The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

I wrote a blog about the previous episode (and the "daughter" ep from season one) and one prediction I draw from that is that Seth is NOT prone to the "oh wait, everything turns out fine in the end" lazy writing. I don't think they'll do something this big and dramatic and then take a GITM easy way out.

The most interesting speculation here is that the Kaylon are "war gaming" the humans to see how they react but I'd be stunned if they try the "Issac swaps sides" thing, it's just too easy.

By the way, am I the only one who thought it seemed very unlike a machine species to save any part of the biological remains? Logically they'd just incinerate (or whatever) any remaining body.

They don't have a sense of smell, can't get infected by microbes, don't have religious taboos, and cremation uses energy.
As long as the bodies aren't immediately underfoot getting in anyone's way, kicking them into a tunnel is good enough.

Yeah. I thought the "bodies" simply were piles of bones as far as I could tell. Of course it is also possible that some feature of the makeup of the creators bodies made them difficult to cremate.

So the original Kaylon's make the robots. Robots rebel and kill everyone on the planet. This explains why the planet looks like it was made for non-robots. They simply just left most of it as is and used it like that.

Now apparently they want to expand but why invade Earth in order to expand? Makes no sense. You're machines. You don't need things that biological things need and space is so large that you could easily expand anywhere. There are no doubt empty solar systems you could expand into right next to Kaylon space. You could even colonize around the sun. ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g/videos - great videos on various subjects )

Hell the speed that ships in the Orville travel at probably mean that for the Kaylon they could go to another galaxy in a short of amount of time. From their perspective of course.

So that leaves us with the fact that the Kaylon's aren't expanding. They are simply wanting to wipe out all biological life in the universe. They see Earth as a major player in the Union and that knocking Earth out would send the rest of the Union into a tail spin.

Basically we are dealing with Space Nazi's.

It's no wonder Issac is always bragging about being superior. Someone should draw a Hitler mustache on him.

They didn't know it was weapons systems. Only that it could be used as such.

Remember they are still new to Kaylon. It could be as they said part of the planetary defense system.

And the massive tombs.....

That could be explained if the Kaylon's weren't the bad guys.

#1 The original species died out.

#2 Kaylon's shed their biological bodies for robot bodies.

So asking what's going on isn't a bad idea.

Because he couldn't. All communications were cut off between Mercer and the ship.

Bortus is the one, even though we don't see it on screen, that had to order repel all boarders once he was informed the ship was being boarded.

They weren't reluctant. Issac tells Mercer and crew:

"The Kaylon were created by a biological species that once dominated this planet. An irresolvable conflict occurred between us, and it became necessary to eradicate them."

"Coexistence was no longer possible."

"It was a matter of survival. We took no satisfaction in the destruction of our builders."

That's not the actions of a reluctant group of killers.

You're talking about a species that looks at biological species as inferior.

I'm actually surprised that the Kaylon just didn't kill everyone on the ship.

Am I the only one who when Issac fell to the floor was expecting Claire to tap her badge and call for help?

Also, let me pull an Oldfella, when she took off the jacket and climbed the tree.

It's an effort to compete with streaming services like Netflix. A lot of "hour-long" TV shows are less than 40 minutes, due to the commercials being packed into them, this tends to piss viewers off, who opt for streaming services where they see few, if any ads, and so the networks have slowly started to cut back on the ads as a way to deal with this.

Like this [ spoiler ] spoilery text [/ spoiler ], with no spaces between the brackets. You know, like you do with quote tags.

Third option: Claire tricks Isaac into revealing a weakness of the Kalons (perhaps by luring him into a trap, where Mercer and the others over-power and dismantle Isaac to learn more about the Kalons). The crew is then forced to make a choice: Wipe all of the Kalons out, or be subjected to constant war with them, where there's little hope for survival. Someone will point out that this is exactly the same kind of situation that the Kalons faced with their creators and that if they wipe out the Kalons, they'll be no better than them. Mercer (probably) will come up with a third option. This will most likely be something along the lines of "de-powering" their technology (ie taking away their ability to make offensive weapons), the Kalons will basically be quarantined in their system, Isaac will be allowed to remain on the Orville both as a way to convince the Kalons that biological units aren't as bad as they think, and as a source of dramatic tension on the show (probably plenty of people will be asking Isaac if he's going to go nuts and try to kill them all again).

Also possible that they'll come up with some kind of "hail-mary" maneuver that temporarily defeats the Kalon, but they know that sooner or later, the Kalons will regain their former strength and they keep Isaac around in hopes that by living amongst biologicals, he'll be able to provide convincing evidence that Kalons and biological species can co-exist peacefully with one another.

Worst possible option: It turns out that the Kalons didn't wipe out all of their creators, and some of them have been living in hiding amongst the society and a rag-tag assortment of them join forces with the crew of the Orville to stop the Kalons from wiping everyone out. Also possible, that the crew of the Orville discovered that the creators installed a "kill-switch" in the Kalons, which has never been removed and they use this to stop the Kalon forces. (Braga wrote the episode, so....)

I think the real question is fi they're going to wrap the whole thing up in two episodes, or if they're going to go the DS9 route with the Dominion War.

A couple of things that struck me in watching the episode:

As they were going to land on Kalon, I was reminded of the Cloud City sequence from ESB. I also couldn't help but notice that the effects were way better than those in the original version of ESB. Had we seen something like this nearly 40 years ago (when ESB came out), we'd have been blown the fuck away. Now? Eh, it's Thursday night on a rump of a broadcast TV network. Even the guys making fan films in their basement can get close to this level.

Also, when the Orville docked, the music cues seemed to come from ESB. And finally, the fact that the Kalons all had glowing red eyes, was kind of a big tell that things weren't quite right.

The other Kalon having eyes at all was something I noted. Wasn't it mentioned more than once in this show by Isaac that his "eyes" were not functional at all. Simply "andromorphic" That is to make him look more humanoid to deal with humanoids better. So why would the other Kalon bother with this?

The trailer footage seems to suggest a big battle type ending with massive amounts of weapons fire aboard The Orville and the ship itself opening fire and destroying several of the Kalon weapons ships.

Maybe in addition to being an aesthetic remnant from their creators, the Kaylons' eyes indicate the unit's specialty or primary purpose? Though it seems like that would be an inefficient way for them to identify themselves to each other.

I would also note that apparently Isaac does not have the "pop up weapons" that all the other Kalon apparently have. He did not manifest them in this episode nor in the first season where they would've been useful like when he was protecting Finn and her sons.

I immediately thought Coruscant.

When they were in the cave I swear I was hearing strains of Indiana Jones.

Standard TV trope.

Maybe on some level that Kaylon aren't as superior as they think they are. Why keep eyes you don't need? They've got some hangups still from their creators.

Or they just turned the eyes on for the humans.

His body was probably specifically built for the mission. It would be smart to not put any weapons in him just case something does happen to him and the biological things decide to cut him open.

Also it was nice to see that even though the Kaylon are strong they are not invincible. The Orville crew was dropping them with return fire. Now it's a question of is a shot Kaylon dead or can you just transfer the programming to another body.

Issac is Sally Fields:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=rl_NpdAy3WY

I really wanted to like the Orville. I watched 3/4 of the first season before I sort of drifted away. I went back to catch up and gave up after the first half of the first episode of Season 2. The humor is classic Seth MacFarlane, but it just doesn't work for me. For me, it actually works against the show and I don't know why.

Maybe I just can't get past that I wanted it to be Trek and it's not.

I believe that Issac is not okay with the decision to invade Earth. The Kaylon's don't seem to be a hive mind type civilization just based on this episode.

He didn't really give answers to some questions. Issac is blunt and he's willing to answer any question. If he thinks you're stupid he's going to tell you that you're stupid because your an inferior biological life form.

"My true objective was to determine whether or not you are worth preserving."

He says that to Claire directly. Saying you could mean her specifically and not humans in general. Especially given the previous episode were it becomes obvious his programing has adapted to Dr. Finn.

Than she asks him if he's in agreement with the conclusion of the other Kaylon that said, "coexistence is impossible".

Issac never answers that question.

He's standing with the humans on the bridge when Claire tell him, "taught them everything you know" and he has no response to that.

Issac tells her kids that they will grow up to be adults. Perhaps at that point he thinks Kaylon will not wipe out the Union.

In the first season he tells Claire that he's fond of the kids.

I think Issac is going along with the invasion until he can figure something out.

I'm kind of hoping that Issac kills Claire in front of her kids, and as she's dying he tells her that her kids will grow up to be adults. They only reason I have for this, it would be one fuck of a messed up scene, and would fit in with McFarlane's type of story telling.

I don't think McFarlane is stupid.

You apparently do.

I feel the same way about Discovery, the Abramsverse, Enterprise, and Voyager.

Remember than not even Baltar (original) wanted to wipe out all of humanity.

Oh, look... it's Brannon Braga's version of The Borg.

How can you tell without the tits and ass?

That said The Kalons have always remined me of Dr. Who's Cybermen

Kalon = Cylon?

Even the backstory is somewhat similar.

But, yeah, Borg would work too. Though they keep and incorporate the biological parts.

The song Gordon sang.
Bit he did kicks in at 58 seconds.

But far more fun.....

Interesting episode.

Definitely felt very different from any previous episode in the series.

I had a feeling Isaac would eventually turn on the crew from the very first episode.

In what sci-fi universe has artificial intelligence coexisted peacefully with biological life?

Terminator, Matrix, BSG, Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Dune

The only exception I can think of is Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe. His robots were built in with the Three Laws Of Robotics and they only ever tried to help humanity, even sacrificing themselves because they didn't want humans to become too dependent on them.

Come to think of it, was Isaac named after Isaac Asimov?