No offense to Stamets and Culber, but the award for best gay couple in Star Trek definitely goes to Bashir and Garak.
Please stop with this nonsense that anytime two guys are good friends they are gay for each other.
It’s not nonsense:
Garak was initially intended by actor Andrew Robinson to be omnisexual. Indeed, Garak’s first encounter with Bashir is very clearly sexually charged, which Robinson has stated was intentional. Though the pair would eventually become good friends, his primary interest in Bashir at the outset was sexual. That aspect of the character was eventually dropped for some disappointingly cowardly reasons.
The idea of a queer character on a Star Trek show was routinely vetoed by executive producer Rick Berman. Berman believed any hint of non-heterosexuality on Star Trek would have alienated a significant portion of the franchise’s fan base across America in the '90s. It’s an unsurprisingly reductive point of view, especially for a franchise as famous for its progressive politics and social messaging as Star Trek. It also flies in the face of the views of Star Trek franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, who was advocating for LGBT representation by the early days of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late '80s.
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-ds9-garak-queer-rick-berman-veto/
And I choose to headcanon that we just didn’t see any of the physical affection on screen.
The novel (written by Andrew Robinson) A Stitch in Time also confirms this physical attraction, if not specific examples of physical affection.
The Garak -> Bashir -> O’Brien -> Keiko -> Worf -> Jadzia -> Kira -> Odo -> Changeling Orgy love polygon (polyline? graph?). Truly a classic. Everybody is doing it and nobody is happy.
Fuck Rick Berman for a lot of reasons, but I think some people who weren’t alive then don’t realize how deeply unpopular homosexuality was around that time. Still room to grow, but the fact even that homophobia just isn’t the accepted norm now… It’s amazing how much progress we’ve made in my lifetime. Sad and still a coward, but back then Rick was probably 100% correct.
Yes Robinson played Garak as gay despite that not being the character. However, Bashir was skirt chasing throughout the entire series until finally setting down with Ezri.
You can have a gay friend without being gay.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to excuse your bigotry and homophobia.
It’s literally how the character was being played. Famed homophobe and asshole Producer Rick Berman demanded that Garak’s attraction to Bashir be played down because network snowflakes or something.
To your point, Bashir and O’Brian had a very close relationship.And while they had a massive bromance, no one thought they were gay for each other.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to excuse your massive bigotry and homophobia.
To add to what Flying Squid said, Andrew Robinson wrote a biography of Garak (and his up bringing in the shadow of Enabran Tain and his education by the Obsidian Order). In that book, Garak is VERY bi and there’s strong hints that he could have been in a poly triad with a Cardassian boy and girl in Obsidian Order school… if only their loyalty and duty to the state hadn’t complicated everything.
One problem with popular side characters is that they often get ruined when the writers notice the popularity and make them appear more and more.
Sometimes the scarcity of something is part of the appeal. This also goes for popular adversaries.
This also goes for popular adversaries.
Especially if they keep getting defeated, which makes them less threatening each time they show up. Looking at you, Borg in VOY. Farscape’s writers came up with Harvey specifically so they could have Scorpius make frequent appearances without diminishing his threat level.
That’s why I like Q. Dude just randomly shows up, but never gets defeated.
Why would anyone be interested in an ordinary tailor?
Morn
I’m not a fan of Morn, he monopolizes any screentime he gets with those ridiculous monologues.
Ok, now that the ugly argument is over, I think there’s one fan favorite side character we must honor above all. Especially for his lovely singing voice.
