Star Trek

But in-universe it was probably from shagging

Or halfway through Cause and Effect where he turns Data’s Ops chair for Data to sit down in, but he has his leg up on Data’s console, so his crotch is Right. There.

‘Would you care to join my crotch at your station Mr. Data?’

It's hard for Riker to tell whether an android gets just how alpha he is, so an extra close waft is required occasionally to make sure.

Meanwhile on Enterprise the crew have gone to Risa having literally being told to shag the locals. The chief engineer is dressed as Leisure Suit Larry.

He was a nice character mostly because of his relationships with other people imho. Especially Garak, but O'Brien did also really need the support.

I'm quite sure he's a beloved character but I had the same issue with Franklin in B5 always stroking his patients faces and being weird trying to knock them bandy with his charm/shag them

You're a doctor aren't you

Our man bashir is one of my favourite episodes. Bashir is great

I like how Bashir'a character grew. He was a bit of an idealist smug Piers at the start, but he became a bit more grounded as the show progressed.

I do think a a lone character he's not great, but I agree that it's his interactions with Garak and O'Brien that shine.

I kinda wish Andrew Robinson had been allowed to keep playing Garak as bisexually interested in Bashir.

Robinson originally played Garak as gay, he himself said yeah Garak wants to have sex with Bashir. Early on I believe he's never seen showing much interest in any woman but he is delighted in Bashir's company and massages his shoulders and things like that. Legend has it that the DS9 runners were cool with it but higher executives stepped in and told them to tone it down and stop giving him so much time with Bashir. Later he was paired with a young woman (teenager?--err) just to be sure.

And with "higher executives", things seem to point at Rick Berman yet again who was a "raging homophobe" according to writer David Gerrold who got his gay TNG episode cancelled (but Berman's argument was "this is going to air at 4pm in some markets and we don't want angry letters from mums"--not sure if the argument of playing it safe is any better, TOS is actually by far the boldest Trek show because it dared to push boundaries). As a sidenote, Dominic Keating claimed he played ENT's Malcolm Reed as gay too, before they made him lusting after T'Pol pretty early on.

And truth be told, for a self-proclaimed progressive show Star Trek has a grim track record when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation. Scratch that, a grim track record for any TV show period. It got its first gay couple in fucking 2017, Fucking weak, I call BS on the entire franchise for this.

ENT tried a gay/HIV allegory with mind meld AIDS, but that went wrong too.
Sometimes I shudder at how backwards Star Trek could be. Did I mention Data's line in Nemesis "Ladies and gentlemen and invited transgendered species"? Fuck me. Sorry for rambling.

I remember reading that Robinson thought of Garak as sexually ambiguous so that when a load of Starfleet newbies turned up on Terok Nor he felt that Garak would naturally gravitate towards the prettiest - Bashir. It does come through in their early interactions before he was asked to tone it down.

If you watch Garak and Bashir'a first meeting, especially after knowing that Robinson was playing Garak as sexually interested, it's very hard to miss. Flirtatious, to say the least.

That's typical Discovery though. They had a robot girl sitting on the Bridge for 2 seasons and the first time we heard anything about her was when they killed her off.

I've always been a bit sceptical of Trek's progressive credentials though. People harp on about the first interracial kiss but it was made clear both participants were unwilling and it was used as a form of torture. Uhuru may be a black woman on the bridge but her job was basically to repeat what Kirk says. Meanwhile, Spock is the constant recipient of racist abuse from his comrades and all the women were basically window dressing.
TNG wasn't much better, were there any significant female characters?

Guinan was fairly significant