Roddenberry wanting gay characters on star trek

I n the early s, I was much more a macho-type person. Rod Roddenberry, Gene Roddenberry's son Roddenberry died innoted at the timein reference to his father, "I think he would be percent in favor of a gay character in Star Trek.

And he was certainly, as a sophisticated man, mindful of that, but he said — in one episode we had a biracial kiss, Captain Kirk and Uhura had a kiss. The interesting thing about the network, at the time, is that it specifically ASKED its producers to find roles for Black actors, sending out a memo courtesy of FactTrek stating, "We urge producers to cast Negroes, subject to their availability and competence as performers, as people who are an integral segment of the population, as well as in those roles where the fact of their minority status is of significance.

I was still accepting things from my childhood as necessary and part of reality — how men related to women, et cetera. I'm dealing with issues of the time. Here is what Roddenberry had to say about Star Trek ‘s depiction of sexuality. I'm dealing with the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War and I need to be able to make that statement by staying on the air.

I have, over many years, changed my attitude about gay men and women. Roddenberry, pre-Stonewall, was not considering LGBTQ+ characters on Star Trek in the s. So that's the way Star Trek envisioned our future in the 23rd century, but I think we're getting closer to that utopian society that Gene Roddenberry visualized, much more rapidly than even the technology.

Rod Roddenberry believes his father would support LGBTQ+ characters on Star Trek now. However the first openly gay characters in Star Trek came 50 years too late and 26 years after Gene Roddenberry made a promise to include a gay character in TNG but died before the shows conclusion.

In other words, casting a regular Black character or a regular Asian character was, while certainly admirable by Roddenberry, not something that the network even had a problem with at that point in time. I talked to him as a liberal rather than as a gay man and I understood his position on that.

That show was literally blacked out in the south, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia didn't air that; our ratings plummeted. I never really deeply believed those comments, but I gave the impression of being thoughtless in these areas. Was that the case?

Did Gene Roddenberry Try

My assistant, Susan Sackett, used to say to me, "You really put down women a lot for someone who is supposed to be thoughtful and liberal. Takei urged the filmmakers to create a new character instead. I was never someone who hunted down "fags" as we used to call them on the street.

I would, sometimes, say something anti-homosexual off the top of my head because it was thought, in those days, to be funny. Takei continued, "And I understood that because I was still closeted at that time. A few years back, there was a bit of a controversy when George Takei, who played Lt.

Sulu on the original Star Trek TV series fromcriticized the decision of the Star Trek film reboot to have the Sulu in the film series which was set in an alternate timeline where Captain James T. Kirk and his crew took over the Enterprise earlier than in the original timeline be gay.

Even after franchise creator Gene Roddenberry supported a more nuanced depiction of sexuality, it took a long time for an identifiable gay character to appear. Roddenberry is almost certainly correct that his father would have been in favor of there being a gay character on Star Trek now, but I think there has been some confusion as to Roddenberry's thoughts on the topic when it came to the original series.

Gene Roddenberry's views on LGBTQ+ characters evolved over the years for the better. An earnest attempt has been made to see that their presence contributes to an honest and natural reflection of places, situations and events, and we desire to intensify and extend this effort.

Ex Astris Scientia Homosexuality

I think he would love any sort of social issue being brought into Star Trek. It was the lowest rated episode that we had. Finally in we got to met Paul Stamitz and Hugh Culber. I came to the conclusion that I was wrong. My attitude toward homosexuality has changed.