Recap / The Orville Season 3 E 09 Domino

The creation of a powerful new weapon puts the Orville crew — and the entire Union — in a political and ethical quandary.

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Tropes:

• The Alliance: Several new ones are forged in this episode. Ed even references the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a famous (and short-lived) alliance between two former enemies.
  • Having been cast out of the Union, the Moclans decide to ally with the Krill against the Kaylon.
  • The Kaylon form an Enemy Mine with the Union to regain or destroy the superweapon. After this is achieved, the Kaylon then agree to a provisional alliance as a first step toward prospective membership within the Union.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: The majority of the episode is action packed, but the scene with the main cast and their families at the cabin is one long heartwarming moment. The funeral at the end for Charly also counts, as it shows the entire cast mourning her.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Teleya seems more amused than anything by the Moclan ambassador's open chauvinism. She even compliments his hubris with a quote from Gordon.
  Teleya: You have got ... balls.
• Armor-Piercing Response: In response to Primary's questions about why Charly sacrificed herself, Kelly and Isaac snap off a pair of depleted-uranium-grade answers.
  Kaylon Primary: This reasoning is unsound. Please explain.
  Kelly: She sacrificed herself so that the Kaylon could live.
  Kaylon Primary: ... Why would she do this?
  Isaac: Because these biologicals are not as our builders were. It is what I have attempted to communicate. They are worthy of preservation. They are ... my friends.
• "Ass" in Ambassador: The Moclan ambassador insults Teleya to her face by telling her that the Moclans will naturally be in charge of their alliance, since she can't possibly expect his people to subordinate themselves to a mere female. This is right after that same misogynistic attitude got his people kicked out of the Union. One wonders how this guy manages to keep his job.
• Back for the Dead:
  • Dalak, the Krill captain who led the fleet against the Kaylon attacking Earth, is part of the Krill-Moclan fleet which is engaged by the Union, and his ship is among those that are destroyed when the Kaylon enter the fray.
  • Admiral Perry, as well, has been a Mauve Shirt senior flag officer to this point, and manages to hand over the anti-Kaylon weapon to the Krill and Moclans before being promptly blown to bits on his departure.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Kelly picks up some impressive bruises and cuts in her fight with Teleya.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Union and the Kaylon have ended the war and become allies, but at the cost of Charly’s life. Also they have a new powerful enemy in the Moclan-Krill alliance.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The gigantic brawl between the Krill/Moclan and Union/Kaylon fleets at the end of the episode, complete with the Union's starfighters making a Star Wars-esque trench run.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: The last Moclan in the control room tries to shoot Charly before she can disable the weapon, only for Isaac to use his head guns to shoot the blaster out of his hand before he can pull the trigger. As Kaylon Primary had already gunned down the chief scientist and everyone else who attempted to flee, the Moclan slowly leaves the control room with Isaac's guns trained on him the entire time.
• Brick Joke: An early scene has Perry mistaking a quote from Leonard Bernstein as being from Winston Churchill. When Kaylon Prime claims the Union has an "inefficient" democracy, Halsey correctly paraphrases Churchill's well-known thoughts on democracy (albeit without attribution): "the one thing you can say about democracy is that all other forms of government are even worse."
• Break Them by Talking: Teleya tries to get under Kelly's skin by needling her about her divorce from Ed. Kelly just snaps back that Teleya should see a dermatologist.
• Broken Pedestal: What esteem Ed had left for Teleya is gone by the end of the episode when he sees that she's willing to use their daughter as a bargaining chip.
  Ed: Jesus ... you are contemptible.
• Call-Back: When Charly tries to convince Ed to not order her to resurrect Isaac in "Electric Sheep", Ed instead turns it around on her and attempts to convince her to show the Kaylon that the Union does care and respects life, especially those who are misguided. Guess what Charly does when the countdown on the anti-Kaylon weapon is locked...
• Chekhov's Gun: The Pteradon starfighters that the Orville took onboard in the season premiere finally get their time in the sun.
• Dead Star Walking: After several recurring appearances, Ted Danson as Admiral Perry gets this treatment.
• Designated Girl Fight: Kelly and Teleya get to throw down. Teleya narrowly comes out on top, but is rifle-butted unconscious by Talla. Notably, both of them come out with bruises, cuts, and (in Teleya's case) a few broken bones.
• Doomsday Device: The anti-Kaylon weapon can be (and is) scaled up to a extinction-level WMD that will kill all Kaylon in the galaxy. Much like the Trope Namer, Isaac and Charly set it to go off if any attempt is ever made to disarm it.
• Due to the Dead: Charly receives a funeral attended by what looks to be the Orville's entire crew. Ed and Isaac both eulogize her, and Ed mentions that she's set to receive the Union Medal of Valor.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: When the supersized quantum core is overloaded, it obliterates the facility and cracks the crust of Draconis 427, while also releasing an energy wave that destroys a fair portion of the Krill-Moclan fleet in orbit.
• Easily Forgiven: Given the Kaylon have slaughtered who knows how many millions of organics, the Union being willing to actually give them a chance at joining the Council is more than lenient.
• Enemy Mine:
  • After being kicked out of the Union, the Moclans forge a new alliance with the Krill. Ed outright compares it to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
  • With the Krill and Moclans allied, Ed realizes the only possible way to stop them is allying with the Kaylon.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Perry's particular zeal in exterminating the Kaylon when Ed and Kelly report the results of their test to Union Central hints at his subsequent defection.
  • The song that Charly and Gordon sing is about pretending that you'll live forever and everything will keep coming up roses. Guess what ends up happening?
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Kaylon Primary can't understand why Charly sacrificed herself until Kelly and Isaac make it very clear to him. To his credit, however, Primary is willing to try, which is why he decides that allying with the Union, at least provisionally, is the logical choice.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Moclans, after getting expelled from the Union, form an alliance with the Krill, against both the Kaylon AND the Union.
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The episode makes a couple references to World War II:
  • Ed comments that the sudden alliance between the Moclans and Krill reminds him of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which historically led to them splitting Poland between them down the middle.
  • The debate over using the superweapon to wipe out the Kaylon bears a lot of resemblance to the argument over the use of the first American nuclear weapons to compel the surrender of the Japanese Empire. The decision was hotly debated in secret at the time, and remains controversial. The Planetary Union ultimately elects to use the weapon against a purely military target as a warning shot, one of the options that the War Department historically discarded (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mixed military and civilian targets, Hiroshima being a war production center and Nagasaki a naval port).
• Gay Guy Dies First: Charly, the only (human) LGBT+ character so far, dies sacrificing herself to destroy the anti-Kaylon weapon. She's also the only main crew member to die so far.
• General Ripper: Admiral Perry is practically chomping at the bit to exterminate the Kaylon, even when everyone else in the room points out that they'd be committing genocide. His zeal is such that he betrays the Union by giving the weapon to the Krill, because he knows they won't hesitate to wipe the Kaylon out.
• Genocide Dilemma: The key of the episode is that creating a weapon to defend Earth is one thing, but wiping out the Kaylon is something else, when there's a chance others could change like Timmin. The Union Council elects to use it as a deterrent only, even with the possibility that the Kaylon will eventually find a way to counter it. Admiral Perry steals the device so he can hand it over to the Krill precisely because they do not have any such compunctions.
• God Help Us All: A horrific realization courtesy of Captain Dalak when the Kaylon join the Union Fleet against the Krill and the Moclans.
• Godzilla Threshold: The revelation that the Krill and Moclans have allied with each other and stolen the anti-Kaylon weapon causes Ed to propose an alliance with the Kaylon.
• Gone Horribly Right: The first test of the anti-Kaylon weapon reduces the Kaylon fleet to debris, a level of devastation clearly well above what was expected. This leads into the Genocide Dilemma, as the characters have to confront the fact they've developed a weapon that will utterly wipe out the Kaylon.
• Gunboat Diplomacy: Reconstructed. The Union manages to end the Kaylon conflict after designing a super weapon that has the potential to wipe them all out, and appealing to their desire to not be exterminated. That said, it's made clear that this armistice will only last as long as it takes for the Kaylon to formulate a counter to this weapon; the hope is not that the Kaylon will play ball forever, but that the Union will be able to negotiate a genuine peace before that happens.
• Heel–Race Turn: The Kaylon, after Primary witnesses Isaac sparing unarmed adversaries and Charly's sacrifice. Kaylon Primary seems particularly perplexed by it, and finally realizes not all biologicals are bad, as Isaac had asserted.
• He Knows Too Much: Teleya has Admiral Perry killed because he'll report the Krill-Moclan alliance to the Union, and she'd rather it be kept secret as long as possible.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Charly remains behind on the planet to overload the quantum core before the weapon can fire, not only destroying the weapon but, even more importantly, convincing the Kaylon that not all organics are the enemy and that they should agree to a peace treaty.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The anti-Kaylon weapon works by causing a feedback loop in the Kaylon communication network, causing everything and everyone connected to it and within the range of the weapon to instantly explode.
• Honor Before Reason: Admiral Perry intends to turn himself in for his theft of the anti-Kaylon weapon and says as much to Teleya, who promptly has his shuttle vaporized.
• Hypocrisy Nod:
  • Both the Moclans and Krill complain that the Union "imposes its values on other cultures while failing to see their own hypocrisy." For double irony points, the Moclan ambassador then attempts to impose his culture's values on their putative alliance with the Krill by demanding that Moclus be the senior partner because Teleya is a woman, to her incredulity.
  • Perry talks of how he "believes in the idealism of the Union"... even as he betrays it to give the weapon to the Krill. Teleya calls him on it.
• Idiot Ball: The Moclan ambassador insults the Supreme Chancellor of Krill to her face by stating that it would be unthinkable for his people to subordinate themselves to a female. He's lucky that Teleya seems to find his attitude amusing more than anything, given how she treated the last diplomatic party to visit Krill under her administration.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Ed and Admiral Halsey both say this flat-out to Kaylon Primary when they meet for parley: if the Union actually wanted to wipe out the Kaylon, they could perfectly well have fired the superweapon from orbit and there wouldn't have been a thing the Kaylon could have done to stop them.
• Irony: Ed lampshades how the crew has to join with the Kaylon to stop the Krill-Moclan alliance that has the weapon the Union created to destroy the Kaylon.
• Irrevocable Order:
  • Due to the nature of the weapon's attack and the speed at which it propagates, once the command is given to fire it cannot be aborted.
  • The Moclans rig the anti-Kaylon weapon in such a way that it cannot be deactivated once armed. This forces Charly to instead overload the quantum core, destroying the weapon along with a fair portion of the planet.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Charly, Admiral Perry, and Kaylon Primary were probably right that the Kaylon would likely find a way to counteract the weapon eventually.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: This is more or less how every Union character who isn't Admiral Perry sees his theft of the anti-Kaylon weapon; he's thrown his career and life away and handed a WMD to their enemy for the purpose of committing genocide.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • The Moclan ambassador initially insists that the Moclans must have command of their alliance with the Krill, but they quickly fold when Teleya dresses them down for their incompetence and makes it clear that, unlike the Union, she doesn't see their arms trade as a necessary resource. From that point on, the Moclans are clearly subordinate to her.
  • The Kaylon logically agree to the Union demands for a cease-fire, because they concede the Union could destroy them at any time and there's no option but the olive branch being offered. Kaylon Primary insists that they'll find a weakness in the weapon, though, even as he accepts the offer.
• Last Words:
  Admiral Perry: Go back to Earth and turn myself in.
  Dalak: Avis help us all.
  Charly: I'm here, Amanda.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In the assault on the Moclan-Krill weapons base housing the anti-Kaylon Doomsday Device, Grayson, Keyali, Burke, Isaac and Kaylon Primary descend to the surface and infiltrate the complex^note With Isaac, Burke, and Kaylon Primary getting seperated due to an enemy encounter. Malloy and LaMarr lead a squadron of Pteradon fighters providing cover for the group. Mercer, Bortus and Dr. Finn stay aboard the Orville to fight the battle against the Krill and Moclans in orbit.
• Ludicrous Precision:
  Isaac: I served with Ensign Burke for 257 days, 17 minutes, and 49 seconds.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: There's not a lot of logic in putting the Orville's chief engineer, LaMarr, in the cockpit of a Pteradon fighter for the assault on the Moclan base, other than perhaps his past experience as a navigator. He would, most likely, have been more help back on the Orville keeping the ship and her crew in one piece.
• Mandatory Line: Penny Johnson Jerald's only speaking appearance is during the sequence set on Earth, in a single scene with Kelly.
• Meaningful Echo: At the beginning of the episode, Charly describes the effect of the anti-Kaylon weapon as being like knocking over the first in a row of dominoes. At the end of the episode, Isaac states that her sacrifice will have the same effect on Union-Kaylon relations.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • By forcing the Union to ally with the Kaylon, the Krill and Moclans inadvertently caused the Kaylon to learn that not all organics are in fact horrible, leading Kaylon Primary to decide to give the cease-fire a chance after all.
  • Chancellor Teleya has no real reason to stay at Dr. Kalba's base to oversee the testing and firing of the anti-Kaylon weapon, rather than return to her seat of government on Krill. But she remains there anyways, which gets her beaten and captured when the Orville crew, backed by the Union and Kaylon forces, come to eliminate the weapon.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Kelly is initially adamant that Charly set the core overload on a timer and flee the planet with the rest of the infiltration team, but reluctantly accepts Charly's sacrifice when she makes it clear there is no other option.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: In the space of one episode, the Moclans have joined the Krill as enemies of the Union while the Kaylon have gone from being enemies to provisional allies. This episode also sees the capture of Teleya and the death of Charly.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: In the short span of time since the Krill and Moclans received the anti-Kaylon Doomsday Device, they've managed to rig a compatible transmitter system in Dr. Kalba's outpost powerful enough to propagate the effects of the weapon to a distance of 10,000 light-years or more, along with a quantum core the size of which the main characters have never seen to power it, and powerful shielding and anti-air defenses to protect it. The existence of the core and the defensive weaponry is excusable with the base being a long-established major weapons research facility, but unless it took a substantial amount of time to haul the weapon there, for the Orville to discover it and to amass a Union-Kaylon fleet and return, it's pretty improbable that the Moclans were able to design and implement such a transmission system and robust shielding for a weapon that they were just beginning to analyze and understand.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The crew realizing the Krill and Moclans are working together and have the doomsday weapon.
  • The Krill fleet when they see the Kaylon arrive to help the Union.
    Dalak: Avis help us all.
• Only I Can Make It Go: Invoked and subverted. Charly and Isaac are the ones who designed the anti-Kaylon weapon and claim that they're the only ones who can make it work. However, the Moclan Dr. Kalba quickly works out how to reverse-engineer and activate the weapon, at which point it turns out that Isaac and Charly are now the only ones who have a hope of disarming it before it goes off.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Kaylon Primary noticeably hesitates when Ed asks him what happens now that the anti-Kaylon weapon has been destroyed. Isaac has to prompt him for a response.
• Plot-Demanded Manual Mode: Charly has to detonate the core manually because there are countless safeguards to prevent the very thing she's trying to accomplish, and she has to be present to override them as they trigger.
• Plot Hole: Perry's shuttle is clearly destroyed only by shots fired by Teleya's Krill warship, yet when the Orville eventually arrives at the scene, Bortus and Isaac detect both Krill and Moclan weapons signatures for some unknown reason, which is in turn used as evidence that the two powers have allied with one another.
• Race Against the Clock: The crew at one point has just eight minutes to shut down the weapon before it wipes out the Kaylon, leaving the Union fleet weakened against the Krill and Moclans.
• Realpolitik: Teleya, of all people, apparently manages to find the one thing that will get the Moclans to swallow their He-Man Woman Hater attitude and get them to at least pretend they view a female as an equal: the promise of a military alliance with a superior power.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Perry is unceremoniously killed on Teleya's order after he hands over the weapon and prepares to turn himself in to the Union authorities.
• Sadistic Choice: When Ed offers Teleya a chance to give Anaya a loving home, she immediately leverages that to force him into a terrible choice: he returns her to Krill and she grants his request, or he doesn't and he never gets to see Anaya again. Ed is shocked she'd be willing to exploit her own child to benefit herself, to which she insists that the cause takes precedence above all and Anaya will understand that one day.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Apparently the superweapon can outrun the speed of light, or else firing it from another star system at an FTL-capable society would be pointless. Note that the three times it was fired with a normal quantum core, the Planar Shockwave very much didn't outrun the speed of light. This is hand-waved by the device being tied into the transmitter array in the facility, which would presumably propagate its effects through FTL communication instead of projecting the energy outward from the device itself.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Admiral Perry goes against Union command to deliver the anti-Kaylon weapon to the Krill, knowing they'll put it to use when the Union won't.
• Shout-Out: Isaac informs Kaylon Primary that the anti-Kaylon weapon is set to go off if any attempt is made to disarm it. This is exactly how the Soviets rigged the Doomsday Device in Dr. Strangelove.
• Take a Third Option: The cast and admiralty are split on the prospect of using the superweapon against the Kaylon: is it okay to treat this as a Guilt-Free Extermination War, or is it still wrong to commit genocide even if the other side monolithically intends it against you? It's the Union Council that finds the third path: use the superweapon as a threat to force the Kaylon to surrender, and maybe then they can find a way to coexist peacefully afterwards.
• Tap on the Head: Talla cracks Teleya in the head with the butt of her rifle to end the latter's fight with Kelly. Given that Talla just had to break up with LaMarr over repeatedly accidentally breaking his bones and the fact she forced the entry door open with her bare hands, Teleya's frankly lucky Talla didn't crush her skull outright. Nonetheless she's able to speak intelligibly only minutes later.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Orville's crew and the Kaylon aren't especially happy to be working together. Averted with the Krill and the Moclans, who seem to be getting along quite well after the initial stickiness between Teleya and the Moclan ambassador.
• Tempting Fate: The Krill commander smirking "this will be over quickly" during the battle... and then the Kaylon show up.
• That's an Order!: Kelly tries to order Charly to leave with the rest of the team. Charly snaps back that she has higher orders — disarm the weapon by any means necessary — and unless Kelly intends on countermanding them she's going to have to put up or shut up.
• That's What I Would Do: Bortus states that if he were in the Moclans' shoes, he'd take the anti-Kaylon weapon to one Dr. Kalba, a genius Moclan scientist and weapons designer, and knows precisely where he's based because the Moclans likely haven't shuttered Kalba's research facility just yet. He's proven to be right.
• Tim Taylor Technology: The anti-Kaylon weapon can convert any amount of power into a wave of destruction against the Kaylon, its range determined by just how much power can be dumped into it. With the Orville powering it, it can wipe out an attacking force. With the supersized quantum core on the Moclan outpost and a powerful transmitter wired in, it could reach a distance of 10,000 light years.
• Title Drop: A double one. First, Charly talks of "dominoes" to explain how the weapon to wipe out the Kaylon works. At her funeral, Isaac compares her sacrifice to the first domino toward a Union-Kaylon alliance and a better future.
• Uncertain Doom: Admiral Perry has two associates who break the anti-Kaylon weapon out of Union Central on his behalf and who then report they're en-route to meet him with it in tow. It's left unclear whether or not they accompanied him on his trip to meet Chancellor Teleya, and if they did, they probably perished when Perry's shuttle was blown up.
• The Unreveal: It's left ambiguous if Ed accepted Teleya's offer, though it seems unlikely this time around. His attitude of utter contempt suggests that he refused the offer, and Teleya as the Krill Supreme Chancellor is a much more valuable prisoner than a mere spy. The Orville is also surrounded by a Union fleet returning home from the major battle at Draconis 427 and therefore Ed has much less leeway with a prisoner they no doubt know he has. How this affects things on Krill is also not discussed.
• Villain Has a Point: Teleya makes some very snide, yet accurate remarks about Moclans' extreme sexism getting them kicked out of the Union, yet having the "balls" to come to her practically begging for an alliance while insisting they lead the alliance just because the Krill are led by a woman. Her demands of an equal partnership are more than reasonable. She could have easily demanded their total submission.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The anti-Kaylon weapon is one for the Kaylon specifically, a weapon of potentially limitless range that is unblockable and instantly fatal to everything Kaylon it touches.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: How Perry sees himself, giving the doomsday weapon to the Krill to wipe out the Kaylon and thus protect the Union. He intends to turn himself in, only to be killed by Teleya.
• Wham Episode: The Moclans ally with the Krill, the Union ally with the Kaylon, Charly dies, Teleya is captured, and the Kaylon are willing to give peaceful coexistence with organics a chance. In the space of two episodes, the series' entire political map has been rewritten.
• Wham Shot: At the start of act 1, Mercer orders Isaac to activate their new defense weapon, a giant energy wave disperses from the Orville, and every Kaylon ship explodes.
• Wham Line:
  • An In-Universe example, when the Orville arrives at the projected coordinates of Admiral Perry's shuttle and find only debris and residual weapons signatures.
    Kelly: What kind of weapons?
    Bortus: They appear to be Krill. And Moclan.
  • Something that viewers would probably never have seen coming:
    Kaylon Primary: [To Capt. Mercer] You are proposing an alliance.
• Wham Shot: Admiral Perry showing up to meet Teleya.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: After Isaac pulls a Blasting It Out of Their Hands on the last Moclan and allows him to leave alive, Kaylon Primary — who shot the other four in the back for trying to flee — asks why Isaac didn't just kill him. Isaac simply states it wasn't necessary.

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