TV Review – Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 97: The Host

Original airdate: 13 May 1991

Overall 3.0 / 5.0 (mildly engaging)
Gay Content 1.0 / 5.0 (a female invites a relationship with Dr. Crusher)

Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) enjoys a fledgling romance with a Trill ambassador named Odan (Franc Luz). At this point in the Star Trek franchise, the Federation knows little about the Trill. A medical emergency involving Odan creates a crisis both for his relationship with Beverly and the peace negotiations he is mediating.

The Trill are a species that play host to a symbiotic organism. The symbiote is quite long-lived and is typically transplanted into a new host when the former host dies. In this episode, the original host for Odan, with whom Beverly falls in love, suffers fatal injuries in an attack. As an emergency procedure, Beverly implants Odan (the symbiote) into Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) until the Trill can send a permanent host. Odan tries to continue their relationship, but Beverly experiences understandable difficulty. After much soul-searching, she and Odan continue their relationship, even in Riker’s body. However, when the permanent host arrives, it turns out to be a female (Nicole Orth-Pallavicini), and Beverly ends their relationship.

I am disappointed that the Star Trek franchise comes so close to actual gay content but then skirts away. Again. It seems to be typical Trek with regard to gay issues: talk around the issue but always keep it at arm’s length.

Remember, though, this is not a gay episode. The gay content is minor and confined solely to the last couple of minutes. In fact, when the episode is considered on its own, it’s a fairly positive portrayal. For example, the female Trill is clearly open to a lesbian relationship with Beverly; she actively invites it. That’s great!

Beverly ends the relationship after explaining that she can’t handle a partner who changes bodies like that. She says, “Perhaps, one day, our ability to love won’t be so limited.”

Some viewers interpret this statement to mean, “Perhaps one day our ability to love won’t be limited by gender.” For my part, I disagree with this interpretation, because everything Beverly says leading up to the statement is about the Trill constantly changing hosts, creating uncertainty and instability for a human partner. It’s positive that Beverly doesn’t use gender as the reason, although I do question whether she would have ended the relationship if the new host had been male: she is visibly disappointed when she discovers the new host to be female.

But even if Beverly were explicitly addressing the fact that Odan is now the same sex as her, I don’t think it’s gay-negative that she refuses the relationship. I would probably make the same choice (in an analogous situation appropriate to my own sexual orientation).

But that’s considering “The Host” on its own. This episode isn’t isolated. When weighed with the other instances of gay content in the Star Trek franchise, it’s more disappointing because there’s no balance. It always works out this way, or somehow similar: the storyline that could have produced some substantive and positive gay content instead leaves us with mixed messages and no gay characters or relationships. The sum total adds up to the exclusion of gay people from the vision of Star Trek.

To tell you the truth, that this episode contains any gay content at all is probably incidental, more an artifact of Beverly’s tragic love story than an attempt to be gay-inclusive. But I have to give them props: the episode at least intimates that same-sex relationships do occur (somewhere) in the Star Trek universe (off-screen), and that is a step in the right direction. Not much of a step, but still.

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For more posts on all things gay in the Star Trek universe, check out my Gay Star Trek Main Page.

Tags: Beverly Crusher, Gates McFadden, Gay Science Fiction, Gay Star Trek, Star Trek, The Next Generation