The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

FTFY

Fixed it for you? All you did for me was mess it up.

Well that was a couple of very familiar sci fi plot lines, minus the right talent to breathe life into the Data/Lore interaction. That Isaac actor is no Brent Spiner.

My takeaway from that episode is that a) it reflects on me somehow that I get nothing but yucks out of Lamarr getting mangled by Talla, and b) we need to see more of Dr. (nurse?) Natalie.

So much wrong with this episode:

- Negotiating an alliance? I have an idea! Let's flat out lie about how our whole society is structured. Nothing establishes trust like jumping right to deception. It's a good thing Mercer, et. al. didn't lead the negotiations with the Krill, otherwise they'd have been all "we totally see the light now, all hail Avis!"

- Despite probably trying very hard not to, Talla can't fuck a human without seriously injuring said human, yet she didn't destroy the bed in the process? What is that bed made of?

- Charliey and her stupid dumb face.

- Issac and Timmis should have fucked.

- Charlyie and her dumb stupid face.

4/1000

No, I didn't accidentally add an extra zero. To give this episode an accurate score I had to do it out of a thousand.

I'm just going to come out and say what everyone was feeling. It was damn satisfying and hilarious when K1 blasted the kids. Little shitheads had it coming.

I think Mark Jackson in some way has an easier and in some ways has a harder row to hoe. Brent got to use his face to act which meant he had to keep a stoic expression most of the time, but also meant that it was a tool to convey subtle emotions or even big ones when the occasion called for it. Most of the time Mark only has his voice and body language. Of course, Brent had better material to work with the overwhelming majority of the time. I think when Mark appeared as "simulated human Isaac" this episode, he did pretty well.

Do you mean that Lamarr getting mangled was supposed to get "yuks," i.e. laughter, or "yucks" as in bad reaction? It was meant to be played for laughs, but the notion of a romantic partner repeatedly injuring another and the injured person lying about it comes a little too close to domestic violence situations for my liking even though here the hurting was accidental.

Clearly they were riffing on all the times Worf and Jadzia showed up in the infirmary on DS9 after getting hot and heavy, but gender-flipping it (though I can't recall if Worf ever had injuries too - Jadzia was... spirited).

But yeah after the #metoo era that sort of thing plays less well.

Oh I definitely meant amusement at his injuries. He's a dude, so that's still ok.

Topa: "I have a crush on a boy!"

Grayson: "Well, tell him how you feel."

Me: "It's Gordon, isn't it?" *two seconds later* "Of course it's Gordon."

Well, *sigh* Klyden's back. At least they kept Ch***y to a minimum this episode. (I'm tired of figuring out ways to misspell her dumb name, because I refuse how to learn how to spell the names of people who suck, so I'm just going to treat it like a very bad swear word from now on.)

2/100 +5 points for the Dolly Parton cameo scene, +10 points for the folk music cover of "Jolene"

17/100

I laughed my ass off when it turned out to be Gordon. It was also so very sweet, and Gordon being really slow on the uptake was hilarious.

Also, DOLLY! HELL YES!

It was nice to see Klyden back, and that he was given a chance to make amends. Sometimes what happened to Topa is enough for parents to see reason that their children are deserving of love, and that they *do* love them, but it shouldn't have to take that drastic kind of step for it to happen. Still, Klyden realized he was wrong, and is working to fix what he broke, and I appreciate that.

This was a terrific episode. I hope there's a season 4, because I think the show has truly hit its stride. It has funny, dramatic, whimsical, action oriented, and even peaceful moments where you can just enjoy the experience without any plot interference.

I really liked this episode and it was good to see Dolly Parton, but my god she's almost unrecognizable now. She can still sing though. I liked the campfire version of Jolene. It does kind of seem like they were setting up potential romance between Bortus and Grayson.

The good: The cluelessness of Gordon, the Dolly Parton cameo, the fact that the Union finally decided to draw a line in the sand as to putting up with Moclan sexist BS, Klyden's making amends, decent action

Things that don't make much sense to me about the overall premise:

1. How there are there potentially a whole chain of female Moclans to be smuggled. Wouldn't doctors be able to detect female Moclans in egg or at birth and do the surgery right basically at birth or shortly thereafter?
2. How/why did Moclans get so prejudiced about women?
3. Why, now that the cat is at least somewhat out of the bag about there being a number of Moclan women, why they would go to this particular colony in violation of the agreement, as opposed to any number of new colonies or Union or non-Union worlds that would either welcome them with open arms or at least not care one way or another about them being female.

Things that don't make much sense to me about this episode:

Could the Planetary Union/Ed have sent a worse pair of monitors/representatives than the Orville/Kelly & Bortus? Let's see, we in the Union have presumably hundreds of ships with well-trained crews skilled in diplomacy and with no possible conflicts of interest or issues with the Moclan government at a time when there continue to be threats to secede from the Union in a way that would potentially leave us vulnerable to both the Kaylon and the Krill. Who should we send? I know: the ship that nearly caused a rift with the Moclans when they discovered a crewmember had a supposedly rare female Moclan baby that we patched over by having her undergo forced gender reassignment surgery. Oh, and it just so happens to be the same ship that discovered this colony of female Moclans in the first place and who fought on their behalf to defend the colony. And the same ship that just within a couple weeks caused another stir by having that Moclan boy get gender reassignment surgery back to being female. That's an awesome choice. Who should monitor the Moclan Inspection Team to make sure they aren't doing anything sus? Let's pick literally two of the people who physically fought Moclans in defense of the colony, one of whom has a daughter who was at the center of some of these controversies. And also, let's allow him to bring the daughter along the trip to rub it in the Moclans' face that we just basically said "screw you" to them.

How would the female Moclans need/want to use Topa as a conduit for their Underground Railroad? There are presumably millions if not billions of people who would be sympathetic to their cause, who would be in a better position to help because they are not a) an adolescent girl b) on a ship that could be at the other end of the galaxy or blown up at any time c) someone who already is at the center of controversy over Moclan gender issues and d) who would cause major friction between the Union and Moclas if discovered?

How could the female Moclans not see that using Topa as a symbol would be a far better use of her? I mean, her story is perfect as a documentary -- she had a high court case on Moclus, she struggled knowing that something was wrong with her life, she was nearly suicidal because she was forced to live a lie, she finally discovered that she was a she, she managed to defy the odds and get back to her true gender and now she's happy and all sorts of good things. I think it would really bring a lot of internal and external pressure to bear on the issue.

What was up with the Moclan Inspection Team? First of all, how did they come to suspect that Topa had agreed to participate in the Underground Railroad? They were nowhere around when Helveena and Topa talked in private. If they had listening devices, why didn't they bust Helveena and Topa directly? Also, it would have been a much better story IMO if Topa HAD NOT agreed to participate, and they just kidnapped her on baseless suspicion, tortured her for information she did not possess. Anyway, assuming that the female Moclans have been sneaking actual female Moclans to their colony, how did the MIT miss that? Shouldn't a simple check of lifesigns on the planet show that there were (say) 2012 Moclans on the planet when there should have been only 1937? If the female Moclans have dampening fields or whatever to hide that they have higher numbers of people, shouldn't the MIT have figured that out? When the MIT disabled Kelly and Bortus's shuttle, why did they do so little to it? The MIT easily could have made it completely incapable of taking off at all. How did the MIT expect to get away with all this? It's pretty clear in context that Topa was taken by them. Did they just expect that they would be able to just deny things and claim it was outrageous that people thought that it was a possibility that they took her when by process of elimination they pretty much had to have done so? Did they really think that Topa's disappearance/death wasn't going to matter or that there was no chance that they might have to answer for it? Or was stopping the defection of female Moclans worth potentially paying that price?

Other fronts:

Torture: It seems ridiculous that the Moclans would use torture as their first and only move to get to the truth of what Topa knew. I also hate that TV tends to portray torture as 100 percent successful.

Klyden. I do appreciate Klyden coming around and realizing the error of his ways. But I also think he got a super-quick redemption arc given the heinousness of what he had said and how he had been acting. In fact, I was hoping that Klyden was behind the abduction of Topa and it was about forcing her to be re-gendered as male.

Bortus/Kelly: It seems like they were doing a little bit of a ship-tease for those two. I don't know how I feel about that. They are probably my two favorite characters of the show, so I guess I could see more...?

Charly: She had like one line this episode, to express surprise/confusion about violating the treaty by going to the colony and she couldn't even pull that off well. Like I seriously think I or anyone off the street would be a better actor than her.

The Union expelling Moclus: I know it is the prescribed "happy ending," but it seems way more realistic that Moclus would throw some of its people under the bus and the Union would go along to avoid the major split that they now will have to do. Part of me would like it if the Krill and Moclus decided to ally against the Union.

1 - at least for humans, all embryos start out as female. So presumably that's also true for Moclans. Tho one would assume that genetic testing could reveal the sex . . .
2 - this was sort of explained a while back. Apparently Moclus is such a hostile environment (or was) that the Moclans decided that females were "too weak" to meaningfully contribute. Which, however, raises the issue that the "all male" Moclans must actually be hermaphroditic in order to reproduce.
2 - continuity, one would assume. TV audiences in general ain't real bright, so if you can give them a moment of "oh yeah, I remember this," then you help suck them into your story.

Worf poked out Dura... I mean Bortus poked out that Moclan's eye out. Still don't like Klyden.

I was thinking the same thing.

Hulu should make a Klyden and Ch***y spin-off series for the sole purpose of taking The Orville: New Horizons' place as the worst thing in television history.

On second thought, they probably shouldn't, because they could be held liable for all the murder-suicides that would take place as a result of people watching it.

They are resting too much on the Moklan thing this season. If that was the finale, then at least they can't disappoint any longer.

Two more episodes, unfortunately. Then, hopefully, it'll be canceled.

There are two more episodes left.

There is also an ebook/audiobook of an episode that they couldn't make due to Covid-restrictions rearing their head. I listened to it. Not bad, not great.

Why did they have to go to 1914 NY? 1992 NJ would have worked.

The premise was the simulation started off someplace someone originally wanted to go. 1992 NJ would have been too much of a stretch.

Even if the reverse is true and all Moclans start off as male, the point is that Moclans should be able to detect femaleness in the egg, or certainly after birth. For there to be any significant number of female Moclans to potentially smuggle would require either doctors who are either incompetent or secretly against gender reassignment surgery along with parents who are against it as well (because again, if the parents notice -- as they presumably eventually would have to -- that their darling child has a va-jay-jay, they would generally want to know how the doctor failed to notice and do something about it) or it would require a number of births in secret, which seems like it would be rare because of the whole sitting on an egg for a lengthy time thing, along with no medical care.

The explanation that Moclus was a tough physical environment and women are weak isn't detailed enough or plausible enough IMO to explain both how women might have been bred out, nor why the prejudice continues to the present day to think that girls are a birth defect.

I think shows should try to make sense both in-universe and when they do things for the benefit of TPTB or viewers.

All 3 Seasons Of Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Soon Available On Disney+

Good, I can drop Hulu then.

I'm trying to figure out if this is a good sign or a bad sign for a possible 4th season.

On the one hand, it could be seeking a (presumably) bigger audience because I assume D+ has more subscribers than Hulu at this point.

On the other, it could just portend that they are just milking the existing resources that they have to provide content on D+ because there are only so many Marvel and Star Wars series and movies that they can do.

This may be anecdotal, but I’ve heard that a lot of people who are frustrated with Star Trek are turning to to the Orville to get their fix so maybe it’s picking up steam.

This season of The Orville is a turning out to be one heck of a pretty big letdown, so the Star Trek incel nerds are in for a surprise if they haven't watched it before.

Besides, you've got three pretty good Trek series currently airing.

I’m just going off of what I’ve heard.

A fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.

A deadly weapon unleashed! The Union and the Orville crew are faced with an ethical quandary, Captain Mercer seeks a peaceful alliance with the Kaylon. Meanwhile, the Mocklans and the Krill join forces. Peace hangs in the balance as Captain Mercer and his crew are deployed to prevent the complete destruction of the Kaylon.

If you get what I'm referring to above, then you know what this episode reminded of. I thought it was well executed and I liked this episode a lot.