The Orville Perfectly Flips Star Trek: Voyager's Doctor Storyline
WARNING: This article contains reference to suicide and contains spoilers for The Orville, season 3, episode 5, «A Tale of Two Topas»
Isaac perfectly flips the story of a Star Trek: Voyager Doctor in The Orville season 3, episode 5. «A Tale of Two Topas» picks up the story of Bortus (Peter Macon) and Klyden's (Chad L. Coleman) child Topa, who was born female. In the single-sex society of the Moclans, this was deemed to be an abomination, and the decision was made to reassign their daughter's gender in one of The Orville's earliest, and most lauded episodes, season 1, episode 3 «About a Girl.» When it aired in 2017, it was a promising sign for the show's intention to tackle the social commentary of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek.
In «A Tale of Two Topas», Topa discovers the truth and decides to undergo surgery to reclaim the gender identity she was born with. It's a decision that leads to tensions between Bortus and Klyden, and between the Planetary Union and Moclan society. Ordered not to conduct the surgery aboard the Orville, Claire (Penny Johnson-Jerald) offers to resign her commission to do the right thing. It's then that artificial lifeform Isaac (Mark Jackson) offers to conduct the surgery instead, following in the footsteps of Star Trek: Voyager's emergency medical hologram (Robert Picardo).
RELATED: Recasting Star Trek: Voyager In 2022
Many of The Orville's characters have Star Trek counterparts. Bortus is Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation, while Captain Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) becomes more like Star Trek's Kirk with each episode. Throughout the series, Isaac has essentially been The Orville's version of Data, an android that doesn't quite understand the intricacies of human behavior. However, in «A Tale
Read more on screenrant.com
