Entertainment
How Censorship Ruined Star Trek's Sexiest Planet
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
In Star Trek, there is a planet named Risa that is known for one thing: being the most sexually adventurous destination location in the galaxy. We got our greatest look at this pleasure planet in Deep Space Nine’s “Let He Who Is Without Sin,” an episode that producers originally intended to fill with bikinis and naughty storylines. Unfortunately, they faced so much censorship from the network that the raunchiness was completely neutered, leaving showrunner Ira Steven Behr to declare that there was no longer any point to the story they were trying to tell.
Speaking of which, the story in “Let He Who Is Without Sin” is that Worf and Jadzia Dax want to hash out their relationship problems on Risa, and they bring Quark, Bashir, and Leeta along for the ride. But Worf hates the relative softness of this pleasure planet and its people almost right away, which is why he falls in with a group of radicals who think Risa is the prime example of Federation citizens becoming overly weak. After committing some light eco-terrorism (as a treat) by screwing with the planet’s weather system, Worf learns the error of his ways and patches things up with Jadzia.
Where’s All The Sex?
Most Star Trek fans who hate this episode do so because the Worf storyline is utterly insane: his actions affect thousands of people, and he never faces any consequences whatsoever. However, the writers and producers behind this Deep Space Nine episode believed it failed for a reason entirely different from the one they had in mind. Namely, network censorship kept them from portraying anything too naughty on the pleasure planet, ultimately making Risa feel sexless and boring.
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, veteran Deep Space Nine writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe is quoted as explaining why Star Trek couldn’t do anything really risque with its most infamous sex planet. “Kids watch this show, and in some markets it airs at five o’clock,” which “meant we couldn’t show skin” and “there was no sex.” At that point, “It became a totally asexual show, and once that happened, the whole thing got flushed down the toilet because none of it made sense anymore.”
What Slips In Must Slip Out
To his credit, Wolfe understood immediately that these restrictions were going to ruin the story he had written, and he tried to warn the showrunner (and co-writer) Ira Steven Behr. In a later interview with Geektown, Behr said that Wolfe kept telling him, “let’s pull the plug on this,” and “this is not going to work.” In retrospect, he agreed, but admitted that at the time, “I just didn’t have the guts to dump it.”
As for why “Let He Who Is Without Sin” couldn’t work with all the censorship requirements, Behr said that in order “to do a really sexy show about Risa,” they had to be able to portray characters “experiencing pleasures” of a carnal nature. Unfortunately, he discovered that “you couldn’t even have sexy bathing suits, really.” The producers also couldn’t have sexy birthday suits: after filming a naked massage scene, Leeta actor Chase Masterson was told by executive producer Rick Berman that the scene was getting cut because it was “too sexy for Star Trek.”
Sex: The Next Generation
On top of his general creative frustrations over what they could and couldn’t show onscreen, Ira Steven Behr hated the fact that this censorship rendered Worf’s story completely nonsensical. Summing up his concerns, he asked Geektown, “Why the hell were we doing this dumb show about someone who is upset about Risa when Risa seemed so unassuming and so tame?” Originally, Behr wanted to present a society so permissive and hedonistic that even the forward-thinking Star Trek fandom would question whether this planet had gone too far in embracing pure sexuality.
Unfortunately, network restrictions killed any real exploration of sexuality, and making the required changes to the story meant the writers never addressed the big plot hole in “Let He Who Is Without Sin:” the fact that Worf is never penalized by Starfleet for a blatant act of petulant ecoterrorism. As Behr points out, the entire plot about Worf hating Risa’s hedonism makes no sense when the entire planet has zero sex appeal. Ultimately, the failure to properly portray Risa and properly motivate Worf cements this as one of the worst Deep Space Nine episodes ever made.