Ya you make good points, but when I think like that I begin to strongly dislike alot of it.
My personal beef was always how the federation looks the other way at all the vassals and clients of the Klingon Empire. Just ignore their hordes of space helots I guess.
Ironically it is only in Enterprise where I finally see someone disgusted by it, but they technically aren’t the federation yet.
For those particular episodes you mentioned the cogenitor one was the one I really disliked. Some of the worst moralizing ever: think of the perils of unrestrained suffrage before you enlighten a slave!
kieron115@startrek.website 1 week ago
Oh, right, the Orions. For sure Gene put quite a bit of his prejudices into the races, which then got amplified by early Trek writers’ tendency towards mono-cultures, and I think all of Star Trek has had trouble trying to figure out how to fix it. Enterprise decided to just lean into the stereotypes hard though for some reason. The Ferengi were an anti-semetic caricature in TNG until the DS9 writers worked to expand their culture on screen and move away from some of Gene’s more troubling stereotypes. Hell, they had an entire arc where Rom and Leela worked to literally dismantle the existing Ferengi culture into something more aligned with Starfleet ideals. It took until Lower Decks, a 30-some odd minute cartoon, for them to do something similar with the Orions. So I guess my point of this ramble is that, while nothing is gonna change these old episodes, if you wanna see some positive progress for the Orions I would highly recommend watching LD.