Tuesday, 15 February 2011
10 PM Eastern - 7 PM Pacific
“Commander, tell me about your sexual organs.”
Watch online at YouTube.
Looks like the video at that you tube link has been removed.
Here’s another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttQkbCuadL0&feature=related
Damn you, CBS!!! :mad:
Thanks for the new link. Adding it to the first post. 
Mixed feelings about this episode, or rather what this episode highlights about Star Trek in general. Hooray for an actual Star Trek episode that addresses homosexuality. But boo for Star Trek for this being the ONLY episode in TNG or bascially any broadcast TV Star Trek that even nods toward homosexuality.
Like “The Host”, DS9: “Rejoined” and ENT: “Stigma”, “The Outcast” was one of the few episodes of any of the Star Trek series which brushed on the subjects of gender identity and homosexuality in an allegorical manner. Of the episode, producer Rick Berman said in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, “We thought we had made a very positive statement about sexual prejudice in a distinctively Star Trek way, but we still got letters from those who thought it was just our way of ‘washing our hands’ of the homosexual situation.” The “situation” arose continuously through the run of Star Trek: Enterprise and still does today, with some alleged homophobia on the part of former Star Trek producers.
Is that a fair assessment? What other shows even broached the subject in the late 80s?
And here we go!
Maybe. But Star Trek should be ahead of the curve.
Rick Berman tried not to let perceptions of what the public would find acceptable “influence us too much” in the choice of Riker’s opposite, adding “but having Riker engaged in passionate kisses with a male actor might have been a little unpalatable to viewers.” (San Jose Mercury News, Grapevine, March 14, 1992) Nevertheless, Jonathan Frakes felt otherwise and would later criticize the decision to cast women in the roles of the J’naii, as a love affair apparently shared between two men would have made the statement of the episode stronger.
“Null space.”
I’ve been told by many that resides between my ears.
Really transgender issues more than homosexuality, but kind of a disappointment either way. 
Billy Crystal played a gay character on SOAP in the '70s. There was a gay kiss on Dynasty (not sure of the year). Trek, for as progressive as it’s been on so many topics, was and still is waaaaaay behind the curve on this one.
Interesting. A bisexual … Jack Harkness type of Riker would have been interesting though.
Ah. Good examples. I’d forotten about Billy Crystal on Soap. Soap was such a great groundbreaking show.
Frankly, the small men on Angel One made more of a statement than the women in this episode did.
I still can’t believe that Enterprise didn’t make a better effort of touching on gay issues. I mean, it was well into the 21st century, for Roddenberry’s sake.
Yeah, it was never going to happen.
The ideas here are really cool but Riker the seduction master always is, um, somewhat unconvincing to me.
I like the little chat there about the use of gender-neutral pronouns. 
It is outrageous that Star Trek had a blind spot there. The leadership of Roddenberry and Berman is to blame, I say.
Riker (thinking) “What’s it like on a planet where everyone has the same bad haircut?”
“Some like women with big boobs. Some like women with a shapely ass”.
Yeah it’s kind of odd…
I hadn’t seen the bit about Frakes wishing that the J’naii (sp?) had been cast as more ‘masculine,’ I agree with him that it would make the statement a bit clearer.
But sadly, many otherwise lovely, geeky people are still uncomfortable with non-heterosexual expressions of love and desire.
Hmmmm Captain Jack! omnisexual!
Who can say? I’ve always thought of Roddenberry being more progressive, but I suppose even he was a product of his times.