Gays Finally Get to Go to Outer Space.

When it first aired, the original Star Trek broke new ground for depictions and discussions about race on television. But something that’s remained absent from all the versions of Star Trek–as well as almost all other televised and cinematic science-fiction in the United States–is the presence of homosexuals. Watching Star Trek and Star Wars and and whatever other nerdy stuff you can think of (with the exception of Buffy and that brief lesbian relationship in Battlestar Galactica: Razor), it often feels like in the worlds of fantasy and sci-fi, gay people just don’t really exist.

That’s thankfully about to change with Virtuality, the new show from Battlestar showrunner Ronald D. Moore, which will feature a gay couple aboard the show’s spaceship. At After Elton, Michael Jensen has an interview with Moore about the new show and the gays therein–and he also quizzes Moore about the failure of sci-fi to deal with gays in the past. “It makes me guilty,” Moore says when asked about the issue. “I always feel guilty when these questions come up because it’s something that I don’t do and I haven’t done enough of and I hope I do do, but I haven’t really done it.” He continues,

I think some of it has to do with [how] certain science-fiction deals with action/adventure sort of roles and action/adventure sort of archetypes, and traditionally gay and lesbian characters are not part of those archetypes. So when you are doing a version of Die Hard on the Enterprise like we did in Next Generation, there’s not usually the gay or lesbian characters part of that equation. Which doesn’t mean that of course none of these characters can’t be that, but it doesn’t usually like–oh, yeah, and then there’s usually the computer guy, and there’s this guy, and you’re not usually thinking in that template, and television writers and film writers think in templates.

Anyway, it’s a solid read, and it makes Virtuality sound even more intriguing. Check out After Elton’s whole story here, and another there’s good story on the issue over at i09.