Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Orville: “Majority Rule.”
By Michael Isenberg.
This coming weekend marks the 2018 Hugos, “Science fiction’s most prestigious award,” at least according to the awards' own website. Named after Hugo Gernsback, founder of Amazing Stories magazine, they're generally open to works published during the previous year.
Looking over the finalists, I was dismayed to see that some of them aren’t so prestigious. The Last Jedi? Seriously? More regrettable, many fine works of 2017 science fiction weren’t among the finalists. And so—
Welcome to the first annual NOT THE HUGO awards!!! Our first category, Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. And the award goes to (the envelope, please)…
The Orville, Season 1, Episode 7: “Majority Rule.”
The Orville is the brainchild of Star Trek super-fan Seth MacFarlane, and actor/director Jon Favreau, who seems to have a hand in everything these days. Think of the show as The Next Generation with potty humor. The look and feel of the eponymous starship is pure Enterprise D. The ensemble cast includes discount Commander Data and discount Lieutenant Worf. The pilot episode has jokes about the urination frequency of aliens, the absence of strip clubs on space stations, a dog licking its balls, erections, and drawings of penises. And yet, as the series plays out, it also offers insightful social commentary on subjects including cultural conflict, gender reassignment surgery, and religious intolerance.
I’d like to praise its boldness in defying traditional genre boundaries, but frankly, I don’t think it’s intentional. With only twelve episodes under its belt, the series is still trying to figure out what it wants to be. Mr. MacFarlane practically admitted as much during a Television Critics Association press tour in January. “The show was experimental in a lot of ways,” he said. “Tone was the biggest experimental part of it. What we found was that we can lean a little more heavier into the science fiction and not have to worry so much about knocking out a joke every page. The show is an hour and really can and wants to service its storytelling in a way that makes it a priority. The jokes come as they come, the comedy comes as it comes.” Evidently, the sophomore year of Orville will be less sophomoric.
There is nothing sophomoric about the episode “Majority Rule,” however, written by Mr. MacFarlane. And it's a worthy recipient for my alternative to Hugos, which are based on voting, since voting is what "Majority Rule" is all about.
When a pair of Planetary Union anthropologists go missing on the planet Sargas IV, a landing party from the Orville must go undercover to investigate. Sargas IV is so much like twenty-first century earth that one of the party, Lieutenant John Lamarr, expects to see “a Bustin' Jeeber walkin' around somewhere.”
The resemblance to earth goes deeper than throwaway jokes about annoying pop stars, however. Like Wesley Crusher in the TNG episode “Justice,” Lt. Lamarr soon finds himself arrested for an inadvertent offense—in a conversation concerning dance moves, he attempts to illustrate his point by dry humping a statue of the Sargans’ beloved pioneer woman, Mella Giffenden. Lamarr is quite likable and we want to see him acquitted (unlike the insufferable Wesley) (and I don’t just say that because Wil Wheaton blocked me on Twitter). Unfortunately, this is more easily said than done, as we learn during the jailhouse meeting Lamarr holds with Willks, played by Steven Culp, known to fans of Star Trek:Enterprise as Major Hayes. Willks isn’t Lamarr’s lawyer—that term is unknown on Sargas IV. Rather, he’s Lamarr’s…well, I’ll let him explain it:
Willks: I'm your publicity officer. I'm here to help guide you through your apology tour. LaMarr: Okay, wait. Now I'm really lost. What the hell is that?
Willks: You-you don't know what an apology tour is? John, they happen every day. How can you not be aware...?
LaMarr: Let's say I'm not aware, okay? Let's say, right, I'm the dumbest sonofabitch you've ever met. Now with that in mind, why don't you explain my situation to me?
Willks: Okay. You performed a disrespectful act on a statue commemorating frontier hero Mella Giffenden. It was caught on video and uploaded to the Master Feed. You received over one million downvotes from the public, which makes what you did a crime against the state. You will now begin an apology tour during which the people will vote on whether or not they believe your sincerity. If your downvotes remain under ten million, you'll be free to go.
LaMarr: [After he stops laughing] W-w-wait. All that crap you just said: that-that's real? You gotta be kidding me.
Willks: That's how the justice system works, which I think you know.
LaMarr: Okay, wait. So, uh, what happens if they don't believe me?
Willks: You will undergo social correction to prevent future transgressions.
LaMarr: What's that, "social correction?"
Willks: You will receive a series of neurological treatments to pacify any and all potentially negative impulses.
LaMarr: Okay, now I ain't laughing.
(Now that's how you do exposition! Fit it into the plot in a natural way, in this case a prisoner meeting with his lawyer-surrogate, and make sure the information isn't something the person receiving it already knows.)
To summarize, in the words of one of the characters, it’s “Government by American Idol.”
It’s a very polite society—who doesn’t want an upvote for complimenting their co-worker for losing weight?
But the downside to such “absolute, unstructured democracy” is considerable. The dire straits faced by Lt. Lamarr is certainly the most extreme scenario, but the voting system intrudes upon daily life in hundreds of less dramatic ways. Accidentally bumping into someone and spilling coffee on them is a downvotable offense. Being accused of cultural appropriation for wearing the wrong hat has the potential to spiral out of control. Even matters that require expertise, like what foods are healthy, or whether an environmental report is true, are settled by majority rule. And anyone with greater than 500,000 downvotes becomes part of a persecuted minority, unable to be served in restaurants or coffee shops. Since your votes stay with you for life, the poor judgment of youth is never forgiven.
While votes have potentially disastrous consequences for those who receive them, there are no consequences to issuing them, and correspondingly little thought goes into it. In the opening scene we see a pretty twentysomething take a moment to downvote two men on the Feed while simultaneously eating toast and gossiping on the phone. “That one guy has really weird eyes,” is her explanation. We later learn that they’re the missing anthropologists, who were caught on camera not giving up their seats on a “subtrain” to a pregnant woman. Not their fault: they didn’t see her.
Eventually the Orville crew finds one of the anthropologists. He's been socially corrected and we learn that it really is no laughing matter. It’s a sort of electronic lobotomy. The treatment left him “healthier and happier.” We know that because he keeps telling us—in the cheerful, soulless, vacuous tones of Landru’s acolytes in “Return of the Archons.” The Orville’s doctor determines that the condition is irreversible, even with the twenty-fifth century technology at her disposal (Good screenwriting there, Seth. Way to up the stakes).
The parallels to our own society are palpable. Everyone on Facebook is an expert on the issue du jour. Numerous careers have been brought to an abrupt and ignominious end thanks to Trial by Social Media, sometimes for offenses as minor as inappropriate jokes, tweeted years earlier. Paula Deen, Kathy Griffin, Brendan Eich, Naomi Wu, James Gunn, Roseanne Barr—they’ve all seen their incomes cut off and possibly their lives ruined with no rights of any kind: no presumption of innocence, no right to counsel, no rules of evidence, no opportunity to present one’s case to an impartial forum—not even a rule book to codify what the offenses are. One can go on an apology tour, make the rounds of the talk shows, say, “I’m sorry,” but the apology will never be good enough for self-styled victims determined to be offended.
Science fiction is a powerful medium for exploring social issues. By carrying some phenomenon to its logical conclusion, or transplanting it to some other setting, an author can shed new light on it. That’s certainly behind the success of the original Star Trek, which took on the controversies of its day: overpopulation, racism, war, alienation (okay, some fans could have lived without the space hippies). “Majority Rule” carries on this great science fiction tradition, a worthy successor to Star Trek.
And therefore, Nerds who Read awards Seth MacFarlane and The Orville its first NOT A HUGO.
Stay tuned to Nerds who Read all week for more awards.
| Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. For his own take on trial by public opinion—there's even an “apology tour”—check out his 2012 novel Full Asylum, available on Amazon. |
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