Space: The Female Frontier

by Kate Lock. Radio Times magazine August 24 1996.

Its hugely popular follow-up, Star Trek: The Next Generation, portrayed its main female characters in traditional caring roles - as a doctor, Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), and a counsellor, Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), while Whoopi Goldberg hung out in a collection of funny hats and gave sage advice to Picard.

"I think we took the formula more than a step further because Gates and I were both in powerful positions," says Sirtis, a London lass who now lives in LA. "Star Trek is very much a reflection of what is happening in society. But this is American TV; they're reluctant to push it too far in case the advertisers back out."

A case in point was McFadden's so-called lesbian kiss in an episode where a male Trill host whom she used to love died and the Trill (a symbiont who lives in a humanoid body) returned as a female. McFadden got to kiss her on the wrist. In Rejoined, a forthcoming episode of TNG's successor, Deep Space Nine (currently showing on Thursdays on BBC2 and Sundays on Sky One), science officer Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), also a Trill, goes one step further when she kisses her symbiont's former husband, now a woman, on the lips. It caused furore. "We stuck our toes in the water, but in DS9 they jumped right in," laughs Sirtis.

Tiny but bosomy - Troi's cleavage is a source of much speculation among adolescent Trekkers, who stick her head on to naked women's bodies on the Internet - Sirtis makes no byBones about her sex-symbol status. "Apparently I'm the 'eye-candy' of TNG, which at my age [mid- to late-30's] I find quite a compliment."

Although she's glad to be out of the tight-fitting uniforms - "after seven years I can finaly breath out" - she recognises that looks count, whatever quadrant of the galaxy you come from: "It's part of the deal. That's what the American public wants to see, not women who look like they've been dragged through a hedge backwards. So, yes, we are important, valuable members of the cast, but we have the extra pressure of having to look beautiful all the time."

Even DS9, which features the tough, go-getting second officer, Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) and the aforementioned Dax, hasn't broken that mould: Farrell, a former model, has three pairs of falsies to give her the required outline. "I've got special ones that move when I run; the ones I normally wear are huge because I wear black and you disappear against the dark background. But if I wear those things in a brightly coloured outfit they're too big, so they gave me smaller ones..."

But at least the DS9 duo don't have to contend with the unresolved sexual tension that continued to both McFadden - whose character had an on-off relationship with Picard - and Sirtis, who found herself in a half-hearted love triangle with Riker and Worf. "I felt that the directors had seen Beauty and the Beast one too many times," she says. Notwithstanding the fact that Klingon love-making is reputed to be too ferocious for humans to stand. "Quite. But they chickened out. We would both have been in the emergency room after the first session."

Sex, however, really is the final frontier when it comes to Star Trek. "We did an episode in the fourth season and there was a lot of hoopla over it because I was going to be in bed with somebody. The fans went nuts, going, 'We don't want sex in Star Trek,' " remembers Sirtis. "And I was thinking, how do they procreate in the 24th century?"

Live long and prosper? Yes, but discreetly...