Star trek metamorphosis movie#

Star trek metamorphosis movie#

The topic had been a political hot potato, with movie and television studios censoring these sorts of plots into the late fifties. Up until a Californian anti-miscegenation law was overturned in 1948, such laws were to be found in thirty of the forty-eight states. This is quite close to the sort of dialogue the characterised discussions over anti-miscegenation laws. “Is this what the future holds? Men who have no notion of decency or morality? Maybe I’m a hundred and fifty years out of style, but I’m not going to be fodder for any inhuman monster.” His views are classified as “parochial” by Spock. He is out of touch with the wider universe. Cochrane is a man who has been stranded on a rock for over a century. Tellingly, Cochrane’s freak out when he discovers the Companion’s romantic feelings is presented as a generational gap. “The matter of gender could change the entire situation,” Spock observes, as if the idea of a romantic love would be ridiculous otherwise. When the cast discover the Companion is explicitly feminine, it serves as a “eureka!” moment. “The idea of male and female are universal constants, Cochrane,” Kirk assures Cochrane, which seems depressingly narrow-minded for the show. While the relationship may not be between two human beings, the viewers can rest assured that it is a relationship between a man and a woman. Unfortunately, the episode goes out of its way to undercut any such readings. Coupled with the rest of Cochrane’s angry and reactive tirade against the creature, it’s hard not to read some measure of homosexual subtext into their relationship. “For all these years, I’ve let something as alien as that crawl around inside me?” It’s a rather explicit inversion of the standard dynamic in heterosexual couples. “Do you know what you’re saying?” he demands. When Cochrane discovers that the entity is in love with him, he feels violated. Metamorphosis explicitly codifies the relationship as sexual. This is what happens when you leave the red shirts in charge…

I suppose I even have an affection for it.” We’ve been very close in a way that’s hard to explain. A sort of joining.” As the man tries to explain his relationship with the entity, he uses language that evokes romantic love. The two interact on a “non-verbal level.” Observing their union, in which the man is enveloped by the entity, McCoy remarks, “Almost a symbiosis of some kind. When our characters get stranded on an alien world, they discover a lonely human and the all-powerful entity that seems to provide for all his needs. With the exception of Rejoined or Chimera, this is the closest the franchise comes to suggesting a non-normative relationship. In a way, Meta morphosis suffers because of the thirty-odd years of Star Trek broadcast after the fact. If Star Trek: Enterprise could not bring itself to feature a non-heterosexual lead character in the early years of the twentieth century, it seems unfair to complain about an episode of Star Trek broadcast in the sixties. To be fair, Star Trek has always struggled with issues of gender and sexuality.