The greenness always put me off. Right from when I first watched Wolf in the Fold I thought the greenness really de-sexualized them. Now BLUE.. that's a lot sexier colour.
You're right about the Phlox line. But this does raise an interesting question about sexual preference. The Orions' pheremones were said to affect men "physiologically" by causing them to desire the girls so much that they all want to be the "alpha male" in hopes of attracting them. So if there had been any gay men on board, isn't the aforementioned definition saying that the gay men's sexual preference would be altered so that they would, possibly for the first and only time, want these particular women? The episode may actually be kind of unconsciously throwing "born this way", under the bus. Not trying to make any grand political statements here, just speculating on the events in "Bound". BTW, King Daniel, you should get some sort of prize for bringing up an issue in an Ent episode that (I don't think) has ever been raised before in this forum.
Yes, you're right - it's all a big undefined grey area to say the least. Although, having said that, I doubt it's anything Manny Cotto thought about in great detail while penning the episode - if at all.
This sums up my feelings of the episode also. My only problem with it was the "twist" ending of having the men be the slaves. I thought that silly little cliche' was uneccesary, but it was such a minor part of the episode that I can ignore it.
I love the teaser -- the Vulcan version of Here Be Dragons. I don't mind the episode except that it should have featured a revolt by all the women plus Tucker. It felt lazy that every female got a headache.
The whole reason I think this episode is brilliant is that it is a sci-fi exagurated metaphor about how all it takes is three women in bikinis and suddenly men (at least the single ones) can't think straight. I love the twist at the end where the women are in control, as to me it's a great analogy for women who become strippers, sex workers, etc, who capitalise on the fact that "it is the men who are the slaves" as they have no control over their own urges and desires. Having said that, some of the execution could have been better. I'm not a huge fan of T'Pol's comment at the end that "even the most disagreeable species have some... positive attributes" being laughed at by the men (in charge). As much as it can be seen as pointing out the inherent bias of our own patriarchy, it also sees men freely laughing at the idea of women in charge, and not being called out on it....
It's hardly the most universally disliked episode in all of Star Trek (Spock's Brain, Turnabout Intruder, Shades of Grey, The Outrageous Okona, Threshold). It still isn't very good. Doing an Orion backstory episode where it turns out the "slave girls" are really in charge was a good idea, but in execution the episode was quite literally fan wank. Why does it have to be TV? You've been provided with a multitude of examples of a male version of this kind of thing in this thread. Bond most certainly applies, in particular in the older movies. In the Connery/Moore films essentially every woman he meets aside from old ladies come on to him, and in general when Bond sleeps with a woman she is immediately 100% devoted to him afterward and willing to die for him (as often happens). There's a running joke in the Bond fandom about Bond having a "magic penis" for that reason. It's pretty much the exact same concept as "magic sex". I could definitely see people saying that it was sexist for making the women look like idiots (as people say with James Bond) if you did a gender swapped version of the Orions, even though no one complains about this making men look like idiots (because it really doesn't).
I didn't hate it but didn't like it much; average, somewhat enjoyable goofiness (and hotness). I disliked and didn't buy the idea that the Orion men were also/actually under the control of the Orion women, that went too much against what other episodes and the episode itself had suggested.
How much did the other episodes really "suggest" though? Everything in The Cage/Menagerie was an illusion and even then there was the "no man can resist them" comment. We didn't see Marta interact with any Orion men. Some people pointed out that Kirk seems to be weirdly immobilized when he attacks her, which likely was just awkward staging and not deliberate, but it does fit with what was later established. Garth on a certain level does appear to be unaffected by her (which you could blame on his insanity; if his mind isn't working properly the pheromones may not have the same effect) but on the other hand you could blame his suddenly killing her on his being made more aggressive. There could be a give and take type thing where Orion women have to be careful not to get their men too riled up or jealous given the effect of their pheromones, but still use them to control them. See, all of this stuff could have been interesting, but the episode largely ignored stuff like that in favor of just being sexy.
I still think this idea was a brilliant twist. Like @TheAdmiralty said, it's not like previous episodes were full of ironclad specifics, and I fail to see how it went against what had been suggested earlier in Bound. It also brings a fantastic rereading to the auction that occured previously in the season; men bidding on making themselves slaves is a fantastic addition to the IDIC that Star Trek is all about.
It does? It struck me as the obvious twist, the first idea you'd have after saying ``we can't seriously do sex-slave women in 200-freaking-5, we need to twist the premise somehow''. I admit I'm not sure what would be a good twist; maybe revealing the twist way earlier in the episode so it can actually be about sexual politics. (And I agree that there was so little in the canon about the specifics of the Orion Slave Women that they could have done most anything without an actual continuity error. Nothing would save Enterprise from complaints of making imaginary continuity errors, although a great episode makes people less worried about that.)
Maybe not the most original twist, but I still think the effects of it are a great way to re-examine what you think you know. I can see the benefits of it coming earlier, but I guess half the point is that its designdd to pull the rug out from under you? Like I said before, I like the idea of the episode (at least as I interpret it) more than its execution.
In later seasons Enterprise became very reliant on arcs - this is probably one of the last (if not the last) good one-off stories the show has. It's always fun when the captain gets laid - although this time he can't contain his shame (enters the bridge facing the other way in the lift)!
I rather like Bound. It was rather light-weight fun. I appreciated the twist with the Orions, but I mostly liked that the episode finally resolved the Trip and T'Pol thing. I loved the ending when Trip teased her and she finally just kissed him. About damn time!
Makes you wonder what the hell kind of "herbs" were growing on that planet that the Vulcans sprinkled in their plomeek soup. I liked the episode. I always liked when they revisited a TOS species, even with the twist.
I thought it was much better than it's reputation. I was ready for the worst episode of the franchise, and perhaps in human history given what I had read. It wasn't even close to that bad.