It was "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky".
THE ORVILLE - S1, E4: "IF THE STARS SHOULD APPEAR"...
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It was "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky".
Her use of the floor reminded me a bit of Riker's in "Measure of a Man" where he tries to "prove" Data is a non-sentient being incapable of making his own decisions by having Data perform a remarkable feat of strength (bending a heavy bar made out of a dense metal.) This is pretty similar to what Kelly did with Alara(?) and she was rightfully called on it, that Alara is stronger due to her species, not gender. (In MoM Picard points out there's many biological aliens with greater strength than humans.)
Kelly did, nicely, rebut the other side's counter of "a male could have done it easier" with a, "you have no way of proving that."
It could also be argued her use of (Malloy?) to counter "males are smarter" thing was too designed as she specifically chose a man who was not bright and even expressed that he was willing to do what was necessary to help the child (suggesting he may be "lying" or playing the fool to help Kelly's point,) It would've been better made if she had used a strong female from a race that's not gifted with greater than normal abilities and, perhaps, a more random selection of a male member of maybe even the (Malacan?) species?
But that's sort of a "trope" when it comes to these types of stories, rarely does it get any kind of courtroom procedure or standard of evidence correct, Trek did it numerous times as well. But, again, it was more about showing an overall point to us than it was to the characters in the episode. That one's gender has no bearing on one's ability.
We do. Since the "benefits" of the gender reassignment surgery are not of a medical nature, it is unlikely to appear in a medical database, and introductory materials are unlikely to mention it because female births are to infrequent to make it worth mentioning. Gender reassignment may also be something the Moclans consider self-evident in this case, so they may fail to mention it while not know that they had to. Bottom line, though, is that we don't know the contents of the medical database, so we can't judge the doctor by their contents.
I don't see how they weren't, medically speaking. Legally speaking is another matter...
There's a difference between accuracy and detail. I didn't find anything particularly inaccurate (medically speaking), given the level of detail the show provided, and a writer should only provide the amount of detail necessary for the plot. The more detail you have, the harder it is to be accurate in your details. That's not to say I didn't want a little more detail, but it wasn't essential for my personal enjoyment of the episode, and adding unnecessary detail can do more harm than good.
I'm totally on board with you on this one. At the very least, they could have arranged for a JAG officer to rendezvous with them at the Moclan homeworld. Then again, thinking back on the episode, Moclan law may have required Bortas to appoint an advocate on the spot, so they didn't have time to find someone qualified. Not a great plot device, though. I'd have preferred some more realistic court drama with people who present a case like actual lawyers.
Given how anal Star Trek fans can be about "canon" it's understandable. I actually got into an argument with someone here once who actually tried arguing the characters aren't breathing oxygen in the episodes that don't state it.
I remember fans actually used to bother Stargate's producers about the fact we never see the characters changing their clothes, intuiting it to mean the clothes automatically change themselves while the characters are wearing them. They ended up making two jokes about this in SG-1's 200th episode: in one scene where the characters are wearing different outfits than in the prior one, Teal'c made reference to the fact that had just changed their clothes, establishing canonically that they actually changed their own clothes rather than suddenly wearing a new outfit spontaneously. Then, later on in the episode, Walter Harriman's uniform actually does spontaneously change in the same scene, just to really mess with the fans.
Wow, it really is amazing how overly literal some people are.
As for the current debate, I don't really see where any of the stuff @Ometiklan wants would have really been necessarily, it wouldn't have really changed any of the stuff that happened, and it would have just added unnecessary technical details that nobody other than a few nerd on the internet would have cared about. The thing to keep in mind is that these kinds of shows need to be able to appeal to the casual fans, who just want an entertaining story and aren't going to be concerned with details of Moclan biology or culture.
This is going for a much more casual audience than Trek did, so they're not into as much detail. Which is probably for the best, since I have a feeling that that obsession with details is part of what almost destroyed the franchise with Voyager and Enterprise.
As for the current debate, I don't really see where any of the stuff @Ometiklan wants would have really been necessarily, it wouldn't have really changed any of the stuff that happened, and it would have just added unnecessary technical details that nobody other than a few nerd on the internet would have cared about. The thing to keep in mind is that these kinds of shows need to be able to appeal to the casual fans, who just want an entertaining story and aren't going to be concerned with details of Moclan biology or culture.
This is going for a much more casual audience than Trek did, so they're not into as much detail. Which is probably for the best, since I have a feeling that that obsession with details is part of what almost destroyed the franchise with Voyager and Enterprise.
Voyager and Enterprise most assuredly did not destroy the franchise. Franchise fatigue surely did.
They may not have destroyed the franchise, but they did do a number on the Fanbase.
*cough* A Night in Sickbay *cough*
Enterprise season 2 killed the franchise, utter dire! It could never recover.
All I wanted was either Dr Finn to know about the procedure and refuse to do it, or at least look it up before refusing it.
As for Kelly being the advocate, I didn't really mind it, but if they had said why she had to be the choice, I would have been happy.
Here we go again with franchise fatigue. (hint, it's quality not quantity)
The viewership curve went down steadily over the course of time. Quality shows get cancelled all the time, and shit shows continue. I think people just had enough after all that time--hell, weren't there actually two Treks on at the same time for a year or two? Too much of a good thing. But to each their own excuse... 
Have you ever seen any eps of The Starlost? It's on YouTube. Lower budget but decent sci-fi. You'll see what I meant if you take a look.
The bad writing sure didn't help.
If you apply this same sense of rigor then most of TOS also falls apart. The crew lands on planet of the week, gets a quick cliff's note sample of the dysfunctional culture, then tries to show them the way forward (prime directive be damned), usually with a hammy speech by Shatner. Lather, rinse, repeat. Simplistic? Sure. But it was more than enough for the show to be so well lauded and remembered a half-century later.
At some point you have to just accept this kind of stuff as Gulliver's Travels style pocket morality tales. Emphasis on "pocket". It's not necessary for the crew to analyze the situation to anal retentive levels of detail. I mean, come on, they used Rudolph footage as a character epiphany. You're setting the bar way too high.
No, from way before that. McFarlane is familiar with the antecedents, whether trekkies are or not.
With all this talk about literal showing of things one of the highlights of this last episode was the elevator scene. It was awkward but funny at the same time.
Franchise fatigue? That's Berman's narrative that blames post-TNG/pre-DSC TV Trek's steady loss of viewers on something other than the fact that TPTB were unable to make a show that people wanted to keep watching. More accurate than "franchise fatigue" is "We couldn't make a show that people wanted to watch," or "We made boring shows and couldn't collectively stop ourselves from doing it."
It's accurate. People were bored with Trek. The audience started abandoning it in the first year of DS9.
Although I liked all incarnations of Trek, albeit not equally, I take your point that the sameness became an issue after a while too, contributing to said "fatigue". I don't disagree, although I think Enterprise season 4 was headed in the right direction, and I liked the Xindi story arc as something new--ish, after they bungled a potentially fascinating Future Guy story line.
It's blame-shifting. It supports a narrative that the franchise was fine, but people were just over-saturated with it. My contention is that people were sick of the formula that the shows had gotten themselves trapped in. Once the franchise started divorcing itself from the Berman-era patterns, and going back to dynamics that it had left behind, but which were still intrinsically of the franchise, like Kirk and Spock's relationship, it found itself rejuvenated.
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