I really like Lower Decks, and I'm excited to see where the show goes from here. But I am continuously surprised at how aggressively heterosexual it is; straight relationships are squeezed into every possible story line,

even when they don't make sense or mess the flow of the episode up, but do we get any LGBT rep? No. Not even in the form of a non-speaking, background pairing. We discussed this in #OutOfOrbitPodcast, but it would be SO easy to include even a mere CRUMB of LGBT rep!

The latest episode is thus far one of the only ones where a romantic sub-plot would actually have made sense, yet it's also the ONLY episode to date that hasn't involved any on-screen kissing or romantic relations. The pairing in question just happens to be wlw...

Not to get all Mariner about this, but?? I've never seen a show, especially an animated one, have so much forced heterosexual sub-plots but not even so much as a subtle nod towards LGBT themes.

Animation is the perfect platform to explore new aliens, new worlds, new concepts and new character dynamics. Lower Decks is great and has introduced some really funny, brand new characters....why not take that freedom and give us something fresh?

It's getting to the stage where it's a case of lazy and oblivious writing at best, or a deliberate act to omit any LGBT themes from the show at worst. It's a disservice to Star Trek to stop pushing for better diversity, better representation, and better content.

TLDR; I am bloody tired of being baited by new shows that claim to be diverse and edgy and fresh and relevant and PC, only to once again get given nothing but the same awkward skirting around LGBT characters, relationships, and themes.

I lied I'm not done: GBT people exist. We existed in the past, we exist right now, & we'll exist in the future. If we ever explore space to the extent shown in Trek, guess what? We'll exist there, too. Stop writing us out of your content. We're not going anywhere.