The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

overall story structure I liked, the message was good and well delivered.
It wasn't enough to hurt my opinion but there were three things I was looking askance at:
1. Kelly/Bortus just assuming two would be enough. I mean the actual fight was fine because the women armed themselves and evened the odds - but going down with just 2 was objectively stupid.
2. The idea that the kid was ever going to keep his mouth shut was hopelessly naive on Bortus' part. Damn, man.
3. Since when is Ed so well respected that he gets to sit at a table with 3 or 4 Admirals and conduct himself as their equal? The whole original premise was this was a guy on the ragged edge of pissing his whole career away and suddenly he's at the heart of decision making?

I've always enjoyed Victor Garber in everything he's done.

2. I assumed Bortus knew the kid would say something and he wanted to get caught. That way he could technically keep his promise and I think Bortus wanted to expose the kid to a different perspective.

I demand she wear that outfit in a "holodeck" adventure and than gets kidnapped by the Krill while wearing that costume. Much hilarity will take place. I guarantee it.

I would figure that Captain Mercer's status has risen dramatically due to his actions in dealing with the Kaylon and Krill.

Actually, I’d say that since he was the one who figured out that there was an Underground Railroad to smuggle females to a safe space, they’d want to include him since he would be more knowledgeable on aspects of it than they would.

Does troi have a catsuit?

Troi was immensely sexier in TNG when she switched to a regular uniform after Captain Jellicoe ordered her to in "Chains of Command".

Hate catsuits play witcher games hbo content and quality type of person in my stuff too.

She should have worn a uniform the whole time.

Oh! I wish I were writing Wonder Woman 1984.

I'd have Gal Gadot meet Adrianne Palicki as a WW street cosplayer.

Wasn't the catsuit Roddenberry's doing?

I have no idea.

Would have been cool to have Lynda Carter play Hyppolita.

Anyone notice that the juvenile humor and stuff that Seth MacFarlane was known for very quickly disappeared from "The Orville"? Aside from the occasional sight gag and stuff like Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" (which even the characters in the episode rolled their eyes at) the show bears little resemblance to a Seth MacFarlane production.

Which gives credence to what many of us said from early in the series. MacFarlane sold "The Orville" as a "typical Seth MacFarlane comedy in a science fiction setting" when what MacFarlane clearly wanted to do (and is doing) is his version of Star Trek.

Exactly right. It was sold to Fox as a comedy but bit by bit has become an action/adventure with comedic elements.

Of course there is nothing wrong with bait and switch when it comes to getting a television show or movie produced. Gene Roddenberry (acutely aware of how popular westerns were on network television at that time) sold the Original Star Trek as "Wagon Train to the Stars". I've heard that George Lucas sold "Star Wars" as a "galactic Gone With the Wind".

It pretty much happened between the pilot and the second episode...

Interesting episode. Got to say that modern day Kelly is so much hotter than seven years ago Kelly.

Damned, what did I do wrong with the spoiler tags this time?

>EDIT<

Fixed it.

At first I thought they were gonna go the Tom Riker route and have both of the Kellys co-existing in the present but with different lives.

Even the Tom Riker/Troi situation was similar to the Young Kelly/Mercer situation.

But in the end they went with an interesting twist ending.

Will it get reversed in the next episode? I hope not. Would be interesting to see how events play out in an altered timeline.

Fixed it for you.

[ spoiler ] Spoiler info. [ /spoiler ]

Remove the spaces between the brackets and the words.

I prefer young Kelly. They kept the wrong one.

From what I've read, there's going to be fallout from this in the next episode. One thing I love about Orville (among many things), is they don't like to hit the reset button.

I just got done with this episode and it just seems clear to me that the writers know how to mix exploration in a traditional Star Trek show with story arcs. We know Brendan Braga is a writer so he has the old school writing knowledge and I think this show is his redemption. Interesting twist at the end, obviously that changes things for Ed and Kelly. How do any one of them end up on the Orville? The jokes were perfect, especially the one about him calling the next day, dude, that's a big no no. This show just seems to flow better than Discovery, which is a shame because I don't hate Discovery.

Just caught up on "Sanctuary" and "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow." (Nice hat tip to Trek's tradition of Shakespearean references in episode titles.)

I appreciated how neither ended in a totally predictable way. '

In "Sanctuary," yeah, the fact that they had a baby in the box wasn't surprising. But the ending was good -- no last-minute revelation or clever gambit to result in a deus ex machina, just a flawed compromise that will probably just put the conflict on a temporary hold.

In "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow," I was expecting a Tom Riker scenario ... and when they found a way to send Kelly back, I was thinking they had passed up an opportunity to do interesting things with Doppelkelly down the road. But the twist was interesting.

The title of the next episode being "The Road Not Taken" suggests a followup. In the tagline "the crew must contend with the disastrous fallout from Kelly's decision," I assume they're talking about Doppelkelly's decision not to continue dating Ed in the past, since I can't think of any decision Present!Kelly made that would qualify. (Unless the title is a red herring, and the "disastrous fallout" is actually from her decision to fire on the Moclan ship an episode earlier?)

It wasn't Kelly who fired on the Moclan ship. She wasn't even in command at the time. But I'm pretty sure her "decision" that changes the present drastically is to not date Ed seven years previously. Which is easy to see. Her acceptance of a second date led to Kelly and Ed's marriage. Leading to their divorce. Leading to Ed's decent into alcoholism and eventually being reduced to being put in command of a second rate exploration ship (Orville) which was then in a position to uncover the Kaylon plot and participate in the successful defense of Earth.

Prior to Ed and Kelly's divorce he was apparently a fast rising star in the Union's fleet. Without the second date/marriage/divorce he would've probably continued that ascendency to command of a major starship....only to be destroyed along with the fleet in the inevitable Kaylon attack.

I just don't get the compulsion to compare them. I like both, but to say this is better than that is, to me, like saying "I like Supergirl better than I like The Tick" or vice versa. They are both comic book properties but they are NOT trying to be the same sort of thing.

They are exactly trying to be the same thing. A sci-fi show on a ship set in space.

In the same way Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 were compared to each other for being sci-fi shows on a space station in space.

So yes it's natural to compare them.

Quark was a SF show set on a ship in space. Doing the same general premise in no way requires you intend to do it in the same way.
McFarlane is attempting (successfully) to do "throwback" space opera, Disco is doing "new-school" SF - more comparable to, say, "The Expanse" than to The Orville but mostly derivative of NuBSG style television.