We do tend to try and stay open to gender stuff; usually there's a
reason why someone is male or female, so it's cast that way. But as an
example...in "Quality of Mercy," the role as originally written was for a
father/daughter combination. In the process of casting, we thought, why
not mother/daughter? So that's how it ended up. In "Points of Departure,"
we have one of your requests already taken care of...a part of a war
cruiser commander who could've been male or female...cast female.

jms