Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 21 Return of the Archons
This is an episode that is fun yet at the same time problematic. BTW if you ever wanted to get into Star Trek cosplay the Lawgivers uniform is basically a brown robe and a metal tube. Super easy. So this one was kind of cool in concept but when you think about it the Festival is pretty much just an excuse to commit rape. Not exactly forward thinking as far as women’s liberation is concerned. There were many episodes with strong misogynistic tendencies and I think this one (along with Spocks Brain and Turnabout Intruder) was one of the worst.
However I like to think they tried and TNG made up for a lot of prior poor gender decisions. However my problem with this episode is the fact that they fell back once again on the old “talk a computer into killing itself” trope. That one is used almost as much as having red shirts die. This was the second episode to us it and after a while it just got lazy. In order to prove what a hard core Trek fan I am I will list all the episodes that use this cliche off the top of my head: What are Little Girls Made Of, I Mudd, the Ultimate Computer, and The Changeling. Seems like standard SOP is when faced with any kind of artificial intelligence just have Kirk argue with it for 5 minutes and run away from the self destruct. 
He’s like Deedee from Dexters Lab’s father (not impossible knowing him. Image courtesy of the cartoon t shirt collection).
Nevertheless fun episode with some half baked social commentary messages.
the Infamous Dave Inman
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