Picking up from where the previous post left off…
Saw the Spock-child. It would be Sarek-child, but that's harder to say. Anyway. They continue to fill my heart with love and wonder at the miracle that is the development of humans, and I'm now going to sully that by getting back to this. After I've charged the vape.
Please, someone else read this?
Right; where did I get to...
The Orion slave woman who's wearing the purple bat-shaped corset pushes open a door and walks into Engineering like she's high and this is DisneyWorld. Everyone stops to look at her, which is definitely something you want to happen around a warp core. She finds Kelby (he's the Chief Engineer, or would be if someone would piss off back to the Columbia like he keeps saying he will) and thanks him for helping her find the mess hall that morning. It looks like he's going to escort her back out of a restricted area, but she want to know more about the warp core. A little cutaway shot has an annoyed-looking female crew member drag a male colleague back to the work they were doing, because men are such slaves to their hormones.
The Orion slave woman, D'Nesh, caresses the warp core and then asks for a tour because "Harrad-Sar never let us leave our rooms." Kelby offers to show her around, then they leave the engine room. On his duty shift! Hardly Chief Engineer behaviour, especially considering that I strongly suspect the tour will be 'the corridors to Kelby's quarters' and nothing else. Probably just as well he's a senior officer and therefore doesn't have to share a room.
Cut to: Sickbay. Hoshi walks in and asks what Dr. Phlox has for a headache. Phlox is walking oddly, and his hair is a touch dishevelled. Something is wrong with Phlox! Ensign Keely was in with a similar headache just a few minutes ago (that's not what's wrong with Phlox). What happens to paracetamol in the next 140 years??[note: this was originally written before the whole paracetamol-during-pregnancy-causes-autism bollocks of autumn 2025] Anyway, Phlox can't find an obvious cause and Hoshi blames stress and relates it to the Orion slave women. She says that she's not used to trying to work with guys who just stand around drooling whenever one of them is around; Phlox says she's jealous of them – which is quite a leap. Men love to go to sexual jealousy between women, as if we all live and die for men to think we're attractive, and we all have to be the prettiest in the room at all times. (For the record; I'm not even the prettiest ostensibly alone in the room right now; Maggie the cat is just over there and she wins paws down, no question.) It's a thought-ending cliche if ever there was one. According to Phlox, it's all just "healthy sexual energy"? Up to a third of the crew are unable to do their jobs to an acceptable standard because they're sweaty and disrupted – speaking of which, the disarrayed Phlox then collapses. He says he must be nearing a sleep cycle but recently had one, so clearly the unknown thing affecting the women is what's affecting him, too.
Back to Engineering, and maybe Kelby didn't immediately go to his quarters after all? He and D'Nesh are talking about the matter-antimatter reaction and dilithium crystals. I get the sense the actor is trying to make her lines all sexy and suggestive, but it's like talking about nuclear fission in lingerie. I'm not saying it's impossible, but as flirtation goes it's highly improbable. I guess the writers really wanted to imagine a circumstance where a Sexy WomanTM gets aroused by listening to a man talk about his unsexy job? Kelby is cockblocked by Trip who is still not fucking off back to his ship (the Columbia).
Kelby's eyeline is off, so it looks a bit like he's just so turned on that he's about ready to kiss the nearest person and that happens to be Trip. Except they're butting heads and Kelby's being all aggressive. Because Trip won't feck off back to the Columbia like he keeps saying he will; because he just got cockblocked—or is something else afoot? By the strings and French Horn of Tension, it might just be the last option (or secret answer 4: all of the above – I guess it depends on how the actors wanted to play it). Trip orders him off duty, or the brig it’d be more comfortable there. D'Nesh twirls her hair some more.
Look, it's the ship! Wheeeee!
And now to Navaar's room where she's conveniently lying on her bunk, turned so her body is facing the camera. Until she sits up, the shot seems to be carefully composed so her hip is never out of frame. It's also perfectly set up so that Archer's crotch is very much in the middle of the shot, too. R O O M Y. She immediately gets into his personal space – which could be to fit into the shot, but it doesn't feel that way. Immediately, she's all breathy-voiced and flirty; she's "been [Archer's] property for two days".
STARFLEET DOESN'T CONDONE SLAVERY STARFLEET DOESN'T CONDONE SLAVERY STARFLEET DOESN'T CONDONE SLAVERY STARFLEET DOESN'T CONDONE SLAVERY
After telling her that she and her sisters aren't his property, he explains that "On my world, slavery's been illegal for hundreds of years." 2
Navaar is mostly confused: "I've been a slave my entire life. On different worlds, for different owners."
This is making me think of the anti-sexwork types who want to 'rescue' trafficked people and sex workers by having them arrested and kicked out the country (assuming they're foreign nationals), with little to no support in the aftermath.
"You're free to start a new life." 3
And what does Navaar do with her freedom? Get right back to exploring Archer's large and roomy ship, apparently. She's now choosing to get it on with him – and hey, uncoerced enthusiastic consent is sexy. T'Pol calls down to Archer to say they're arriving at the planet that's basically an enormous lump of magnesite floating in space for realsies, which would usually prompt an 'on my way' type of response. He mumbles "be right there" and immediately gets waylaid. BTW, Makeup did a really good job with the body paint in this scene – there's only the slightest hint of transfer on Bakula's face if you look fairly closely.
The ship arrives at the planet, and Archer arrives on the bridge. Something might be up (ahem), because the turbolift door opens and he's facing the wrong way. He swaggers out on to the bridge and something is definitely up (though maybe not that), because his collar is far more open than usual, and he's awffy sweaty. Archer sort of looms around the bridge as an unfamiliar vessel appears, and fires weapons at them. Reid laughingly notes that the unknown aliens, who appear to be in a science ship, could shoot at them all day and they'd take no damage; but Archer wants to return fire, which will have the mild side-effect of destroying the alien vessel. The men all seem to have varying degrees of sweaty faces, from Mayweather's popping biceps to Reid's dewy glow to Archer's I-think-that's-a-fever?; the Drums of Conflict are pounding, the Violins of Peril play an extended note, as Archer orders Reid again, but Reid refuses! Archer shoves Reid away from the weapons controls, meaning to murder the unknown scientists himself! But the alien ship has flown away, probably forever blissfully unaware that they nearly died there. We never so much as think about them again.
Cut to: a green bum.
Seriously. D'Nesh is walking down a corridor and the camera is set at about the height of her knees or just above. It fully pans up her back and down again to her feet (this might be Quentin Tarantino's preferred iteration of Star Trek) as she makes her way to Kelby's quarters. Lads, I think they're going to do The Sexxx. Whatever Archer and Navaar did earlier was probably more like a quick handjob.
Exterior of the ship (a nice overhead of the ship passing by in orbit of the spherical magnesite with ionic clouds), then Kelby and D'Nesh, looking somewhat post-coital. D'Nesh still has her bat corset on though. Maybe getting in and out of what looks to be somehow a one-piece bikini? is more hassle than she can be bothered with. Or maybe it's only been 5 minutes and she didn't have time to disrobe.
Kelby is having a moan about how Trip is still on the ship and not, you know, fecking off to the Columbia like he said he would. It's unclear how much time elapsed while we watched the ship orbit the biggest lump of magnesite you've ever laid eyes on; but presumably not that long because we have almost 20 minutes left to get things wrapped up here. In the episode, not you and I. Unless you want to read a lot faster all of a sudden. I guess they're either scanning the planet between the clouds where they can (the ionic clouds are interfering with the scans so Sarek knows how much magnesite is really down there) while waiting for Harry to arrive; or because so much of the crew has been so inefficient the past few days, they're getting caught up on their paperwork. That ship passing under us (maybe a new euphemism?) stands for anything from two minutes upwards – my point is that either Kelby just started moaning about Trip not long after D'Nesh arrived and this is one of those "no, it happens to all men" moments, or it's after something because like I say, it's hard to judge as she's still fully dressed. As much as an Orion slave woman can be, anyway. The apparent capacity for longevity suggests it's past time for shore leave, ideally at a pleasure planet like Risa. The crew needs some jamaharon.
D'Nesh encourages Kelby to complain about Trip, but then pulls back when Kelby intimates that he wants to get intimate. The delivery of "I'm used to being with men who take what they want!" is odd to me, and I can't quite say why. It sounds very artificial and performed, which SPOILERS does fit with the Orion freed-slave women having hidden intentions and D'Nesh specifically pushing Kelby's buttons to get something.4
Kelby interprets the thing to be taken as his job, or maybe he's actually really still thinking about the luscious lips of Charles 'Trip' Tucker III? D'Nesh asks "what would you do to keep me forever?" and predictably, he says "anything you want" which is probably better than specifics. They were just discussing his inflamed passions about Tucker multi-blocking him, after all. Kissy kissy lie down, fade to black.
So Kelby has finally, almost definitely, shown D'Nesh his large and roomy starship. Who knows if she ever got the purple bat-kini off though; it really seems like the male crew are intensely frustrated in this episode (female crew members? Who experience sexual desire? What in the Erica Jong are you on about?! That said; can you imagine an episode of Enterprise about female sexual desire? That would be Code of Honor level bad.) and remarkably sweaty at all times, she probably didn't have time to disrobe. Disbikini?
Sweaty Kelby is up to something as he sneaks into Engineering though a hatch that might be a small door, and starts pressing buttons on a screen. An alarm sounds as Trip descends the ladder from the warp core, so he rushes back up and quickly discovers that Kelby is messing with something important. To get to the part of Engineering Kelby is at, Trip has to go back down his ladder again, then up another – would it not have been more sensible to put these work stations up ladders all on the same, contiguous floor? Especially in moments like this, when getting from one work station to another in a timely manner is of utmost importance? We’ll soon discover that adrenaline has been elevated in the menfolk, in response to a pheromone released by the Orion slave women (apparently deliberately) – remember when pheromones were a big thing? – and this has made them more aggressive, suggestible and delusional.
Did you know; the main emotional response to increased adrenalin levels is fear?
So. Trip pulls Kelby away from the console; Kelby punches Trip (hard enough to make him fall to the floor); Trip rugby tackles Kelby to get him away from the workstation, and they throw a few punches when they get back up. Kelby gets one more punch in, to Trip's 4 blows and that's Kelby out for the count. Adrenaline, remember. Kelby is so full of adrenaline in this scene that he's sweating hard and apparently significantly more aggressive; while Trip is noticeably unsweaty throughout the episode – the only male to be wholly unaffected by these mystery pheromones, unless Porthos escaped too. Nonetheless, Kelby goes down like a sack of sweaty, terrified potatoes; and Trip attempts to undo whatever he was doing to something very important in Engineering.
Trip yells "Blow the dampners! Move!" and the men in Engineering tie their ponytails.
Exterior: the Enterprise comes to a halt (well, not a halt – powered flight stops suddenly, but an object in motion...) in orbit of the biggest oblate spheroid of magnesite in the Alpha Quadrant, hand on heart Captain; no word of a lie or Sarek strike me down. Seems not all the thrusters lost power at the same time, as the ship immediately loses attitudinal stability and looks like it's away to do Yeager Loops until power can be restored. I hope inertial dampners weren't the ones being blown, or there's going to be the tang of butyric acid mixed in with whatever is the 22nd century's equivalent to Lynx Africa; unwashed sports socks; that cabbage smell that always shows up eventually around institutional kitchens; and – as two thirds of the crew are male, and all no doubt extremely and Bermanly heterosexual – the scent of jizz by the bucket load.
Whatever Kelby did, it blew out every EPS junction in the system? What system? That was far too easy, even if Kelby is technically the chief engineer. Anyway; they might be dead in the water, so to speak.
They arrive in Sickbay to question Kelby, who is strapped to the bed. There's crosstalk (cross-shout, to be more accurate) as Phlox needs to administer treatment for the dangerously high adrenaline levels 5, but Archer is all "not until he's answered some questions!" because extreme fear makes him needlessly cruel, it seems. The sedative is administered, and Phlox gets enough peace to explain the pheromones to Trip (Archer is still there, but seems to remain extremely disrupted). According to this episode, dramatically increasing the typically male metabolism causes aggression? Is he saying that the men are hangry?? Then they ultimately become delusional, while Phlox says while waving towards the now passed-out Sweaty Kelby. It seems his delusion is that he thinks Trip is out to get him? Put a pin in that; I'll come back to it. Eventually.
Female crew haven't escaped the pheromones either; the effects on them are headaches and listlessness. Phlox posits that it's to "reduce competition" between sexual rivals because all women, at all times, are always competing for male attention. All of it! Nothing else matters! The menfolk are on to us!
Phlox is suffering the effect of the pheromones to his sleep cycle so intensely, he has to take stimulants to stay awake. In fact, the only unaffected crew members are Trip and T'Pol. Tri'Pol, if you will. For all that Archer is stalking around the room, reminding me of nothing more than Neanderthal!Riker from Genesis (TNG, season 7; Gates McFadden's directorial episode), he's paying attention and is on the ball. He asks what's special about Tri'Pol (I'd apologise but I'm quite proud of coming up with that just there, so I don't want to) and Phlox says he's not sure. Oh, and by the way, the effect is cumulative. There's no likely outcome stated, but we cut immediately to Archer and T'Pol walking with purpose while the strings of climaxing dramatic tension play. She's still in her raspberry pink velour, which is in contrast to Archer's navy blue uniform. (Her wearing pink to his blue really is fitting for this episode, innit?)
The Captain confronts the Orion slave women in the decon chamber, where they've been placed to isolate them from the crew; and Navaar tries to be all scathing. Someone went and searched the Orion slave women's room, and they found a communication device that looks remarkably like a large, brass bath plug.
There's some discussion about what they've been up to, and Navaar tries to undermine Archer's sense of his masculinity by suggesting he's a weak commander, then the Sexxxay Pheromone Mind Control kicks in (the decon chamber containment really worked out, huh?) and he starts mirroring her movements, almost letting them out of their makeshift brig. T'Pol breaks the spell; either by simply speaking, or reminding him of his rank and responsibilities on the ship. Captain Archer and T'Pol leave, but oh no! The random MACO is sweating, and Navaar is making eye contact with him! Who could have foreseen this totally predictable development? Also, someone really had better check the decon system.
Archer tells T'Pol to get down to Engineering, and help Trip fix the ship so it can move when Harry shows up. She protests; Archer's judgement is impaired, much like his vision must be by the sweat rolling into his eyes. Archer insists he's fine, and orders her to the engine room.
In the engine room, Tri'Pol discuss their situation re: the Orion threat and Trip's naiveté when they started out on the mission, back in season 1. This is cut off by two crew members having a loud altercation that Trip steps in to curtail. He turns back to T'Pol, sighing that "that's the third one in the last hour." They discuss the pheromone situation some more, then turn to how it's not affecting Trip at all. T'Pol says it's probably to do with her; there's an elder married female Vulcan's tale that when a Vulcan mates, there's a shared psychic bond. Trip disagrees that they mated. T'Pol rolls her eyes and says "Uh huh." I have questions. Do I want answers? Oh yeah, that time they showed a surprising amount of Jolene Blalock's bottom. They mated.
Just as well, really, as that psychic bond is what's protecting Trip, even though she didn’t ask if he wanted to bond psychically so that’s morally dubious – much like that time Trip was pregnant. Bodily autonomy and consent, particularly in intimate situations? In early-2000s sci-fi, written mostly by men for an assumed audience of pretty much only men? I think not! That's (barely) for girls (in theory, anyway; in practise not so much)!
Back to the Bridge: Archer is pacing around, waiting for Harry to arrive. Finally, his ship appears on sensors: tactical alert is called. Who turned out the lights? Archer stops pacing as Harry hails them – probably for the best; he'd probably trip on something in the dark. As the Strings of Peak Dramatic Tension are playing, Archer doesn't play Faith of the Heart at him again, and Harry is at first solicitous. Archer – who may now be the most affected by the Orion slave women's pheromones, now that Kelby is out cold – isn't willing to play nice, and goes straight to what he thinks Harry is after: the Enterprise. Harry won't get it without a fight! However, it's not the ship that Harry is after. He's here for Archer's head, with or without the relevant body attached.
Dude, he literally told you this right before the dancing! This is why you do business before the entertainment!
Harry starts shooting, and takes out the phase cannons pretty rapidly. Then the torpedo tubes are tied. Harry then stops shooting; grapples the ship, and begins to tow it away. Enterprise can't break free. Harry's on the horn, he wants to talk again. Archer, at one point, says "we're not going anywhere!" and isn’t the point of Harry’s grappler that they can’t go anywhere other than where they’re towed – like that planet with the slave market from the last episode with the Orions? So I guess they are going somewhere. 'tism? No idea what you mean.
Harry then says that it's out of his hands; that he and Archer are slaves in this situation. At the emphasis of the word "slaves", a penny drops.
Archer: "They control you?"
Harry: "You finally realise that. Yes, Captain, you've been operating under a misconception…
“It is the men who are the slaves, not the women."
I’d love to run around every room, screaming bloody murder, but the episode unfortunately isn’t over yet.
Is that relief on Archer's face? Realisation?
Or maybe he just figured out how to leap home?
Maybe Archer plays Faith of the Heart now, because we immediately cut down to the engine room and Tri'Pol reacting to something. They're off to the bridge! T'Pol arrives first and starts doing something at her station. They're going to send a positron burst through the towing cable, which will break the connection.
Then: as the music indicates things hitting their nadir (it seriously made me think of "Mister Worf, despatch a subspace message to Admiral Hansen: we have engaged the Borg.") the turbolift door opens and it's the Orion slave women and their Sexxxay Mind Control Pheromones! T'Pol and Hoshi try to break the spell, but Archer is manipulated into ordering Reid who is manipulated into obeying the order to arrest T'Pol at phaser-gun-point. Again, sexual jealousy between women is suggested. Ugh. I’m getting tired of inspecting the inside of my skull.6
However, Trip arrives to save the day; stunning Reid, then Archer and also Mayweather. It's just Tri'Pol versus the Orion slave women now. Where’d Hoshi go?
The positron burst worked – it seems Orion ships aren't that well designed, because the when the energy system goes down, it takes out propulsion and weapons as it goes. The Enterprise still had weapons when their EPS system broke!
Navaar tries her 'charms' on Trip, calling him "the true master" of this large and roomy penis vessel. She doesn't notice that he isn't all sweaty and disturbed, and he provides an armed escort off the bridge for all three Orion slave women.
Exterior: ship at warp. Captain's Log: Supplemental. The women are all back on Harry's ship. I wonder if 'Sar' translates to Orion for 'Mudd'?
Sickbay: Phlox is treating everyone with some sort of injection. The pheromones will wear off in a few days, and Reid managed a whole 10 minutes without thinking about the Orion slave women! Well, you just bollocksed that up there, didn't you Malcolm?
T'Pol: "At least we learned something about the Orions."
Malcolm, chuckling: "Yeah, that the women are in charge!"
T’Pol: "It proves that even the most disagreeable of species have some... positive attributes." 7
Remember a while ago, when Kelby left the narrative? I said I wanted to return to his apparent delusion; namely that Trip was out to get him and thwart his promotion to chief engineer. Pin removal time: Trip gets T'Pol to admit that she wants him back on the Enterprise, and he reveals that he put in the return transfer request three days beforehand, so possibly before all the hormone-driven hijinx ensued (the passage of time is hazy in this episode, though it appears to be three or four days at most — happy new year! The Hogmanay bash on the ship must’ve been quite something that year) meaning that when Kelby was fretting to D'Nesh about his promotion being thwarted, he was in fact completely correct. Oh, and whatever this you-want-me-here-but-we-didn't-mate-but-we-did-just-kiss thing is between Tri'Pol isn't a big deal. Ugh.
I need a drink.
Digressions/Footnotes: (I’ve not quite worked out how to make footnotes work; sorry about that. Maybe I'll fix it eventually.)
1: If visiting Talos IV in the 23rd century is high treason, punishable by execution in the 23rd century; how is slavery punished in the 22nd century, where behaving like they did at the end of the 20th century is standard for a lot of the humans selected to be the first humans ever that far from Earth? Have I got that the wrong way around. Have I even made the point I thought I did? Legal standards of the 22nd and 23rd century are going to be a wild ride, anyway. Slavery and the death penalty are terrible – hottest take, I know.
Okay; bear with me. 2154: slavery is illegal in Starfleet. 2250-ish: Captain of the flagship, the finest crew in the fleet, is considering resigning – TO BECOME A SLAVER with the Orion Syndicate. Maybe Pike is being hyperbolic, but Boyce's response doesn't quite match that. Or maybe it does? Owning other sentient beings might be acceptable, but visiting a no-no planet will have you killed by the state. WTactualF.
2: The history of abolition is far more interesting that I, not one for History as a subject (though I am very fascinated with certain historical events), had ever really considered before. But, to save your failing eyes and cramping scrolling thumb, I will leave that for another time – or better yet, someone far more qualified.
So, for the sake of brevity: slavery was declared illegal as Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1948. Theoretically, slavery is illegal more or less everywhere on Earth.
This scene presumably takes place on December 29th, 2154 – 206 years, 19 days since the UDHR was signed into international law, as it happens. 200 hundred years is technically a multiple of 100, hence "hundreds". Slavery was abolished in the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 18th, 1865. (Almost a full year after the amendment was passed by Congress, and never forget that the Amendment still allows slavery, as a treat – when it's punishment for a crime. That fun plotline in Orange Is The New Black that involved the inmates making (and then wearing and selling) underpants? Slavery.) 289 years and 11 days before Archer has this encounter with a woman who everyone describes as a slave and appears to believe that she belongs to him – in the possessive, "you're my property" sense. But Archer clearly said "on my world" so he couldn't possibly have been meaning "in the US" because that would really emphasise the US-centric nature of Enterprise after all the efforts TNG, DS9 and VOY went to to be more global.
Anyone else find the short amount of time (relatively) between 1865 and 1948 – 83 years – disorienting? The amount of technological advancement between those years is almost overwhelming – and no wonder Far Beyond The Stars hits so hard.
3: Okay, and what would that actually look like? If they have indeed been slaves all their lives, what sort of education did they get and skills could they develop? Remember; Navaar is "the most skilled", and I doubt it's in engineering, exobiology or even embroidery. To build a new life, including having a good shot at reaching some sort of stability, most people need a job. This is where the allegory starts shedding the green body paint. Archer's Earth has moved on from capitalism, so rent and bills aren't an issue, but humans still need to feel like they're doing something that they value with the majority of their time. In the fully automated luxury gay space communism of Star Trek's future, everyone has a job if they want it and it'll most likely be in a field they enjoy. In 2025, not so much. Sex work can have a much better hourly rate than whatever the National Minimum Wage – Because We'd Pay You Less If We Could! – happens to be at any given time.
(If you're reading this, you're giving me purpose, so thanks for that. Hopefully, you are also relaxing and/or entertained, so this sloppy dissertation has purpose, too. Oooh, semantic satiation. Purpose. Purpose. Purposepurposepurposepur. Purrpohse. Porpoise of purpose!)
4: Putting that line about "men who take what they want" right after she pulls away from Kelby's sexual advance, though. Big, as the kidz say, oof. Especially when you combine it with that line from 1966 that claims Orion Slave women "like being taken advantage of". The audience might not have that detail in mind when they watch this episode (unless they're doing an Orion-themed episode binge which now that I think of it, might not be such a bad idea) but the writers probably did and it's certainly something when Roberto Orci is seemingly less misogynistic regarding the Orion slave women.
5: Hyperadrenalism is also known as Cushing's syndrome. It can be fatal, but it's very easily treated, even now. If you clicked through on that last link, and read the conclusion, you'll already know that there's a strong correlation between a Cushing's diagnosis and symptoms that dramatically reduce a person's mortality – within a period of years, not days. (Moi kochany; please remind me to do that thing that's in capital letters on my to-do list; turns out it could be quite important.) However, it's extremely unlikely that anyone in the crew would drop down dead in the next five years... unless... unless he's been demonstrating the roominess of his vessel! Oh no! No wonder Archer looks extra-frowny!
6: Get this, folks: it's entirely possible for men and women (and everyone else) to work together, to be friends – without any sexual attraction involved. There's also far less sexual jealousy between women than this episode would like you to believe. In fact, in some groups of friends (not pointing elbows or anything cough) comprising femmes and friendly enbies even including some femmbies, there's negative sexual jealousy/competition between us. We're there to gas each other up and forget that cis, straight men are even a thing – for a while at least. This is a subtle reference to a Discord server I run and hopefully my friend Veronica will remember to join it eventually; this is your reminder if you ever read this, V! (I hope you appreciate the very elaborate and surprisingly wordy set-up.)
And we knew all this in 2005.
7: I don't know what's more disappointing: the extremely tired trope that it's actually women who have all the power over men; because women are the keepers of sex, while all men are just constantly horny and DTF at any given moment regardless of the circumstances and will do literally anything to get some, and women abuse that power over poor, helpless men to get what they want and my ex-wife/ex-girlfriend/woman-who-won't-accept-my-advances is a frigid bitchcuntwhore who only wants my money and was probably cheating anyway – or the other equally tired trope of women who think everyone should be politically, socially and legally equal actually want a matriarchy.
In conclusion; the only way I can think that maybe this contrivance of an episode exists is to find a way to retroactively exonerate 1966 Pike. Slavery isn't morally reprehensible when the slaves willingly participate, right? Are the Orion slave girls even really slaves?
There's an action figure of Vina "as an Orion Animal Woman" (emphasis mine) by the way. It's interesting that one of the most iconic women in all of Star Trek is described as a slave or an animal. Her only trait is her sexuality, which is presented for the men observing her. It's to be possessed, quite literally traded. Orion women undermine the much-vaunted ideal of the utopian future, where everyone is equal regardless of gender. Bound's assertion that Orion women have all the power aside, Orion women are not equal in their native culture, or to Starfleet officers. Lower Decks has done the most canonical work on Orion culture, and redressed the balance significantly. It seems makes a huge difference to have several women and people of different ethnicities in the writers' room. Yes, the cast of Lower Decks is animated (except for that crossover episode of Strange New Worlds) but the women especially feel far more fully realised than most of the women written by men, who went before them in the shows LD refers back to constantly.
When I wrote about Angel One, I quoted something attributed to Gene Roddenberry which shed light on his attitude to women; about how women (all women, everywhere) are manipulative liars etc. That blatant misogyny from men who are otherwise generally progessive is fully on display in Bound. (Misogyny from progressive/leftist men is nothing uncommon, it has to be noted.) The idea that women have power over men because all men are in a constant state of horny and women use access to sex to make men do things isn't new (and wasn't in 2005), though proponents have certainly made use of the internet to spread the idea as far and wide as they posibly can. Perhaps my online spaces are too much of a leftist, feminist "echo chamber" (excuse me while I roll my eyes at the concept) but I don't think it's ever really breeched MRA spaces because most people undertand that women often like sex; queer people exist, and that's just not how anything works. The whole concept displays the lowest opinion of men: wholly in thrall to their base impulses and barely able to do anything besides try to get off. The Venn diagram of people who think that, and those who believe men built civilisation and all technology and all 'good' art, etc, is an oblate spheroid – one that may contain enough magnesite to build a thousand warp cores. The cognitive dissonance to cast men as all-powerful and yet also so exploitable must cause many, many nosebleeds.
I just read an episode review that's old enough to refer to the Wachowskis by the wrong gender, which suggested that the writer of this episode – Manny Coto – meant it all as a playful callback to TOS and (presumably) the rampant misogyny of that series. It was a joke, you see. It's hard to laugh when jokes like that undermine the equality and quality of life of half the world's population by reinforcing (whether by accident or by deliberate choice; the outcome is the same) the very dated patriarchal ideas that too many people hold with utmost seriousness. Is the joke the TOS-style misogyny? Or is it the big reveal; that the men are the slaves: not the women who have always been referred to in the entire franchise as slaves? What makes either of those things funny?
I think I said near the beginning of Part One that Enterprise is, to me, regressive Trek. The humanity portrayed is little better than the middle of the road of the early 21st century, made in part by people who possibly thought – at some deep, dark level – that they would lose out on things if women and minorities were on the same level as them. "As some have observed we may not be able to stop evolution, but perhaps we can reduce it to a slow crawl." Who knew that 18 years later, it would be the producers with their thumbs on the scale?
While looking for a relevant We Hunted The Mammoth post that helps to illuminate support my half-cocked thesis, I found this and it's hilarious so I can't not share it here.