Fans of Star Trek will be excited to hear about new casting developments for the upcoming season of Star Trek: Discovery—the show will now feature trans and non-binary characters, the first transgender representation in the franchise’s half-century history.
It is particularly exciting that not one, but two characters are being introduced: the first is a non-binary crew member named Adira who will be played by Blu del Barrio, the second is a trans man named Gray who will be portrayed by Ian Alexander. Del Barrio is a non-binary actor using they/them pronouns, who will make their major screen debut on Discovery. Alexander, a trans actor who uses they/them and he/him pronouns, has previously been seen on Netflix’s The OA and video game The Last of Us Part II.
According to a press release sent by CBS, “Adira is highly intelligent with a confidence and self-assurance well beyond their years. They will find a new home on the U.S.S. Discovery and form an unexpected bond with Lt. Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz).” It’s heart-warming to hear that Adira will get to have that closeness with Stamets and Culber, the first openly queer couple in Trek’s long history—and important that Trek won’t be shying away from the bonds that queer people have historically formed with each other in search of family and acceptance.
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Gray, on the other hand, has a very interesting path ahead of him. According to CBS, “Gray is empathetic, warm and eager to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a Trill host, but he will have to adapt when his life takes an unexpected turn.” Trill storylines have been taken as an analog for transness ever since they were introduced on Trek, with some fans even going so far as to consider Deep Space Nine‘s Dax as a transgender icon in pop culture. This begs the question of whether or not Dax could be due for an appearance on Discovery—knowing that the crew has headed into an unknown future (and that the Trill are a part of season three’s plot), it’s even possible that Gray could be Dax’s next host, if they wanted to tie into larger Trek continuity.
While Star Trek has always considered itself to be a franchise in the business of imagining a better future, it’s taken a long time for them to reach this point in queer representation. Here’s hoping that Adira and Gray enjoy a warm welcome, fascinating character choices, and a long tenure as newcomers to the Star Trek family.
Star Trek: Discovery season three will premiere on CBS All Access on Thursday, October 15.
What about TNG The Outcast?
@@@@@ Robert
Or, what about ENT Cogenitor?
Will they actually be well-written, though? This is Discovery after all; their batting average on that front is pretty bad…
@1/Robert: I don’t think one-shot guest aliens really count. I mean, by that logic, the Q, the Changelings, and various other aliens were technically nongendered or genderfluid, though they tended to be written as cisgender.
@@.-@ Christopher
All of those examples you mention are characters on the shows, yes, just like the non-binary characters in the two episodes mentioned.
@5/Nate Hoffelder: The point is that they aren’t main characters. Also that none of them are human, so they failed to acknowledge the possibility of nonbinary human gender. And most importantly, that none of them were played by trans or nonbinary actors (as far as we know), so they were not examples of inclusive casting.
Can someone explain to me how Dax is not considered a trans character?
@6
You’re thinking cast members, which is a subset of all characters. (The OP made the same mistake)
@7 Janet
Excellent point!
@7/Janet: I don’t think Dax really counts as trans, not in the same sense as real-live trans people. Dax is a genderless symbiont that has been bonded with various different cisgendered hosts in succession. Jadzia Dax is not Curzon Dax after a sex change, she’s Jadzia sharing the memories of Curzon and the earlier hosts that were implanted into her. It’s not the same thing. Certainly trans viewers often saw Dax as a figure they could identify with in the absence of more direct representation, but now they don’t have to settle for that approximation anymore.
@8/Nate: No, the OP did not make the mistake, though the headline writer did by phrasing it in terms of characters in the first place. What the OP said was “the show will now feature trans and non-binary characters, the first transgender representation in the franchise’s half-century history.” This is about representation, which means including diverse actors. It should be obvious that opening new doors for real-live actors to be included and represented in the industry is infinitely more important than hairsplitting technicalities about imaginary characters. So it’s not the characters that matter here.
Let’s just hope they are good, well rounded characters.
While I’m generally down for aliens and androids as a metaphor for poking at gender, Trek has been somewhat behind the curve when it comes to human gender and sexual diversity. (I say that as a 45-year Trekkie.) And I think that a lot of those tropes have a fair bit of baggage that isn’t the best when it comes to trans representation. Dax’s sexuality and gender seem to be only relevant as a running joke or issue-of-the-week. The Outcast suffers IMO because the writer’s never quite decided how far they could go in addressing anti-gay politics with the mandate that the main cast must be textually heterosexual. “Turnabout Intruder” feels most like a guy indulging in a thought experiment about gender roles, which is how these stories frequently read.
What I think is a game changer–something that only recently come to its own in literary SFF and a handful of TV media–are trans stories where being trans is not one of the biggest conflicts of the story, or used as a metaphor for some other SFF political point. Those are the stories that I tend to find more interesting/comforting. The Hexarate, Radch, and Tensorate are terrible places to live, but not because being trans poses a problem within those settings. Even as progressive as Dax was, baggage from the transition process was frequently the conflict of the week.
I’m glad to hear this! I just finished watching Deep Space Nine for the first time (and enjoying Keith’s rewatch series here while I was at it). The series was way ahead of its time in a lot of other respects (ambitious serialized storytelling, etc.), but most of the gender stuff now feels limited. Though yeah, DS9 did do better than TNG did, especially in the episode (‘Rejoined’) where Dax and her former spouse from previous hosts re-encounter each other – as two Trill women – and the passion re-emerges. A major improvement on almost the same thing happening in TNG and it being handled negatively and clumsily by the writers (‘The Host’).
Not this sounds interesting!
I’m with #12. Given the history of the franchise, I’m surprised it took this long. For many of us older fans, I think the original series was the first time we saw a truly integrated multi-racial and multi-cultural cast in popular entertainment.
Not to diminish this news, which is great, but these issues being explored via the imagined culture of the week has its positives, too. Personally I’d love to see how the Binars would react to a non-binary person, like one of these new regulars. Yes, that’s about as subtle as a photon torpedo, but I can’t say I’ve ever watched Star Trek for its subtlety. Comparing notes between cultures and having open and honest conversations, though sometimes clumsy like in “The Outcast,” is still fascinating to watch.
Anyway, I’ll take that over another fireworks show/space battle.
As far as trans content in Trek goes, Data let his child choose their own gender and appearance. They originally wanted to look exactly like 1990 Marina Sirtis, which is understandable.
@16/JFWheeler: The thing is, when you treat people as “issues,” that’s not really inclusion. It’s treating them as something unusual, as something to educate your target audience about. That’s a necessary first step, sure, but you have to move beyond it eventually. True inclusion is when they aren’t “issues,” they’re just characters the same as everyone else. True inclusion is when a non-binary person is just called “they” and nobody finds anything odd about it, or when a romance between two men is written just as matter-of-factly as a romance between a man and a woman.
Incidentally, this very thing happened in Japan on Kamen Rider Zero-One, which just ended this past week (each season of KR is a whole new series, story, and cast). There was a supporting character in the show, Naki, who was never actually identified by a given gender (easier in Japanese than English since their pronouns are gender-neutral), and was played by an agender performer, Satsuki Nakayama. The fact that Naki was agender was never brought up, never talked about; it was just there.
IIRC, this was also done in a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel a couple of years ago, The Missing by Una McCormack. There was an alien race in the novel whose characters were never referred to by a gendered pronoun. It was never explicitly said they were non-binary or agender; it just wasn’t addressed what gender, if any, they had. To my annoyance, everyone who posted about the book on the TrekBBS defaulted to referring to the alien characters as “he,” and Memory Beta’s entries use gendered pronouns for them as well.
@18
They can do both. DS9 existed in a future where Black people were no longer brutalized, but they invented a way to directly address racial injustice in and around our times in “Far Beyond the Stars.” It was bold. It was blunt. They even used the N-word in that episode. Likewise, Discovery could stop and directly address transgender issues–without making it the entire theme surrounding these characters. Because there was certainly much more to Benjamin Sisko than Benny Russell.
For better or worse, Star Trek has always been an “issues show.” And to ignore the issues of our times, to not occasionally step outside the cushy future and smack the audience in their complacency, I feel would be a missed opportunity and a further lowering of this new Trek into a well-meaning but ultimately hollow space opera. It makes for good press, no doubt, but why not a story? It’s on people’s minds. Now is the time to tell it.
@19/JFWheeler: DS9 went 135 episodes before doing “Far Beyond the Stars.” There’s no rush. Star Trek‘s preference has always been to make a statement about inclusion by not making a statement about it — by saying that in the future, these battles have already been won and everyone just accepts each other without question. When it does address it, it’s an infrequent grace note, not a central theme.
Also, it’s pretty bizarre to say they’re “ignoring” the issue when they’re actually giving regular paying jobs to genuinely trans and non-binary performers. What they’re doing in real life by casting inclusively is a far more potent, meaningful, and concrete statement than just doing “issue stories” within the fantasy of the show.
This is wonderful news. And no, all-NB alien species or alien allegories like Trills changing gender due to their hosts do not count. These are actual NB and trans characters, and played by actual NB and trans performers.
Jadzia is trans, sorry cissies, it’s #facts. (obviously in a show about the vast enormities of space there should be many, many more trans ppl, and this news is about-time-and-all but just bc the writers and audience don’t understand trill as trans doesn’t mean they aren’t.)
@22: I’m sorry, but I think it’s unfair to the Trill to impose a human gender category on them when they’re something different — that’s classic misgendering, seeing a gender that doesn’t fit your norms and forcing it to fit your pre-existing definitions rather than broadening your definitions to encompass something new. Joined Trill gender doesn’t correspond exactly to any human gender, since it’s the combination of separate individuals, an agender symbiont fusing sequentially with numerous hosts whose pre-joining gender is generally not changed by the joining. There is no exact human analogy for that. And each joined host is a separate individual, not merely the same single individual after a sex change. Jadzia Dax is not the same person as Curzon Dax, as “Facets” made clear. She’s a new, distinct individual, a cisfemale Trill by birth whose joining gives her the memories of seven previous beings of two different sexes, while not in any way altering her perception and presentation of herself as female. Just their memories and facets of their personalities, but not their actual identity. The whole point of the sequential joining is that each host brings a new, separate identity to be added to the mix of memories.
Certainly there could be a Trill host whose joining might make them redefine their gender identity, or possibly even get a physical reassignment surgery, but that would be an individual choice, not a species-wide routine. No Trill we’ve seen onscreen has done that, as far as we can tell. Trill would presumably have as wide a range of gender variations as humans do (and keep in mind that the vast majority of Trill are unjoined).
Yes, certainly a character like Dax can be a valuable source of identification and representation for trans or genderfluid people who have no more genuine representation in fiction, but it’s just an approximation of the real thing. Now that we’re actually going to have the real thing, actual trans and non-binary actors playing characters like themselves, it’s not necessary to settle for the fictitious approximation anymore.
Although they may not count as trans representation, some Dax episodes absolutely addressed trans struggles, e.g. deadnaming in Blood Oath:
KOR: Curzon, my beloved old friend!
DAX: I’m Jadzia now.
KOR: Well, Jadzia, my beloved old friend!
Or in Afterimage:
SISKO: I know this has been a hard time for you, old man, but you see
EZRI: Don’t call me that! I’m not the old man. I’m not Curzon. Or Jadzia
@24/Michael: Yep — as I said, they can work as an analogy/allegory in the absence of the real thing, but that doesn’t mean they are the real thing.
Just in case somebody might have missed the point.
I’m also pretty stoked to have two Asians in the show.
@christopherlbennet
omg, sweetie, ty so much for cissplaining what misgendering is. my fragile feminine brain clearly hasn’t understood it’s own experiences. I do appreciate you acknowledging Jadzia being an inspiration to me though, that’s very gracious.
what’s “classic” is cis ppl seeing an experience of gender different than their own, but which doesn’t quite fit into their understanding of contemporary trans folks, and jumping through hoops to explain that, actually, they are cis. oh, and telling trans ppl that they are wrong, that’s pretty classic too.
I don’t know what a cisfemale is, but it sounds hottt.
Jadzia is trans, it’s #facts, sorry I don’t make the rules.
@27: Sir, this is an Arby’s.
Not sir, ma’am. But again, Trill are not trans by definition, because cis hosts keep their own birth-assigned gender, and the symbiote does not have a gender that we are aware of.
The stories told with Trill characters can be allegories for trans experiences, though.
@27: You misunderstand me. I am not saying joined Trill are cisgender (although the specific host characters we’ve seen have all been portrayed that way). I’m saying they are neither cisgender nor transgender, because they are not human. They are an alien species that has a kind of gender identity that doesn’t exist among humans. I’m not denying the spectrum of gender diversity, I’m saying that spectrum gets even wider once you include nonhuman species, and trying to force them to fit human gender categories — any human gender categories, no matter how broad — is a failure of imagination. Assuming cis and trans are the only alternatives is as narrowly binary in its way as assuming male and female are the only alternatives. Our minds should always be open to new possibilities.
Jadzia seems to have a perfectly clear idea of what is her. What is Dax and what is the memories of previous hosts. Having the memories of a number of men doesn’t make Jadzia Trans but it certainly might make her gender fluid.
@31/roxana: Sure, it could, but it wouldn’t be automatic for every joined Trill. It would depend on the individual host, just as with humans.
I guess you could interpret “Rejoined” as genderfluidity — Dax and Kahn still felt the same way toward each other and the fact that Dax was a different gender now was irrelevant to them. Aside from that, though, neither Jadzia nor Ezri ever showed any indication of considering themselves male or non-binary. Though nothing precludes other Trill from doing so.