Out of line offensive humor is what McFarlane is known for.
To be fair, I believe the gag was that he wanted Bortus to lay an extra (presumably unfertilized) egg for the omelette, not to use the one that had the baby in it.
And after episode 3, I think I’m officially hooked. It’s like 90s trek never ended.
My guess is that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are simply variant body morphs, with no real biological difference. They only use the terms because the morphs generally resemble the males and females of other humanoid species.
It definitely reminded me first and foremost of the B5 1st season episode where Dr. Franklin wants to operate on the alien kid whose parents don’t believe in being cut open. This was probably the most dramatic, TOS-style morality play episode of the series so far,
Isaac mentioned that Moclan females are only born once every 75 years or so, but Klyten(?) says he was born female. Perhaps the number of female births is increasing due to the environmental damage they’ve done to their planet? Could make an interesting plot point for episodes to come.
The ‘75 years’ is certainly an average, so it’s going to clump occasionally…
I would guess, though, that it’s not actually that the numbers are increasing, or that this is an unusual clump - I wager it’s actually a lot more common than they think - and certainly more common than they let other species hear about.
(Making it a deformity caused by environmental damage would be well into Unfortunate Implications.)
That’s my guess, too. Plus, when you include Heveena, that’s at least three female births in the span of one Moclin lifetime. I suspect that it happens far more often than they’re willing to acknowledge; it reminds me a little bit of Worf’s comment about the smooth-forehead Klingons in the DS9 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”: “We do not talk about it.”
First I missed the “The Good Place” premier (which I watched online), now I missed this and the season premier of “Gotham” (I was not home Thursday night, but could have recorded them)
I need to pay closer attention to the TV schedule now
Brian
You need a better DVR (if you have one). One of the things I really like about Google Fiber is that I tell it to record a show, and it figures out when it is on (doesn’t handle football delays unfortunately).
Do need to be a little cautious on options - if you tell it ‘Big Bang Theory’, it could easily fill it self up with reruns.
We didn’t bother watching it this week. We’ll catch it On Demand instead.
Why me, Lord? I’ve been good.
:dubious:
All I can say is; awesome episode. McFarlane took massive risks, bringing by my count about half a dozen controversial issues into sharp relief. What I liked about it is how he subverted expectations. The “father” of the baby is the one born female. The aliens have their own real culture, they are not just humans with skin diseases. And the ending; there is no great epiphany for the “backward” culture, and no great make-up/break-up scene, the partners just, try and live on.
Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? How long is a Moclan lifetime? In the Trek universe, species with lifespans well over a century weren’t uncommon. It’s possible that Klyden is 75 and Heveena is 150, (or thereabouts). (It seemed that her works were seen as classics by the other Moclans, so they must have been written a long time ago.) But I’ll admit that’s a bit of fan-wank…
You need to lower your egg-spectations.
True enough, and I thought of that (though neglected to mention it) when I wrote my earlier post. Vulcans, for example, can live to over 200.
I’ll make a note, for my Little List.
:dubious:
One possible issue they could have made more of: Klyden was born female, concealed that from his mate, and then fathered (?) a female.
Are we looking at the equivalent of a heritable birth defect? If Klyden had known, could the developing embryo have been scanned for the ‘defect’? Instead of spending 21 days incubating the egg, could they have chosen to abandon it and try again for a ‘normal’ child?
So many fun controversies to play with: gender selection, abortion, eugenics, sexual mutilation, parental vs. individual choices… Kudos!
When they scanned the planet, I was vaguely expecting them to discover that some huge percentage of the population was “female” and alterations were far more commonplace than anyone realized or would openly discuss. The isolated female turning out to be the famous author was pretty eye-rollingly dumb.
I find I can’t really summon much concern with the Moclan policy just because “male” and “female” are so poorly defined and “females” apparently completely unnecessary for the propagation of the species. If the baby had been born missing its “testosterone secretion organ” and a simple procedure could clone and surgically implant one… big deal. As it is, the episode neither made it clear that “conforming to male” required a surgical grafting of a penis, or even if so, what this species uses its penises for, if anything.
It’s comparable to the TNG episode “The Outcast” in that the androgynous alien species made a big deal about how being “male” or “female” was considered shameful and worthy of medical correction, but never got around to explaining what “male” and “female” actually means to them, leaving it to the audience to project our own definitions onto the characters.
I thought the advocate for the Moclan made pretty reasonable arguments (and some of the Orville crew’s arguments were super weak - oh, a female of super strong species is stronger than the male of a weaker species, no shit?) and that socities that are more or less functioning perfectly fine should be able to handle their own matters internally - so I was actually happy to see the resolution of the episode and thought well of the show for how it turned out. On Star Trek our crew would’ve made perfect arguments and the backwards race would’ve made comically evil/poor arguments and our crew would’ve won with their moralizing ways wrapping it all up with a ribbon. This was actually fairly brave for a light hearted trek type show.
On reflection, the early throwaway scene with the doctor and the blob seems relevant. So she thinks they’re not compatible as species? Big deal, he (?) can extrude a penis-like structure (probably a pretty versatile one) as needed, so what difference does it make?
They have great confidence in that force-field-that-keeps-air-in-but-lets-ships-out. One failure and everyone on the deck is swept out to a messy death by suffocation.