I cannot point out an episode or film that made me stand back and rethink my own stance of these issues. As my first encounter with the universe was the Next Generation, I was actually quite surprised seeing how progressive its approach was and how much it fit the European approach as compared to the American one I had the opportunity to experience personally by then. However, when I watched the Original Series much later on, the depiction of an overwhelming majority of femal characters as sexual objects was strange even though I know that the 1960' was the time of Mary Quaint and the mini skirt.
With respect to gender, race and (a)sexuality, it has always been the Borg that fascinated me the most. We have had a long debate in Europe on integration (that sometimes takes the form of forced assimilation), and the Borg, to me is the depiction of why it is totally wrong. The most striking manifestation of this is them being grey. If we try to suppress that we are actually different in many ways, you simply use all colour, but also soul.
Another interesting element is that they actually have a Queen Bee. While as an archetype it must be a female, in history you can see probably only men in the same position among humans. Those who wanted to make all their people uniform are all male as far as I can recall: Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Franko just to start with. Interestingly enough they all tried to make their people uniformally grey or black, for some reason colours were mainly missing from uniforms - be it military or the coat worn by all in China. I wonder if any woman woutl be capable of becoming such a queen bee of a country or nation. Strong female leaders - however few there have been in history - are not opressors in that sense. They may have been behind terrible acts, but they don't go for grey. Why could that be?
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