Topa (Pullum) and Kelly (Palicki) from “A Tale of Two Topas”
Courtesy of Hulu
[This story includes spoilers from the third season of Hulu’s The Orville.]
The Orville revisited the alien culture of the Moclans in season three, and it was done in quite emotional fashion.
Following previous episodes setting the stage from the sci-fi series’ first two seasons that aired on Fox, the fifth episode of The Orville’s current season, airing on Hulu, centered on Bortus (Peter Macon) and Klyden’s (Chad L. Coleman) child Topa (Imani Pullum), now a teen, sharing that she identifies as female and requesting to reverse a surgery that all Moclan females undergo as a baby that changes their sex to male. Bortus supports Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) and Isaac’s (Mark Jackson) efforts to abide by Topa’s wishes, despite the rage that it causes for Klyden, who was also born female.
Seth MacFarlane, the show’s creator and star who wrote and directed the episode, tells The Hollywood Reporter that after laying the groundwork for the character and single-gender species in season one, the show’s team was eager to explore the storyline again after enough time had passed, particularly when there seemed to be some sense that the show could improve on how it set things up the first time around.
“With this kind of material, you’re always threading a needle, and in the past, there are things that we perhaps did not handle as expertly as we could,” he says. “That’s part of the learning process — certainly with any show, you find your footing — but I’ve been really gratified by the reaction from the fans.”
During his below conversation, MacFarlane reflects on a 2010 Family Guy episode in which Quagmire learns that his parent identifies as transgender (at the time, advocacy groups including GLAAD had expressed concerns with the episode). MacFarlane also discusses what it will likely take for The Orville to get another season, along with his thought process for how he would approach an episode commenting on the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.
What made you feel like this was the right story to tell at this time?
When you’re dealing with this genre and alien cultures, the story arc doesn’t always present itself immediately. You have to discuss it in the room, and you have to kind of hash out all permutations of how it could develop. In many ways, when you get this far into a series, the characters and the universe guide you. We had established Bortus; we had established Klyden; we had, to some degree, established Topa, and certainly established the rest of the crew’s relationship to those characters. In a strange way, the universe of The Orville guided the writer’s room in this direction. It seems the most organic way to let her story play out, and when I was writing the draft, I found that it was not a simple thing to do, but breezy enough process that it was a good indicator that we were on the right track. This episode was a pleasure to write because when I got into it, all indications were that the story had been broken properly and responsibly and with care.
Have you taken a look at reactions on social media to the episode?
Yeah, I have, actually, and it’s very gratifying. With this kind of material, you’re always threading a needle, and in the past, there are things that we perhaps did not handle as expertly as we could. That’s part of the learning process — certainly with any show, you find your footing — but I’ve been really gratified by the reaction from the fans. They’ve really taken it as a conversation starter. I hope that The Orville never feels like we’re on a soapbox. That’s never our intention — our intention is to entertain and to begin a thoughtful conversation. But for this episode, at least, it seems as though that’s been the general reaction. People have taken it as a character story that is allegorical — it takes place in this alien world — but is also the impetus of a much more human conversation.
The Orville needed to find its footing on this topic?
In general, The Orville took a minute to find its footing. There are certainly elements of season one that I would go back and fine-tune a little bit, if I could, all across the board. How serious science fiction and comedy work together is something that is much more often done wrong than done right, and I think early on, there were some things that we were stumbling with. Late in season one, and certainly throughout season two, we were figuring out where those flaws were and where the machine was creaking a little bit and were able to course-correct and land in a place that started to feel really organic.
Is there a different level of freedom to approach topics like this with Hulu than with the show’s previous home at Fox?
Content-wise? No, believe it or not. (Laughs.) Fox — Fox Broadcasting Company, let’s be clear about that — would’ve been just as embracing of this material and our handling of it as Hulu was. The difference, however, to me is just as simple as running time. You’re not stopping six times for a commercial break, which always affects the structure of your story, and you’re allowed to breathe on a streaming service. In an episode like this, where you’re telling a very emotional story, there are times when you just have to let the scene breathe, and you have to see character’s faces and how they’re processing certain story turns. It’s tough to do that on a broadcast network because you have to cut everything down to 43 minutes, and not every story is 43 minutes long.
Given your other projects, I’m not sure if your fans might have always assumed you would want to tell this kind of story in this way. Does this show feel like you’re offering a different way that you’ve tackled topics — trans topics, but also other topics — in the past?
It just depends on the show. Different shows have different needs. I’m working on the Ted series right now for Peacock and finding that its needs are just very different. The comedy has not gone away. I’m still fighting for jokes that I think fit well with the universe of that show. With something like The Orville, it gets trickier because I’ve been very cognizant of how the humor fits into the show, and I know people love the humor. I went back and watched some of season two recently and found that, tonally, what we’re doing is really not that much different. I think so much time has passed that people are thinking back to The Orville in earlier years as this laugh fest, and it really wasn’t. It just depends on the story. This season, as we go along, you will see episodes that lean much more into the comedy. Family Guy or Ted would handle the topic in their way. This was the way that was right for The Orville.
“A Tale of Two Topas”
Courtesy of Hulu
So it wasn’t necessarily a mindset of, “I want to kind of change my legacy a little bit or atone, in a way, for other jokes I’ve told,” but it was just more that the project feels different and handles it differently.
No, it was nothing like that. Look, there are always things that you would do differently when you look back at earlier points in your career. For me, it’s more about nuance. There isn’t a big change I would make. It’s more about individual moments and individual jokes. The intent of the Family Guy episode was to show that Quagmire’s father was still a war hero, and still someone that he could look up to and respect. Actually, that episode was written by Steve Callaghan, a writer on Family Guy, who had the same experience with his own parent — his father had transitioned to a woman — and he was writing, in many ways, from his own experience. Now, certainly the language of Family Guy makes that story a little bit different than it would be on something like The Orville, but I think that’s something that gets lost a little bit at times when we think of that show, that Steve was writing from experience. But The Orville just requires a different kind of storytelling, and to be blunt, I enjoy it more. I’ve never enjoyed a writing process more than I have on this show.
I know the process of getting to a fourth season is complicated, as the actors’ contracts are up after this season. But given that there continue to be various topics to tackle with a show like this, including the recent Roe v. Wade decision, do you find yourself hoping for another season?
I would love it. I know the entire cast is hoping for it. It’s a big question mark for a lot of reasons. It’s not an inexpensive show to produce. It requires an ambitious budget. But the flip side of that is, it’s no more ambitious than half the other streaming shows on television. It really is gonna depend on audience response, on whether the show gets discovered. I still think there are a lot of people who just don’t know that we’re out there and don’t really quite know what we are. And when people sit down and watch the show, they’re almost always surprised, and it almost always upends their expectations. Probably because it’s me (laughs), probably because most of what I’ve done in the past has been very different, but it’s dependent on audience response. At the end of the day, it’s a business. It’s dependent on whether we’re worth something to Disney and to the platform that we’re on.
Do you know how you might tackle a Roe storyline if you were given the chance for The Orville?
I have no idea yet. I have no idea. We delved into it a little bit in our fourth episode of the season [by using a storyline involving the Krill alien species to criticize the practice of some states forcing a woman to see an ultrasound before undergoing an abortion]. It was really just a bit of color for that episode to show a little bit more about how their world operates. And it was pure coincidence that the episode aired the day that that disastrous decision came down. I don’t know how we would handle it specifically. At this point, it’s certainly something that we would want to dig into, but it would require many days of sitting in the writer’s room and discussing it and how it applies to our world. You wanna make sure you’re starting that conversation without yelling at people, much as we’d all love to. It’s just not the way to tell a story. You have to be nuanced. It has to organically inject itself into the larger story that you’re telling. It’s to make your point and to put forth your thesis. So to speak without preaching is a real Goldilocks zone. And that takes a lot of time, too, with a lot of talented writers, to figure out. And certainly, I’m lucky enough to work with a lot of them.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
New episodes of The Orville debut Thursdays on Hulu.