10 Actors Who Were In The Orville AND Star Trek

9. Steven Culp

Steven Culp appears as Publicity Officer Willks in Majority Rule, an episode from the debut season of The Orville. He was the MACO Major Hayes in Star Trek: Enterprise's third season, as well as Commander Martin Madden, Riker's replacement as first officer of the Enterprise-E, though his scene was deleted from Star Trek: Nemesis.

Majority Rule was based on Jon Ronson's 2015 non-fiction book: So You've Been Publicly Shamed. Hated In The Nation, an episode of Black Mirror with a similar plot was based on the same work.

The novel, as indeed do the episodes, explores the notion of public shaming. In The Orville's case, this involves citizens being 'upvoted' or 'downvoted', with their social standing reliant on the same. The episode doesn't end with any seismic changes on Sargus IV, rather it centres on Lysella, a single citizen who chooses to live another way, by the episode's close.

Culp's Willks serves as a publicity officer to Navigator LaMarr, attempting to swing the public in his favour, serving as a Sargus example of a public defender.