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.
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”
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”.