions and analyses of old Trek episodes told from a queer perspective. Even in ‘98, there was a space for LGBTQ+ fans to critique the series’ gay representation and campaign for it to be improved. They were clearly mobilised, writing a comprehensive set of demands and not once settling for scraps. They called out Trek’s writers for hiding behind gay allegories, rather than introducing actual gay characters when media was sorely in need of such things.
The best bit is that they were hardly a fringe group. At their peak, they amassed thousands of supporters, including Gene Roddenberry’s grandson, Richard Compton Jr. Seven of Nine’s actress, Jeri Ryan, was also aware of the campaign to get her character a girlfriend.
Sadly, I don’t see anyone talk about the GayTrek crew nowadays. The Voyager Visibility Project has been immortalised on the official Star Trek website, but I have no idea what the people behind the movement are up to now. Yet I believe they’re more important than most of us know, and we’re all reaping the benefits of what they worked for. Because now, more than two decades since their website shut down, the Star Trek fandom is one of the more LGBTQ+ friendly sci-fi spaces out there.
Jadzia is trans, Riker is bi, Garak is pansexual, Kirk and Spock clearly have something going on – these are just some of the widely accepted fan theories I’ve come across in my short time in the Star Trek fandom. It’s even better when actual gay characters are added to the show in Discovery and Strange New Worlds – so many fans welcome them with open arms. Having just come from the Star Wars fanbase, where many can’t get over how a Black woman was in the Obi-Wan show and blink and you’ll miss them lesbian kisses are cut from the films, I’m so grateful that Trek is full of people proud to celebrate diversity for diversity’s sake.
This isn’t to say that the fandom doesn’t have its own shithead problem. When Strange New Worlds premiered last month, some assholes took issue with Celia Rose Gooding, playing Uhura, wearing her hair naturally. But then it seemed like those voices were drowned out by those praising her performance, and the show as a whole. We also saw everyone dunking on Republicans who are pissed that the communist space show isn’t compatible with their worldview.
The best thing about Star Trek is that it doesn’t hide away from the ‘woke’ label. Because let’s admit it, the writers have wokified the series with Strange New Worlds. The main character of this show, Captain Pike, actually made his first appearance in 1965. Back then, he clearly didn’t respect women (“I just can’t get used to having a woman on the bridge”). Now, the bridge is mostly women, and there’s a non-binary pirate on the ship. Pike’s first appearance was almost 60 years ago now, and Paramount had the sense to leave his sexism in the past.
Oh, and can we speak about that non-binary pirate for a second? Captain Angel is played by Jesse James Keitel, a trans woman. She’s been featured prominently in the marketing, even taking over Star Trek’s social channels for a time. Because fuck bowing into pressure from bigots who got mad at gays being added in Discovery. Finally, it looks like these people got the memo and left. Star Trek isn’t for them.
Overall, modern Trek does a good job of living up to a motto it coined back in its original run: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”.
But it isn’t just down to Paramount, a lot of it is on us. As our queer elders did two decades ago, it’s our job to form spaces for fans of all backgrounds to freely discuss what they want from the series, without toxicity. To share fan art, fan fiction, and fan theories about how the entire galaxy is queer coded, because why not?
In the short time I’ve been among Trekkies, I’ve found so many of them to be just as bright and optimistic as the show’s view of the future. And as I’ve dug deeper into our past, I’ve only fallen more in love. Let’s keep learning from the GayTrek crew and everyone who came before us, and create a vision of a galaxy where everyone is safe to live and love how they wish.
The last thing the GayTrek team discussed before their site went under was a boycott of Star Trek: Insurrection. They planned pickets and amassed 40,000 supporters for their cause. Whatever you’re all up to now, thank you for fostering a fanbase that believes in Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Thank you for protecting our dumb gay communist space show.
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