Document Type
Article
Abstract
The Star Trek series, which have been both praised for radical inclusiveness and criticized for their "neo-conservative agendas," de-essentialize identity, gender, and sexual orientation through their depictions of the Trill, an alien race in which humanoids "join with" symbionts, slug-like creatures each of which lives in the abdominal cavity of its host, with whom it then shares a single fused consciousness. Hosts are selected independently of their sex, so that a symbiont dwells alternatively inside males and females; each new host, as well as the symbiont, is heir to the memories of all previous hosts.
The notions of unified selves and essential genders are both disrupted in Star Trek-The Next Generation. In "The Host," Dr. Beverley Crusher rejects the advances of a female Trill who is hosting the symbiont previously hosted by Crusher's male lover. Here, passions are detached from bodies, placing sexual orientation and gender into question.
Likewise, episodes of Star Trek-Deep Space Nine featuring Trill officer Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax demonstrate that both consciousness and gender are fragmented. In "Facets," for example, Jadzia, current host of the Dax symbiont, participates in a Trill ritual in which the memories of each of the symbiont's seven prior hosts are transferred into one of Jadzia's current friends on the station so that she can interact with those hosts. The plurality of Trill consciousness, a plurality which researchers have attributed to human minds, is thus rendered visible and, as one male character plays former female host, his behavior illustrates the performativity of gender.
Repository Citation
Wolfe, Susan J.. "The Trouble with Trills: Gender and Consciousness in Star Trek." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 5, no. 4, 2005, pp. 1–9. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol5/iss4/7