The thirst can be a weapon.
Cyia Batten played the 1st Ziyal (Dukat’s daughter) on DS9, Irina the rebellious racer in VOY, and Navaar the Orion pirate on ENT.
Orion culture is primarily a matriarchy, the slavery notion is a deception used in their schemes, the “feminine wiles” are a tool knowingly used for cons, there’s some degree of empowerment in using one’s attributes to their advantage, and Rick Berman is/will always be a creep.
Yes, I’m familiar with their stance of “hey you know those sex slaves? They are actually the evil ones and they enjoy slavery”. That’s the problem. They literally have a slaver say something along the lines or “I, the guy selling sex slaves, am the real victim here”
They are actually the evil ones and they enjoy slavery
That’s not it. They don’t enjoy slavery, they aren’t slaves. Orion culture is strictly matriarchal. Those women in the dancing girl costumes, they OWN that ship, set it’s agenda and define it’s targets. Given what we’ve seen of Orion culture in other shows more recently, it’s extremely likely that they are sisters and nobility on Orion, that their mom runs an arm of a major interstellar crime syndicate, they literally own that “slave trader” dude and could kill him or have him killed with zero consequences. But it’s more profitable to control him and others like him with sex drugs.
They make men into their mouth pieces and prey on the misogynist assumptions of the galaxy by showing patriarchal cultures what they expect to see from slave traders, then turning the tables on them.
Lower Decks did an awesome job of showing what the culture would evolve into given a few hundred more years and some more modern attitudes (and did it hilariously, and with a sex positive, feminist take on it).
Yes, the imagery is problematic and stems from artistic choices made in the 60s (literally more than half a century ago). But even in the Enterprise era, they were looking for ways to reinterpret that imagery and turn your assumptions about the power dynamics it implies upside down. That was the whole point of that episode. That’s why people “think it’s cool”.
You append to ENT a vision that was created years later to try to fix the problem. Lower decks did that, but the writers of Enterprise had no idea they would. They wrote it according to the existing vision of the orion slaves: a sexy, vulnerable woman sold into slavery. Which is, yes, very old-school.
But they do show that orions are slavers, as TPol for example is sold into slavery. By an orion man.
What enterprise did is keep the image of “sexy women” but added an “evil and manipulative” layer to it. While keeping them as slaves that say they are victims. How does this translate to the current world? “Sex trafficking victims, prostitutes, etc, are actually the cause of their situation and they enjoy it”?
Even Star Trek Continues managed to do much better, showing the orion slave as being trapped into hypocritical politics but being strong willed enough to fend for herself, showing that not defending victims forces them to go to dramatic ends.
And ENT didn’t do that just once, the writers are visibly pieces of shit so I have no doubt that the intention was absolutely not feminist. They have episodes defending more slavery (cogenitor), they have weird crap with underage incestuous sex shown pretty clearly on camera, they have a lot of crap going on. Plus all the sexist jokes and remarks all along the show. No, no one will make me believe that ENT was trying to reverse sexist ideas, they were head-deep into them. Lower decks tried to fix it but it doesn’t save Enterprise.
