Metro Weekly

Star Trek’s Brannon Braga: Gay squeamishness due to ‘family show’ time slot

”It was a shame for a lot of us that….  There were people who felt very strongly that we should be showing casually, you know, just two guys together in the background in Ten Forward…. I have no doubt that [today] those same creative players wouldn’t feel so hesitant to have, you know, have been squeamish about a decision like that…. I think it was, not so much a young man’s [issue] — it was a syndicated family show, showing at six o’clock, you know, in Salt Lake City; so you had to deal with each separate affiliate rather than one network.”

Brannon Braga, a producer and writer of the ”Star Trek” television series and movies in the late 1980s and 1990s. (After Elton)

Many fans of the influential science fiction show have complained that, despite many promises, gay male and lesbian characters have been absent from the decades-long franchise. Braga tells AfterElton that he thinks times have changed in favor of being gay-inclusive; yet he says that his new series, “Terra Nova,” does not have any gay characters either. That new show will premiere on Fox in May of 2011.

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