The Orville - Seth MacFarlane takes on Star Trek

I have DirectTV Now and the Fox channel has all of the episodes…except the pilot. /headscratch Wha?

Pilot sets things up but its by far the weakest episode. Just enjoy!

I’m gonna go ahead and declare there is an inverse relationship between Orville episode quality and number of ex-wife cracks in a given script

I enjoyed tonight’s episode quite a bit. Other than the “glory hole” bit, there really wasn’t any stupid humor to speak of. The quarreling brothers were perfect, and I liked the doctor a whole lot better by the end - she didn’t do much for me in prior episodes. I see the humanization of Isaac is moving along apace - no real surprise but it’s still fun to watch.

I really loved tonight’s show—that was a TNG-ass episode for sure.

Am I the only one weirded out by her just straight up murdering the guy who had her locked up? As far as he knew, if he let her go she would just go out into the forest and get eaten. He has no idea that there’s a spaceship out there looking for her. But at the first chance she gets to escape and find her kids, she instead chooses to stay there and ambush and murder the guy. Why? And then later she’s telling her kids not to kill the aliens because “we value life”? Make up your mind.

But there is some logic to it. It’s just Seth MacFarlane logic. The guy is a survivalist. That means he’s right-wing. That means you have to kill them before they kill you. It’s a really unhealthy worldview to have, and thank God it’s not shared by everyone because the Tremors beasts would have devoured us all long ago if it was.

Heh. I kind of love how different your interpretation of each episode always is from mine.

I thought that scene was pretty appropriately a serious murder. When she broke into the other room, she was not planning on killing the guy. But after she spoke to her sons, her facial expression completely changed. She was going to do whatever it took to get out there to her sick son, even if it meant killing people. That’s why she said her line about not killing people to her son later. She felt guilt about what she’d done, but she felt that it was necessary to get her boys. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t still going to teach them to do the right thing. Later when the Captain asks her for her side of the adventure, she quickly changes the topic and said she’ll do that later. She’s not ready to talk about it, because she doesn’t feel fully comfortable with what she did. I don’t think it’s regret, necessarily,
but she’s not proud of it either.

Seriously. This is TNG, warts and all riding the high seas again.

I for one much prefer Discovery but this is a nice bowl of comfort food.

Nice catch, I would have to agree with that assessment, and it makes me like the episode a lot more.

I thought she was quite justified in her actions. Funny how my wife calls me a bleeding heart liberal every other day and yet by these standards I would be a right wing survivalist.

Okay, that does make sense. It’s not that I think what she did was necessarily wrong, I just didn’t pick up on her feeling bad about it.

When I watch this show, somewhere in the back of my mind I’m expecting to be pissed off. So it’s nice to get the perspective of someone who’s actually watching it in good faith.

I noticed that the other Trek show (Discovery) has over 230 unread posts now, since I ducked out of there after watching the first episode on CBS. I’ll take that as a good sign. I’m going to watch that when the season is over, so it’s a good sign that the show is generating so much discussion on Qt3.

Of course, it could just be that it’s like this thread, where a lot of the posts are about “It’s its” or Almost Human or Alien Nation or Space: Above and Beyond. :P

Most of it is me whinging about how terrible it is, and folks telling me to STFU.

I’ll take your advice!

I kind of looked at the doctor’s actions as necessary. She had no idea anyone was going to come try to rescue her and her boys. When she first climbs out and around into the storeroom, she’s just looking for the communicator. When she finds it and confirms her sons are alive, but learns one is sick, she makes the hard decision to kill her captor because she knows he will try to stop her escape and come after her and her sons should she succeed in escaping. She has no idea the Orville is on it’s way…she’s thinking long term. Hell, for all we know she may have been weighing the option of killing the guy, retrieving her sons, then setting up in the guy’s home where it is safe until she can figure out how to get rescued. She tried reasoning with the guy from the start, but he wasn’t receptive, so she did what any parent would do, put her kids first.

Later in the episode she atones for what she’s done by making sure the cure gets synthesized and that the Federation Union sends a medical team back to the planet to dispense it. She essentially saved thousands, maybe millions of lives, at the cost of that one life. That’s a very TNG ending to that story.

Not sure I’d want to be on that medical mission though. “Stop trying to eat me and let me inject you with this cure!”

Absolutely, she made the hard call and did what needed to be done. She’s really become one of my favorite characters, and it’s not just because I love Cassidy Yates either.

Yup. Can’t wait for her and Yaphit to finally hook up! ;-)

Oh god, I hope not.

Who’s Yaphit? Is that the green blob played by Norm McDonald (or a Norm McDonald sound-alike)?

Yes, and it’s actual Norm McDonald.

Watching this episode made me think they are going to need to give Isaac an “expression” upgrade in the future. They’ll write it up by saying that he’s made progress studying humans now and sees how essential facial expressions are for communicating with humans and they’ll make a big joke out of it with some wacky expressional faux pas. Anyways, they need it because he is just so boring to look at all the time, and he needs it to make the character work I think. Right now he has nothing at all going on, and they aren’t going to let him play the most boring straight man ever for the whole series.

Look at the robots in all other media properties for examples.

Of course, they could just relegate him to mostly unused side character, then it won’t matter. But if he’s going to be “starring” in episodes like this one, I think it’ll happen.

I enjoyed Totally-Not-Data’s role in this episode. I don’t think he needs an expression update. His deadpan emotionless delivery works for me.