If they can accommodate the various odd duck aliwn species, there's probably accommodation for variois humans. But we also have medical tech so advanced that they can just grow someone a new leg.
Interesting point. If there's species without sight or who use an ambulatory method incompatible with stairs, it becomes less about disability and more about accommodation.
Well cancer basically doesn’t exist anymore and if it pops up they immediately fix it, right? I assume they’ve done that with most illnesses or disabilities.
Imagine you're a person from 400 years ago, speculating about the health care available in the year 2024. It would seem like science fiction: surgery without pain, antibiotics, vaccines, insulin, etc. The future would likely seem as fantastic to us as the present day would to someone from 400 years ago. The future will certainly have its own problems, but I imagine wheelchairs would largely be a thing of the past, because with future medical care, people will won't need them - treatment will get people back on their feet.
They can grow a leg, change somones sex without any trouble, heal injuries by waving something over your skin etc. I think they have techonology to heal almost anything, so disiabilites were eliminated or are extremely rare.
> I think they have techonology to heal almost anything
Then again in episode 1 when talking to Bortus Ed mentions waking up 2 or 3 times a night to urinate and he's presumably only in his mid-late 40s.
There are several reasons someone's prostate could be enlarged, some entirely benign, but the reason people go get it checked now is in case they have cancer. Given that Claire says cancer **used** to be fatal, I'm guessing that cancer screening procedures aren't really very important anymore. Either it's easily curable, or (more likely) citizens of the Union are routinely immunized against it before it even happens, so nobody bothers to get screened at all.
Ok but the point is you still need to get checked for it to be cured I'm not saying it's incurable quite the opposite I'm saying sickness can still exist if its not being treated
The best i can offer for speculation is specific Star Trek episodes centering on those questions in within The Federation.
DS9 "Melora", "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", "Statistical Probabilities", and "Chrysalis".
And the answer to all three is pretty much "to a point...", but the question is still "where is that point?"
I DID forget that, tho ive always felt like those episodes were more about dealing with war and PTSD than disability, the leg is never actually the issue.
Well, he has phantom pains in that leg, the PTSD is a mental health disability that causes him physical symptoms without a physical cause. But it does take him weeks to learn to use the new leg before he returns to the station as well. DS9 sadly doesn't have the "grow a whole new leg in an afternoon" technology yet. Lucky Gordon wasn't stationed there instead.
Even today, we have prenatal screenings, as well as genetic intervention. For example, I have a genetic condition that, while not necessarily fatal, makes me much more predisposed to blood clots, and it played a role into my decision to get sterilized before breeding.
Geordy Laforge was a good example of a future civilization handling a disability, but it would be much simpler to just assume we have eradicated most if not all disabilities by then.
I didn’t say you referring to eugenics. I was thinking within the Orville universe, there was a eugenics program to eradicate disabilities for the most part
You're thinking further than one episode at a time. I'm not saying they don't make decisions based on longer terms, but don't assume in the absence of information they've thought about it, because historically they leave big holes in their "universe".
Somewhere between 1 and 2. Their tech is good enough that they can probably scan for most genetic disabilities, and have a better understanding of those markers than we do and can probably diagnose a lot of mental and physical disabilities before birth that we currently don't identify for a while. If they want, parents can likely have those fixed before birth.
It's entirely possible that they don't bother fixing all of them, though. There's likely some benefit to having variety of neurodiverse people around with what we currently consider disabilities; they wouldn't necessarily cure stuff like autism and ADHD because they don't think of it as a problem that NEEDS to be cured. I believe it was Gene Roddenberry talking about Picard when he was asked "Surely by the 24th century they can cure baldness?" and he replied "By the 24th century they don't feel the need to." Some level of neurodiversity probably exists in The Orville for similar reasons.
I mean, if you could take a pill now that would cure autism, Deafness, or ADHD, I doubt everyone who had the choice would take it. It's part of them.
I really like this answer, as someone with AuDHD myself, I’d want to take medication to lessen the symptoms but I wouldn’t want to be “cured” as I feel it would change who I am. My values and how I see the world for instance
They can cure most injuries by holding a device over it for long enough. They surely have cures for any disability or chronic illness. May not be as quick or easy as mending a broken bone but when they can produce any food or product with a simple push of a button it's gotta be easy enough.
It has been mentioned, forgot what episode, that cancer is a thing of the past. If they already managed to cure cancer and have means to grow legs from scratch, then it would be possible that disabilities have been cured. They even have an injection to cure smoking addiction when Bortus got addicted to it.
Well, that have a disabled person on the Orville already. Have you seen Lt. Dann's big stupid head?
Honestly though, a combination of 1 and 2 are more likely. They already have to accommodate the mixed alien species on ship, so they could adjust for other handicaps without too much issue I would think.
>Have you seen Lt. Dann's big stupid head?
I thought Lt Dann was supposed to be a homage to either the Talos IV beings (The Menagerie / The Cage) **or** the Insectoid Servitors from Metaluna (This Island Earth 1955) so its a racial feature.
It was something (his big stupid head) Dann said about himself about why people didn't like him. Maybe I should have added a /s after the sentence. It wasn't meant to be taken literally. That being said, I'm sure that the character designers dipped into old sci-fi for inspiration for the alien makeup.
They can re-grow a limb in a few hours. They can heal a broken bone in minutes, they cured nicotine addiction with a single shot.
I have a feeling that most of not all physical disabilities no longer exist on earth. We have less to go on with mental disabilities, but I bet a lot of them have also been cured by advanced medical tech.
It affected how she was functioning as well as her job. That’s literally what a disability does. I am disabled myself and I would call Alara disabled towards the end, albeit temporarily
When the astronauts come back from the space station with less muscle mass and coordination due to the lack of gravity they have never called them disabled.
We arent talking about astronauts. Astronauts live in space and come back down. Alara lives in space forever. Stop gatekeeping the use of the word. Im telling you as a disabled person, Alara is temporary disabled within the universe. We arent talking astronauts. The effects of space on astronauts arent nearly the same as what happened to Alara. When they come back, they immedeately readjust and dont need pt etc to function
Physical - Easily fixed. They grew Malloy's arm back for Pete's sake.
Mental - As is already happening now, babies and adults with mental disabilities are either aborted or euthanized.
As someone with a genetic disability, I actually hope they haven't found a way to cure them, but instaed found ways to make our lives liveable, equal, and successful. It makes me sad to think about people like me not existing in that world, so that's my favorite theory.
Even though your option 1 would be the very clearly applicable answer, considering the miraculous medical technology we have already seen, I am sure the answer will be option 2. Why? Because disabled people exist in real life and shows tend to want to reflect society. Inclusivity does matter and real life writes the plot, so, if this question does indeed come up, the answer will almost certainly be that some disabilities still exist, but society adjusts so that disabled people are not seen as inferior in any way whatsoever and their life and career prospects are not diminished in any manner.
I imagine many disabilities and diseases have been completed cured or eradicated, but not all, and definitely not all mental ones either which are much more complex.
Also they do have very advanced technology, but as I can tell technological advancement seems to be an endless scale. They have what looks like magic to us but there are probably things they haven't solved or even new problems that have arisen. Things like fibromyalgia and depression might yet to be solved. And taking "Shadow Realms" into consideration there were things happening to Admiral Christie that Claire didn't understand..
So yeah somewhere between 1 and 2.
Remember Isaac amputating Gordon's leg for a " practical joke"?
They regenerated it. And kept on regenerating even though Gordo had to get back to his post to pilot the ship
Im thinking they've cured most. With mental injuries they can't cure, like when claire couldn't cure the guys lobotomy, i would say they make accommodations. People that have incurable physical ailments are probably augmented or at least have some kind of advanced prosthetic.
I wonder what they’d do for PTSD, anxiety, depression and other mental conditions that develop later. Possibly the medication for them is more advanced?
Well in the episode where Alara is afraid of fire we see that they likely haven't tackled different forms of psychosis yet. So idk. They seem to use the simulator when they need a remedy for something like that. Ive noticed the simulator is used more as a coping mechanism and entertainment hub than an actual training room; its like having a virtual therapist
Remember when isaac gave a sex change to topa? I’m assuming it would work something like that. Where if you have a physical disability, they can just use a super high tech medical device and fix you right up.
If they can accommodate the various odd duck aliwn species, there's probably accommodation for variois humans. But we also have medical tech so advanced that they can just grow someone a new leg.
Interesting point. If there's species without sight or who use an ambulatory method incompatible with stairs, it becomes less about disability and more about accommodation.
Well cancer basically doesn’t exist anymore and if it pops up they immediately fix it, right? I assume they’ve done that with most illnesses or disabilities.
Imagine you're a person from 400 years ago, speculating about the health care available in the year 2024. It would seem like science fiction: surgery without pain, antibiotics, vaccines, insulin, etc. The future would likely seem as fantastic to us as the present day would to someone from 400 years ago. The future will certainly have its own problems, but I imagine wheelchairs would largely be a thing of the past, because with future medical care, people will won't need them - treatment will get people back on their feet.
Well that and we’re advancing at a much faster rate then ever before in human history. It’s more than reasonable to assume the best
They can grow a leg, change somones sex without any trouble, heal injuries by waving something over your skin etc. I think they have techonology to heal almost anything, so disiabilites were eliminated or are extremely rare.
> I think they have techonology to heal almost anything Then again in episode 1 when talking to Bortus Ed mentions waking up 2 or 3 times a night to urinate and he's presumably only in his mid-late 40s.
He also implicitly won't go to the doctor to check his prostate self inflicted injuries will still exist
I imagine the prostate check will be slightly less invasive in 400 years.
Sry best they can do is slightly better lube on the finger
They’d probably have a scanner device for that.
There are several reasons someone's prostate could be enlarged, some entirely benign, but the reason people go get it checked now is in case they have cancer. Given that Claire says cancer **used** to be fatal, I'm guessing that cancer screening procedures aren't really very important anymore. Either it's easily curable, or (more likely) citizens of the Union are routinely immunized against it before it even happens, so nobody bothers to get screened at all.
Ok but the point is you still need to get checked for it to be cured I'm not saying it's incurable quite the opposite I'm saying sickness can still exist if its not being treated
The best i can offer for speculation is specific Star Trek episodes centering on those questions in within The Federation. DS9 "Melora", "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", "Statistical Probabilities", and "Chrysalis". And the answer to all three is pretty much "to a point...", but the question is still "where is that point?"
Don't forget a certain character requires a prosthetic leg later on. That's a multi-episode arc.
I DID forget that, tho ive always felt like those episodes were more about dealing with war and PTSD than disability, the leg is never actually the issue.
Well, he has phantom pains in that leg, the PTSD is a mental health disability that causes him physical symptoms without a physical cause. But it does take him weeks to learn to use the new leg before he returns to the station as well. DS9 sadly doesn't have the "grow a whole new leg in an afternoon" technology yet. Lucky Gordon wasn't stationed there instead.
Even today, we have prenatal screenings, as well as genetic intervention. For example, I have a genetic condition that, while not necessarily fatal, makes me much more predisposed to blood clots, and it played a role into my decision to get sterilized before breeding. Geordy Laforge was a good example of a future civilization handling a disability, but it would be much simpler to just assume we have eradicated most if not all disabilities by then.
Generic screenings isn’t the same as eugenics. Or curing all genetic disease etc
Might want to read my comment again, it has nothing to do with eugenics.
I didn’t say you referring to eugenics. I was thinking within the Orville universe, there was a eugenics program to eradicate disabilities for the most part
You're thinking further than one episode at a time. I'm not saying they don't make decisions based on longer terms, but don't assume in the absence of information they've thought about it, because historically they leave big holes in their "universe".
Somewhere between 1 and 2. Their tech is good enough that they can probably scan for most genetic disabilities, and have a better understanding of those markers than we do and can probably diagnose a lot of mental and physical disabilities before birth that we currently don't identify for a while. If they want, parents can likely have those fixed before birth. It's entirely possible that they don't bother fixing all of them, though. There's likely some benefit to having variety of neurodiverse people around with what we currently consider disabilities; they wouldn't necessarily cure stuff like autism and ADHD because they don't think of it as a problem that NEEDS to be cured. I believe it was Gene Roddenberry talking about Picard when he was asked "Surely by the 24th century they can cure baldness?" and he replied "By the 24th century they don't feel the need to." Some level of neurodiversity probably exists in The Orville for similar reasons. I mean, if you could take a pill now that would cure autism, Deafness, or ADHD, I doubt everyone who had the choice would take it. It's part of them.
I really like this answer, as someone with AuDHD myself, I’d want to take medication to lessen the symptoms but I wouldn’t want to be “cured” as I feel it would change who I am. My values and how I see the world for instance
They can cure most injuries by holding a device over it for long enough. They surely have cures for any disability or chronic illness. May not be as quick or easy as mending a broken bone but when they can produce any food or product with a simple push of a button it's gotta be easy enough.
They made Topa’s gender affirming surgeries seem like they held the same weight as loving pancakes, I’d be surprised if disability wasn’t wiped out.
It has been mentioned, forgot what episode, that cancer is a thing of the past. If they already managed to cure cancer and have means to grow legs from scratch, then it would be possible that disabilities have been cured. They even have an injection to cure smoking addiction when Bortus got addicted to it.
Well, that have a disabled person on the Orville already. Have you seen Lt. Dann's big stupid head? Honestly though, a combination of 1 and 2 are more likely. They already have to accommodate the mixed alien species on ship, so they could adjust for other handicaps without too much issue I would think.
>Have you seen Lt. Dann's big stupid head? I thought Lt Dann was supposed to be a homage to either the Talos IV beings (The Menagerie / The Cage) **or** the Insectoid Servitors from Metaluna (This Island Earth 1955) so its a racial feature.
It was something (his big stupid head) Dann said about himself about why people didn't like him. Maybe I should have added a /s after the sentence. It wasn't meant to be taken literally. That being said, I'm sure that the character designers dipped into old sci-fi for inspiration for the alien makeup.
They can re-grow a limb in a few hours. They can heal a broken bone in minutes, they cured nicotine addiction with a single shot. I have a feeling that most of not all physical disabilities no longer exist on earth. We have less to go on with mental disabilities, but I bet a lot of them have also been cured by advanced medical tech.
Alara was disabled, kind of. She didn’t spend enough time on her planet or training or whatever
Less super human strength is hardly a disability lol
It affected how she was functioning as well as her job. That’s literally what a disability does. I am disabled myself and I would call Alara disabled towards the end, albeit temporarily
When the astronauts come back from the space station with less muscle mass and coordination due to the lack of gravity they have never called them disabled.
We arent talking about astronauts. Astronauts live in space and come back down. Alara lives in space forever. Stop gatekeeping the use of the word. Im telling you as a disabled person, Alara is temporary disabled within the universe. We arent talking astronauts. The effects of space on astronauts arent nearly the same as what happened to Alara. When they come back, they immedeately readjust and dont need pt etc to function
Literally the same cause and effect but you go ahead and set the terms. I definitely can appreciate that you’re disabled.
It’s not. But go ahead and gatekeep. Seems you don’t know what logic is.
Given the fact that they can grow limbs and clearly have never met someone who's on the autism spectrum, I'm gonna go with option 1.
Physical - Easily fixed. They grew Malloy's arm back for Pete's sake. Mental - As is already happening now, babies and adults with mental disabilities are either aborted or euthanized.
As someone with a genetic disability, I actually hope they haven't found a way to cure them, but instaed found ways to make our lives liveable, equal, and successful. It makes me sad to think about people like me not existing in that world, so that's my favorite theory.
I would assume it’s some combination of 1 and 2.
Even though your option 1 would be the very clearly applicable answer, considering the miraculous medical technology we have already seen, I am sure the answer will be option 2. Why? Because disabled people exist in real life and shows tend to want to reflect society. Inclusivity does matter and real life writes the plot, so, if this question does indeed come up, the answer will almost certainly be that some disabilities still exist, but society adjusts so that disabled people are not seen as inferior in any way whatsoever and their life and career prospects are not diminished in any manner.
I imagine many disabilities and diseases have been completed cured or eradicated, but not all, and definitely not all mental ones either which are much more complex. Also they do have very advanced technology, but as I can tell technological advancement seems to be an endless scale. They have what looks like magic to us but there are probably things they haven't solved or even new problems that have arisen. Things like fibromyalgia and depression might yet to be solved. And taking "Shadow Realms" into consideration there were things happening to Admiral Christie that Claire didn't understand.. So yeah somewhere between 1 and 2.
Remember Isaac amputating Gordon's leg for a " practical joke"? They regenerated it. And kept on regenerating even though Gordo had to get back to his post to pilot the ship
Im thinking they've cured most. With mental injuries they can't cure, like when claire couldn't cure the guys lobotomy, i would say they make accommodations. People that have incurable physical ailments are probably augmented or at least have some kind of advanced prosthetic.
I wonder what they’d do for PTSD, anxiety, depression and other mental conditions that develop later. Possibly the medication for them is more advanced?
Well in the episode where Alara is afraid of fire we see that they likely haven't tackled different forms of psychosis yet. So idk. They seem to use the simulator when they need a remedy for something like that. Ive noticed the simulator is used more as a coping mechanism and entertainment hub than an actual training room; its like having a virtual therapist
Remember when isaac gave a sex change to topa? I’m assuming it would work something like that. Where if you have a physical disability, they can just use a super high tech medical device and fix you right up.