The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

If I had a baby and it came out with weird stuff that no human had, I wouldn't automatically think it's a zir or a schlee or whatever gender we don't have. I'd think it was deformed, at least until I checked with a doctor.

Oh for fucks sake fuck off with that SJW shit.

These people aren't stupid. They never said there were never females born on the planet. Clearly there are since they have a medical procedure to change the baby to a male.

And Klyden knew he was born a female and probably looked it up after he found out that he had been born a female. So he would know.

And the Doctor on the ship would know. She has this thing called a computer where you can look things up and learn new things.

actually, it doesn't make sense at all. Considering biodiversity on earth alone, and that an alien planet would have differing environmental factors and opportunities humanoid is probably completely unique.

It is easier for fantasy and dramatic purposes.

Gorn would be considered "humanoid".

I thought the whole "cowboy adventure evolving into a dance off" was extremely hilarious plus Mercer's "wtf!" reaction to it. And its actually the kind of ridiculous thing I can imagine someone programming into a holodeck adventure. Nothing TNG, DS9, or Voyager would ever think of.

The whole thing never made sense from go. "All members of our species are male." does not describe any imaginable state of affairs. If you're all alike and reproduce without pairing off, you don't have a male any more than a female.

What K said. But regardless, I am really digging this show. They're actually doing fairly serious drama but leavened with a good chunk of oddball humor. Kinda like real life. The show must be a hoot-n-a-half to shoot.

Except they do have females in Moclan society.

They just consider it to be a birth defect. They have medical procedures in place to deal with it immediately at birth.

So yes Moclan's can recognize what a baby female Moclan looks like. They certainly realized that adult female Moclan was a female when she walked in. They didn't ask what was wrong with this Moclan. They immediately knew she was a female Moclan.

What the episode missed was the rate of female births is probably far higher than the Moclan government wants to admit and what happened in Moclan society that they went all male. That would have been intresting to find out. Perhaps the males wanted nothing but war and felt the females were holding them back. So they genetically engineered females out of the equation.

Perhaps those issues will be dealt with in another episode.

Will we have game of thrones or nbsg cast members as guest stars?

I thought the whole thing between Bortas and his mate was particularly hilarious (and on point) when Bortas said "she might go on to greatness, like guiding Santas Claus's sleigh on Christmas Eve!"

"Bill Nye The Cancer Guy?"

The ending is different than what Trek would do. In Trek, Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisko, or whatshisface, would have made an impassioned speech, thus swaying the jury and the kid wouldn't get her bits chopped off. Hell, they might even ban the procedure altogether.

I think I get where Seth is trying to take the show. He's trying to do a Trek-like show which takes on contemporary issues, while avoiding the dogmatization that has occurred in Trek (and other things in the genre) where character A always has to behave in a certain manner, or people have fights over what exactly is the combination to Kirk's safe. He may need to tap some better writers if he wants to pull it off, but I think the show stands a better than even chance of surviving for a while.

that's virtually everything I wanted to say.

There were still some awkward forced jokes but not nearly as many, and the holodeck* scene was genuinely funny in a sense you could absolutely have seen say, Bashir & Co. play out.

If one want to think deeply about the ain plotline, it does in fact make a pretty significant mistake about gender identity (unless we postulate the biology of that is different in Moclans) but honestly, no one has any intention of thinking deeply about anything Seth writes and on a casual viewing, they really nailed the whole "tradition vs ethics" thing

If this show is basically equivilant in quality to TNG S1, then this was more or less their "The Mesure of a Man" though maybe a somewhat more lightweight version.

consider this:

In an episode which one would have to assume was intended to exercise the power of a fictional story to effect social change...the key plot point was a couple of guys showing another guy a fictional story to change his mind.

I also thought that when Mercer had the ship scan for females on the surface that it was going to turn out to be an entire hidden colony of women and in true Star Trek style they were going to reveal a bunch of them to the court and causes a sea change in Moclan style.

Either McFarland considered that and then pulled back because it would be "too Star Treky" or he was always going to deliberately tease the audience with a "this is just like Star Trek" and then pull out the rug at the end.

Loved Bortas "if Rudolf had been euthanized at birth?" Yeah that's not in the story but I think most people know that if Rudolf had not gained Santa's favor he would've ended up as venison.

Also loved the "He just left his child with two drunk guys".

Nope. Kirk couldn't stop Lokai and Bele from continuing to fight their pointless war on the surface of Cheron. Riker couldn't stop the J'naii from brainwashing his love interest out of her gender. Picard couldn't convince the Angosians to give Roga Danar and his fellow veterans their freedom. Janeway couldn't get the Malon to stop polluting. Janeway couldn't convince the Devore to stop hunting telepathy. Sisko couldn't get the Maquis to stop fighting the Cardassians.

There was also the androgenous chic that Riker was banging. She wanted to be female and she was forced back to being androgenous leaving Riker with blue balls.

But, he did convince the people of Eminiar VII and Vendikar to chill out.

But, Picard did point out that Admiral Norah Satie is basically McCarthy in a dress with some of the most timeless lines in all of Trek.

But, he did convince Starfleet that Data was fully sentient and thus worthy of the rights owed to any sentient being under Federation law.

Who?

He ran out of Trilithium Resin...

14th doctor mentioned that.

Melinda Culea was better off as part of "The A- Team" anyway

If you take the Star Trek comic book series seriously a few years later the war resumed.

Vendikar was completely destroyed and a third of Eminiar VII was rendered lifeless.

I have to say I really liked how the episode worked out. It was not really a utopian ending. The show is really seeming like it is more of a comedy drama with a space exploration plot. Seth is really a guy who can pull off this sort of thing. The one thing I really liked was that the parents of the child were all about loving the child no matter what. No one was going to disown anything. It is also good how no one on the ship is a Picard. I love STtNG's captain, but this lets you include all sides in your dramatization of the issues.

I think it is a grand idea to try to confront heavy social issues with a show using a genre that has had success with parable oriented shows. I hope he does it well. I think he is thoughtful and insightful, and I know the people close to him also carry a lot of insight and appreciation for the differences in people. He has been involved in some pretty popular shows. I hope in a couple of years I am cosplaying some of these characters at a con. Oh who am I kidding, that will be next year.

I have a mixed impression. On the one hand, the episode worked, and it is indeed nice to see the show tackle difficult issues as if they are difficult, rather than preaching one solution or another.

However, the whole sex issue was confused on several levels. What does male and female mean in a species where almost everyone is male and males get together in pairs in order for one of them to lay eggs? Are there gender roles? Are there different kinds of sexual desire?

(Also, are we supposed to believe that it is ok to be female because some females are incredibly strong and one of them is a famous writer? How about deviant sexuality in persons that can't justify themselves with some extreme power or talent? Perhaps they intended to show that off as useless, after all the court decided against these arguments, but it seemed to me our sympathy was supposed to be with the people making these claims.)

The dick joke by the slime crewperson was hilarious. The bit with the Captain's (hologram) parents talking about colon issues went on about 50% too long. This is perhaps my biggest peeve with MacFarlane's humor...dragging it out FAR too long in order to wring every possible laugh out of the setup. He seriously overdoes this on a frequent basis. I lost interest in The Family Guy due to this, among other reasons.

Bottom line is that I'm enjoying the show enough to record it weekly. But they need to keep improving to hold my interest.

I did love the line Mercer got off on the prosecutor. Something about "You've been a dick all day long, so shut the hell up!" Delivered with actual heat, as opposed to a comedic take. Personally, I'm finding the show to be extremely well done.

On that same note, why is it that a "masculine" society is only represented by unregulated industrial pollution and recreational combat? Seemed like a bit of minor misandric pandering...

A different situation, in that Soren was anatomically the same as the rest of her species but developed taboo feelings of wanting to identify as female.

I haven't seen the episode yet, but I'm guessing that when they say Moclans have a single gender, what they mean is that every member of the species has the capacity to both fertilize and be fertilized -- they are simultaneous hermaphrodites, just like some earth invertebrates. So being born female or male would mean only having half the equipment.

Ernie the Chicken agrees!
Conway Twitty agrees!

They don't go into the plumbing, but Bortus laid an egg. No details on if Clydon fertilized it or if Bortus did it himself or whatever....

Seems to me that a population where everyone fertilized their own eggs would have massive genetic diversity problems...

This most recent one of "people living on a giant spaceship who don't know they're living on a spaceship" was pretty lame. On reason being that plot has been around and used in seemingly every space opera I've ever heard of. Star Trek itself took several cracks at the idea IIRC.