For 50 years, the gayest thing about Star Trek was gay icon George Takei aka Sulu from the original series – not the series character, mind you, but the outed actor. It wasn’t until 2017 that there were openly queer characters in the franchise, at least as far as people were concerned. Pretty poor for a supposedly progressive universe.
But back in the 90s, Captain Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew from Star Trek: Voyager tried to make her bridge a little more colorful.
Star Trek Captain Kate Mulgrew from Starship Voyager spoke out in favor of queer characters in her sci-fi series
Speaking to Collider this summer, Mulgrew revealed her attempt to LGBTQ representation to bring to the USS Voyager:
I wanted a gay character on the bridge with me! But [die Produzenten] could not be persuaded to do so. According to the motto: ‘It’s enough to have a woman in the chair’. […] I went to Rick Berman and said, ‘It’s a good cast, a very good cast. But we need a gay character. I want you to know this, this is my preference and my decision.’ But they thought there was no room for that back then.
Showrunner Rick Berman was considered far more regressive than Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who died in 1991. According to a PBS interview with Sulu actor Takei, he also wanted a queer series character but couldn’t afford it at the time. He would have already played with fire with a kiss between the white Kirk and the African-American Uhura.
The Undiscovered LGBTQ Land: Star Trek and the Long Road to Queer Representation
Things were a little more progressive in the 90s over on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where they at least had crew member Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), who as an alien symbiote previously had a male body and made contact with an old partner again . And of course there was the heavily queer-coded bromance between Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and the Kardassian spy Garak (Andrew Robinson).
In Star Trek: The Next Century, the makers wanted to film an episode with an AIDS allegory and a very casual male couple, which Berman, who, according to Star Trek author David Gerrold, was very homophobic, also thwarted. Years later, the forbidden episode came about in a different way.
The first openly gay characters in the official Star Trek universe arrived only in 2017 with Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz) to the franchise. Maybe that’s why Mulgrew concluded: “All in all, Star Trek has come a long way in terms of representation. It’s nothing if not by the people, for the people. It’s for everyone, and always will be.”