Bring the Jubilee

I am about halfway through one of the best alternative histories I've encountered so far, Bring the Jubilee. The novel portrays an alternate history in which the South won the civil war. Two elements of Bring the Jubilee make it exceptional: One is the philosophizing about time and free will. The novel delightfully explores the differences between predeterminism and free will, exploring the circular nature of time. The second aspect of the novel that makes it exciting is that it shows how a Union loss during the Civil War might have very well ended up creating a new form of slavery in the North using indentured servants. In many ways, Bring the Jubilee anticipates the daring anti-racist critiques of the recent film C.S.A. (itself an alternate history), but in a more science fiction, and less counterfactual manner. Bring the Jubilee also, unlike so much Civil War alternative fiction, does not subscribe to the cult of victimization that engulfs Southern narratives of alternative fiction. It's a great read, and I encourage you all to pick it up. I can't wait to finish it.

Aliens I: The Greatest TV Aliens Ever

For me, television science fiction has always been handicapped by its lack of inspiration in designing alien species. Part of this comes simply from budgeterary constraints. Its a lot easier to show knobbly headed humanoid aliens then anything truly unique. The Scarrans (pictured here) are among TV's best efforts at creating a truly unique looking alien. I think Babylon 5, Farscape, and Doctor Who (in both incarnations) have done the best at creating strange species, both from a psychological and biological perspective. Babylon 5 had the most detailed alien cultures of any show, particularly the Minbarri and Narn (admittedly humanoids). It also presented the wonderful Shadows, the first non-bipedal species to play a major role in a science fiction story arc. Farscape usually featured bipedal aliens, but wonderfully strange ones, like the Scarrans, Luxans, Hynerians, Pilots, etc. The cultures may not have exactly been detailed, but there was a wonderful sense of adventurousness in the design of these species. Star Trek has not been as successful, though there have been some wonderful species shown even in that series: the Horta and the Borg being both alien and well thought out. Doctor Who, however, is unique in its ability to create aliens that consistently defied the bipedal humanoid prejudice, even if they looked incredibly corny. The Daleks, for instance, though descended from a humanoid species, are one of the most startingly original creations in all of science fiction television.

Now what I would really like to see is Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's Moties on sci-fi TV. That would be something to see.

Glenn Beck and science fiction

Yes, Glenn Beck and science fiction. Despite the huge popularity of media celebrities like Beck, there has been relatively little attention paid in science fiction television and film to the possibilities of the Father Coughlins of the airwaves and broadband. Babylon 5's Dan Randall is probably as close as any of these shows have come to dealing with the cult of media worship that surrounded Beck, Limbaugh, Coughlin, etc. Making matters worse, these programs always show some safe CNN-like champion of bland liberalism replacing the conservative media of the right, a result that is both unlikely and seemingly not much better than the alternative. Partly, science fiction is cautious about its portrayal of the media because it is unsure what forms of mass media will be used to inflame the conservative masses of the future. Yet there is plenty of material to play with here. For instance, a talk radio host or a televangelist getting ahold of nanotechnology and using it to control his followers every thought and mood. Or a right wing rabble-rouser on the level of Tom Zarek, with or without the strong political critique that Zarek offers of centrist liberalism (preferably with a good right wing critique of liberalism, as oppossed to the cornball stuff Hollywood comes up with). So science fiction TV, you are on notice: We need some mass media personalities on our shows, if only to critique the mass media.

The Abuse of Exorcisms in new films

Well, with the new release of The Last Exorcism, and the continuing popularity of films like The Exorcism for Emily Rose, I thought it would be a good idea to caution science fiction producers not to follow the same path. These new films on exorcism clearly exploit mentally ill populations, which after all are the victims of exorcisms. The mentally ill often have no choice as to whether or not to get an exorcism, as the recent scandals concerning Mercy Ministries Australia testifies to. Exorcism is not some cool religious rite tailor-made for horror movies, but an abusive, denigrating religious practice, primarily aimed at the mentally ill. It has no place in any modern religion, still less as the subject for exploitative Hollywood films. Fortunately, to my knowledge, only Space 1999, among major sci-fi series, has had an exorcism in it, though that Scotty-murder episode in the original Star Trek got pretty darn close. Hopefully, science fiction television won't follow the examples of horror films.

Creation of the Humanoids

Creation of the Humanoids is an early sixties film, reputed to have been Andy Warhol's favorite picture (what a recommendation!). Really, though, this is a fascinating movie. Some of its speculations on A.I. were so advanced that it would take till A.I. (1998 or so), before Hollywood would again interrogate the issue of artificial intelligence so deftly. There is definitely a Phillip K. Dick-like fascination here with what separates man from machine. The movie also predicts that artificial intelligence will become the civil rights issue of the future, with the Order of Flesh and Blood violently oppressing the A.I. population. Some people have criticized the sets and special effects. Frankly, I love them myself, because they kind of remind me of that retro-future look so popular in the sixties. But please, check it out for yourself. It's a great movie that pulls no punches in its explorations of the boundaries between men and machines (and the film actually appears to side with the latter, to my great approval.).

O.B.I.T

I just finished watching a fascinating episode from the Outer Limits, entitled "O.B.I.T." In many ways, it is a precursor to The Prisoner. The episode portrays aliens, with the unwitting cooperation of the U.S. government, installing monitoring computers around the country, preying on everyone's secret thoughts and exposing them to government censorship. Powerfully, one military leader admits that O.B.I.T. monitoring is like an "addiction", a "drug", that is self-feeding and self-renewing. In many ways, O.B.I.T. serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers of government computer surveillance technology. This was a persistent problem in the sixties, with the government using the most advanced surveillance technologies of the time to get rid of white socialist and black power groups, such as the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. The episode also serves as a warning on the dangers of Mcarthyism, still a sensitive issue in early sixties America.

Of Annoying New Age Priests and Sci-Fi

Nothing annoys me more than annoying New Agers spouting off meaningless dribble in sci-fi movies. Nothing against the New Age movement personally, but all this "come to union with yourself", "find your own spiritual power", "learn to evolve beyond hate" etc. rhetoric is just a little too much like the New Thought movement of the early 20th century. The more a character gets zen (or Zhaan), the more she\he is likely to make startlingly incomprehensible, utterly meaningless statements. Don't get me wrong, I think an examination of the belief systems from which New Age Thought came from, like Buddhism, are well worth exploring, but I have less use for their exploitative Western equivalents. So, lets have a little less Zhaan and a little more true Buddhist Zen, not its diluted New Age equivalent

The Gerstein Dilemna in Science Fiction and Real Life

The Gerstein Dilemna, as I've termed it, is the choice between saving millions by killing thousands, or doing nothing and walking away. I've given it that term in reference to SS officer Kurt Gerstein, an anti-Nazi who infiltrated the SS in World War II and subsequently tried to alert the world about the Holocaust and sabotage the Holocaust from within the SS. Gerstein is believed to have destroyed a number of gas shipments to the camps, but in order to destroy those shipments, he had to let others go through. Thus, in order to try to save hundreds of thousands, he had to kill tens of thousands. Few literary works have taken on Gerstein's life: The Deputy being the most prominent. But though science fiction has never dealt directly with Gerstein (to my knowledge) it frequently brings dilemmas like these up, because of the epic scale on which it is set. Unfortunately, sci-fi seldom shows its heroes making the hard choices, and when they make the hard choices, they are always spared the consequences. Rosselin considers genocide in BSG, in order to save the human race (killing milllions to save thousands, in that case) and Ender commits a "guiltless genocide" in Ender's Game, but neither of those examples are particularly encouraging. A true Gerstein-like scenario is needed in sci-fi, as a cautionary tale, if nothing else. Sometimes the only way to resist the enemy, is to fight the enemy within. In the process, you don't have clean hands. But then, in war, no one really does.

Sarah Jane Smith and Feminism\Anti-Feminism

Ah, yes, Sarah Jane Smith. A women still of impeccable beauty, played by Lis Sladen. An entrepreneurial reporter, one of the few women to truly pierce the doctor's shell. And a feminist?
Doctor Who fans tend to brag about Smith as being one of the early representations of feminism in science fiction television and to be fair she was an improvement on the bikini clad women of Buck Rogers, running at roughly the same time in America. But I don't see Sarah Jane Smith as necessarily much of an advance for feminism. Indeed, her feminism was used as the butt of several cruel (but admittedly, very funny!) jokes in the first season of the Tom Baker era. In one episode, Sarah shakes hand with a man and greets him as Director of a science facility, only to find out that she had sexistly assumed that the man ran the facility, when in reality his female companion had (see "Giant Robot"). That same female companion ended up being a dictatorial feminist on the path to scientific world conquest. In a second episode, Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor cleverly uses Sarah's feminism against her to persuade her to climb down a tunnel to prove that women are equal to men. So, why such mixed messages? One man: Terrance Dicks. There isn't a Doctor Who episode in existence which hasn't had Mr. Dicks's poking some fun at the feminist movement. As much as I want to take this seriously and berate Mr. Dicks for the offense of political incorrectness, he's just so darn funny about it! So, Sarah's characterization may have been a relic of an earlier era, but thank God for that. We love Sarah Jane just as much anyway.

Battlestar Galactica and Mormon Population Genetics

I watched Glenn Beck today, mainly to get mad, and had to suffer through a very covert one hour infomercial for Mormon population genetics, clothed in an argument against Manifest Destiny (a doctrine, coincidentally, that Mormons very readily believed in). In case you are one of the four or five people who doesn't know this, Mormonism is considered increasingly suspect in scientific circles because the accuracy of one of its central claims - that Native Americans are really lost tribes of Jews - has been called into considerable question. I don't want to come off as a fanatic anti-Mormon. I'm hardly an expert on the church, and my main problems with it aren't factual but deal with the over-abundance of clerical power at the top of the church hierarchy, shamefully used to lessen doctrinal dissent through a very active process of excommunication. But watching Beck made me think of the BSG series, particularly the old ones. Glenn Larson was a devout Mormon and Mormon theology infuses the old Battlestar Galactica. In a very real sense, the old BSG serves as a apologia for Mormon views on the Lost Tribes. The series tries to make plausible the idea that current humans (the Lost Tribe) are really the descendants of the 12 colonies (get it - the 12 tribes of Israel). In the new series, the sacred scriptures, including the Book of Pythia (the Book of Mormon) point out that the myths of the lost tribe are true, and therefore many characters, including Laura Rosselin, put their faith in these scriptures, despite the questionable lack of evidence for God's existence in the universe. While BSG never confronts the whole genetics issue in the series - WAY TOO CONTROVERSIAL - it is interesting how BSG tended to culturally pilfer other cultures (Egypt in particular - again significant) in its quest to prove a basis for a Mormon-friendly sci-fi series. That cultural voyeurism, the willingness to steal from other cultures what is not yours to take, has been a sad byproduct of Mormon theology, from the well meaning but very offensive posthumous baptizing of Holocaust victims to the trivialization of Native American culture. That the BSG series continue that tradition does not speak well for either BSG or Mormonism.

Filed under: science fiction, Battlestar Galactica, population genetics, Mormonism, Holocaust victims

Stop Suppressing Politically Controversial Sci-Fi

I am beginning to get more than a little paranoid about the apparent suppression of politically risky sci-fi. Norman Spinrad's latest novel, Osama the Gun, can't get published in the States because it deals with a future terrorist attack in a nuanced manner. Spinrad's famous novel Iron Dream, which portrays Hitler as a science fiction writer, mysteriously has gone out of print, despite the fact that it is considered one of the major explorations of Hitler's ideology in contemporary sci-fi. Spinrad is a major writer, but I fear he's ticked off so many people by being honest that he's suffering a kind of unofficial censorship today.
Similarly, until quite recently, Peter Watkins's films were out of circulation. Watkins sci-fi is some of the most politically radical ever filmed, particularly Privilege, which mocked government control of the entertainment industry and youth culture. That this excellent film was unavailable for close to forty years is a travesty. We need more artists like Watkins and Spinrad, not less.
And while you're at it, will someone finally release Blake's 7 here in the States? Don't worry, we can handle the bleakness. What we can't handle is a science fiction genre that refuses to take risks.

The Moral Ambiguity Divide

Science fiction television is divided into basically two halves: series that present basic battles between good and evil and tend to see the universe in terms of absolutes, and series which stress moral ambiguity. Here's how I'd divide the series:

Absolutist shows: Star Trek, TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, SG-1, Doctor Who (original), BSG (original), Buck Rogers, The Prisoner, Earth 2, V (original), Twilight Zone, Outer Limits

Ambiguity shows: Andromeda, Firefly, Farscape, Blake's 7, BSG (reboot), Torchwood, DS9, X Files

In the Middle: Babylon 5, Crusade, Doctor Who (reboot)

This is obviously not a full list of series. Which kind of series you like tends to depend a lot on your cultural and ideological background. As a rule, though I hold to some absolutist beliefs, I prefer the more ambiguous shows, because the writing is much better. Of my favorite series, only the original Doctor Who and The Prisoner are absolutist. Some of the other absolutist shows are fine, like The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, but as a whole I just don't think these absolutist shows can match the nuanced characterizations of Farscape, Blake's 7 and Babylon 5. On the other hand, some shows have taken the ambiguity so far, such as Firefly and the BSG (reboot), that their characters are essentially cyphers and lack the depth of personality of a Kerr Avon or a G'kar. My other problem with the more ambiguous series, particularly with the new BSG (reboot), is that they sometimes sound too sympathetic to horrendous ideas, like the government eliminating certain civil rights during a time of war. I for one was more than a little pissed when Rosselin outlawed abortion for the good of the body politic in the new BSG, and I'm a pro-lifer! I thought Rosselin should stick to her guns and not give in to the "ends justify the means" rhetoric that has come to characterize the entire rebooted BSG franchise. I think JMS's position on Babylon 5, in which there are always choices, but always consequences to one's choices, is less likely to lead to this kind of relativistic anything-goes approach to civil rights and legal morality. But then again, I do like Blake's 7, which takes BSG's ambiguity and ramps it up ten degrees. I guess, though, that is because there is no sanctimonious pretense to moral strength on the part of Kerr Avon, which makes Blake's 7 more palatable than BSG, with BSG's constant desire to stay "relevant". Long term, I think Blake's 7 has been far more significant to the genre, because it refused to give some of the cheapened answers to moral questions that BSG delights in. Just my opinion though. Tell me what you think.

Category: Science fiction politico, science fiction politics

The Lurkers and Homelessness

Babylon 5 is also unique in that it is one of the few sci-fi programs to deal with the issue of homelessness, through its depiction of the poor outcasts on the station, the Lurkers. The series's sympathy always is with the Lurkers, even if Garibaldi occasionally gets angry with them because there's increased crime in Down Below (where the Lurkers live). The series depicts a variety of paths to homelessness: drug addiction, alcoholism, political dissidence (the equivalent of being black in America on Babylon 5), mental illness, etc. The series is also not shy in condemning the right wing Clark administration for ignoring the plight of the homeless and instituting harsh policies against the poor and the mentally ill. Perhaps most importantly, several of the characters in the series flirt with having to live in Down Below, or try to stick up for people in Down Below and their rights. Marcus makes various friends among Down Below's population, as does Garibaldi. Lyta and Byron live in a colony in Down Below that is much like a hippie commune for telepaths. Franklin spends several weeks in Down Below dealing with his drug addiction. I think it's a tribute to Babylon 5 that the series dealt so honestly with these issues.

The giant evil mega-corporation and science fiction.

Science fiction has a tendency to show corporate officials as villains. Frankly, I don't have much of a problem with this, since, lets face it, many corporation officials are villians. However, the economic analysis that goes on in science fiction television is predictably weak, and the situation is not much more complex in film sci-fi either. The only corporation in science fiction that has really got the extended attention it deserves is Edgars Industries in Babylon 5. The whole fourth season of Babylon 5 examined how William Edgars, the head of Edgars Industries, sought to play Mr. Garibaldi off President Sherdian, in the hopes of buying time to develop an anti-telepath virus. Edgars motives are complex, yet believable for a corporate exec. He isn't an idealist, but Edgars is concerned that the telepaths, particularly Psi Corps, will end up dominating homo sapiens, and becoming homo superiors themselves. Edgars therefore seeks to eliminate the telepath menace before it becomes a power mundanes can not deal with. The portrayal of Edgars is suitably excellent for Babylon 5, as it shows how a good, or at least decent man, can be sucked into Nazi-like plots given the problems of his time.

Not many other shows have featured corporations in a major way. Blake's 7 occasionally delved into corporate politics, as did Doctor Who and the X-Files, but many series, most notably Star Trek, hardly touched on corporate greed, to their everlasting and eternal shame (the preacher in me, natch!). Here's hoping that the next dialectical mega-analysis of a mega-corporation in sci-fi isn't another fifty years away.

Reference under Marxism.

Wolf and Iron

I thought you guys might all want to take a look at Wolf and Iron, by Gordon Dickson. Wolf and Iron is interesting because its one of the first novels to posit a post-apocalyptic scenario not based on nuclear or biological warfare, but instead on economic collapse. Personally, I find this scenario less compelling, than say a oil-less world or something like that, but it does make for some interesting reading. The hero essentially treks through America, meanwhile explaining how the American economy collapsed due to its failure to live up to capitalist principles. The novel is absolutely brutal in its depiction of survivalism, and for that alone, it deserves a look. Think of it as a poor man's The Road.

Dune Miniseries: The Only Good Exploration of Fundamentalism in Sci-Fi

The Dune and Children of Dune miniseries are two of the best explorations of fundamentalism in television or visual sci-fi. Of course, this is partially due to the source material: Dune and Dune Messiah, in particular, were moving accounts of the growth of a fundamentalist culture and its tragic demise. What makes the Dune miniseries so exciting is that it refuses to play with easy stereotypes but instead shows the full complexity of fundamentalist belief. Even more importantly, these miniseries show the degrading effects of hero-worship on the worshipped, as a cultic group of priests quickly gains power in the Fremen-dominated fundamentalist hierarchy. The series also explores the link between ecology and religious belief, with the desert like conditions of Arrakis leading to a harsh, no nonsense religious belief. Dune's analysis of the deleterious effects of fundamentalist belief are sufficiently broad that they are unlikely to offend Muslims, Christians, or Jews, who are themselves fundamentalists. Instead, these series cause fundamentalists to ponder both the greatness and the pitfalls of their own religious traditions.

Karl Marx and the Triumph of Libertarian Sci-Fi

One of the most peculiar aspects of the science fiction genre is that it has been dominated, not by liberals, as is traditionally supposed, nor conservatives, but libertarians. Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gordon Dickson, The Prisoner, H. Beam Piper, and Robert Heinlein, among many others, could all be labeled libertarian in their outlook. So far as I know, only Mieville and Kim Robinson, among major authors, are socialist in outlook. The picture becomes even worse when one looks at fantasy, though the situation in both genres is improving. Fantasy literature has too often been dominated by right wing ideologues, like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. So what needs to change in the genre? I think, first of all, there needs to be a greater awareness of the plight of working class people, something Marxist fiction is particularly good at supplying. Secondly, publishers need to be challenged to diversify their production lines beyond the conservative\liberal, libertarian banners, to something more original, inviting voices from socialism and anarchism as well. Lastly, as the Sci-Fi Politico has pointed out before, the genre needs to accept individualistic voices, especially in TV and Film, rather than rely on retreads of old ideas. Only then will we have a genre that both Rand and Marx could be proud of.

The Virgin in TV Sci-Fi

I'm hoping to teach a class on conservatism in fiction (a rather short reading list) in the Spring of 2011, so I'm coming up with all sorts of crazy arguments for conservatism, even though I'm far from a conservative. The lecture I'm working on now is called the "Case Against Sex" and it made me think of the treatment of virginity in TV sci-fi. There has been very little sexuality shown on screen, but characters are usually prone to be identified as heterosexual men or women (Captain Jack and company excluded). Explicitly virginal characters are very rare. Until the 1996 Doctor Who movie, and the new series, Doctor who was not, as Terrance Dicks puts it, a "snogger". In other words, he was always suppossed to be above romantic relationships and a little aloof from them. Doctor Who therefore is the model of the viriginal character in science fiction. The other major virgin in sci-fi is Marcus Cole from Babylon 5, where his virginity is seen as a mark of his priest-like Ranger status. The whole priest-Ranger idea is interesting, especially since Marcus's virginity is not tied to a hatred of sex, but simply the fact that he has not found the right woman. This makes his death at the end of season four all the more poignant, because we know he is sacrificing his chance for sexual love, for the woman he has romantic desires for. I think this latter, joyful kind of virginity may be a postive way of depicting singles and virgins in the future, rather than using them as the butt of some cosmic joke.

Punishment Park

Peter Watkins's Punishment Park is probably the most radical sci-fi film ever produced. Punishment Park tells the story of a group of political prisoners (actually 2 groups), of leftist persuasions, who are taken to a government park and used as training material for police exercises. Perhaps the most famous scene in the movie is a straight-by-the-numbers repeat of the gagging of Bobby Seale, an infamous act that occurred in the 1968 Chicago trials, when Seale, a black man, was ordered gagged by a judge. Watkins used a number of experimental techniques in the film, the most interesting of which is the use of amateur actors to get more "natural", less acted reactions. Though this amateur acting can be a little unnerving at times, it overall is a success, though not to the extent it was in Privilege, Watkins's even better 1967 movie. Punishment Park was part of the sci-fi bonanza of the late sixties and early seventies - a time period in which science fiction films actually said something about the world, rather than copying it. Watkins is a justifiably acclaimed director, and I sincerely hope that he has not made his last film. Science fiction needs more visionaries in his image.

Neanderthal Negativity

One aspect of contemporary science fiction that I am greatly concerned about, indeed worried, is the tendency of television sci-fi and film to trivialize the life experience of Neanderthals and other proto-human peoples. This can occur in something as innocous as the Flintstones, or as deeply troubling as Geico commercials. The slogan "So Easy a Cave Man Can Do It" I find personally morally revolting. That slogan is nothing more than human biological chauvinism against a lifeform potentially as advanced and sentient as we are. The sci-fi channel has frequently used the Neanderthal-run-amok plot idea and it also featured in Star Trek:TOS ("Galileo Seven", the TNG episode about a deevolved Worf) and the old BSG. I believe it is imperative for television programs to be respectful in their treatment of Neanderthal life, and I believe this for entirely rational reasons.

The human species may be on the cusp of major technological breakthroughs that will allow us to meld species. Already this has been done at the embryonic level, with human-animal hybrids (usually destroyed after a short time in the womb). The definition of what constitutes humanity is therefore much more problematic today than it was, say, 20 years ago. For that reason, sci-fi fans must demand that science fiction series treat potentially sentient lifeforms with respect. The evidence for Neanderthal sentience is overwhelming. To make fun of "Cave Men" as stupid is, in my opinion, the equivalent of using the N word, and indeed is a conscious play to human racist sentiments. I, for one, will continue to be incensed at how television disrespects our closest sentient relatives, and I hope you will be too.

Horizon: That pesky anti-colonial Blake's 7 episode

I think one of the most interesting Blake's 7 episodes is "Horizon". Horizon deals with Blake's attempt to find a rebel hide out on a colonized Federation planet. What makes the episode so interesting is that it is very clearly a direct attack on British imperial designs in India, with the governor Ro standing in as a convenient representative of the colonial collaborator, later colonial rebel. Remember, this was the time period in Britian when Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell were still very popular among British conservatives. A time period when Mary Whitehouse was relentlessly ferreting out deviance from any sci-fi series that showed a spark of spunk. For Blake's 7 to so directly attack British imperialism and side with the native point of view, shows that the series, even in the relatively early-going, was going to attack big issues. I do think certain elements of the program, particularly Ro's return to native dress, have a touch of British condescension, but I think overall this episode does an admirable job of putting the post-colonial agenda on the sci-fi map. Later series, like Earth 2, could use this plot development as a valuable starting point.

The Science Fiction Emmys: Best series at portraying LGBT characters

I thought, in addition to my series on post-colonialism in sci-fi, I'd conduct a sci-fi Emmy series. So, I decided to start with an easy Emmy: Best LGBT characterization. Does anyone really even need to guess here? It's Captain Jack, from Torchwood, of course! Captain Jack is one of my favorite characters in all of science fiction. I don't understand how anyone, even the most homophobic bigot, could hate old Jack. His one liners recall Kerr Avon, he has the charisma of Paul Darrow as well, and he is an LGBT-advocates dream for positive science fiction depictions. Indeed, my only problem with Captain Jack's characterization is that it is so well done that it's almost too easy to like him. He's in some sense, a safe LGBT character, not a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" drag queen with a heart of gold. But I think it's important to realize that until the new Doctor Who and Torchwood brought in LGBT characters into the realm of sci-fi, LGBT characters were still in the closet. I think, unfortunately, they still are to a large extent in American sci-fi. While homoerotic subtexts could be found in British sci-fi as far back as Blake and Avon, those same subtexts are fairly rare in American science fiction. If I could nominate an honorable mention, it would definitely be Babylon 5, which quietly promoted a very sincere pro-gay reading of modern science fiction. I've heard that Dark Angel, DS9, and perhaps Dollhouse have also attempted this, but the recent controversy over the American adaption of Torchwood (since fortuitously canceled) shows that we have a long way to go.