Star Trek’s Lost “Gay” Episode Airs Saturday

From Star Trek: Phase II:

“Blood and Fire: Part One”, will be released on December 20, 2008 as a holiday gift to fans. The fourth episode completed by Star Trek: New Voyages, and the first produced under the Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II moniker, “Blood and Fire” was written by Carlos Pedraza and David Gerrold, based on an original TNG script by David Gerrold.

The horrific story finds a battle damaged Enterprise caught between an incurable contagion that threatens to overrun the galaxy, the pull of a dying star, and Klingons poised to attack. Like all of the best Star Trek episodes, “Blood and Fire” finds the Enterprise crew facing their own human fears and failings as they have to weigh the costs and decide how much personal risk to take in order to save the people around them.

Gerrold wrote the story of contagion as a metaphor for the AIDS pandemic and the episode is dedicated to the gifted Star Trek alumni the world has lost to the disease: William Ware Theiss, Mike Minor and Merritt Butrick. It was also Gerrold’s intention to challenge the apathy of the public regarding the small sacrifice, yet far reaching power, of blood donations. Based on an original TNG script that was shelved because of the mention of a gay crewman aboard the Enterprise, “Blood and Fire” for Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II honors Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a non-judgmental future with the inclusion of a gay couple as part of the principle action of the story.

Kevin of ‘Brothers & Sisters’ Passes the Test

From the Southern Voice:

MANY GAY CRITICS ARE relentless when it comes to gay television characters. They must be prominent, not peripheral. They can’t be stereotypical, but they can’t be one-note and boring either.

They must avoid a clichéd coming out, and they must not be overly angsty about their sexuality.  Their lives should involve complications unrelated to being gay, but we must on a continual basis be reminded that they are, in fact, gay, or they’ll be deemed “gay in name only.”

They can’t be promiscuous; they can’t be campy; they can’t be psychotic. They should preferably be in a relationship, and if they are, they should have awesome, hot make-out scenes frequently. Anything less is hardly equal treatment.

But with a glass-half-full mentality, we should appreciate the strides made in the last few years. Watching “Brothers & Sisters,” it’s delightful how the character Kevin Walker passes every gay test.

Read the rest by clicking here.

CBS Lags in Introducing GLBT Characters

Network and broadcast television will by in full bloom this fall with LGBT flowers as there will be 16 GLBT regular characters featured on various prime-time series. That is more than double from only one year ago.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has stated this is a positive sign of networks showing more diversity, and moving towards equal representative, although they also claim more work needs to be done. According to a GLAAD study released last week, GLBT characters accounted for 2.6 percent of all the regular characters in TV series, which is up from 1.1 percent in 2007 and 1.3 percent in 2006.

Neil Giuliano, GLAAD’s president singled out Fox as the most improved leader for having five such regular characters this fall, when were none last year.

CBS is coming in last as none of the 126 regular characters on that networks shows are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, GLAAD said, and only one recurring character — Brad on “Rules of Engagement” — is gay. As far as the other networks, ABC will have seven characters that are either gay men or bisexual women this fall, NBC will have three and the CW will have one, according to GLAAD.

“As the networks gradually add characters from all backgrounds and all walks of life to prime-time programming, more and more Americans are seeing their LGBT friends and neighbors reflected on the small screen,” Giuliano said.

Is Star Wars Ready for a Gay Character?

You might not see the need for this question. It sounds silly that anyone would be upset that a new villain in a terrible Star Wars movie is purple, wears feathers, and speaks like the recently popular film character Truman Capote. In other words, this character is amusingly gay, and no one seems to be too upset about it. What’s the big deal?

Read more at moviesetal.blogspot.com.