Thread by @IBJIYONGI

Did anyone else watch both Discovery and The Orville female baby episode? I’d like to discuss. My feeling is both shows ended up in “when you let cis white men do all the writing territory” but somehow I find Orville’s handling less infuriating?

* ... all the writing” territory*
Both shows try to address trans issues, kind of: Discovery by using transracialism (hey Dolezal) and Orville by having a species where a (socially assigned) female sex baby is an anomaly

What I find interesting about the Orville’s take and what isn’t addressed in any of the critiques I read is the complication of colonialism: can these humans tell another species how to handle their gender business? I actually appreciated this aspect of the narrative.

In this sense Orville does a better job of recognizing the entanglement between white supremacy and gender/sex identity issues

BUT Seth didn’t even bother to find out the difference between sex and gender. I know he was aiming for middle America but he really could have just been careful to use “sex” and not “gender” when he wrote the episode.

I agree with people who said that letting people be who they are shouldn’t be conflated with a gender binary equality push so the emphasis on women’s equality is not heeat and on the other hand, homophobia and transphobia are definitely entangled with misogyny in the real world

I do think the humans should have mentioned intersexuality to contextualize their response. The show really missed an opportunity to take a strong stand against the mutilation of intersex children, which in some sense is really the most directly comparable human behavior.

By setting this storyline in the context of a just born baby, it’s not quite an analogy for how trans people are treated and it accidentally/carelessly conflates (binary) trans and intersex issues

Lots to critique there in #TheOrville. At the same time, I found Discovery’s plotting around some of these same questions to be so in love with its own writing that I found it far less thought provoking. I learned nothing new about my own standpoint.

The critique of hardline Islam was so heavy handed and over simplified as to be unhelpful. The critique of empire was similarly so over the top that it didn’t feel like a critique of our current dumpster fire or even a warning about our future.

While The Orville actually repeats some of the truly violating questions that people get asked, Discovery buries everything so deeply that it’s almost unrecognizable.

Discovery has an incredible cast. INCREDIBLE. But the plotting sounded to me like a white guy who thinks he’s woke trying to be super woke while not doing the basic woke thing: having a wildly diverse writer’s room.

The Orville also suffers from not having a diverse enough writer’s room but also doesn’t give off the impression of believing it achieved next level wokeness without it. They go about as far as a homogenous team might go.

The must fundamental answer to all of these problems is a writer’s room AND production team that reflect the communities whose themes and experiences will be taken up. Imagine if Discovery was being led and written by trans and cis women of color?!?

We don’t just need Black actors leading casts — we need Black producers leading the shows that give those captains their lines. (also btw Michael seems to not be on the path to Captain ....... ) Look at what Shonda Rhimes did for TV. Imagine a Black woman running Star Trek.

We won’t realize the TV Galaxy that Star Trek seeks to portray until directors/producers like @gates_mcfadden and @shondarhimes and @ava are given the opportunity to run the show. It’s not #IDIC if the show runners are always white men, even though I love what they often did.

In either case, I am curious to see whether Braga and MacFarlane absorb the feedback they got about this episode and am looking forward to season 2. I appreciate their love for Star Trek and belief that it doesn’t need fancy special effects to be interesting.