Frakes wanted to kiss a gender ambiguous alien who presented masc but Berman said “nope, you can have blacks and whites working together but no one is gay in the future”
that’s very interesting, didn’t know that. they cast conventionally attractive women for most of the enby aliens. they also wrote it so that the character basically looks at the camera and goes “just so you know this isn’t gay in any way because i am a woman”. also the character is trans and gets conversion therapied but we’re only supposed to care because it makes riker sad… i love the episode and it’s fascinating for the 90s but of course ultimately manages to reify gender and the binary. i have a lot of thoughts about this episode lol
The actors always wanted them to fall in love, but alas it was the 90s
Frakes wanted to kiss a gender ambiguous alien who presented masc but Berman said “nope, you can have blacks and whites working together but no one is gay in the future”
iirc they did kiss, Frakes’ objection was that Berman was a coward for casting a woman for the enby alien instead of a man
that’s very interesting, didn’t know that. they cast conventionally attractive women for most of the enby aliens. they also wrote it so that the character basically looks at the camera and goes “just so you know this isn’t gay in any way because i am a woman”. also the character is trans and gets conversion therapied but we’re only supposed to care because it makes riker sad… i love the episode and it’s fascinating for the 90s but of course ultimately manages to reify gender and the binary. i have a lot of thoughts about this episode lol
we have a critical lack of Riker emoji smdh
Riker will forever be Number One.