The Orville

Glitch

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I watched all of Star Trek and before writing that that post, took into consideration the episodes those writers did in Voyager and Enterprise, this Orville episode is basically it's Threshold which was Voyager's most infamous but at least Threshold didn't forget crucial plot points and had a clear resolution.
 
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Daith

Bustin make feel Good!
Citizen
Won't deny some of the decisions made were very questionable, but it's not like the Higher ups deciding to go on an Away mission isn't something that Treks never done.

Though one moment gave me pause wondering if it had a bit deeper connotations.

When Isaac encountered the Spider Creature in the hall and they sat there staring at each other. Obviously the creature recognized Isaac as a Mechanical and not able to change most likely. But could there be reasons it decided to just leave him alone without attacking. Could his people already have a history with these creatures? Like were the Kaylon possibly built as a counter force? Could the Spider people have wiped out their creators by transforming them. The Kaylon's disposition on organics could be informed by the spider peoples complete changing of the creators..... There's no real evidence but it's a thought.
 

Dake

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Citizen
When Isaac encountered the Spider Creature in the hall and they sat there staring at each other. Obviously the creature recognized Isaac as a Mechanical and not able to change most likely. But could there be reasons it decided to just leave him alone without attacking. Could his people already have a history with these creatures? Like were the Kaylon possibly built as a counter force? Could the Spider people have wiped out their creators by transforming them. The Kaylon's disposition on organics could be informed by the spider peoples complete changing of the creators..... There's no real evidence but it's a thought.

Yeah,
I assumed it was because he was non-living and non-aggressive. But there was a part of me that wondered if there was some recognition there as well. The only reason I don't think the latter was true is because Isaac made no comment on it. It's possible he wouldn't know, but unlikely.
 

Glitch

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Citizen
It's been pointed out the plane crash bit is something that Seth Macfarlane avoided on 9/11 because he was hungover. I recall a Family Guy commentary in a episode with a montage of Brian and Stewie travelling across the US and taking pics in front of corn fields n every state, he said since avoiding that incident, he travelled by roads, maybe this was personal.
I wish there had been more depth from exploring these fears in the episode, Gordon being bullied, Kelly's calamari phobia, Bortus peoples ritual, these were wasted opportunities.
 

Daith

Bustin make feel Good!
Citizen
And this episode felt very timely….

Again the Orville brings the mirror of Sci-FI and turns it back on us.
 

Glitch

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Citizen
Some think the Krill will be decimated by the Kaylon but I think there will be a schism between the inner and outer provinces leading to civil war or partition.
Should also consider the Moclan being on shaky grounds with the rest of the Union and the Krill's other enemy the Chak'tal who kicked their butts in a season 2 episode.
Isaac in the cowboy hat was amusing and someone pointed out Seth Macfarlane wore his costume from A Million Ways to Die in the West for the saloon scene.
 
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Dake

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Citizen
And this episode felt very timely….

Again the Orville brings the mirror of Sci-FI and turns it back on us.
Especially considering it was filmed at least a year ago if not more at this point.

It's a bitter sweet in that this season has had a far less hopeful overall outlook compared to the first two and can only be a reflection of the time.
 

Kalidor

Supreme System Overlord
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Citizen
So that was a long episode, like a movie as many have been so far this season.

It's hard to have any pleasant thoughts about Klyden. He's been through a lot I guess but shitting on your kids is taking it too far.

I'm glad Topa got a happy ending. Given the nature of the show and the outcome of the original episode about the trial, I was bracing myself for a suicide.
 

Darth_Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
Im kinda losing interest in this show. I loved it when it was a funny show with some drama sprinkled in. Now it’s flipped itself. It’s cool though the series is taking some issues and bringing them to light. I was also happy to not have the new ensign bash Isaac for an episode, we get it, you don’t like him.
 

Glitch

Well-known member
Citizen
I do appreciate the show taking both sides on issues like Klyden's stance was reasonable despite the extremes he took, he values his culture and people as it is a system which works, he loves his child and wants only to protect her. But maybe Klyden is using them all as a clutch for his own insecurities.

The extinct aliens they were researching felt like they'd lead into something more, maybe them being a progenitor or subspecies to Moclans with multiple genders or maybe Moclans were engineered from them.
 

Kalidor

Supreme System Overlord
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
I wasn't looking forward to watching The Orville right after coming off the heels of the SNW season finale but this episode ended up being really good.

Time travel is always something I adore in sci-fi, especially when they get it mostly right (I'm not sure if they got the facts correct about the amount of time it takes to future travel using relativity). But it's one of those episodes where you just think it's fucked up how Gordon's entire family got erased. I'd like to think that there's still a timeline out there where they still exist and he wonders why Ed never went back for him.
 

Daith

Bustin make feel Good!
Citizen
I gotta say this feels like an episode where there really was no real right answer.
 

Darth_Prime

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Citizen
Finishing up the episode now, they are doing the faster than light thing.

Should have left Gordon.
 

Donocropolis

Olde-Timey Member
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
That was definitely a tough call. I wasn't sure how the episode was going to end. I'm not sure the Union rules about time travel are all that well thought out. I mean, obviously if you got stuck back in time and used your knowledge of the future to radically change things, that would be bad. But, even if you followed the rules to the letter as Gordon did for the first 3 years, every fruit you eat, animal you kill, tree you chop down for firewood, etc. all impact the world in some way that can ripple forward. I'm not sure that Gordon was wrong to just try to quietly slip into society and live out a normal, low-impact life. I would have liked to see the show spend a little more time rolling around in the messy parts of the decision, both before they went back for 1 month stranded Gordon as well as after. From the "preserving the future we know" aspect, I think in the end that Ed would have had to make the same decision, but I feel like younger Gordon accepted the news a little too easily. Once they told him what had happened and the future that he lost, I think Gordon would have been more a lot more conflicted, even if he ultimately agreed that it was the right thing to do.
 

Cybersnark

Well-known member
Citizen
Yeah, the Union seems to know far less about temporal dynamics than the 24th century Federation, so they're playing it arguably way too safe.

Given the earlier comment from Lamar about temporal paradoxes creating new timelines, we might be looking at the start of this show's "mirror" universe.

Orville couldn't have made it back to 2015 without stopping for more Dysonium, so they always would've had to stop in 2025, which means they always would've "cemented" that chain of events before rescuing "their" Gordon. There is no timeline in which they rescued Gordon without stopping in 2025 (and thus observing it, collapsing that particular quantum waveform).

So there are now two timelines: the "correct" one, in which Gordon only spent a few months in 2015, and another in which Gordon lived out a full life and had at least two kids.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
I think mercer handled it WAY to harsh at the end there. He could have walked away and let gordon have some peace instead of that last few moments of anger and panic and hate. I mean: you just, ostencibly, sentenced the guy and his entire family to worse than death and you just outright told them how you were going to ruin it.

"Gordon, I'm not going to take you back. You have a beautiful family, and I want you to have a wonderful life."

*turns, walks away*

"Engineer lamar, fire up the time machine, we're going to fix this shit."
 

Glitch

Well-known member
Citizen
I wish his wife turned out to be something else rather then the perfect partner he got with that holodeck episode just for realism.
 


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