Sexual Temptations In Star Trek: The Next Generation

Sex. It’s the word that causes many to sputter about red-faced and others to clutch their pearls. It is a topic whose discussion is reserved for locations other than polite society, rarely in mixed gender groups, and never with your parents. However, we are more than willing to be consumers in this topic when we are hidden away by ourselves or when it is disguised under the vail of entertainment. Our consumption of media laden with sexual overtones proves the warnings found within the Song of Solomon.
The most obvious way that that sexual temptation permeates its way into our lives is through the media we consume. I recall a promotional spot for Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring DeForest Kelley, a primary actor from the original Star Trek series, highlighting the differences between his Star

One of the main points Kelley emphasized was the differences in the way that the two programs handled what he termed “romantic encounters.” In the original series these scenes were defined by a long gaze into each other’s eyes followed by some romantic music and a cutaway, conversely, The Next Generation featured couples lying in bed together numerous times and occasionally ventured even further, once landing on a planet where fornication was the primary, if not only, pastime. This trend of leaving an ever diminishing amount up to the audience’s imagination, with television productions such as Grey’s Anatomy or Game of Thrones, continues even today where it is not uncommon for a television show to include a scene that, 20 some odd years ago, would have been considered a pornographic work or something only suitable for MTV. This