Non-Trek Worldbuilding. Part 5: The Orville
- cepmurphywrites
- 1 hour ago
- 11 min read
By Tom Anderson.
It’s been quite a while since I last penned an article in this series, for reasons I will make clear. To briefly recap what ‘Non-Trek Worldbuilding’ is all about, this is an article series in which I look into the worldbuilding of sci-fi settings which attempt to coexist with the cultural dominance of the Star Trek franchise, in particular those which came after it rose to that state of prominence. In this environment, an alternative sci-fi setting (especially those of a similar ‘space opera’ bent) effectively cannot ignore the existence of Star Trek; generally, they either try to do something deliberately different, or knowingly incorporate or deconstruct some of the established elements of Star Trek.
Thus far, I have looked at examples including Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, Red Dwarf, Star Wars in its earliest incarnation when it had to define itself against Star Trek, and even Galaxy Quest. The latter film is knowingly a parody and deconstruction of Star Trek but, as I discussed in the corresponding article, a thoughtful one which put surprising effort into coming up with original names and variations on Star Trek technologies and other norms.
At the end of that article, I mentioned that a lot of the general look of Galaxy Quest – the ship, the uniforms, the technology – bore a suspicious resemblance to that used in The Orville. This is a sci-fi space opera series created by Seth MacFarlane (who also plays the lead, Captain Ed Mercer) and which ran for three seasons between 2017 and 2022; the third season was exclusive to Hulu, hence the time gap.
At the time I wrote the article, I didn’t know very much about The Orville. I do remember when it first debuted, memes circulated about Star Trek fans supposedly abandoning the controversial Star Trek: Discovery series (which also began in 2017) in favour of The Orville. This made me a bit wary about seeking it out at the time – I also did not have any streaming provider that carried it. Discovery falls into the same category as the Disney Star Wars sequels and, to a much lesser extent, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. These are examples of works of media that certainly have substantial flaws to them that deserve criticism, but any grounded criticism is invariably drowned out by a horde of slovenly man-children keyboard warriors who think Mount Athos is dangerously progressive and usually know as little about the franchises they are supposedly defending as they do about personal hygiene.
I digress. The point is that I was a bit concerned about what The Orville might be like, if it was being promoted as an alternative to the alleged “Woke Trek”. My knowledge of Seth MacFarlane was also mostly his association with puerile humour on animated shows, which did not inspire confidence.
Fortunately, it turns out, this impression was entirely incorrect. Since writing the previous article, my father and I binge-watched The Orville over a few months and came away exceptionally impressed by this as a work of science fiction. In some ways it is the Platonic ideal of post-Trek science fiction that knowingly evokes the feel of Trek without feeling too derivative in the details. Furthermore, far from an ‘antidote to woke’ its entire central thesis involves an exploration of the collision of progressive liberal values with cold-blooded geopolitical pragmatism, in which its editorial sympathy is decidedly with the former. Perhaps the more reasonable criticism (if it ever escapes being drowned out) is that The Orville represents the struggle, whereas Discovery too often just slapped token representation on the screen without doing anything with it in context, but that’s a discussion that will have to wait for when tempers have cooled.
For context, please note that I avoided reading anything about The Orville online while I was watching it to avoid spoilers, and even after finishing it, I still haven’t read anything about its production – so, compared to some of my other articles like the one on Andromeda, this won’t include any behind the scenes material.
Here’s a brief rundown of the setting. In the twenty-fifth century, Earth is one member of the Planetary Union, a Federation stand-in (but one with rather fewer members). In one of the most intentionally straight copies from Star Trek, Earth is presented as a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society in which no-one uses money and the effective currency, if any, is ‘reputation’. (In some ways this is actually explored slightly more than in Star Trek itself, but crucially, not in a critical way – this utopian value is still presented as a positive, which is very important to me as a viewer).
The two other members of the Planetary Union we see most often (there are also several others) are the Xelayans and the Moclans. Xelayan is pronounced Seleyan, thus making it one of the more blatant (to my mind) Trek references – Mount Seleya is a famous place on Vulcan. The Xelayans do not have the Vulcans’ defining focus on logic and rejection of emotion, but they do have their super strength (exaggerated further due to high gravity), esteem for science at the expense of military service, and pointed ears – which are covered with rills, as are their noses and foreheads. On the Orville the Xelayans are represented by security chief Alara Kitan, who is later replaced with the suspiciously similar substitute Talla Keyali.
The Moclans are even more central to the arc plot than the Xelayans. They are introduced as a single-gender (all male) species who live on a polluted industrial world and are responsible for weapons production for the Union. On the Orville they are represented by Bortus and his partner Klyden. It is clear from day 1 that in some ways, the Moclans represent the Klingons from The Next Generation (TNG) and Worf specifically – also like Teal’C from Stargate SG-1, Bortus is a comically-serious, inscrutable warrior.
However, in the first few episodes of the series, our assumptions about the Moclan species begin to be turned upside down. When Bortus and Klyden’s egg hatches to reveal a baby girl inside, it gradually comes out that female Moclans are born on a far larger scale than their government admits and are subjected to ‘corrective surgery’ against their will to become male. The dispute is complicated when Bortus is persuaded to try to defend his child’s right to remain female, but Klyden reveals he was also born female and doesn’t want the child to be an outcast. It eventually transpires that the Moclans’ greatest, reclusive writer is actually a secret female, and later we learn there’s a hidden colony of female exiles shipped there via an underground railroad. The first season sees a courtroom episode where, sadly realistically, all the heartfelt appeals in the world don’t sway the court and Bortus’ and Klyden’s child Topa is indeed subjected to a sex change operation. He grows up (rather rapidly, as is Star Trek tradition) over the course of the next two seasons and the controversy eventually returns at a critical time.
The Union’s primary recurring foe is the Krill species, whose ships slightly resemble Romulan ones but otherwise (pleasingly) aren’t a very close match for any Star Trek antagonist race. They are expansive religious fundamentalists, worshipping ‘Avis’, with very pale skin and must live in darkened environments. There is a complex plot with the Krill over the course of the series which makes them considerably less two-dimensional than this description might imply.
Another major alien species is the Kaylon, a group of androids who are more technologically advanced than the Union, but thus far have remained on their homeworld. They have sent a representative, Isaac, to the Orville in order to explore the world of biological life forms. Considering how much TNG used Data, I would not have expected Isaac to become perhaps the biggest star of the show and to be an interestingly unique character whose plots remain original and distinct from Data’s. In some ways, how the show uses Isaac is one of the most impressive and fulfilling parts of the show.
In addition to these recurring races, there are also many minor races both inside and outside the Union which we encounter. For example, the advent of CGI allows the recurring character of Lieutenant Yaphit, a lascivious but good-hearted protoplasmic blob who bears a suspicious resemblance to the title character of Howard Tayler’s sci-fi webcomic Schlock Mercenary.
The series is named for its setting, the USS Orville, named for Orville Wright (as indicated by the presence of a model of the Wright Flyer on Captain Mercer’s desk, alongside a Kermit the Frog doll as “someone whose leadership skills I admire”). It’s a bit strange to name a ship after Orville Wright’s first name to my mind, but there you go. I’m actually more surprised that they kept ‘USS’, one of the most unfitting and atavistic holdovers in the Star Trek setting (where they had to hastily redefine it as ‘United Star Ship’; I don’t think they ever say what it stands for in The Orville). Especially odd when Galaxy Quest’s suspiciously similar ship, the NSEA Protector, does use a different acronym. Really, it’s mostly the forward hull that looks similar between the two, the aft of the Orville looking more evocative of the loops on the Andromeda Ascendant. Copying from multiple sources is the same as originality, after all.
This brings us neatly onto technology. The aforementioned loops on the ship are said to be the ‘quantum drive’. For the most part, one way in which The Orville diverges from the TNG-era Star Trek it mostly evokes is that it does not make much attempt to bring in real science, with some exceptions. The level of scientific literacy usually hovers more around the Voyager level. “Quantum” is simply used as a stand-in for “warp”, as in “go to quantum”, “maximum quantum”, and of course it also evokes the (different) quantum slipstream drive that featured in Voyager and then was cheekily nicked for Andromeda.
Weapons are rarely mentioned by name in The Orville, in this respect somewhat similarly to Andromeda and Galaxy Quest – there’s no attempt to compete with the iconic phaser. One or two episodes describes the shipboard weapons as plasma cannons and torpedoes. The hand weapons are called pulsers according to various fan wikis but I’m not sure if that’s ever said on screen.
Probably the biggest outright difference between The Orville and Star Trek is that the former lacks anything akin to transporter technology, at least as used by the Union and most other powers we see – only substantially more advanced civilisations seem to have them. That does create a substantial shift in character between the two, a trick I’ve used myself in my own science fiction writings for better distinction from Trek. Arguably it’s only possible because, unlike Star Trek when it first kicked off in its original form, this show has the ability (thanks to CGI) to frequently show shuttles taking off and landing. The Orville’s shuttles themselves take a lot of cues from Star Trek, right down to having miniaturised forms of the same characteristic engines on them. They switch to a different and sleeker shuttle design, as well as featuring fighters, in the third Hulu-exclusive season. The ship’s interiors also get substantially more advanced-looking from season to season, visible on the bridge and especially in Engineering where we eventually get to see the heart of the quantum drive.
Another key difference between The Orville and Star Trek is that Planetary Union shuttles use cloaking devices (explicitly described as cloaking) which in Star Trek is, of course, forbidden to the Federation by treaty. However, this cloaking is only seen with small shuttles and often seems more aimed at stealthily hiding the shuttle from less advanced civilisations that are being studied rather than from frontline enemies, who might be able to see through the cloak (though I’m not sure if this is consistent). In this respect it seems more akin to the ‘holoship’ type of cloaking seen used by the Federation in Star Trek: Insurrection. Incidentally, the Planetary Union does seem to have something directly equivalent to the Prime Directive and even gives a reason for it, showing how a planet that was contacted too early ended up destroying itself.
A technological similarity between the two, on the other hand, is in the use of a holodeck, sorry, an Environmental Simulator. The Orville thankfully does not return to the overused well of ‘the holodeck goes wrong, with hilarious consequences’ TNG plots, but instead draws more on the higher development given to the concept in Deep Space Nine and occasionally Voyager. For example, one memorable episode sees Gordon Malloy use the data from a smartphone found in a twenty-first century time capsule to recreate the life of the woman who owned it and ends up falling in love with her and being addicted to spending time in the simulator. The Orville is also less shy about depicting the simulator used for nefarious sexual purposes, which was usually only implied in Star Trek.
Another difference between the two involves the role of pop culture. After the ill-judged space hippies in “The Way to Eden” and Joe Piscopo in “The Outrageous Okona”, Star Trek has generally shied away from showing recognition of current pop culture in the future. While we can assume that classical music that has endured for three centuries will probably endure for another three, or so goes the logic, it’s much harder to predict which current films or music will still be around then. There’s a lot of fish-out-of-water temporal humour that comes from this, e.g. a time-travelling Tom Paris is an expert on the 1950s but finds himself in the 1990s instead. By contrast, The Orville routinely features current (or somewhat older) music and films, in particular the crew enjoying watching twentieth century films and referencing them. This is partly due to having the rights for a big chunk of that pop culture, but it’s still a noteworthy distinction. Dolly Parton’s music in particular eventually becomes plot-important.
Some of this ties in with the fact that, at least initially, The Orville seems more parodic and seedy in tone, but this is rapidly (and thankfully) abandoned. The initial framing device is that Ed Mercer broke up with his wife Kelly after returning home early from an assignment to find her sleeping with a blue alien, and it being a blue alien is played for laughs. Then later they have to work together as captain and first officer amid this tension. However, for the most part the tone becomes more serious (but still with laughs along the way) and by the end of season 2 we have a time travel plot about the It’s a Wonderful Life effect that would happen if Ed and Kelly never got together, stemming from the impact of the emotional damage of their breakup. I was pleasantly surprised by just how serious and meaningful The Orville can be. The tone can sometimes be slightly anti-religious which is not my preference, but in some ways this just feels like it’s authentically evoking the feel of Star Trek’s more unsavoury parts.
In terms of worldbuilding, then, The Orville mostly conservatively sticks quite close to the Star Trek norms, with occasional exceptions such as the lack of transporters. There is little attempt made to come up with original or distinctive terms to replace the iconic Star Trek ones, and to some extent I think this is deliberate. Fundamentally, Seth MacFarlane wants to tell Star Trek stories in a recognisably Star Trek-like setting but getting around Paramount’s lawyers, and from this point of view, The Orville succeeds mightily. The stories it tells sometimes resemble the self-contained, high-concept ones of the original 1960s Star Trek (e.g. “Mad Idolatry”, “If the Stars Should Appear”, “Majority Rule”, “All the World is Birthday Cake”) other times the moral quandaries of TNG (“About a Girl”, “Deflectors”, etc.) or its plots about what it means to be human (“A Happy Refrain”), the geopolitics of Deep Space Nine (“Gently Falling Rain”, “Domino”) and the time travel shenanigans of Voyager (“Twice in a Lifetime”). In some ways, at its best it surpasses all of them, learning from Star Trek’s example and building on it in a new direction.
From a worldbuilding perspective, then, The Orville falls into the category of knowingly aping Trek in a respectful manner rather than trying to do something differently. It is not a fascinating vein of difference in the way, say, Andromeda is, but it certainly homes highly recommended from me.
Tom Anderson is the author of multiple SLP books, including:
The Look to the West series
The Surly Bonds of Earth series
The Twilight's Last Gleaminghttps://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/index.php?threads/the-death-of-zeitgeist-and-the-reflective-superheroes-of-the-mid-2000s.7314/
among others.