NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 9072831" data-attributes="member: 6750908">If we're going to talk about potentially harmful stereotypes used for humor, the gender dynamic between Spock's in-laws is fascinating. T'Pring's mother is a bigoted harridan who uses her husband's family honor to rationalize and reinforce her own prejudices-- simultaneously very Vulcan and very human-- while her father is a good-natured, open-minded, and spineless doormat who capitulates his supposed domestic authority in order to protect the mere illusion of it.It's a sitcom premise with sci-fi execution, and it's brilliant. Also, if you imagine that T'Pring's father had gotten Pike alone for five minutes-- he would have asked Pike to give Spock those recipes, so that his household staff could truthfully say they got them from a Vulcan.I'm not a fan of nuTrek style grimdarkness, but I like episodes like this (or Una's court martial) that show that the cultures and the species of the Federation still have foibles and feets of clay... because Roddenberry's utopia shines the brightest when the franchise reminds us that utopia isn't easy, that everything that Star Trek tell us is possible had to be fought for tooth and nail by us and our children, and zealously guarded by their grandchildren's grandchildren.Everything our heroes in Starfleet have to fight for in their utopian future is a reminder that their ancestors brought them there from a world that was even darker than here.</blockquote>

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