No offense to Stamets and Culber, but the award for best gay couple in Star Trek definitely goes to Bashir and Garak.
Please stop with this nonsense that anytime two guys are good friends they are gay for each other.
It’s not nonsense:
Garak was initially intended by actor Andrew Robinson to be omnisexual. Indeed, Garak’s first encounter with Bashir is very clearly sexually charged, which Robinson has stated was intentional. Though the pair would eventually become good friends, his primary interest in Bashir at the outset was sexual. That aspect of the character was eventually dropped for some disappointingly cowardly reasons.
The idea of a queer character on a Star Trek show was routinely vetoed by executive producer Rick Berman. Berman believed any hint of non-heterosexuality on Star Trek would have alienated a significant portion of the franchise’s fan base across America in the '90s. It’s an unsurprisingly reductive point of view, especially for a franchise as famous for its progressive politics and social messaging as Star Trek. It also flies in the face of the views of Star Trek franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, who was advocating for LGBT representation by the early days of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late '80s.
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-ds9-garak-queer-rick-berman-veto/
And I choose to headcanon that we just didn’t see any of the physical affection on screen.
The novel (written by Andrew Robinson) A Stitch in Time also confirms this physical attraction, if not specific examples of physical affection.
And I would say that even if the novel is not considered canon, the way the actors (and I do not believe it was just Robinson who felt this way) chose to play the roles is valid as part of canon as long as it doesn’t actually violate anything continuitywise.
If I found out that James Doohan had played Scotty as if he were an alcoholic… well, I wouldn’t have personally seen it that way, but he notoriously loved booze, so sure. Scotty was an alcoholic.
There’s a whole episode where Scotty drank a Kevlan under the table, the Kevlans were shown to be basically supermen, so… I’m pretty sure it would take an alcoholic to do that.
Edit: Oh, and the TNG episode where he got mad because everyone drank synthahol…
Sure, but if, alternately, I found out that he played Scotty as if he wasn’t an alcoholic- that he could go for months between scotches, he just had an amazing tolerance for alcohol when he drank, fine. It still doesn’t affect continuity.
Exactly. The actors aren’t robots or AI, running solely off the prompts of directors and writers. They are part of the collaborative art project that is the show. Their input, motivations, intentions behind the character are just as valid as the writer’s. Garak is queer, because Robinson says so. During the pandemic, Bashir and Garak did a video where they exchanged letters, and they made it clear that they romantically involved in that. Regardless of if physical sex occurred during the timeline of the series, suggesting that it could not have because none of the characters, in the tiny fraction of a percent’s time we actually see them during that year run, never outwardly exclaimed “bee tee dubs, me and Garak are banging” is such an insult to the actors who put so much of themselves into that role.
I said basically the same thing too. We see a fraction of their life for part of the about 45 minutes the episode is on. For all we know, everyone was complimenting Garak and Bashir on what a cute couple they made as they strolled down the promenade holding hands. Just not at the time we see them. Which makes sense because most couples aren’t about PDA all the time. Even if they’re on a date.
Especially Julian, tbh. He strikes me as the “but what would people think!” Type when it comes to dating a Cardassian. Lol. Not that he’s prejudiced… But simple Garak may well be a spy for the obsidian order!
During the pandemic, Bashir and Garak did a video where they exchanged letters, and they made it clear that they romantically involved in that.
I think I somehow missed this! Do you happen to have a link? A quick YouTube search didn’t help me out.
After I posted this, I tried to find it and I can’t. Either I’m using the wrong search terms, or I dreamt it. Lmao.
Iirc, it was a reading of a portion of a stitch in time. I mainly remember it because it was the first time I’d seen someone other than me think that Garak was queer. I wasn’t big into online trek communities at the time, and my brother didn’t twig to it.
Fuck Rick Berman for a lot of reasons, but I think some people who weren’t alive then don’t realize how deeply unpopular homosexuality was around that time. Still room to grow, but the fact even that homophobia just isn’t the accepted norm now… It’s amazing how much progress we’ve made in my lifetime. Sad and still a coward, but back then Rick was probably 100% correct.
I don’t agree. Firstly because Roddenberry himself wanted queer representation on TNG in the 80s, but also because there was a lot of precedent with queer characters becoming more normalized on TV going all the way back to the 70s when Billy Crystal played a decent, caring gay man on Soap with toned-down stereotypical mannerisms.
But also, Garak was introduced in 1993. Look how many queer-themed TV episodes had happened in the 90s by then on mainstream shows like Roseanne and L.A. Law. Even gay recurring characters were on TV by then. Roy’s gay son on Wings showed up multiple times and did not fit any gay stereotypes, which was kind of the point of the character. The, again not stereotypical, gay couple that opened the bed and breakfast in Cicely in Northern Exposure debuted in 1991 (the town’s founders were also revealed to be a lesbian couple that year). I already mentioned Roseanne above. Sandra Bernhard’s character, a member of the main cast, came out as gay in 1992.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1990s_American_television_episodes_with_LGBT_themes
Berman was just a bigot.
No disagreements on Rick Berman being a bigot, he was pretty shitty for a lot of other additional reasons too, don’t have to limit to being a homophobe, but… LGBT themes doesn’t mean openly LGBT characters. We did definitely have some, but a lot of those characters lived in the realm of plausible deniability to let them have mass appeal. Publicly, they could just be ‘two roommates’. If you were a rare character who got to be openly gay, you tended to fall victim to the ‘bury your gays’ trope and probably were not long for this world.
Ellen came out in 97, on her show and then in real life, and they responded by slapping a parental advisory warning on her very family friendly show and then cancelling it as soon as they could. It may have made Will & Grace more acceptable though in 98… I feel like that was one of the first shows where they were okay having gay men regularly on US TV, but even then only as long as it was for comedy.
I know we like to put that black and white filter on it and pretend it was a long time ago, but it was a rough time, and a lot more recent than any of us like. Gay sex was technically illegal in over a dozen states until 2003 and a few of the less progressive states hadn’t even had those laws that long. A full 28 states went out of their way to explicitly ban gay marriage, most of them did so in the early 2000s. DS9 had it’s last episode in 1999.
The DS9 writers and actors also had workarounds for Berman. They would write a scene and then a close but Berman friendly version. He would ok it and then the actors would “improvise” the original script.
Dukat was another case of the writers and actor colluding. Berman wanted him to be straight up evil. The writers and actor wanted to give him respectable motivations for his evil acts.
So he is not a good guy but you can respect the love for family and state that drives his terrible crimes.
I don’t know what to tell you. I gave you a bunch of examples that predate Garak’s debut on DS9 and a link that had a lot more.
Aight, give me an openly gay man on TV before deep space nine that had a role where they had even half as many appearances as Bashir or Garak because I didn’t see one there.
I checked, Roy’s son was apparently in 2 episodes, the answer is there aren’t any who come close. We’ve made truly gigantic strides in LGBT representation, it was a dark time.
Except ds9 literally rolled during the Queer renaissance, when we got back all the ground we lost due to AIDS. Ffs, Beverley Hills 90210 had more LGBTQ chars than trek.
The Garak -> Bashir -> O’Brien -> Keiko -> Worf -> Jadzia -> Kira -> Odo -> Changeling Orgy love polygon (polyline? graph?). Truly a classic. Everybody is doing it and nobody is happy.
The term I’ve used for graphs of poly relationships is “polycule” because they look a lot like chemical diagrams: Multiple nodes connected in different ways, different kinds of bonds.
Polycule is, indeed, the term we use in the polyamory community.
Wait, Bashir liked O’Brien?
I thought nobody liked O’Brien, not even his wife. That is why he was in the jeffreys tubes and teleporter rooms so often.
Well O’Brien did say he preferred Julian to Keiko
That’s unfair. But yes, Bashir was absolutely Mile’s bromate.
Yes Robinson played Garak as gay despite that not being the character. However, Bashir was skirt chasing throughout the entire series until finally setting down with Ezri.
You can have a gay friend without being gay.
Just because Bashir preferred women doesn’t mean he didn’t also have a romantic interest in Garak. They absolutely played it as though it were more than just friendship, at least at the beginning.
We all know that once Bashir’s gene modification secret was out, he would want to share himself with everyone just to show off.
For all we know, Bashir fucked anything he could like Mariner. Like I said to someone else, we see these people’s lives for less than 45 minutes at a time. And only even close to that if they’re in every scene, which rarely (maybe never) happens. So all we know is that we see Bashir going after women. He could have been going after everyone else, he could have made an exception for Garak because it’s the 24th century and people aren’t restricted to heterosexuality like that anymore… who knows?
But they sure as hell played it as if it was more than just friendship, at least at first.
And remember, Garak was shown as being interested in women as well.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to excuse your bigotry and homophobia.
Sorry… how is it either bigoted or homophobic to go against Berman’s “no gay people on Star Trek” edict and agree with the actor who played the role?
Garak can absolutely be a gay character. Insisting that there was a sexual romance between the two is homophobic and bigoted.
Because… approving of romances between two men from the way they reacted to each other on the screen is bigotry? Because I thought it was recognizing two people clearly attracted to each other when I see it?
Seems to me that the bigoted position would be assuming two characters did not have an attraction to each other just because it wasn’t stated overtly. The assumption that every character in Star Trek is 100% heterosexual unless otherwise stated is not exactly a position that accepts queer people as being common in the future.
Assuming two guys that hangout are secretly in a relationship is homophobic. I dont understand how you cant see that. It has to absolutely be intentional ignorance. Asserting that two dudes who have never expressed physical desire toward one another are gay simply because they are close friends is homophobia.
I also never said garak wasnt gay. Quit being dishonest.
I’m genuinely curious: how does “insisting that there was a sexual romance between [two guys]” make anybody homophobic and bigoted?
I don’t think Zakkull has enough RAM to process your request
My only regret is that I wasn’t able to ban you myself.
Fuck off back to the outskirts of the Delta quadrant.
It’s literally how the character was being played. Famed homophobe and asshole Producer Rick Berman demanded that Garak’s attraction to Bashir be played down because network snowflakes or something.
To your point, Bashir and O’Brian had a very close relationship.And while they had a massive bromance, no one thought they were gay for each other.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to excuse your massive bigotry and homophobia.
“These characters could be interpreted as gay.”
“You are a massive bigot and homophobe.”
What a comeback. Please, do a response to Basil and Dorian Gray next.
The newbie baby icon next to their name is just the icing loooool
To add to what Flying Squid said, Andrew Robinson wrote a biography of Garak (and his up bringing in the shadow of Enabran Tain and his education by the Obsidian Order). In that book, Garak is VERY bi and there’s strong hints that he could have been in a poly triad with a Cardassian boy and girl in Obsidian Order school… if only their loyalty and duty to the state hadn’t complicated everything.
One problem with popular side characters is that they often get ruined when the writers notice the popularity and make them appear more and more.
Sometimes the scarcity of something is part of the appeal. This also goes for popular adversaries.
This also goes for popular adversaries.
Especially if they keep getting defeated, which makes them less threatening each time they show up. Looking at you, Borg in VOY. Farscape’s writers came up with Harvey specifically so they could have Scorpius make frequent appearances without diminishing his threat level.
That’s why I like Q. Dude just randomly shows up, but never gets defeated.
It also helps that while Q is always a problem, he’s rarely an actual antagonist.
Yeah, the sweet spot is when people start obsessing over them in syndication after the series has wrapped up.
Garak was a round character played by an actor that absolutely understood the role. He would have done just fine with more appearances
Why would anyone be interested in an ordinary tailor?
And such a plain, simple one.
Not so ordinary. I hear he used to be a gardener. On Romulous.
Morn
I’m not a fan of Morn, he monopolizes any screentime he gets with those ridiculous monologues.
Monologopises
Monologpolizes.
Mornologpolizes
Mornologpolises
Live, laugh, love, Garak…
Ok, now that the ugly argument is over, I think there’s one fan favorite side character we must honor above all. Especially for his lovely singing voice.
ONE! MORE! TIME!
More Dabo Girls, please.
In DS9 the less human like the character is the more interesting they tend to be.
A person of culture, I see.
loving a supporting character is something but wait to experience second lead syndrome. That’s another level of pain.
Martok
Martouf
Too soon
I was so pissed when he turned out to be the Za’tarc, man…I knew right away that it was his smile I’d miss the most.
