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this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Amusingly, even the creators of The Outcast didn't realise they were making an episode about gender identity. They saw it as an episode about sexuality, and about providing representation to gay people. Which isn't an incorrect reading, obviously, but I think most people would agree that interpreting it as a trans allegory is a much stronger reading.
I don’t now, nor did I then see it as a representation or allegory for gay people… although… I suppose someone who knew little-to-nothing of trans (or gay) people might mistake it as such— and in 1992, a lot of people probably made this mistake. So, I can see this being the case back then.
But I have trouble believing the writers didn’t know what they were doing, as they seems to capture Soren’s struggle in a pretty heartfelt and accurate way. I think the only character whose sexuality may have been considered in that episode was Riker’s, as it immediately and unequivocally established him as pansexual without even mentioning it. And that’s how you do it. Just like Jadzei Dax’s bisexuality. Or Garak’s. It was a footnote at most. We only learned about either/both through incidental actions, not because it was either announced or made a spectacle of, and neither of those characters were ever defined by it.
Edit: For me, though, at the age of 13, this episode was my introduction to the concept of transgenderism. And, for that matter, the concept of being non-binary. And both were explained in very clear and simple terms, and in accepting, non-judgemental ways. And I’m so grateful that Trek thought me these lessons first before others tried to teach me another message later. For I knew that they were wrong because what Trek taught me was something different: love and understanding and empathy and compassion and acceptance— for without those things, people get hurt. People suffer. People die.
People like me.
The key to the gay allegory is to take a much less literal look at it. It's about representation of a person who is ostracised for reasons related to the broad category of "sex and gender expression". It is a metaphor, after all, so there's nothing wrong with being less literal about it.
Speaking of Riker, Jonathan Frakes wanted Soren to be played by a man, to make the message stronger to the contemporary audience. I think the studio chickened out?
Oh, regarding what the episode was supposed to be, IIRC, it was supposed to be a straight-up story about a gay male alien escaping an oppressive society that Riker hooks up with. Like, there wasn’t any metaphor or allegory beyond gay oppression in contemporaneous society, it was just that. And, of course, Rick Berman, an inveterate prick and widely-known homophobe absolutely shut that shit down. It got rewritten repeatedly into what it became, and, yes, Frakes still wanted Soren’s character to be played by a male, but Berman adamantly refused due to his own bigotries. Sure, Paramount may have gotten cold feet about it anyway, maybe not, but it never got that far.
Eventually, it got to the form we finally saw on screen, but, in retrospect, it’s a much stronger piece for it, and, at least in my eyes, the story is quite straightforward. It’s very plainly a trans character in an enby society which forbids gender expression of any kind, and that’s the source of the conflict. Additionally, there’s the allegorical references to the lgbtq+ community as a whole and otherism generally, but neither of those concepts are directly the subject.
Of course, people are going to read a lot more into it as they personally identify with it, and I’m not in any position to criticize or judge that. I’m just giving my own interpretation.