Star Trek's Writers Worried Famke Janssen's Guest Spot Would Spark A Controversy
Before they were Professor Charles Xavier and Jean Grey in "X-Men," Patrick Stewart and Famke Janssen shared the screen on an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Stewart was, of course, the series lead, Enterprise-D Captain Jean-Luc Picard, while Janssen played Kamala, one of the many beautiful alien women on "Star Trek." Captain Kirk may be the famed womanizer, but Picard had his dalliances over the show's seven seasons — Kamala included.
The episode is "The Perfect Mate," the 21st installment of the fifth season. Kamala is a Kriosian "metamorph," an empathetic being who can read their partners' feelings and adjust themselves to them. She's been betrothed to an ambassador from the neighboring world Valt, in hopes this will help end a conflict between the planets. As she travels on the Enterprise-D and works alongside Picard, they grow closer and closer.
Aired in 1992, this was Janssen's first role on television. She wasn't even Bond girl/villain Xenia Onatopp yet, let alone the awesomely powerful X-Man Phoenix. As detailed in the behind-the-scenes book "The Captain's Logs" by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, the episode's writers felt the need to get Kamala right and avoid sexist pitfalls that might displease the audience.
Just how progressive is Star Trek?
"Star Trek" has a reputation for trailblazing progressivism. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. even convinced Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) to stay on the show. A competent Black woman in a position of some authority on a TV series? That was radical for the 1960s. That's not to say it had a flawless track record. "Turnabout Intruder," for instance, suggested that somehow, sexism endured in this 23rd-century utopia and women weren't allowed to be starship captains.
Showrunner Michael Piller (who revised "The Perfect Mate") was concerned about the episode becoming one of these controversial ones:
"[Kamala] is an empathic metamorph and has the ability to be whatever a man wants her to be. For all those people who thought we were so sexually open-minded with the other shows, they're going to start sending in their letters and saying what's wrong with you guys on this one? This is the [most] adolescent male fantasy of all time."
As Piller notes in "The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion" by Larry Nemecek, the compromise was to have Dr. Crusher voice these concerns and then have Picard dismiss them on noninterventionist Prime Directive grounds. Likewise, Piller says in "The Captain's Logs" that the solution was to make the episode a character piece about Picard; "If Picard is confronted with his perfect mate, could he resist her?"
To that end, the episode had to sell Kamala as alluring as the script described her: "If there's no magnetic electricity between [Picard and Kamala] and it doesn't happen for me as a man watching her, then the audience will not accept for one second that Picard would even give her a second thought."
These days, "The Perfect Mate" is mostly remembered as a trivia note by "X-Men" fans, it being Stewart and Janssen's first time acting together. Clearly, someone bought their onscreen chemistry together.