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The Orville is a satirical science fiction drama created by Seth MacFarlane and modeled after classic episodic Star Trek with a modern flair.
Allies of the Planetary Union:
WARNING: This thread WILL contain unhidden spoilers for The Orville episode "About a Girl" and everything before it. You are allowed to talk about future episodes of the series, but put ANY information that comes after this episode behind spoiler tags.
Written by Seth MacFarlane, directed by Brannon Braga.
The entire crew is excited to see the newest addition to Bortus & Klyden's family - a rare Moclan female. Without warning, Bortus demands that Dr. Claire Finn (Penny Jerald Johnson) perform a sex change operation to convert his newborn to male. After Bortus' demands are rebuffed by Dr. Finn and Captain Mercer, a Moclan cruiser is called to take the child away to Moclus. However, Bortus has a sudden change of heart and the crew of the Orville steps in to defend the child's rights in a court that views being female as a birth defect.
Originally released: 21 September 2017
Check here to find out where you can stream or digitally purchase The Orville in your country. The Orville season 1 is also available on DVD.
What did you think?
This is the episode that really made me realize that the show wasn't just a comedy sci-fi spoof, that McFarlane was actually going to try and tackle moral issues.
Episode specific Spoiler:
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Definitely an upsetting episode to me. Still feel bad for Topa.
Future season spoilers
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Continued to dislike Bortus' spouse, and the whole Murder / divorce thing was pretty extreme.
This is the episode that really made me realize that the show wasn't just a comedy sci-fi spoof, that McFarlane was actually going to try and tackle moral issues.
So much so. The last couple of weeks, I've been talking about how the show hadn't won me over yet with the heavier comedy focus of those episodes. This is the one that made me go "Yes. I am going to keep watching this show." This is that good stuff that I've been missing in a lot of modern sci-fi: these future society morality plays as commentary on present-day culture.
Obviously, all sci-fi is ultimately commenting on the present, but there's something about this OG Trek issue-of-the-week presentation which allows a show to cover more ground than something where the narrative has one central theme with a singular message it wants to get across. I love this setup.
The fact that this episode ends on such a down beat, while obviously upsetting, from a presentation standpoint shows a degree of maturity in the writing that continues to be a great strength for the program over its three seasons. I do want to note some spoilers before continuing, for anybody watching this for the first time who struggles with the episode's conclusion.
Minor spoilers for future episodes
This episode does not represent the totality of Topa's story. As a final ending, this would be an extremely disappointing way for Topa's story to end. However, this story is carried across all three seasons. If you want more detail, see the next spoiler.
Major spoilers for future episodes
Topa goes on to experience gender dysphoria and is informed of her natural female birth. She is eventually restored to her original female body and identity. There is some awful conflict with Klyden and other more bigoted Moclans which will be triggering for many. Klyden later renounces and apologizes for his beliefs and actions. The family ultimately reconciles, with both parents loving Topa as she is. This is not presented as something which is easily or immediately fixed just because Klyden said sorry.
The episode was mostly very well received, but also faced criticism in terms of being a story essentially about transgender people told from the outside. Seth MacFarlane later appeared on Roddenberry Entertainment's Mission Log: The Orville podcast where the subject of "About a Girl" was discussed briefly from about 15:57 onward. This episode came years after "About a Girl", so I don't recommend watching it now if you're trying to avoid spoilers.
In the podcast, MacFarlane acknowledges both the welcoming and criticism that greeted the episode, saying (fairly nonspecifically) that there are things he would have done differently in the episode. This isn't really a spoiler, it's just several paragraphs long, so I'm putting it behind a spoiler for length reasons.
Mission Log: The Orville "About a Girl" discussion
Mike Richardson: How do you decide which issues to tackle and which of those episodes do you think were tackled particularly well?
Seth MacFarlane: Well, the shows that have aired thus far, that's a tough one. You can write about something and then the day after the show airs, you can read something that changes your opinion or broadens your opinion. That happens all the time. Certainly, with an episode like "About a Girl", at the time, we felt like we were locked in to what this was. There are things now that I might do differently, just as far as ... even just the use of language in that show.
Jessica Lynn Verdi: I think we all learned. We even learned; while we were covering that episode, I talked to a good transgender friend of mine, who more than anything just congratulated the fact that a prime time show was talking about it and ... still had a ways to go, but you don't want to scare an ally away from learning more by saying "You screwed that up."
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, and I think we see a lot of both. I see a lot of both. I see people who have that same reaction as your friend, who are "Yeah, great, you're partway there, thanks for talking about it. Now, here's what I can add to it, here's what you might have left out." And then you have the other side, where it's, you know, "How dare you try to tell this story without getting everything right?" And that, I have no defense for, because, I ... you can only cover the bases that you ... nobody's perfect. But each time, you get a little better at it.
That's a pretty good representation of The Orville both in- and out-of-universe. "Nobody's perfect. But each time, you get a little better at it."
Definitely liked it. It's the series's first "courtroom episode", and they did it fantastically while also tackling real issues.
It also kind of highlighted how Bortus is quite progressive for a Moclan (or just in general, all things considered). I'm slightly stepping on a later episode , but his progressive outlook wasn't a result of his time with the Planetary Union, though they did help him expand it (e.g. the Rudolph scene).