On 25 Mar 2001 as I do recall, Fiona Moore wrote:
OTOH, that could be equally shocking. When Kathryn brought up Ultraviolence I was surprised, because while Ultraviolence is presented as a good thing in A Clockwork Orange, the universe of ACO is so horrible that I wouldn't accept anything its members glorified as a good thing for me personally. A bit like how a friend of mine was recently making a good case for the rehabilitation of "Power"-- the message is sexist, but the way the message is presented is so abhorrent that it makes sexism abhorrent to the viewer too.
Making a massive effort to drag this list away from its recent obsession with genital activities:
When I first watched "Power", there was a moment about halfway through when everything suddenly seemed to make sense and I thought I realised what the author had planned: when Jarvik fights Tarrant, defeats him thoroughly (by judicious application of brain-power, if I remember correctly; at any rate it looked like a fair fight) and then Dayna challenges him in her turn and is obviously winning. After all, Dayna is the athletic and aggressive one whom you'd expect to be in better training for unarmed combat -- and it's a logical conclusion. Jarvik spends the whole episode dismissing the entire female sex, as Fiona mentions above, so doesn't take Dayna's abilities seriously -- and thus she is the only one who can defeat him.
Then in the blink of an eye Dayna is suddenly the one who is flat on the ground and being held down, and Jarvik's worldview is restored just in time for him to be menaced by a Kairopean and call for teleport to get the pair of them up to the Liberator as the plot requires. I was sitting there mentally shrieking at the author for overlooking a golden opportunity! The daft thing is that none of this is necessary.
The episode would have worked perfectly well -- and made Jarvik a more sympathetic character, in my view -- if Dayna had been allowed to finish the fight, defeat Jarvik and be the one forcing her opponent into submission when they were forced to teleport up; whereupon, under the guns of the troopers on guard in the teleport section, the victor would abruptly have become the prisoner, and the rest of the episode would have proceeded as before. But in this case Jarvik's attempt to save Dayna would have been motivated (and this could easily have been made explicit if desired) by respect for an honourable enemy, which I would read as perfectly in character, rather than by what appears to be knee-jerk protective instinct for a fragile female.
I feel that this one small change would have made a totally disproportionate improvement in what is otherwise not at all a bad episode, bringing an enjoyable irony to a cliche'd situation; and Jarvik might actually have gained thereby, becoming more fallible and hence more sympathetic to the audience.
(Apologies if this has been brought up before; it seems so obvious....)