TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

They revisit the trans child episode in a later season, I think it's really well done.

There are dozens of us. Dozens!

The Orville is boring at best and tone deaf at worst. I'm genuinely surprised at how well received it seems to be among Trekkies. I generally find that my Star Trek tastes are uncontroversial and in alignment with Trekkie groupthink but I am apparently way outside the norm on this one.

It's the Galaxy Quest comparisons that really get me, though. A huge part of why Galaxy Quest is so great is how self-aware it is. The Orville has none of that. Just the opposite, in fact: it's totally unaware of how bad a job it's doing filling the shoes it's attempting to fill.

I don't think they handled the trans issue badly actually. For one... The season 1 episode is about putting your own ethics onto other civilizations. It's not about trans kids at all and is more about if it's okay to control another groups law system because you find it morally incorrect.

The episode in s3 that revisits it does a good job of talking about actually transitioning and the trans experience.

I'd you're talking about the s1 episode then I think you missed the point. If you're talking about the s3 episode then I'd love to hear your arguments.

It's a rough topic. I thought it was well handled but I understand people feel strongly

the episode about the trans child and they handled that horribly

Definitely no worse than a TNG season 1 episode.

I struggled with it as well. I think for the same reason that I out grew family guy.

I really didn't like how they handled the trans episodes. Pretty much all of it was done badly but you can tell the writers think they did a great job.

For one the way it's presented, the child in question had their sex changed at birth without their consent/awareness and they simply reversed that later on. It sets up a reading where one can interpret the show as saying the gender you are born as is the one you really should be. And this is how some people have interpreted the show.

I think the writers tried to take the "assigned x at birth" terminology and make it literal but the way its done just doesn't actually work.

Also the in universe drama doesn't make a lot of sense. They make a big deal of worrying about how big of a decision it would be for the kid to change their sex. But in the show the procedure to change sex is pretty much magic and would be perfectly reversible with the technology they have. It's not a big decision actually, if they found they didn't like it they could go back at any time no problem. It doesn't make any sense.

And the way the transition is presented as pretty much just magic poof, next scene now you are girl, makes its completely unrelatable to real world trans experiences. The trans experience is completely removed from the depiction. It does nothing to actually show a cis audience what it's like to transition.

Lastly, the characters not once actually say the word trans or transgender. This is suppose to be humanity in the future. The characters should know about trans issues but they write it as if they don't, its bizarre.

If they really wanted to do it right they should have just had a real trans story. No dumb sci-fi set up where their sex was changed at birth. The kid should have just organically been shown to discover their gender identity over a few seasons. Shown a realistic transition where things take time, lots of experimentation with presentation and the like. Actually identified themselves as trans. It could have been great but what was shown was very much written by the cis for the cis.

I checked out when they took the whole ship computer and several engineers to unlock…an iPhone, then just scroll through this woman’s life. It was the Geordi’s girlfriend idea, just dumbed down.