Got to stick up for this ep, because the last scene of it is what made me a fan, the first time I saw it. I'll admit that I usually cringe most of the way through - not because I find it misogynistic, but because it embarrasses me for Meegat and Avon _both_. And yes, I'd find it embarrassing no matter what the genders of the groveller and grovellee - it's just 'entirely too much externalizing of emotion', to quote another show. But the last scene makes it all worthwhile.
There are, IMO, two things going on in this ep. One is to set up the 'Orac' plot, which can be discounted because it could have been easily folded into the next episode. The other, and far more important, is to characterize Avon - he is more human by the end of the ep; he is the character in this story that changes and grows. He has been humbled by a new awareness of the responsibility inherent in leadership and power. (He's annoyed that Blake has noticed that he's learned it, but he's learned it nonetheless. And yes, he does seem to keep trying to unlearn it; but I don't think he ever quite succeeds.) That final exchange with Blake is where, for me, Avon became a sympathetic, three-dimensional character.
I can indeed see where this ep might be interpreted as misogynist if the point were to set up Avon as some sort of Übermensch; but rather than aggrandizing him, in fact, it does the reverse. It is Avon, _not_ Meegat, that the episode mocks.
To deal with a few specific concerns:
[1] Jenna as damsel in distress - I honestly don't see this one. Everybody in the cast gets caught by the enemy, one time or another, _and has to be rescued by the others_. Jenna is not portrayed as some sort of helpless shrinking violet. She makes a real stab at escaping; the reason she can't isn't because she's female, but because she's outnumbered. Suggestions to the contrary strike me as more sexist than the actual portrayal. _If_ the women come in for significantly more than their share of getting captured, that might be a problem with the series as a whole, but isn't apropos to a discussion of a specific episode.
[2] The rocket is rocket-shaped - well, duh. And barring wings, so are airplanes and birds. If basic aerodynamics are sexist, take it up with the universe. On top of that, two words: stock footage. [And if anyone wants to complain about phallic symbolism where it might actually do some good - joystick manufacturers. I'm desperate to find a joystick small enough to fit my hands.] Plus, as Neil says, it's also a womb.
[For that matter, with the whole penetrating the void thing, maybe space exploration is in itself sexist and aggressively masculine, and we should stay happy and ignorant right here on Mother Earth. Hm. NASA's rockets are sort of whitish, and space is sort of blackish; maybe space exploration is racist too, whaddya think?]
[3] Meegat is female - well, if one wants to see entrusting a vitally important job - the saving of an entire race - to a woman as misogynist, then I guess there's no way to prevent one from seeing what one wishes to. However, I think I'd feel both honoured and humbled at being given such a responsibility. There's also no indication that all of those who held the position were female.
[4] Meegat can't launch the rocket - her entire race can't launch the rocket, so construing this as sexist is _ludicrous_. Besides which, if they can launch it, there's no story.
[5] Meegat is helpless - no, she's not; she's unsophisticated, which is something else entirely. She provides Avon and the others with the safety of her bunker, and the information needed to rescue Jenna. They'd all be dead without her. Fair trade for pushing a few buttons, I'd say.
[6] Meegat is subservient - she thinks they're the saviours of her race, her people have waited generations for this event and she's the only one privileged to witness it; of course she's subservient. She's practically overcome with ecstasy (not terror). She is _not_ a 21st-century human woman with a 21st-century mindset. Go have a face-to-face conversation with God, and see if you do as well. [Honesty forces me to point out that it's Vila and Gan who bring up the idea of God; Meegat never suggests such a thing.]
[7] She picked Avon - perceptive of her. How long would you have to be in a room with those three to decide which was the dominant male? Not long, I'll wager.
We also cannot disregard the possibility that, given the presence in other episodes of 'mystical' occurences, that Meegat's prophecy may have been an _actual_ prediction, and she might have had very specific information that would lead her to recognize Avon. He did fit the story very tidily.
[8] Launching a rocket falls in Jenna's expertise - I hardly think that being able to pilot the space shuttle qualifies one to run mission control. We're talking about operating computers here; far more Avon's field than Jenna's, who tends to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-one's-pants type IMO (cf. Breakdown).
[9] Avon didn't immediately correct Meegat's impressions of him/them - good for him! To do so would have been both stupid and unkind; stupid to go around upsetting your brand-new host when her hospitality is all that stands between you and a very dangerous situation, and unkind to walk into one's home and immediately start dismantling one's world-view without so much as a by-your-leave. Avon was in a delicate situation and absolutely right to proceed cautiously - whether said host was male or female, so no sexism there. And the final scene makes it quite clear that Meegat's incorrect impressions were cleared up before they left. Personally, I admire Avon's gentle and respectful treatment of Meegat.
[10] Avon didn't take Meegat and/or her people to safety on another planet - there is no indication that Meegat and her people (who presumably include both genders, so again this doesn't carry any inherent misogyny) wanted or asked to go. Meegat's people wanted the rocket launched; they _got what they asked for_. To blame Avon for not relocating them can only be based in a desire to blame Avon; it has nothing to do with the reality of the script. If they wanted to go and were not taken, it would be Blake's fault, or the entire crew's; but if they did not want to go, it would be far worse IMO to force them to leave their homes.
For that matter, there is no indication that relocating them would hold any advantage for them over staying where they were. They had apparently been subjected to the radiation for generations; they were dying from cumulative damage, not the immediate radiation sickness that was a threat to Liberator's crew. There is no reason to think that any long-term genetic damage would reverse itself in another environment. Why remove them from their homes to die on a strange planet? There have been many people who chose to die in a familiar place, rather than to pull up roots and take a chance elsewhere.
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It seems to me that what's actually being objected to is that a person who needs help (on behalf of her race), who happens to be female, gets said help from a person who happens to be male. IOW, the message being _read in_ is female=weak, male=strong. But given that stories need some conflict or tension, be it weak/strong or good/evil, and given that we have only two genders, the only possibilities for the two main characters are m/m, f/f, m/f, f/m. Statistically, it's perfectly reasonable to have 25% of the stories being a man helping or besting a woman. If you look at the whole series, Servalan bests Avon sometimes, and mostly they draw. B7 certainly does not seem skewed in this respect.
Avon does not gain anything at Meegat's expense; rather, he learns an important lesson by helping her. That sounds like mutual benefit to me, not exploitation.
Sexism, like racism, ageism, etc., is fairly easy to find if one goes looking for it. The fact that a person wouldn't like to be Meegat, to behave like Meegat, to think like Meegat, does not automatically make Meegat a victim. Meegat, of course, is a character; but if she were a real person, and happy with her lot, then IMO to decry that happiness and force her into victimhood because it fits one's own worldview is far more misogynistic than anything Avon (or Terry Nation) did to her. The feminist movement was supposed to be about _choices_ for women, not about merely shoving them into a _different_ set of boxes. At least, that's the way I remember it. YMMV.
Mistral