Throwback Thursday: Come See The Smutty Side Of Star Trek

Our continuing mission………..to boldly get laid in ways no one has before!

Hey Fleshbot fans! Much to the dismay of certain factions of society, Star Trek as a franchise has always been “woke”, challenging racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia since its inception in 1966 through casting decisions and masterful storytelling.

For a super deep dive into sexuality in Star Trek, I’d recommend this whole-ass documentary and many other videos on the subject from the YouTube channel of the fabulous Jessie Gender.

What I’m aiming for here on this Throwback Thursday is an overview of my personal favorite Trek plots and episodes involving sexuality, gender, and romance in hopes to tempt you to fire up your Paramount+ (all Trek series are available to stream on that service at press time) and sink into what you previously thought to be just hours and hours of dry technobabble, pew-pew space battles, and funny-forehead aliens-of-the-week. It’s going to be a long winter--- there’s lots of marathon fodder here.

Star Trek: The Original Series features Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), an incurable ladies' man who fucked his way across the galaxy. Also, it introduced the concept of pon farr (“Amok Time”), which is the term used to describe sex that Vulcans have only every seven years— and you thought your dry spell was bad! The OG “everyone’s sexual inhibitions are removed” episode (“The Naked Time”) is famous and was quite risque for its time.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, of course, has one of the other biggest sluts in the Trek universe and the basis for my own beefy-beardy-Daddy “type”, Commander Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes). In a landmark episode (“The Outcast”), Riker explores a relationship with a person from an alien race called the J’naii, who only have one gender and apparently one bowl haircut. Tragically short-lived first-season security chief Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) gets busy with Data (Brent Spiner) and gets herself the original “fully functional” AI boyfriend in just the second episode of the series (“The Naked Now”), a plot which is a  nod, no doubt, to the aforementioned “The Naked Time.”

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine blows away the concept that the holodeck is just for training, workouts, or holo-novels by having holosuites available for rental from Quark, who also operates the space station’s bar and casino, and it’s pretty evident that there are many adult-only programs available to fulfill your fantasies. DS9 takes some more forays into the Mirror Universe, first introduced in the Original Series, where everyone is basically just more sexy and evil. Already a huge Major Kira (Nana Visitor) fan, her Mirror Universe alter ego, The Intendant (first introduced in “Crossover”) made me feel some kind of way and hundo p contributed to my queerness. DS9 also brought us the first on-screen TV kiss between two women (“Rejoined”). The plot of that episode involved Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), a character who is now a trans icon in her own right, reconnecting with a woman who was her lover in a literal previous life in a male body.

Star Trek Voyager brought us the iconic ex-Borg sex symbol Seven Of Nine (Jeri Ryan) in her shiny skintight glory (we first see her in “Scorpion Part II”), but also the now-infamous “lizard sex” episode (“Threshold”) which finds Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and Lieutenant Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) devolving into lizards and getting it on after hitting the upper limits of warp speed.

Admittedly, I’ve got a lot of Trek to catch up on personally, being mostly a Next Gen and DS9 superfan, but from what I’ve seen of Star Trek: Discovery, it’s hella queer, which is awesome. Star Trek: Picard brings back Annika Hansen, aka Seven of Nine, and guess what, she’s a lesbian! Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds also have some great representation. I could really go on and on about these topics, but I will let you explore those strange new worlds and new civilizations on your own!