The Outer Limits: Lithia (1998)
Season 4, Episode 17
5/10
Unintentionally hypocritical throughout?
13 July 2022
Warning: Spoilers
On the one hand the sci fi aspect of this episode is relatively believable and the core concept of this episode is interesting, I just think it tries to push the anti man argument too far and contradicts it's message of men being the violent ones throughout.

Plenty of instances in this episode where women threaten violence, use violence and steal. Yet the entire episode Hera the leader of the enclave is berating Major Mercer on being guilty of being a man the most heinous of crimes.

Pele threatens to kill Mercer for sleeping with Miranda. (Threat of violence)

Hyacinth enclave repairs the damn stealing water needed to power the Lithia enclave. (Stealing power)

Ruling council increase taxes by huge margins (Stealing food)

Miranda shoots and kills a member of Hyacinth enclave, member of Hyacinth enclave shoots Mercer off the transformer and he falls to ground. (Violence)

Mercer was the initial cause of some of these, but Pele would just as likely threaten another woman who was sleeping with Miranda. The violence due to stealing power from Hyacinth enclave was avoidable but still women chose to be violent in those circumstances too!?

Major Mercer is really a terrible man (that's totally intentional for the episode though), he's aggressive, immoral and pretty incompetent (especially during the hostage swap incident). For a military man it's pretty amazing how bad he is at combat in stressful situations, he shoots a hostage in the back and manages to shoot Miranda as she's running towards them. But this all serves the primary narrative of the episode, that women would be better off without men.

The missed opportunity here is to give a less bigoted view, had the male who was revived been more of a decent man it would have made for a more interesting story, instead we are given every cliche with Mercer. Whilst we are shown that women can be violent the suggestion is that it's all because of Mercer too, which is unacceptable as a premise.
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