I've been catching up on the Dr. Who spinoff series "Torchwood" this week. It's awfully fun, aside from the occasional cringe-inducing stumble in the scripts. (Is it just me, or is Gwen the worst cop in Wales?) But it got me thinking about gay characters in science fiction, and how there really aren't any, aside from Captain Jack Harkness.
I went looking online to see if my memory was simply failing me. I found a lot of "top 10 gay science fiction characters" lists, but they all had to stretch their definition of "science fiction." For example, the After Elton website stretched their definition of science fiction to include "Zorro, the Gay Blade" and John Constantine (the real one, from the comics, not the movie).
One character which didn't make any of the "top 10" lists I found is Lieutenant Felix Gaeta. "Battlestar Galactica," a show which has earned a well-deserved reputation for fearlessness, has been surprisingly squeamish on the matter of Gaeta's sexuality.
Okay first of all, his name has "gay" in it, which makes me cringe. Gaeta's homosexuality was implied throughout the series, causing a cascade of "is he or isn't he?" threads on message boards across the internet. Gaeta was finally outed by the show, but only in the webisode series "The Face of The Enemy."
Frankly, I find this sort of thing almost worse than having no gay characters at all. Why won't they just come out and say it? Why be coy? It's the year 2009, for pity's sake. The assumption that "these things have to be kept quiet" is insulting.
On the up side, Gaeta is one of the more memorable and complex characters on a show which is chock full of memorable and complex characters. Gaeta is arguably more three-dimensional than many of the primary characters. (I'm looking at you, Apollo.) Gaeta is neither good nor evil; he's just human. His homosexuality is simply a part of the fabric of his character, along with the tiger tattoo, and the loss of his leg.
In a move which is only surprising if you don't think about it for very long, lesbian characters are relatively thick on the ground in science fiction. (More on lesbians in science fiction in a future post.) It's difficult not to draw the conclusion that lesbians are acceptable, but gay men are not, because science fiction's traditional core audience (males age 18-24)finds lesbians "hot," and gay men "icky."
Of course, circling back to Dr. Who, the Doctor himself has had (offscreen) dalliances with men. (Okay, with Captain Jack.) But I'm not sure if this actually counts as homosexuality, because the Doctor isn't actually human. Frankly, I'm a little vague as to whether Gallifreyans even have gender in the way we understand it.
Can a non-human from a planet which may or may not have gender, who incarnates in the body of a male, be said to be homosexual if he kisses another boy? Frankly, this is a rather delightful question, and it's the kind of thing that science fiction would be great at discussing, if it would only grow up.
