Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 43 Wolf in the Fold
This episode was not exactly a pillar of women’s liberation. If one could have a real complaint with regards to this show in general it’s that in spite of all it’s attempts at racial issues, anti war, and social problems the sexism and misogyny were rampant and never so much as in this episode. 
Women are pretty much treated as inanimate sex objects and are more or less helpless in the face of masculine dominance (Not to mention brutally murdered en masse. Problem solved image, while not necessarily funny, comes from the Funny T Shirt category. Sorry it was the best misogynist image I could find). One of the worst quotes from Mr. Spock ever came from this one: “women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species.”
If anything redeeming can be had from this episode it is that if you compare this to any of the TNG shows you can see how greatly the shift in gender parity has progressed. I won’t pretend there aren’t still major issues surrounding this today but in TNG none of this dancing sex slave girl BS would have surfaced. Also for once Kirk wasn’t the focus of the show. It’s nice to see Scotty get his chance at bat.
However, let’s talk about the psycho-tricorder for a minute. So this device records anything that happens to someone for the last 24 hours. Umm, excuse me but wouldn’t that have been the perfect answer to like 85% of the other episodes? Court Martial? Turnabout Intruder? And the Children Shall Lead? The Trouble with Tribbles? Journey to Babel? Mudd’s Women? Space Seed? Dagger of the Mind? Charlie X? The Man Trap? The Conscious of the King? Spock’s Brain? Every one of these episodes could have been solved in short order with the use of the psycho-tricorder. Just strap Kara into one of those and figure out exactly what she did with Spock’s brain. It should have been the most commonly used device after communicators.
Oh, well. I guess sometimes you just invent stuff to keep the episode moving without having to worry about how it will affect future episodes (cough cough kironide cough cough). Also by listing all those episodes I just realized that TOS had some very cool episode titles. Suck it, TNG. Encounter at Farpoint might be the worst title ever.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
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