Sexuality in Star Trek - Marriage in Star Trek

Marriage in Star Trek

Many major species in the Star Trek universe are depicted as having mainly monogamous, heterosexual marital relationships. Major characters who became married to each other include Keiko and Miles O'Brien, Worf and Jadzia Dax, Leeta and Rom, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, William Riker and Deanna Troi, and Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher (in an alternate future). Other characters noted as being married include Leonard McCoy (divorced before the events of Star Trek), Spock, Hikaru Sulu, Beverly Crusher, Katherine Pulaski, Benjamin Sisko, Tuvok, and T'Pol. The Doctor, a holographic individual, spent time with his own holographic family and got married to a human woman in the alternate timeline from which Admiral Janeway returns. James Kirk, experiencing memory loss, marries a Native American woman, Miramanee. The marriage lasts for several months, until Miramanee's death.

While marriage in Star Trek is most frequently shown to be a pairing of two individuals, the doctor aboard the Enterprise (NX-01), Phlox, was a prominent exception. A Denobulan, his species practiced polyamory. He had three wives, who in turn each had two other husbands besides him, and these were open marriages where spouses were free to pursue sexual relationships with others, as evidenced when one of Phlox's wives visited the Enterprise and openly flirted with Trip Tucker, in the Star Trek Enterprise season 2 episode 14 episode titled "Stigma." TNG episode "Up the Long Ladder" includes polyamory, or at least a relaxation of monogamy, as a requirement in the face of genetic necessity. Two human colonies need to interbreed to survive and Dr. Pulaski advises that each woman have a child by three different men and each man father a child with three different women to ensure sufficient genetic diversity.