Yay, Rena Owen!
Bingo. I think McFarlane takes a similar attitude towards such societies as Sam Harris or Bill Maher does (certainly he is a secularist like them), and this is a clever way of addressing the topic without anyone being able to call him an Islamophobe.
But earlier, they looked like a tough commando team when they surrounded the shuttle with rifles drawn, and kind of frogmarched the landing party to the leader’s abode.
I think the “hermaphrodite” option is the most likely. They pretty much have to be, for their reproduction to make any sense at all.
I suspect there’s something in their genetic make up that usually produces a hermaphrodite with the male reproductive features being significantly more prominent than the female features, and so they are perceived as being “male”, while the “females” have male reproductive features that are much smaller/more hidden (growers rather than showers, in human terms?). This dichotomy could be the result of many types of pressure - natural selection, sexual selection, social pressure, deliberate social engineering.
Link this back to the first episode of this season, when Bortus went back to Moclus for his annual urination. It was a major public affair, when everyone on site would have seen, and probably commented on, the size of his junk. Perhaps this rite evolved as a means of making sure everyone had the “right” size of penis. No one would want to mate with someone who everyone else laughed at.
Yeah, and where did all their rifles go? When they’re just hanging out in hiding, they have a team ready to capture any visitors on a moments notice, but when there’s literally a battlecruiser in orbit just waiting for orders to capture or kill them all, they suddenly decide to stand down and put their weapons away? Ridiculous.
Resisting a Moclan battle cruiser would likely be suicidal whereas a small group of humans, who they know are likely to be more sympathetic to their cause, are less threatening.
My hat’s off to Seth McFarlane for finding a way to have Marina Sirtis on the show. She was always my favorite on ST:TNG.
It was not Jonathan Frakes?
First off, I’m male (heterosexual), so, no. Second, while I’ve come to admire Jonathan Frakes in the intervening years I never cared for his character in that show. He reminded me too much of my dad. I was also a young man when ST:TNG debuted so seeing a “looker” like Marina Sirtis was quite, um, stimulating for me. It’s nice to see Mr. McFarland give her a role in his latest, even if it’s only a small one.
If the question means, “but JF directed the episode, shouldn’t he get credit for casting Marina Sirtis?” The answer is that TV casting decisions are usually made by producers, not directors. Besides, JF has only directed two episodes of the show, and it may only be coincidence that he drew the script for the episode MS was cast in.
But it wasn’t suicidal for Kelly and Bortus. 
It’s like those two scenes were written by different people.
ETA: I couldn’t stand Sirtis’s TNG character. I didn’t recognize her here.
There was also Tony Todd (who played Worf’s brother Kurn)
Brian
Regarding all discussion on Moclan mating and reproduction I feel obliged to point out that we can’t expect the way things work on our planet to be the standard in the universe. For all we know, it will turn out that having two primary genders is the outlier when compared to how all other (off-Earth) species are constructed.
Of course, a point could be made that in-show they’ve discovered this not to be the case and it *is *the Moclans who are unique, but on the other hand maybe all the other races are just too polite or discreet to tell us how odd they find human sexuality.
Yeah, it’s hard to believe that in the beginning it looked like Klyden was the one open to other cultures.
I loved that. 
There’s no reason whatsoever to assume that; this is an alien species.
And he’s not being subtle about it at all. All we’re missing is for a group of Moclans to commit a major terrorist attack on the Union and then the Union can act like the terrorists weren’t Moclan and invade a completely different planet.
This makes sense. At least they didn’t genetically engineer their females into non-sapient animals.
The show severely undermines that in the way they portray nearly every alien species. They constantly show aliens who display the same gender characteristics as humans.
Just watched the episode.
All this talk of Marina Sirtis and Tony Todd, and no love for F. Murray Abraham?
I liked the ending. A “next gen” solution. (for better or worse…)
F. Murray Abraham.
Well, there’s also Yaphit, who, although he presents as “male” from our social point of view, has also been noted as being a species that reproduces by mitosis.
Well, of course he’s not being subtle about it. This is his version of Star Trek, which was not a show noted for the subtlety of its political metaphors.
Yet he’s infatuated with the doctor.
A few thoughts:
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Bortus acted incredibly stupidly by not telling his captain about the baby, and Ed not suspending him from duty was inexplicable. Bortus should be brought up on charges, and it was a pointlessly clumsy opening to the story.
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Maybe Moclans are more tolerant of conflict than we are but why hasn’t Bortus dumped Klyden? What an asshole that guy is.
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That said, I am again pleased that the episode didn’t have an easy, tied-up-with-a-bow solution. They came to a temporary compromise.
Yes, and showing his kid that baby was also incredibly stupid. In fact Bortus has acted really stupid on a number of occasions.
Right, I like compromise, they hardly ever go for that on TV.
Wouldn’t Bortus have to kill Klyden to dump him? Obviously he doesn’t want to do that and if he tries to dump him otherwise maybe Klyden wouldn’t accept it, or he’d be deeply shamed or something.