Terry Matalas Gives ‘Star Trek: Legacy’ Update; Alex Kurtzman Hears Fans “Loud And Clear”

Yeah certainly a good compromise and I think why many are cool with the S 31 movie.

Or they can still do the show, but maybe just fast track the Legacy show first, because I think it’s important to their overall plans. So it doesn’t have to be cancelled, just maybe do that one after. But ironically I thought maybe what they were doing with SNW and the S 31 show would just come later…but I was clearly wrong on that. ;)

I have thought a couple times it might be interesting if they converted the movie franchise into making one lower budget movie per year with a more reasonable Star Trek plot (i.e. not a universe ending revenge plot).

However, a similar thing might work well for a TV show too if they made 2-3 two hour standalone movies per year instead of one drawn out 8 hour movie.

My post was in reply to someone who was lamenting a lack of gay male characters in Star Trek, you can refer back to that post for context. Also, FYI transsexual is an outdated term.

Again, you are seeing what you want to see, saying Matalas is erasing a gay relationship from Star Trek and replacing it with a straight one which I still cannot for the life of me see at all. If a gay couple isn’t allowed to break up like adults but still display loyalty and affection for one another, then that’s a ridiculous standard to hold gay relationships to. The fact that they were a couple was not ignored, Raffi and Worf were an interesting pairing, and not in a romantic way, you are actually the only person I’ve seen pick up on that.

I think you are confusing “risk-averse” with plan ol’ remedial writing. Few heterosexual relationships in current Trek are any better than what we’ve gotten with Seven/Raffi, and I think you are making a leap to cast unnecessary aspersions on the producers’ intentions.

The term “transsexual” is no longer in regular use, and is far more personal than “transgender.” It should only be used if an individual identifies that way, as in the case of your cousin. It should NOT be used as a blanket term, and no character or actor in Star Trek has been identified as such. I work with advocacy groups and I’ve done PSAs for LGBT organizations, and that is the official guidance we’ve adhered to. Our community doesn’t have a set of commandments, so anyone can choose to ignore this advice, but I’m simply giving you an FYI.

Look it up if you don’t believe me about that word, ffs. And please tamp down your condescension towards me, it’s totally unnecessary. I didn’t try to belittle you and expect to be treated the same way in kind. I was using my real-life experience as a professional and a friggin’ human being in the LGBT+ community to give you hard-learned information. I once watched a 50 year old gay man get his ass handed to him by a 30 year old GMHC board member for using the word “transsexual” instead of the more-inclusive “transgender” in a line of copy, so there is also a generational component to it.

I think your conjecture about the business pressures Paramount faces flies in the face of the existence of characters like Captain Angel, Mariner’s onscreen relationship and the very fact that Seven and Raffi became a couple to begin with, to say nothing of how Discovery is stacked with LGBT+ (don’t lecture a gay man on how he abbreviates his community please) actors and characters.

Picard is still a tv show which has story elements to satisfy. Keeping Raffi in the show but trying a long distance relationship or being on the Titan complicates the story compared to giving her demons to fight with only Worf as a foil and Seven having Shaw as her quasi-antagonist. It’s clean, and it has a purpose. A gay relationship isn’t holier than any other in terms of needing to be kept whole despite how it might disrupt storytelling. Seven and Raffi were a rocky couple, they broke up, Raffi stayed at her side in the final crisis, now they serve on the same ship and anything could happen. It’s not The L Word, but it’s also not abject cowardice.

Discovery hasn’t even aired its last episode yet and SFA hasn’t begun casting. All this conjecture is just calcifying preconceptions and insinuating things that haven’t necessary come to pass and do a disservice to these producers based on flimsy circumstantial evidence. So you can support his position, it’s a laudable one, but turning that into the symptom of a sky is falling representation problem is not logical or productive.

I did. You chimed in with your typical cheerleader schtick and replied to things I said selectively.

Thanks for the half-hearted apology. You came across as dismissive of my experience and worth as a source of information earlier and I found that to be disrespectful. You referred to Captain Angel is a way which the character or actress has never been identified, so I was trying to give a helpful FYI. That it happens to align with what GLAAD of all organizations advises is food for thought. Doesn’t change that plenty of individuals happily identify as transsexual.

It could have been a much more polite conversation. We just do not have the same sense of humor, I often detect a sort of gleeful mean-spiritedness in your posts and that’s not my cup of Earl Grey. It’s a big universe, I’m fine with dialing back on replying to you, that will save us conflicts I’m sure.

How many straight couples in Star Trek have been sleeping with each other?

– Picard and Nella Darren similarly decided AGAINST having a relationship in “Lessons,” very much for the textbook reason that the captain should not be sleeping with subordinates.

– Picard and Crusher decided AGAINST having a relationship in “Attached.”

– Riker and Troi had a *past* relationship in TNG. (This was admittedly not so post-NEMESIS, but I would argue that is a special case, in that Troi appears to be outside of the command structure of the ship; see below.)

– Worf and Dax were married, yes. It also worked out disastrously from an organizational behavior standpoint, and the episode implied that Worf would never get a command as a result.

– There was that soon-to-be-married couple in “Balance of Terror”; it was also implied (based on lines in “Who Mourns for Adonis?”) that one of them would have to leave the service, or at least transfer to a new post.

– No one was sleeping with anyone on the NX-01; that was part of the reason I liked the series. It was a realistic depiction of a military command structure, like TOS.

– In VOY, of course we saw them jettison this principle with abandon: Chakotay-Seven (in the last episode), Tom-B’Elanna, etc. But VOY is sui generis, because its crew had every reason to believe they would live out their lives in the Delta Quadrant, and that they were now on board a generational ship. Even there, Janeway and Chakotay decided against a relationship after “Resolutions.”

– Then there is DISCO, where we see a relationship between Stamets and Culber. This is, of course, a same-sex relationship, which was not what we were discussing. But there, too, Stamets is shown to be more a scientific researcher who joined Starfleet to test propulsion systems, more than a career officer. And he’s also described as an Einstein- or Musk-level scientific intellect; like it or not, genius-level folks at the very pinnacle of their fields often get a little more leeway than mere mortals.

Finally, in those rare instances where we have seen intimate relationships between crewmates, they are, at least, not between a CO and subordinate.

I suppose you can argue that, however bad fraternization may be from a leadership perspective, Starfleet differs from the modern military in that many missions last several years, far from port: the proverbial five-year mission. (Then again, 1701-D seemed to return to port frequently enough.)

Starfleet Command may feel that the organization cannot ask crew members to forego romance, or at least sex, for that long and still have a qualified applicant pool from which to draw. Starfleet therefore allows some leeway for relationships where they are not in the reporting chain of command. “Pen Pals,” where we saw a married couple serving on the Enterprise-D, suggests this is indeed the case. Even there, however, Wesley’s mentor told him not to assign married couples to the same team.

Look, I get this is Hollywood and not a 100% faithful depiction of military life, and they’ll occasionally want to show romance between officers for dramatic reasons (cf. Worf-Dax). And as noted above, there might be reasons for Starfleet to be more lax on fraternization than conventional 21st century militaries.

But a relationship between the captain and XO is just a bridge too far. It would engender an absolutely toxic — nay, poisonous — environment on the ship.(STARGATE SG-1 handled this issue quite well; it repeatedly implied that O’Neill and Carter would have gotten married, had it not been for anti-fraternization rules. I have even read that the final, unproduced movie would have had a retired O’Neill engaged to Carter.)

I once turned down a job at a startup-ish company I really liked, primarily because the CEO was dating the COO (who interviewed me). I knew that arrangement would torpedo a serious emerging growth company. (Sure enough, the COO eventually left.) Similarly, every so often you find a naive political candidate or newly-elected congressperson who, in a genius move, decides to appoint his or her spouse as an advisor or even chief of staff. News flash: you can’t fire your spouse if something goes wrong. The best-run offices on the Hill had a virtual Chinese wall between member and spouse.

If he wants his LEGACY series, Matalas was right not to resurrect the Seven-Raffi relationship; “we had a short relationship for a couple of weeks long in the past, and it’s long over” is at least a way of acknowledging this point.

I literally just want. More LGBT characters.

Since I see no one upthread arguing that we should have fewer LGBT characters, I am mystified what triggered this truculent reply.

At best, I see @UpperDecks suggesting (without any real evidence) that some studio executive might have opposed the idea.

sit down and read what I actually say

What you actually said — quoting verbatim — was “they’ve kinda hinted [at] Number One and Erica Ortegas. Which is good, more representation for lesbians is always good.”

To which I have replied that because Number One is Ortegas’ CO, they should not be in a relationship, hinted at or otherwise. The same is true of Seven and Raffi. Well-run organizations (perhaps allowing for some leeway in the case of family businesses, etc., which Starfleet is not) prohibit people in a relationship from reporting to one another or occupying the top leadership positions.

They keep this policy for very sound reasons:
(1) If a direct report royally screws up, you can usually fire him; not so if he’s your husband.
(2) If the relationship goes south, the organization is potentially exposed to sexual harassment/hostile environment lawsuits.
(3) The reports may take decisions in the interests of their relationship, not the interests of the organization.
(4) Other employees may perceive favoritism in terms of things such as doling out the best work assignments, compensation, etc.

None of this precludes “more representation for lesbians.” It merely says that it would be very poor representation to show lesbians who are both senior command crew, with one reporting to the other, having a relationship with *each other*.

just stay away from my comments period. Okay?

Not, that is not OK. This is a blog: a public forum. People are going to engage on the topic at hand, and you will find they sometimes disagree with you.

Dude, I fear that Matalas wants Legacy so bad the he was just too risk adverse to continue with the progressive advancements that we got in DSC. One might imagine his thought process (I am exaggerating a bit to demonstrate my point, obviously):

“TNG reunion with lot’s of Nostalgia and Berman-era fan service — check. Make it action-adventure like Star Wars — check. Bring back as many guest characters as possible — check. Bring in Picard’s mystery son with a British accent and who looks like James Bond and nothing like Jean-Luc — check. Avoid any L-G-B-T-Q stuff and revert Seven and Raffi back to straight to avoid any media fuss with the current w-oke backlash — check.”

There were horses, a man on fire, and I killed a guy with a trident.

;-)