Like most Star Trek fans, I’ve been looking forward to the
release of Star Trek: Discovery with
a mix of excitement and anxiety. Will it be good? Will it tank? Indeed tensions
have run high in the fan community, and it really has been an emotional
rollercoaster. Thankfully we’ve at least had Seth Macfarlane’s off-brand Trek
clone The Orville to keep us
entertained. And while the first episode was nothing spectacular to write home
about, the subsequent episode really began to find its footing as a dramedy. It
was becoming a show that strove to find a perfect balance between humor and
Star Trek-style storytelling, but that still sometimes missed the mark. A
loveable rogue in the world of grimdark 2017 science fiction shows.
Which is why the third episode threw me for such a loop in
the best possible way.
The premise of ‘About A Girl’ is a simple one; the USS
Orville’s chief tactical officer is a man named Bortus, who hails from the
all-male Moclan race. Among Moclans, being born female is exceedingly rare, and
is often considered a disability, which is why it is all the more shocking to
learn that Bortus and his mate have given birth to a female baby. What follows
is a debate among all crew members and Bortus himself that eventually leads to
a tribunal held on the Moclan homeworld to determine the baby’s fate.
Admittedly, this plot is fairly standard fare for a sci fi, and it does come
across rather simplistic with regards to the transgender issues it overtly
tries to tackle by using gender as the allegory (namely, the assumption that
biological sex is linked to gender comes to mind…though then again maybe for
Moclans it is? We never really find out). That being said, while the metaphor
is about gender identity, it succeeds far better as a commentary on pre-natal
disability screening…especially as it relates to autism. You see, Bortus has
his change of heart on whether to perform the procedure on his daughter while
watching the 1960s Claymation Rudolph The
Red Nosed Reindeer movie with two other crew mates, and it was the story of
Rudolph’s assumed deformity actually saving the day that, rather humorously,
makes him reconsider his entire stance.
Putting aside the occasionally weird humor for a moment, the
episode does raise the very real question of a what a disability actually is.
After all, biologically, there was nothing wrong with Bortus’ daughter – she
was a perfectly healthy baby girl. The ‘disability’ in the minds of the Moclans
was her potential inability to partake in society as an adult, along with a
host of perceived stereotypes about people with her ‘condition.’ This should
ring a bell for any one of us who are familiar with the neurodiversity
movement, as well as the push to cure autism through in utero screening. Bortus
himself says it best when he wonders how he could possibly dare to make a
decision about the future capabilities of a being he only just brought into
this world. It all serves to highlight a very real fact – that disability is as
much a social construct based on what is arbitrarily considered ‘normal’ as it
is based on biological realities. Had Moclans been a typical race with two
biological sexes and a range of internal genders, the question of Bortus’
child’s sex would never have even been an issue. Circumstances, and prejudice,
determined her fate more than anything else. That ultimately, even the best
arguments by Orville XO Kelly Grayson failed to persuade the court to respect
the baby’s birth sex also points to a harsh reality – that true social change
is hard, and often requires far more work than one trial in one courtroom can
accomplish.
In the end, ‘About A Girl’ is an overly simplistic and
somewhat problematic allegory when taken on face value as being about the struggle
for transgender rights. It still succeeds in that respect mind you, but not
nearly as well as it does when considered as a metaphor for disability and
autism rights. The fact that, at the end, the court still forced the baby to go
through with the procedure was painful to watch, and it damn near brought a
tear to my eye, but it did so in the best tradition of Star Trek shows of yore.
When one considers the arrogant pride with which some countries have recently
proclaimed to have ‘eliminated’ Down Syndrome through selective abortions and
in-utero testing, the profound, powerful message of this episode is all the
more needed. After all, there really is NO way to know what kind of value
someone will have, or what kind of contribution they will be able to make until
they’re given a chance to develop and grow. So is The Orville the best science
fiction show I’ve ever seen? Definitely not…and in fact I very nearly stopped
watching it after the horrible writing of the pilot episode. But had I done
that I’d have missed out on a show that, while often ham-fisted, also manages
to write decent allegories of important
issues like these.
And you know what? Any show that can make a commentary about
in-utero genetic screening and the social model of disability while also showing
a gelatinous alien flirting with a human doctor within the same 45 minute run
time is a-okay with me!
As always, yours in diversity,
Adam Michael
