Free The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV by Stephen Tropiano

Niki has male bone structure. He concludes Niki was born an anatomical male, but the East German government forced him to have a sex change in order to win medals and advance their political agenda. But as Niki reveals, she’s the one who requested the operation after her parents died because, as a child, she felt like a little girl trapped in a boy’s body. Now she’s wondering if she made a mistake, since the East German government is preventing her from developing socially as a woman. Dr. Hoffman informs Niki she’s got to go back home, but just before her release she sneaks out of the hospital and seeks refuge in Dr. Cottrell’s apartment.
    During a woman-to-woman talk with Dr. Cottrell, Niki explains how even though she’s female on the outside, inside she feels like a “freak” because she doesn’t know how to act around boys. Dr. Cottrell advises Niki to be honest with people. She starts by sharing her secret with Tom (Andrew Stevens), an American diver who is sweet on her. Tom doesn’t know what to say, leaving Niki angry and even more confused.
    When she begins to bleed internally, Niki is rushed back to the hospital. Once she’s out of danger, a guilty Coach Hoffman agrees to loosen the apron strings. After a reunion with Tom, who apologizes for his behavior, Niki returns to what will hopefully be an improved life back home in East Germany.
    The episode takes a unique approach to the subject of transsexualism by displacing a political issue — United States-East German relations — onto the issue of sexual identity. Niki wants to stay in the United States because the East German government controls the three major factions of her life — the political, the professional, and the personal. She’s not seeking political asylum as much as personal asylum. The episode subscribes to the idea that while a person’s sex is biologically determined (and can be surgically altered), gender, in terms of masculine and feminine behavior, can be learned. Sheltered by her coaches, Niki was never sufficiently socialized as a female. As she says to Tom, “I will make a good girl, but will you be my friend and help me find out?” In the end, the young swimmer really has no choice but to return to East Germany, but at least Coach Hoffman agrees to allow her to live fully as a woman.
    An episode of St. Elsewhere (“Release”) deals with a surgeon who refuses to accept his friend’s decision to undergo a sex change. Airing eight years after “The Fourth Sex,” “Release” reveals how society (or at least medical show fans) were perceived as more enlightened. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Dr. Mark Craig (William Daniels), a brilliant yet arrogant surgeon who is shocked when his college roommate, Bob Overland (Andy Romano), checks into St. Eligius for a sex change. Though Bob has the support of his understanding wife, Anne (Alice Herson), Dr. Craig is determined to change Bob’s mind.
    Dr. Craig can’t believe his friend hid his secret from him during college, but Bob explains it would have ended their friendship. “It’s taken me years to stop trying to be something I’m not,” he admits, “Years of trying to be the best athlete, dating the most beautiful ladies, merely to compensate for my own strange feelings.” When Bob refuses even to allow him to consult with his psychiatrist, Dr. Craig considers wielding his power as chief of surgery to halt the procedure.
    “Well, you may have convinced your wife, but not me buddy,” Dr. Craig snarls. “I know you too well to agree to anything so disgusting.”
    “Overland is gone,” Bob declares. “He’s dead.”
    In a way, transsexuality here serves as a metaphor for how rapidly our society has changed over the years. Dr. Craig doesn’t interfere with Bob’s decision, but as he tells his drinking buddies, Nurse Helen Rosenthal (Christina Pickles) and Dr. Westphall (Ed Flanders), he wishes the world was the kind of place his father grew up in,