5x17 The Outcast

[8.0/10] The gender politics and romantic relationships and other glimpses of the “futuristic” social structure were often a stumbling block for me when it came to the original 1960s Star Trek series. Kirk’s concept of consent was fuzzy at best. The treatment of women was variable, to say the least. And while the original Enterprise was a veritable Model U.N., the main trio commanded most of the stories, with the more diverse characters relegated to supporting roles. At times, the show seemed hopelessly quaint, to put it mildly, in its approach to these things.

But I would always have to remind myself that The Original Series was progressive for its time. There’s sometimes a little too much self-back-patting in the hagiography of the show that started it all. Still, however much the adventures of Kirk and his crew fail to live up to our modern standards, there are plenty of ways in which the series was aspirational and ahead of its time in 1966. It’s worth reflecting on that before judging certain elements too harshly.

I feel the same way about “The Outcast”, and episode that addressed homosexuality and gender in 1992, in ways that fall short of our growing acceptance and modern understanding of both in the present day. Star Trek: The Next Generation feels different than The Original Series does to me, if only because it came out in my lifetime, so I’ve witnessed those changes in acceptance and understanding firsthand. The Sixties series is distant and ephemeral and conceptual in its cultural context for someone born decades later, while the time period of “The Outcast” is still very immediate to me, something that makes me apt both to grant TNG more leeway and take it to task in the areas where it falls short.

The story centers on Soren, a member of a species called the J’Naii. The J’Naii are not only an adrogenous species, for whom humanity’s “divided genders” are a peculiarity, with gender itself is considered a primitive and deviant concept. Soren finds herself growing close to Commander Riker and confesses that, despite the taboo, she identifies as female and wants to pursue her attraction to him.

The story is, in many ways, a standard Star Trek reversal. The benefit of science fiction is that it can allow us to examine our prejudices and societal structures through the distance of abstraction and imagination that can be harder for real life norms we’ve been socialized into. Here, TNG aims to help its audience understand the plight of gay people by imagining a world where it’s same-sex relationships that are criminalized, and the simple act of viewing oneself as a male or female is considered a pathology.

The problem is that “The Outcast” frankly raises more with this thought experiment than it intends to. The show honestly does alright when it comes to issues of gender essentialism (which elevates it above even my favorite TOS episodes like “Metamorphosis”). When Soren asks Riker and Dr. Crusher about what it is to be male and female, their answers assuredly reflect a 1992 view of gender and sexuality, but they at least take a broad-based approach and leave wiggle room for different people having different views on the subject. The pair’s responses to Soren undoubtedly reflect the times in which the episode was released, but also acknowledge a diversity of thought and an openness to that, which is about all you can ask for.

(As an aside, it’s amusing to hear about Dr. Crusher dismissing the perception of women as weak as something moved past “long ago” when women were still being forbidden from assuming the captaincy as of TOS’s “Turnabout Intruder”. Though most fans would rather forget that episode anyway.)

But even so, “The Outcast” wades into issues for people who are Trans and into conversations the show’s not really prepared to have. It’s an artifact of the conceit, when the show seems to only mean to address the treatment of gay people in the United States, while inadvertently stumbling into other areas. Even there, the show clearly means well, but offers a fairly superficial treatment on gay rights and perseucition of LGBTQ individuals in the early nineties.

Oh yeah, and there’s a sci-fi plot too! The thing that brings Riker and Soren together is a pocket of “null space”. This energy-depleting realm has seemingly swallowed up a J’Naii shuttle, and Soren and Will have to work together to rescue the souls aboard. There’s not much to it -- which is no sin. The focus is rightfully on Soren’s story. But the null space idea has enough cosmic juice to it to raise some intrigue and provide an excuse for the two leads to spend time together. There’s even some genuine excitement when the two have to use up all their shuttle’s energy in a last ditch attempt to escape the null space pocket resulting in a desperate escape and a puzzling explosion.

(For the record, “The Outcast”, where a member of the Enterprise-D crew goes with someone named Soren into a peculiar pocket of space, is different from Star Trek: Generations, where a member of the Enterprise-D crew goes with someone named SorAn into a peculiar pocket of space.)

The crux of the episode, though, comes when Riker and Soren explore their feelings and are caught by the powers that be among the J’Naii. What follows is what you’d expect from TNG and Star Trek more generally. Soren is put in danger. There are disciplinary proceedings and grand speeches. Riker makes a perilous attempt to rescue her, which inevitably fails because we cannot disrupt the status quo of the series. All of this is well done -- and includes striking character notes for Riker’s relationship with Deanna and with Worf -- but hits familiar beats for these sorts of stories in Trekdom.

What elevates the episode are a few of those big monologues, which are of their time, as everything in “The Outcast” is, but which dramatize the plight of gay people with conviction, affirm their right to love whom they love without fear or shame, and lament the treatment of their sexual orientation as something to be fixed or corrected.

The first comes when Soren confesses her feelings to Riker, and explains how her sense of having a gender and seeking out others who feel the same leads to a life where one's true self can only exist in shadows and careful moments, lest she be treated as a pariah or someone with a mental illness. The scene works, as so much of Star Trek does, by personalizing these broader social issues, exploring them through someone the audience comes to know and empathizes with.
The second comes when Soren’s been found out and is being put on trial for her “crimes”. Riker barges into the proceedings and nobly gives her an out -- claiming that he initiated everything and that she rejected him at every turn. But Soren refuses the easy excuse, instead standing up for her cause and her right to be as she is. It is a trademark Star Trek Big Speech:tm:, but a stirring one, where Soren exposes the wrongness of it all, not her lifestyle, but in any society that would seek to treat her existence as something criminal, her desire to experience love and acceptance as any different from the same desires in those considered “normal.” Are these topics oversimplified in places? Assuredly. But they’re also taken seriously, with empathy for the real life individuals affected in ways far harsher than their abstracted sci-fi counterparts.

The third comes when Soren has been forced into the intergalactic equivalent of gay conversion therapy, and Riker attempts to rescue her. It’s telling that he’s aided by Worf, who acted as the episode’s stock bigot on J’Naii issues and gender more generally. He’s able to overcome those prejudices because someone he’s close to cares about the situation, a true-to-life instance of how personal connections can help people move past more abstracted biases.

But when the two reach Soren (and punch out her guards), she refuses to go with them. In fact, she tells Riker that she was mistaken, and confused, and regrets her previous actions. Riker’s face a little later, when Picard confirms that their business with the J’Naii is concluded, speaks volumes as to the tragedy of all this, the pathos in watching someone’s vibrancy and affection squelched by force and manipulation against their will until they themselves don’t even understand what was lost. The episode is uncharacteristically unshowy about the moment, but that just allows the acting to take center stage, with a superb performance from Jonathan Frakes selling the awful state of all of this.

Frakes himself has gone on record that “The Outcast” should have gone farther, and plenty of Trekkies agree. It should have had Soren played by a man, rather than a woman. It should have been more explicit about the horrors of conversion therapy. It should have addressed in a more head-on way the struggles of the gay community, not just in the 1990s but in the decades and centuries before. It should have been more direct about the story’s ties to homosexuality, rather than addressing the issues in an oblique way.

I understand those criticisms. Gay people have a right to take issue with a story that has good intentions but doesn’t fulfill the needs or expectations of the community the show’s trying to address. Trekkies have a right to object to the lack of actual gay representation in the franchise, which wouldn’t truly arrive until decades later. Fans have the right to point to contemporary works like RENT, released around this same time and starring future Star Trek: Discovery cast members Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, as an example of something contemporary that nonetheless tackled these issues with more clarity and urgency.

At the same time, I’m apt to, as all Trekkies must, remember the Prime Directive. The thinking behind this uber-law in the franchise isn’t just about not mucking with other cultures because of potential negative consequences. It’s a philosophy of humility, of recognizing that for however certain we are in our beliefs, we cannot put ourselves in the shoes of those other cultures enough to judge them. It’s easy to look down on something for not meeting our standards, particularly when we’ve been socialized into those standards through a lifetime of experiences. It’s harder to try to understand the meaning and intention behind where someone else is coming from, and harder still not to judge it.

So when I watch “The Outcast”, and any work that I’m separated from in time or cultural distance, I ask myself some key questions. Is its heart in the right place? Is it open and empathetic when it comes to what’s being addressed? Is it good for its time on the things that matter? Inevitably, we all fail at things, particularly when it comes to tackling social issues on the verge of great (and laudable) changes in our broader community. But if the show or book or movie is trying, if it means well, if it’s extending empathy and care in the right direction, I am apt to show it a commensurate level of whatever grace I can muster from my haughty position thirty years later.

I think the answer to all of these questions is “yes” when it comes to “The Outcast”. The show means to highlight the unfair prejudices facing gay people in 1992. It treats Soren and her struggles with compassion and affirmation. It rallies for the right to gay people to live and love without societal shaming or legal restriction, which seems self-evident now but was practically radical to put on network television at the time. It aims high and at times falls short, which is an eminently reasonable place to land.

I heard a country song the other day called “Most People Are Good”. It is full of red state aphorisms and oversimplified-yet-pandering takes on the world at large and America in particular. But nestled into that cavalcade of trite statements on humanity came the lyrics, “I believe you love who you love. Ain't nothing you should ever be ashamed of.” It’s a small thing to hear something like that in a song meant for country-loving audiences, but it’s a sign of progress, of normalization, made in the broadest of terms.

“The Outcast” was not the destination of Star Trek’s treatment of LGBT issues, and fans and critics had the right to ask for more from the franchise, but it was the start of something, something well-intentioned, worthwhile, and ongoing as a fight to recognize one another for who we are. It’s a project Star Trek’s long aspired to, often fallen short of, and always continued to pursue.