The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

That's kind of an absurd reason when talking about a show set 400 years in the future. There was a time when our military functioned just fine with muskets, but nobody would suggest limiting it to them now.

On the other hand our military still uses horses and other pack animals.

On aircraft carriers?

No. In Afghanistan.

Anyone watch the latest episode?

Not yet.

Pretty damn good.

Sad to see Larry Joe Campbell leaving the show.

Yes. Pretty good for a ship in the bottle episode.

Hilarious about Yaphet and Bortus.

I kinda of agree with Mercer about what Kelly did for him but at the same time he was being a dick about it. Clearly he's proven to everyone in the Union admiralty that they were wrong about him.

Didn't pilots train just fine before simulators?

My point exactly. Actually some of the most ridiculously basic types of training have proven very useful. Part of Soviet pilots training used to involve them holding plastic models of their fighters and moving them around along with other pilots and their models. While it sounds ridiculously simplistic, it was said to be very valuable in helping pilots visualize the relationships between their aircraft and their wingman (and others).

Nevertheless, we use simulators now, and they've improved training a thousandfold. Now imaging pilot training in a holodeck with 100% believable environment, including variable gravity/acceleration. When an actual situation arises, the person will not just have trained for it, s/he will have been through it. Invaluable.

This week: "Meridian" meets "Blink of an Eye," with a dash of "A Piece of the Action" and "Who Watches the Watchers."

"Gordon, I don't know what you're driving at, but I'm going to go ahead and change the subject."

Two words: Simulation Sickness. Presumably, something like a holodeck would be immune to this.

Oh, and I couldn't help but notice the Frit band on the shuttle's windshield.

I noticed that too, but thought maybe it was a CGI mistake.

Who was the hot barely dressed actress in Lamar's quarters this episode?

Oh my god... I enjoy The Orville a great deal because it is in the spirit of Star Trek and it does a great job of bringing back that old nostalgia, but Mad Idolatry has to be one of the greatest “Star Trek” episodes of all time. I never expected this much from this show. Too bad that was the season finale.

It was an ok episode but again it just feels like an idea I’ve already seen explored multiple times.

Not only on Star Trek but I think Futurama and The Simpsons did similar episodes.

The only twist here is that the crew never actually corrected their mistake. Instead the society corrected itself over a long period of time.

I wonder how that would have played out in TNG’s ‘Who Watches The Watchers’?

I think that may have been the point. A subtle repudiation of the Prime Directive idea, in that even with the "cultural contamination," the planet's society worked itself out the way it had to. The "700 years every eleven days" was just a plot device to illustrate the point.

With a lot more self-righteous Roddenberry soapboxing.

One thing is apparent from this episode. That little girl has mad memory skills.

She's like a camera or something because they got Kelly's look and uniform down perfectly enough that even 700 years later it was still good enough to identify her.

It wasn't just the little girl, though. Remember, before Kelly retreated to the woods, other members of the village had appeared. There is a term for this kind of phenomenon, but I don't recall the name for it. Essentially, it's that our memories become frozen around certain events, so we can remember them more accurately. Examples of this include things like the JFK assassination, the Apollo 11 landing, the Challenger explosion, and 9/11. Most people who were around at those times had very explicit memories of those events, even if they weren't direct eyewitnesses to them because they so dramatically changed their world when they happened.

I thought it was an excellent, though predictable, episode. I've always had the belief that societies on other planets would develop similar to us, It just seems to make sense.

Exactly!! I have often wondered what the real impact would be over a one time cultural contamination of a Bronze Age society. This episode really explored the entire development of an advanced society over more than 2000 years. I’ve never seen that before in any TV show, but I have to admit that I don’t watch much TV these days.

The way it was depicted in the episode strains credibility for me.

It seems unlikely that a handful of people witnessing an unexplained occurrence in the woods would lead to a brand-new religion being developed out of whole cloth and taking over an entire world. More likely they'd go back to their isolated village and be dismissed as lunatics.

The only way it makes sense is if, by sheer coincidence, Kelly's appearance fit with something in their existing religion (a prophecy, maybe), and the small band who saw her in the woods included a couple of powerful and respected priests.

The early christians were a very small group, it's implied they had a pope like character so if they developed similar to us, then it's totally possible they had a Roman Empire that forced the religion on everyone.

Do we know it conquered the whole world?

It did seem that during their 20th Century phase that there was fighting over the religion. If Kellyism had spread to the whole planet I can't see why they would be fighting over it.

Also I think you could do it. Look at the Roman Empire. Started out tiny in only little section and just over time grew and grew until it had taken over a significant chunk of Europe.

IIRC, Christianity started with 12 apostles, so there’s that....