The Orville

It does seem like the Krill will be more sympathetic.

The Krill saying, "This is temporary, don't get used to it" was good.

I don't much care for the Orville's world-building but it's just cynical ENOUGH that its Deep Space Nine but not Into Darkness. Which is to say its optimistic but not naive or saccharine optimistic.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 11th 2022 at 1:53:33 AM

Episode 3:

Really threw a bunch of hard 90 degree turns into the opening there.

"Are you high?"

"Possibly, that's what I'm trying to find out."

Okay, this looks to be just hard 90 degree turns the episode.

Didn't take long to guess this was all done by a being not unlike Q, omnipotent and all that, those scenarios were too specific for anything else. Didn't anticipate that Talla was in on it though, nor did I predict that call back. Well, I did briefly think, "you know, I bet those guys from that one episode are probably evolved into energy beings by now," but I didn't think we'd find out one of them was behind this whole ordeal.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jun 23rd 2022 at 11:22:35 AM

Yeah. Those last two parts threw me as well.

Feel like Mercer didn’t quite hammer home the “you dicked us around and I don’t care if the danger wasn’t real, ever hear of informed consent?” point enough.

The episode was really good until the exposition dump. The crew didn't push back hard enough and, uh, it really sounded like the alien was talking about hardcore eugenics. Which is super gross. And it's a really long, boring scene with an actress who came off as pretty uncharismatic. "Q, but really boring" is not a great character angle.

The episode would have been significantly improved by reducing it to "here's who we are, we're doing this because we're immortal, we don't have to explain ourselves to you, bye, sucks to be you, mortals!"

I did like the discussion about death right at the end though. The idea that life only has meaning with death or that death is inherently noble or whatever doesn't sit well with me either. It just sounds like justifications to make it easier to live with this awful thing we can't do anything about.

We all have to make piece with our mortality though.

Edited by Cortez on Jun 22nd 2022 at 9:52:01 AM

Yeah, I get that. The problem is that a lot of people get really fucking weird about the idea of removing death from the picture. The idea that death gives life meaning is bizarre when you really think about it, but a lot of people take it as an automatic truth. Life should give itself meaning, the idea that it only has value when it can end, and the end is really arbitrary and you have no control over it, is really unsettling.

The problem is that we have no actual experience with the alternative. We don't actually know how humans deal with immortality, we don't know if it'd be better or worse, but a lot of people just assume that having death as a factor is better than not having it. And that's what I have a problem with.

Edited by Zendervai on Jun 22nd 2022 at 10:00:08 AM

I do like the Call-Back to season 1 as giving a reason for our Q analogue to pick this particular crew to screw around with. The show has been falling into The Main Characters Do Everything quite a bit, when the premise is that the Orville is NOT the Enterprise, not the flagship, just one "mid-level explorer" among many. But they're still the ones that all the interesting things happen to.

I liked the last episode, felt very Twilight Zoney, however I agree the ending screws it up, is a boring Deus Ex Machina with a lecture at the end.

The previous two episodes really liked me, have no complain.

New episode.

Surprised Ed didn't try to take Anaya with him.

There wasn’t really an opportunity, was there? She’s some distance from the capital and they needed to get the wounded President back to the Union. And as Kelly says, she’s in a good place as long as Mercer doesn’t rock the boat.

Man, Krill mature fast, huh? Next time we see Anaya she could be a young adult, with her own agency vis a vis human/Krill relations.

Interesting openning speech from the Republican Krill candidate.

I was nonplussed by the implications of election fraud and dismissing the election's results.

I thought it was fairly clear that Teleya won legitimately, but then subverted the, ahem, peaceful transfer of power in order to seize the opportunity to capture the Union delegation.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Jun 24th 2022 at 9:47:40 AM

Yeah. That's the sad part. She won legitimately.

IS that how the election went down? That scene went by really fast.

Perhaps I’m basing that impression on the heavy-handed US 2016 parallels. If they’d said out loud that Teleya lost the popular vote but won anyway because of their unusual election structure (they came close with “we can’t win without those two provinces!”), that would have cemented it.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Jun 24th 2022 at 3:03:55 PM

Well to be honest that's a problem that many countries have. In mine recently won a Trump-like candidate and we don't have an electoral college.

Politics aside this episode had me on the edge of my seat all the time. Is amazing how much this show has advance and how they drop the comedy gimmick. Visually was also gorgeous.

I enjoyed the episode, full of suspense and action, however I would have found Krill more interesting have they were portrait less as stand-ins for American conservatives. I'm pro choice but the episode takes a whole weird turn into making it clear that the evil aliens are anti-abortion which felt forced fed. Also I think it would have been interesting if the Krill also had no money in their society as many real life religious fundamentalist groups are anti-capitalist.

The problem here, of course, is that is an American product intended for an American audience. I'm not American and were I live left-wing politics are actually associated with Christian conservatives instead of the other way around (they're still culturally conservative of course). But disregarding Seth's possible unknowingness of this, and/or his desire to criticize his society first and upmost, having an alien culture that feels truly alien is always good. That's why even if they are supposed to represent a group is a good idea not to make them exactly as that group in every sense. This is something it was very well done in such shows as Babylon 5 and Star Trek.

I admit I felt this actually worked well for expanding the Krill.

The krill were always Scary Dogmatic Aliens, being pro life ist on brand for them.

That episode absolutely would not have worked had we not already been very familiar with Teleya. I don't think it would have been nearly as effective if the usurper had been a new character. It makes me wonder, how far back do you think this was planned? I kind of doubt that they planned for this plot thread back in Season 2.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jun 25th 2022 at 7:03:45 AM

Well it's not like abortion is a new issue for religious fundamentalists in America.

×2

For that matter i wonder if things would have been different if Mercer hadn't killed her crew or if she would have ended up like this regardless.