First things first: tonight we meet the new Alara, same as the old Alara. Except now she has a side pony! Okay, that’s not entirely fair. From her very first introduction, Lt. Talla Keyali (Jessica Szohr) demonstrates that she’s far more aggressive and confident than Alara was in her role. Arguably, Talla is who Alara would become at the end of her character arc towards self-acceptance. The show also has the good grace to lampshade the similarities by having Kelly point out Ed specifically requested a Xelayan replacement, despite that putting him in danger of being punched in the face. And besides, I like the idea that Xelaya has an entire subculture of women annoyed by the passive-aggressive intellectual snobbery of their home planet who just want to run off to the stars where they can enjoy the simple catharsis of kicking ass.
Having addressed the problem of organized religion with last season’s finale, “Mad Idolatry”, The Orville broadens its criticism to include secular superstition with “All the World is Birthday Cake”. As Kelly and Bortus discuss the possibility of sharing a party for their upcoming birthdays, the ship intercepts a transmission from a pre-space flight planet that just sent its first message in search of alien life. It’s cool to see the whole crew react to the prospect of first contact with such jubilation. Kelly even exclaims it’s what she most wants for her birthday. The ship makes contact and the crew receives a warm welcome.
The first sign of something strange happening is when Dr. Claire tours a local hospital and notices that an abnormally high number of women are all having emergency C-sections, despite, according to her surreptitious scans, both the mother and fetus being perfectly healthy. Only later that evening, when Kelly mentions her and Bortus’ upcoming birthdays, does it become clear why. They are branded as ‘Gilliacs’, which is the term for the astrological sign they would be born under if they were native to Regor 2. By the rules of their astrological calendar, Gilliacs are murderous sociopaths and must be detained before they inevitably do evil. The two are immediately arrested and the remaining crew is hauled off for a truly uncomfortable scene of dental extraction as a medic removes a plug of each crew member’s tooth for detailed birthday analysis. Kelly and Bortus are sent to a Gilliac concentration camp while everyone else returns to the Orville.
The most potentially interesting aspect of the episode occurs as an almost incidental side note. After the month of Gilliac ends, the Prefect goes on camera and heralds in the new month. Anyone born under this sign is fortunate and fated to become a leader or some other wealthy and influential person. Essentially, we learn, the Regorians abuse their astrological beliefs to enforce an incredibly rigid caste system. It’s never brought up as such, and the idea is never explored, but it’s a tantalizing idea that goes far to explain why the Regorians would be so eager to lock up some perfectly friendly aliens.
Yes, this was an episode specifically addressing destructive consequences of superstition, but it ignores a lot of basic human behavior in order to do so. As a rule, I generally don’t get hung up about the science a sci-fi show utilizes to support its narrative, because I’m much more interested in how sci-fi uses its trappings to tell good stories than I am in the structural integrity of those trappings. But here, the details were just too thin to support the premise. Surely, the Regorians would figure that anyone born in a different solar system would be bound by a completely different astrological system than theirs? As the Regorians say, “The stars don’t lie”. And other planets will see different stars. And have different solar cycles, for that matter. Does the whole planet adhere to the same belief system as the nation the crew landed in? I mean, we’ve been sending out signals into space for some time and we can’t even agree if it’s OK to put ketchup on a hot dog, much less what imaginary system of celestial guidance we want to use to completely structure our society. And if a star exploding caused such a massive societal effect that enacted a pogrom against 1/12th of the population, how was the event not printed out on pamphlets in every lobby on the planet instead of being some obscure, potentially unrelated piece of astronomical data Talla had to uncover? As much as I appreciate how The Orville presents its central allegory directly and in good faith, all these unsatisfied questions about the Regorian cosmology suggests a cynical structure kept in place by a ruling class to enforce a power structure they benefit from a lot more strongly than a bunch of earnest but misguided dopes who will stop an execution on a dime the moment a keen-eyed bystander notices a flicker in the night sky. It’s another way in which “All the World is Birthday Cake” resembles “Mad Idolatry”, when the head of the Church of Kelly was ready to up and completely negate a thousand years of institutional faith because Kelly told him it was whack —though that guy did get stabbed in the back for his trouble. I don’t mind The Orville’s sincerity; it remains the show’s greatest strength. But sometimes it flies completely in the face of everything we understand about how humans act. Yes, the Regorians aren’t humans, but they are stand-ins for exploring the human condition.
The whole idea of the separate astrological stations is primarily used to explore the plight of some expecting parents Kelly and Bortus befriend in the camp. When the woman has her baby under the next astrological cycle, she hides her, knowing she’ll be taken by the camp commander and given away. All of this, of course, echoes our current national sin of erecting concentration camps along the border and forcing asylum-seeking families apart. I’m sure this episode was filmed before this exploded as a national crisis and nothing about the storytelling suggests otherwise, so it mostly just stands out as a miserable coincidence.
Aboard the ship, Ted Danson shows up as an admiral for one of The Orville’s famous view screen cameos and tells Ed he can’t keep hanging around to free Kelly and Bortus. With only a day left to save the two before being forced to return to service, John uses the information Talla uncovered about the ancient nova to create a decoy that will fool the Regorians into believing the star has returned and maybe now those Gilliacs are okay folks after all! It’s an odd plan, but the scene where they unfurl a massive solar sail looks really cool. And it works just in time to prevent Kelly and Bortus from being executed for their failed prison escape! So yeah, the central conceit of this whole episode was pretty flimsy, but we did get to watch Kelly kneecap a dude with a sub-machine gun, which is a perfectly serviceable trade-off.
Stray Observations
- I love the tidbits of information we learn about the Union’s post-money economy. When Kelly talks about reputation as currency, I’m assuming it’s in a good deed sort of way, and not a bunch of would-be alpha bros trying to constantly one-up each other kind of way.
- Ed made an in-laws joke.
- Also, in best The Orville fashion, it was a good scene where the crew discussed the moral implication of lying to an entire planet about the fake star. The show is good about not letting stuff like that just slip by.
- Speaking of Ted Danson, I can’t wait to catch The Good Place finale tonight.
- I love the shitty birthday banners hanging up on the bridge. I’m glad to know someone in the future held onto a 500 year old desktop publishing program.
- Fashion Corner: I couldn’t tell for certain, but it looks like Isaac may have received a costume upgrade? It looks a little more intricate and may involve a few more hard pieces such as forearm guards.
- Naturally, here’s the last word on Superstition.
173 Comments
Its definitely interesting how enthusiastic everyone was about a first contact opportunity, given that more often than not first contact via the Orville ends up with a body count, partially due to the disinterest of them learning anything about the cultures they are about to interact with *before* they stumble into something that derails the whole thing, or their smug sense of superiority at how other cultures set up their societies. The Union Culture as we know it isn’t quite without its notable faults, Gordon’s career, after all was over for drawing some dicks on walls, even though he was one of the best pilots in the Union fleet. Clearly “reputation” doesn’t mean much if being the best at what you do can be derailed by some minor personality ticks. I mean, if that’s all it takes to ruin somebody, is the Union actually a superior civilization than any its looked down on?It does seem the goto move it to attempt to insult new civilizations into doing what he want, and you’d think by now he’d learn after numerous failures that tact doesn’t work, ever. And given Humanity’s rich history where it comes to astrology could have been an opportunity to pull a Yes, Minister kind of game of wits that would have used, or even for a moment tried. But this is Seth’s show, and its his episode, and no, the Orville isn’t about how smart the crew of the Orville is, but more how they can figure out where their adversaries are the most dumb.
Astrology Aliens are certainly different (They looked what would happen you only applied the starting bits of paint to someone playing a Cardassian). I’m not sure why the Union basically threw up their hands at Kelly and Bortus getting imprisoned, the aliens made it very clear that they were just going to be hostile from now so I don’t think much negotiating was going to get done.
It’s really not that surprising. If you scale down the analogy to Christian explorers going to another country. They refuse to believe that something might be wrong with their belief system, and instead think that God (who is the creator of all) didn’t contact these people for some reason.
If I ever wanted one episode to show someone the true insidious nature of garbage Trek-clone science fiction, I would show them this one.This episode makes the entirety of season one look like a masterpiece.
Couldn’t agree more. This was a well-executed version of a very flawed script. I also love that the supposedly advanced Regorians didn’t seem to consider the possibility that imprisoning two Union citizens could, I dunno. Provoke a war with a MUCH more powerful interstellar government that probably has the capability of wiping their entire species out? Obviously we know that the Union wouldn’t do that, but the Regorians couldn’t have known that.
Besides the whole “Different star system, different stars” thing it seemed weird that the Regorians would be willing to start a war with a much more advanced culture over something like this. Especially since they could have just told them all to leave the planet. How would Bortus and Kelly be a criminal threat to them if they weren’t even there?
They at least tried to address that-the Prefect had some line about how releasing anyone born under that sign would be so against the societal order that there would be rioting in the streets. I am not saying it was the most convincing hand wave of a plot hole, just pointing out that an attempt was made!
I think the idea was to show just how adament and nuts people can be with their beliefs.
I was going to say this page needs an update now
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FantasticRacism/LiveActionTV
But some quick-thinking wiki editor already did it.
Works for planet of Hats too.
…but really, even now, isn’t every lie one tells, technically, “to the entire planet”? I mean, when i’m putting a lie out there, it’s for everyone potentially, not just those within earshot.
Except for those lies where you give different people different bits of information, to see where your security leak is. But i would posit, that’s a single complex lie with many moving moving parts.
In this way, with the idea of a composite lie as comprised by many sub-lies, it becomes easy to say “my life is a lie” without getting all hung up about it. This is how we both see ourselves clearly and critically without getting all judgey or cynical.
I might write a self-help book about it. We’re All Liars But What You Gonna Do
One last thing: Was anyone else like “Who the hell is that guy??” when Kelly’s new boyfriend appeared in Ed’s office? I don’t recall seeing him before.
Cassius has been in every episode this season.
He just looks like a different dork each time. haha
Dork? That’s a handsome dude right there.
Maybe because he’s always wearing different clothing? He’s not a crew member so he doesn’t wear a uniform. He’s on the ship’s civilian staff as one of the schoolteachers.Come to think of it, the makeup of the ship’s population is an angle I’d like the show to explore more. I assume it starts with the officers to crew the ship for its primary exploration mission. And because they bring family with them, the ship needs facilities to serve the families. So then they hire a staff for the amenities to serve the non crew (which the crew can take advantage of as well). So that explains why there seems to be a high-end restaurant on board with its own proprietor. Also a bartender, schoolteacher, etc., who aren’t Union officers. (In Star Trek we got a hint of this as well without much further thought, with Guinan, Mot, etc.).
On TNG and beyond you had civillians. On TOS practically everyone aboard was Starfleet, unless they were a guest. And it was explained in the first episode of TNG that the families thing was a new concept for the Galaxy class ships IIRC. You’ll notice the Ent-E didn’t have a whole lot of civillians.
Can definitely agree on the grade. A lot of Orville is building upon what Star Trek already laid down. This episode didn’t really build anything new it just rehashed same ideas and not even ‘late season Star Trek’ ideas. This is ‘first season Star Trek’ inspired at best.
It is only, what, the 16th episode? Mind you TNG wisely cast off Roddenberry after a couple seasons and the show got a whole lot better for the most part because it was no longer shackled to his ego.
That solution (of creating a new “star”) was pure Sagan vs Velikovsky.My biggest issue with the episode up until that point was that the argument for different signs being in completely different places wasn’t really brought up or even given the chance to be rejected. Faking the reappearance of a star “Worlds in Collision” style made up for all that.
It was fine. The score was pretty great, though, as usual. Loved the theme when they were all excited about first contact and approaching the planet.Plus, we got this!
Why would this sort of animation still be a thing 400 years in the future? This was so irritating to me I couldn’t be bothered to watch the final couple of minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E490 years old, and counting. Same reason people still listen to 400 year old music now.Not going to defend every creative choice, but it’s easy enough to suspend disbelief for funny little gags like this, and it’s easy enough to justify them too if you really need to.
Fair enough.
It feels like the show and the crew are not learning from their mistakes. They already did another episode where the crew gets in trouble with an alien culture because they failed to learn very basic rules of that society. In the social media critique episode, they went to the planet without learning the rules and a crew member almost got a lobotomy. Why would they do something so dumb again?Star Trek at least learned from it’s mistakes. After the idiocy of “Justice,” they made the crew more professional and had them learn about cultures before making contact. They even did a great episode addressing the perils of first contact in the episode “First Contact.”
Yes, that’s a very good point and I was wondering the same thing. They should have observed the planet, their culture, etc, before making contact.
That entire opening exchange, before the title credits, had me laughing and smiling like hell. This show is so adorable.
And then the excitement of the entire crew over a first contact mission. Again, this show is so adorbs.
When Ed said, “Prepare for First Contact” it was exciting to see their glee.Also, Brannon Braga wrote Star Trek: First Contact where Earth was first visited by an alien race. Now he’s executive producing a show in which an Earth-born captain visits an alien race for the first time.
I loved that first contact scene. So many sci fi shows, even later Star Trek series, just kind of gloss over stuff like that. To see a crew genuinely excited about a first contact, to express joy at the prospect of discovering someone or something new, was refreshing.
As adorbs as a colonoscopy
You know, I’d really, just once, like to see an episode of first contact where there’s nothing sinister behind the scenes, no major conflict, no one to be saved… just the awe and wonder of a planet meeting “aliens” for the first time and the crew discovering everything about the planet for the first time… the way this episode started out. It would be such a nice change of pace and really tap into the essence of what these vessels are supposed to do – explore and discover.
I felt the same way. Everyone was so happy at the prospect of a First Contact, I kept fearing that shoe to drop.
I loved this episode, which featured another beautifully told allegorical tale.So I will just nitpick.• They might have made a cursory nod to the language issue. The First Prefect might have asked “How do you know our language?”, to which Ed or Kelly could have responded that they have sophisticated translation devices that pick up and translate all speech. Though, of course, any such device wouldn’t have been available to Kelly and Bortus in the prison camp; so maybe that’s why the writers elected to gloss over the issue. Still, it was a bit incongruous to see the alien writing and to have the crew not understand the word “Giliac”, but to have the question of the spoken language go otherwise unaddressed.• Why would a non-spacefaring civilisation call its planet “Regor 2″, with a number? Also, planets with numbers are meant to be named after their stars: Rigel 12 is the twelfth planet of those orbiting the star Rigel. So if the writers wanted to use a number, then this planet could have been called “Gamma Velorum 2”.• I had to chuckle at Ed’s toast mentioning “a fullness of cultural diversity” while at a table full of white guys, in a setting in which the modes of dress, of architecture, and of decoration were all squarely within the bounds of American and Western European norms. (OK, to be fair, there was one black Rigorian at the table. So, yeah, cultural diversity all the way.)• When the First Prefect said “the stars don’t lie”, I thought that the show missed a chance for a very impactful line: Ed could have retorted “I come from the stars, and I can tell you that that’s nonsense!” The momentary lack of decorum would have been consistent with Ed’s anger about his crew members being held captive. (It was left to the First Prefect to deliver a line late in the episode that included a mention of Ed’s people living amongst the stars.)• I wonder whether the First Prefect will ever meet Ford Prefect.
I always find the “we seemingly speak the same language” distracting at the onset but it has been the norm since the original Star Trek series to explain this away with a hand wave. If every time a union crew met with an alien race and we had to watch them translate everything back and forth it would drag down the story telling. It’s just understood that there is some sort of translating going on and it’s being converted to English for you the viewer (or maybe Spanish for you SAP viewers). The only time they do go through a translating routine is when it is convenient for the story. Darmok and Jalad…
I certainly am not saying that the language issue should come up every time. It should be left unaddressed in stories involving the interaction of spacefaring races, all of whom presumably have translation technology.
But in a story involving a less advanced people who are meeting aliens for the first time, some minor attention to the language issue would be nice, considering that “How do you know our language?” would be one of the first questions that anyone would ask.
Interestingly I noticed signage in one of the buildings they were visiting was not in English, rather some non-Roman characters.
Why would a non-spacefaring civilisation call its planet “Regor 2″, with a number?THANK YOU! As soon as he said the name I had a “WTF?” moment.
When the First Prefect said “the stars don’t lie”, I thought that the show missed a chance for a very impactful line: Ed could have retorted “I come from the stars, and I can tell you that that’s nonsense!”
There are so many ways he could have handled it. “We’re aliens so the stars affect us differently” would have been another way to go.
Maybe they know there is a planet closer to their sun and can travel within their galaxy/system. Or at least observe it. So they’re 2. And the next one further away is 3.
We know there are two planets closer to our sun, but we don’t call ourselves Sol 3.That said, thinking about it and how astrology rules them, perhaps it’s something they did for that purpose?
You mean like how humans had no idea Earth is the third planet of our solar system until we traveled in space?
Huh? I’m not sure what you’re saying here. We definitely knew we were the third planet well before we started sending anything into space.
Maybe they know there is a planet closer to their sun and can travel within their galaxy/system. Or at least observe it. So they’re 2. And the next one further away is 3.
Too simple for the nitpickers. lol
Sure… I say we live on Earth 3 all the time. (Or is it Alpha or Prime?) I get confused easily.
Welike to call it Gamma here in the Funk House.
Marty, if you aren’t already, you gotta watch Counterpart (for the reference and a damn good show). 😉
Has the show addressed the universal translator issue yet? While Star Trek typically has the translators be devices worn on the uniform (like the combadge), it could also be an implant (like the Ferengi), which sidesteps the issue of the device being taken away. Translator implants are used in Guardians of the Galaxy and other franchises.
So maybe on the Orville they are using translator chips in their neck or inner ear? Maybe they could show someone joining the Union fleet and having one of those installed.I mean, it doesn’t account for an alien planet having an almost exact Earth-like day, month and year for the plot to work, but I suppose coincidences can happen too.
The Star Trek translators aren’t in the com-badges; otherwise every time a Starfleet officer went rogue and left their combadge on the table, they’d suddenly be unable to talk to anybody. For example, O’Brien in the Tosk episode.
Except that they are. In the Voyager episode “The 37s,” Janeway explains to all the ancient humans that they can understand each other with the universal translator, and points to her combadge as she’s explaining it.Translators are also part of the ships’ and space stations’ computers, though, so people without a combadge who are still on their ship or on DS9 don’t need them to translate. Hence O’Brien with the Tosk.
But then you’d have the same problem every time a Starfleet officer was captured by the locals on a planet and had their stuff taken away. The first one that came to my mind was “The Chute”, but there are many, many other examples. They have to be implants.“The 37s” was a terrible episode. If I have to disregard either one momentary blink-if-you-miss-it acting choice from that episode, or the entire rest of the canon, I know which choice I’ll make.
Your feelings about “The 37s” aside, that episode nonetheless exists, whereas any episode establishing they have implants doesn’t. (And I doubt Kate Mulgrew is the one who just decided the translator was in the combadge).
Wouldn’t be the first time something on Star Trek didn’t make any sense.
On the contrary, episodes where crew-members are off the ship with no combadge do exist, there are quite a lot of them, and usually it’s much more important to the plot than one momentary acting decision from one episode (no matter who ultimately made it).
Yeah, there’s a lot of them. And yes, the show often doesn’t make sense. I’m just saying what the show itself established. But if you want your head canon to be considered official, I’m sure Memory Alpha will be glad to hear your evidence that it was just an acting choice from Kate Mulgrew and not the conscious creative decision of the show’s writers producers and directors. (And Memory Alpha lists a number of episodes citing the combadge as a translator.) I’m sure as far as the Star Trek creatives are concerned, when they don’t have their badges and people can understand them, it’s because the locals have the translators (even when that doesn’t make any sense, either). Because Starfleet crews have been trapped with without translators long before Starfleet was shown to have the tech needed for translator implants, and they still communicate just fine (like on TOS and Enterprise, when they are holding the literal translator device in their hands to explain it to people).
I’m going to assume that there’s a seamless universal translator at work somewhere, generally, because otherwise I go mad. That said, there’s a simple reason why everything else gets translated, but “Gilliac” does not: it’s a proper noun. As a general rule, proper nouns are not translated even if they have a known meaning other than the name.
I can agree with all of that.Alas, it still doesn’t explain the lack of surprise about the language thing on the part of these people who are encountering aliens for the first time.Just one measly little line; all I’m asking for is a single cursory line in this episode only.
“They might have made a cursory nod to the language issue.”
Scripts are only so long. If you have to dedicate a page each episode about getting over the language barrier then it would get dull and repetitive very quickly. Stargate took the same approach: Everyone speaks English, so let’s just get on with the show!
“Why would a non-spacefaring civilisation call its planet “Regor 2″, with a number?”
That bothered me as well! They’d call themselves Regorians from the planet Regor. It’d be like us calling Earth ‘Sol 3′ instead. We wouldn’t do that, especially for a group that has considered themselves the centre of everything for such a long time.
“I had to chuckle at Ed’s toast mentioning “a fullness of cultural diversity” while at a table full of white guys…”
A rather superficial read, don’t you think? Looking only at their skin colour and deciding that that = culture, especially given half the people at the table were literally an alien race (compared to the main characters).
Hi! I am white dude willing to convince myself that a massive turd is a beautiful diamond just to own the libs
“Why would a non-spacefaring civilisation call its planet “Regor 2″, with a number?”While they are not spacefaring, they are advanced at space observing and have developed advanced astrometric to feed their collective astrology fetish. They stated when showing the control room to the Orville crew that that their whole satellite array was built for the original purpose of astrometrics. The scene at the beginning was about about repurposing the array for communication. “Also, planets with numbers are meant to be named after their stars… So if the writers wanted to use a number, then this planet could have been called “Gamma Velorum 2”.”They wouldn’t call the planet Gamma Velorum 2 because they don’t call the star Gamma Velorum, which is because not having contacted anyone from off planet yet they don’t know they are in Velorum around the third brightest star. That’s the name that the Union species gave it.
Ah! Wait a minute! I have just learnt that “Regor” is one of the unofficial names that we use for the star Gamma Velorum! And the origin of that name is pretty interesting.
According to the site One Minute Astronomer:
The crew of Apollo 1 planned to use gamma Velorum to help navigate their spacecraft. Grissom jokingly called the star “Regor”, after his crewmate Roger Chaffee (Regor is Roger spelled backwards). After the ghastly accidental fire that claimed the lives of Grissom, Chaffee and their fellow astronaut Edward White on January 27, 1967, the name Regor was informally adopted as the name of this fascinating star system.https://oneminuteastronomer.com/5235/gamma-velorum/So the whole thing makes a lot more sense to me now, considering that the planets Rigel II, Rigel V, Rigel XII, and so forth are named using the same name that we use for that star, and that the inhabitants of planets in that system are called “Rigelians”.
Eh, the Daleks have been speaking English for 50 years. That kind of sci-fi stuff just rolls over me.
While I like how the show actually tells a story during the hour ep and not drag shit out like soap opera shows, MacFarlane needs more people writing the eps than just him.
Thank you for reviewing this great show every week, but there seems to be a lot of nitpicking in an exerted effort to find some fault almost every week. I thought it was a great episode, totally in the sphere of classic and TNG Star Trek. No episode is perfect, but I would give it a solid B or B+.
I totally agree about the astrology thing and those were my thoughts exactly. If you’re born on a different planet in a different solar system, the signs, planets and planetary placements would be totally different! Any amateur astrologer would understand this basic concept. It just leads me to realize that Seth doesn’t seem to know anything about astrology 🙄 Also, I didn’t like that Bortus and Kelly killed so many people when they tried to escape. Overall this episode was a total flop that seemed to go on forever and I almost turned off the TV at one point.
My couple nitpicks. 1) Suddenly, they decided not to execute the two Orville crew members even though they’d apparently shot and killed a bunch of guards? I get letting people innocent of crimes other than being born under the wrong sign go, but Kelly and Bortus weren’t exactly innocent.2)They made it seem like it would be many years before the Regorans would figure out about the solar sail device (and might move past astrology in the meantime even though they had 4,000 years of history built upon it). But, if they’re able to build satellites and contact other societies (who might come for a visit), I don’t think it’ll be that long before they’re able to do at least local space travel themselves. I’d give it a couple decades at most before they can see this thing that was placed relatively close to their planet. Not much time to redo a society with 4 millennia of history.
While I think people are too hard on the show, I did find one thing “unrealistic” about the episode – if you can even label a sci-fi show that. Its how quickly they rushed into first contact. On Star Trek, they had an episode where they mentioned how they go undercover and research a new warp capable species first, sometimes for years, instead of just rushing in. That makes more sense. Then they would have discovered the whole astrology thing before risking their officers.
This episode has a lot of plotting problems, some discussed in this well written review and some not. My main beef: The choice of this show to move away from any Prime Directive is just fine, and could open up some great stories. But that seems to make it even more important to actually learn about a planet before rushing to meet them. Like, maybe the time to hack into all their media and stuff is before you meet them, not after? Also, this is the second week in a row that Orville crew was gunning down another species left and right with no consequences or comment on it afterward. I get that in both cases there was provocation, but that probably is not what the Union is going for…..All of that said: The sequence where the crew was celebrating the opportunity to make first contact had me grinning from ear to ear. STNG vibes all over the place. Like the reviewer, I love the sincerity of the show and the use of sci-fi to explore the human condition. As many have said before, these shows feel like Season 1 and Season 2 Next Generation plots: many holes, but with potential to be great. I hope this show continues to improve and grows into truly great sci-fi.Whether it takes that step and goes on for ten seasons or if this is all we get, I am enjoying the show each week and I am glad it was made. There is a real place for sci-fi with a core of optimism, and I have missed that.
But that seems to make it even more important to actually learn about a planet before rushing to meet them. Like, maybe the time to hack into all their media and stuff is before you meet them, not after?
Come to think of it, they were able to “hack” into Regor 2’s digital information pretty quickly. Would have been a good idea to check the planet’s version of Wikipedia before heading down.
Late to this, but … yessssssss. There are going to be weird cultural differences in every single new civilization they encounter. You’d think the Union would accumulate data for ten years before knocking on anyone’s door. Okay, that wouldn’t have made for a fun episode, but the crew could’ve spent a week or two where they did a little research offscreen? The entire caste system was based on these astrological signs, so it’s not like they would’ve had to do much digging.They clearly learned nothing from their infiltration of the direct-democracy planet, where they could’ve figured out how the whole upvoting/downvoting thing worked after about 15 minutes of scanning the aliens’ TV shows.
Ok so they got a new Xelayan but went the same thing happen eventually. Also if it’s a know issue shouldn’t their rooms have adjustable gravity settings in the bedroom area at the very least?
The crew of the Orville built a fake wall star to placate a bunch of ignorant jerks.I feel like I just read someone suggest something like that…
What’s silly is overanalyzing comedy and inserting politics into the review of a light-hearted syfy show. Concentration camps at out border? Now you’re the one whose viewpoint is a joke.
I like Talla better than Tharl.I was a bit slow. I didn’t know what was going on with the C sections at first. I thought that “Gilliacs” referred to all those born vaginally.
Not recognizing that outer space aliens would be governed by different astrology seems superbly stupid, as does provoking a technologically superior group of visitors by imprisoning, instead of just exiling, two of its well-meaning members.The societal system for preventing Gilliacs as much as possible should include figuring out the typical gestation time for the species and backtracking to when conception would have to occur. Any and all sexual activity during that period which could lead to conception should be outlawed, no? For that matter, the state should regulate the sexual activity of captive Gilliacs, to ensure either that no future Gilliacs are produced or that Gilliacs produce only Gilliacs so as to keep the population together and under control.Kelly and Bortus sure seemed to kill a lot of people who were just doing their jobs protecting the world from Gilliacs, to be able to smile at a joint birthday party in the end. (Well, to be fair, Bortus isn’t smiling about the joint party.)I do not believe that Evil Internment Camp Leader would stop the execution just because a Gilliac saw a new star in the sky. Kelly and Bortus just killed (or at least seriously wounded) several of his men, and he is evil. He is exactly the sort of character who would follow through with the execution and THEN find out what’s going on with the sky. (Also, we had no friendly alien character to counter him in the camp.)How do we get from “A new star?!” to “Let’s free all the Gilliacs!” I understand intellectually (black hole bad, new star good), but I want to know about the practicalities of the change to the planet’s society.Regor 2 is a weird thing to call your own planet. What happened to Regor 1?
I was a bit slow. I didn’t know what was going on with the C sections at first. I thought that “Gilliacs” referred to all those born vaginally.I had this reaction as well. I thought they were going the whole Huxley route but in a more primitive way – without all the baby-decanting. I thought the freaking out about Kelly mentioning her birthday was offensive because ‘birth’ maybe implied vaginal birth. How do we get from “A new star?!” to “Let’s free all the Gilliacs!” I understand intellectually (black hole bad, new star good), but I want to know about the practicalities of the change to the planet’s society.I found that to be a weird jump in logic as well.
I thought the same thing about the “birthday.” In fact, my reaction was to clarify to the aliens, “No, no, we call it that when we’re C-section babies, too.” (Like Lord Macduff, I was not “of woman born” but was “from [my] mother’s womb / [u]ntimely ripped.”)
How do we get from “A new star?!” to “Let’s free all the Gilliacs!”
Yeah, I can see how the Prefect would have known immediately (it would be similar to an actual Second Coming to him), but they skimmed over how Kelly and Bortus were released and how Ed or the Ambassadors were able to convince the Prefect to let them go when they were literally on the chopping block.
At first I thought the doctor was concerned about a percentage of babies being born with some kind of disease.Since this planet is much like Earth, we can presume not everyone practices abstinence only during the risk zone of having a Gilliac.
I didn’t think disease, but I could see that, too. The initial setup was confusing.People would have to abstain only from those sexual activities potentially leading to conception. I bet they would do so if it were a crime not to.
What happened to Regor 1?It blew up and became Rigor 2’s rings?
Usually in sci-fi planet-naming, “Regor 2″ would mean the 2nd planet out from the star named “Regor”. (So Earth could also be “Sol 3″.)
Having demonstrated the ability to hack into the world’s version of the internet… Why wouldn’t they do this in the first place? It makes no sense to go in blind to a planet’s culture if you don’t have to so you can avoid an inadvertent errors in diplomacy.
I love this show enough that I’ll forgive so many details.1. Humanoid aliens speaking perfect English? Or is there some sort of universal translator?2. The Giliacs accept their ‘nature’ and understand they need to be kept apart for the good of society. Yet they are treated harshly and violently by non-Giliac guards? If there’s some sort of point there I’m missing it.3. A Giliac can give birth to a Leader? That oughta be questioned more.4. Easiest thing for the Regorians (Gregorians) to do would have been to give Kelly and Bortus back. It never was explained why they had to imprison an alien race on their planet. Why worry about the trouble they’ll cause?5. Kelly and Bortus get imprisoned for just being born at a certain time. But get to leave despite killing/wounding a half dozen or so Regorians?6. This show and episode falls into the trap almost all these space exploration type shows do: nearly every planet consists of one race and one government structure for the whole planet.But I still love the show and went to college and was friends with Brannon Braga!
Then perhaps you should contact him and tell him there are several dozen folks here who’d be happy to identify plot holes and gaps in logic in the scripts before they start filming…
Naaah. What would we write about then!?!?! Compliments? That’s no fun!
2. The Giliacs accept their ‘nature’ and understand they need to be kept
apart for the good of society. Yet they are treated harshly and
violently by non-Giliac guards? If there’s some sort of point there I’m missing it.
This was a satirical (?) plot-point that MacFarlane’s pretty good at implementing into the show; in this case he’s pointing out how the GOP treats Mexican immigrants like murderers, while at the same time approving of doing things like locking children in cages and using military force to drive away unarmed refugees…or, at least that was my takeaway.
Awe cute. You think McFarlane has the skill or desire for nuance in societal commentary
You’re pretty deep into the comments on a random episode of The Orville, so if some sort of cynical contrarian such as yourself is bothering, he must be doing something right.
That’s one pretty weak theory bud. You’d make a great The Orville writer with that there internal logic.
It looked like they shot down around a dozen guards and were going to be put to death for that…so what happened to that crime? It was going to be immediate firing squad instead they let them go because of the star returning? Weird justice on this planet. An interesting episode with some flaws.I love how they made the solar sail plan and it only took 12 hours – dang right “make it so” was a great line!
Well, I figure that it had something to do with the fact that the ‘star returned’ during their execution – it could be taken as a sign that they should be spared, and freed along with all the other Gilliacs.
4. Easiest thing for the Regorians (Gregorians) to do would have been to
give Kelly and Bortus back. It never was explained why they had to
imprison an alien race on their planet. Yeah. The only reason would be that they actually want to punish Giliacs, not just protect themselves from them.5. Kelly and Bortus get imprisoned for just being born at a certain
time. But get to leave despite killing/wounding a half dozen or so
Regorians?Why didn’t Ed just start blowing (inanimate) shit up from space? Maybe there’s a rule against it, but it’s way better than Kelly and Bortis killing all those guys.
The option is mentioned by kelly’s boyfriend, bud dismissed by ed as the fact that we have centuries more advanced weapons is exactly why we should not. BTW did you notice that Discovery now does jokes too…
Why didn’t Ed just start blowing (inanimate) shit up from space? Maybe there’s a rule against it, but it’s way better than Kelly and Bortis killing all those guys.
They cover that when Ed talks to HQ; it’d be kind of like the UN just saying “fuck it” and nuking Palestine instead of trying to negotiate a peace deal.Although I agree; were I the commander of The Orville, I would have just started fucking shit up immediately.Then again, I wouldn’t be the commander of The Orville.
6. This show and episode falls into the trap almost all these space exploration type shows do: nearly every planet consists of one race and one government structure for the whole planet.
Here’s the thing though. Do you really want to sit through them discussing the ins and outs of 30 different cultures on every planet? What would that add to the plot?
Maybe – maybe they could add one line about how this is only practiced in the Northern Hemisphere, or something. But it ultimately is one of those things that serves the narrative, and so I always just assume that to be the case.
It’d be nice to see some history on the Krill; I kinda hate that the writers set them up to be so one-dimensional.
They’ll cover that when a Krill becomes Chief Security Officer on Orville: The Next Generation.
It is easy to explain away any odd behaviors of the aliens because aliens are well Alien. They think different, have different world (universe) views, and may even process information differently. Also Belief, Culture, and Complacency are quite powerful forces.
A good ubiquitous example of people just going along with something dumb in the real world is the qwerty keyboard. Most English speakers use it. It is not the best keyboard design and layout, having been designed to make typist slower back when people were able to type faster than the early type machines could physically move. Most people don’t question the layout of their keyboard, they just use it. Many don’t know the history. It is so ingrained in culture that even the attempts to implement different layouts have mostly been a niche thing.
Mmmm…what? QWERTY is based on a comprehensive understanding of the English language, and if you touch-type, it’s the most effective layout based on which letters are most often used in the alphabet and the human ability to reach those keys in an effective manner.Anywho, I agree with you on the first point; I think to put it in perspective, imagine being a Regorian making First Contact with Earth and how batshit crazy Earthlings would look with our worshipping Old Sky Man and some guy that got crucified millenia ago.Then again, the idea that any intelligent life out there would even somewhat resemble a primate in any given form is preposterous at face value; at the end of the day we’re just projecting our given image onto our sci-fi fantasies to make it a comprehensible vehicle for a story…Arrival is probably a much more realistic concept of how humans would gain interaction with extra-terrestrials.It’s nice to just forget about all that shit and enjoy the story.
QWERTY keyboards were developed to show typists down since there are actually very few words that can be efficiently typed with that layout. There are better keyboard layouts that have been developed but they are accepted about as well as the one dollar coin and the two dollar bill in this country because we as humans are so used to the layout we are used to.
You’ve lost your fucking mind. Why on Earth would you slow down a typist? My grandmother was a typist for the OSS and can type 160 WPM on an old-school punch typewriter.There are other keyboard layouts, sure, but are you using a Numpad and writing in T9? No, you are using a QWERTY, because it’s more effecient. Nobody’s forcing you to use QWERTY, you could go full Abc if you wanted, but you use a QWERTY.
Have you ever typed on an old school manual typewriter? If you go too fast the striker arms get tangled and you have to reach in and unjam them. It’s no coincidence that the letters most frequently used in English are all under the control of the left hand when the majority of humans are right handed.
Yes, I grew up using a manual +slide typewriter. I type 76 WPM, kthx?
It’s no coincidence that the letters most frequently used in English are
all under the control of the left hand when the majority of humans are
right handed.
I only unGreyed this shit for…what is it? The Left Hand is involved in some sort of Deep State Conspiracy?Wow.
that the letters most frequently used in English are all under the control of the left hand when the majority of humans are right handed. You mean the Ctrl, Alt, and Spacebar? Shift? Return? All those things are available to both hands. Take a look at your keyboard. 8)
What does the key layout have to do with the striker arm? Would it “jam” any less with an ABC setup?Yes, I cut my teeth on a manual typewriter. I learned from my grandmother who used a manual typewriter during her stint in the OSS.If you’re too much of a pussy to return the striker, that says alot more about you than I.
A simple wikipedia search will show you the history of the Qwerty set up. The initial versions of qwerty were indeed to slow down the typists.
It’s the Dvorak keyboard that was developed based on ergonomic studies. QWERTY was designed to place common letter pairs as far apart as possible because mechanical typewriters tended to jam when adjacent letters were used in quick succession. This enabled the typists of the time to type faster, not slower.
Or look at the US and the metric system. The metric system is quantifiably better than imperial. Everything is in units of 100. Easy as fuck to learn, and the names of the measurements tell you about said measurements.
If you don’t know the metric system, you can still logically tell that a meter and a kilometer are related. If you’ve heard ‘kilo’ being used in another context, like say, computer memory, you can figure out how it applies in other words.
What is the relationship between an inch and a foot? Or a quart and an ounce? If you don’t know what each system is, and what each word in said system means and how many of them are in each, then the system is worthless.
And don’t get me started on celsius vs fahrenheit.
And don’t get me started on celsius vs fahrenheit.
Kelvin or GTFO
With their fascist tendencies and adherence to astrology I was thinking more Regorians = Reagans.
You are why we can’t have nice things…that and Seths ego
5. Kelly and Bortus get imprisoned for just being born at a certain time. But get to leave despite killing/wounding a half dozen or so Regorians?I can explain this away because the “celestial event” happened during their executions, which must therefore be a sign that they should not be put to death (and also that the rest of the Gilliacs should be freed).
3. A Giliac can give birth to a Leader? That oughta be questioned moreTheir astrological signs are based on their birthdays not through their blood, just like Aquarius can give birth to a Sagittarius. 5. Kelly and Bortus get imprisoned for just being born at a certain time. But get to leave despite killing/wounding a half dozen or so Regorians?The first 2 guards weren’t killed, but knocked out by Kelly and Bortus. And Kelly fired back only after the Regorian guards opened fire at her first. I’m no law expert in the year 2419 but from what I see Kelly’s action is justified.
The show is good about not letting stuff like that just slip by. Kelly and Bortus get imprisoned for just being born at a certain time. But get to leave despite killing/wounding a half dozen or so Regorians?Yeeeah. I was hung up on that point as well.
2. and 3. The portrayal of the Gilliacs was interesting. Two American defaults are “don’t accept your lot in life” and “it’s okay to question/challenge authority”, so it was interesting to see a portrayal of the opposite of that happening. Seeing the conflict between husband and wife over whether to give the child up was interesting (though I doubt they could have hidden a child for very long anyways), as was the ability of the guards to compartmentalize their disdain for the parents but not for the child. Unique to see a child of someone in the bad caste get elevated so readily.From a plot standpoint, I don’t mind that the non-Gilliacs have contempt for their captives; after all, if we got too friendly, we might undermine the system. But the camp’s security seemed excessive, if all the Gilliacs were that passive. Maybe there’s a history of resistance, just not in that particular camp.4. It’s not impossible for me to imagine their rationalization being that star alignments are fixed, so it wouldn’t matter where you were born. But the idea of applying the concept of a human birthday (position of Earth relative to the sun) to those patterns is wacky. Some of the crew was probably born in the Gilliac month, but maybe their Gilliac month was, like, every other Earth April and May. The ‘test’ mechanism seems so far-fetched, but if we handwave the Dell monitors and universal language, guess we’ve gotta do the same here. A lot to be desired here though. The leader did seem to strike an authentic balance of contempt and fear at least; the right mix of that would not let cooler heads prevail.
C-sections to avoid the month is classic Pharasaism.Wonder if they have an abortion debate.I would have expected both the Gilliacs in the camp and the people in Mission Control to be more interested in the aliens in the room. More awe-filled staring please!
“We can’t go in guns blazing, we’re not the Krill” – but we’ll use our technological advantage to fake a star to manipulate your belief system so we can deceive our way out! We’re just passive-aggressive Krill. “Find another solution” was fine by me, but the solution wasn’t.Did anyone else find it weird that the Orville crew was allowed to make first contact? Does the Union really allow the closest ship to do this? There’s a funny storyline in here where they call it in and then a Picard-like character (maybe mixed with some of Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s “The Vulture”) shows up with his fancy flagship to steal Ed’s thunder.
Good points lmao
In this week’s installment of “Where have I seen that Orville location before?”The government building was the Oviatt Library on the campus of Cal State Northridge, which was also used as Starfleet Academy in the first of the rebooted Star Trek films. It was also used in Sky High and dozens of other shows and movies.
It’s also about five miles from last week’s scene filmed in Chatsworth, CA. Granted, so many things are filmed in this area that it’s just a matter of time until you see you own home on TV. My house was in the background of a scene in the first season of Last Man on Earth.
Battlestar Galactica filmed on campus as well, the original show.
I am going to be very disappointed if we don’t get a location shoot at Vasquez Rocks before the end of the show.
I love The Orville. It the best successor to TNG but strangely, I kind of miss some of the humor with long setups or B stories. Season 1’s episode ‘Krill’ is a perfect example where we get a good, mostly serious main story and then a hilarious B story centered around Malloy’s misguided attempt to teach Isaac about the human art of practical jokes.
I enjoyed the episode, always thrilled when I forget I’m watching a comedy and feel the tension they’ve tried to create. This episode could have been a straight up TNG episode. That being said, I’m always annoyed by the “We’re going to fix your backwards civilization in an hour” trope. Even though they didn’t technically fix it, it was still the thrust of the episode. Your culture is wrong. Also, the entire episode just highlights the fact that there should be a Federation, er I mean Union First Contact team that handles these things. Just blundering in without doing the prep work is why they had the problems they did.
OK, “is anybody out there, this is Regor 2”? What happened to Regor 1?
Recapping shows no one watches or cares about seems odd to me.
If they didn’t do it, all these people would invade Star Trek discovery reviews. I call it a public service.
You had a leader with his hand tied forced to keep a face on. He made it abundantly clear through several exchanges that despite his personal feelings, he had to consider everything through the lens of the people that elected him. And he did, and put his personal feelings aside, but there was that contrast. When given the opportunity to “do the right thing” and supersede the superstition, he does. Like when he makes the call to send the signal, or when he takes the “new star” immediately for it’s intended purpose, and says as much. Like their society just needed a push to stop demonizing people. One of the last steps to full maturity is letting go of the childish need to attack someone or something else to feel good about yourself. To feel superior. We got to watch a society learn this lesson in maturity. Wouldn’t it be nice if ours did?
fair point…arguably a charitable interpretation but a fair point none the less…
The problem with the language thing was that these aliens use the same term for C-section, even though that term is specifically named after Julius Caesar.But I will point something out about the whole, Why isn’t the whole missing star thing mentioned in their history? We don’t know that these people actually remember that happening. When the star reappears, no one mentions that it has returned, merely that something extraordinary happened with that astrological sign. I also think it’s very possible that 3,000 years ago their planet was much more unified than Earth’s was, and so such a significant astrological event could have buried itself deeply into the subconscious of the entire planetary culture without them really understanding why.
I love the earnestness of the episode and the whole cheery tone of the build-up to the first contact put a smile on my face. The crew’s enthusiasm was really infectious.
However, I have to say that the show could have taken a few lessons from Star Trek as to the nuances of a first contact.For instance, when Ed says that it’s Union policy to answer messages from early spacefaring civilizations, it’s pretty clear from the rest of the episode why that’s a bad idea. The nit against the show is obviously that there’s no reason this should be the Union’s policy, other than the show needed it to be in order to explore the lesson of it.On Star Trek, we’ve seen more practiced measures in place. The first one is obviously the Prime Directive that precludes making first contact before a civilization has achieved Warp Drive. But let’s substitute that with this episode’s policy of SETI-like communication. The Federation sends a team of anthropologists to study the civilization, first from afar, covertly, and then, once they learn the language and some cultural norms, living among the people in disguise, to discern how they would react to first contact.We see this in practice in the episode First Contact, when the Enterprise determines that, despite a planet sending a probe into warp, that they are too xenophobic to burden with the concept of the wider universe at that time.
Heck, even the Orville is shown implementing this procedure, with the social media planet.So, what is implied in this episode is that upon hearing the message, the Orville immediately contacted Regor 2, but we aren’t privy to these discussions other than they set up landing coordinates. We aren’t even sure if the Orville contacted the Union admiralty to approve the mission.
I would think the more prudent course of action would have been to study the planet a while before making contact. Then they would have learned about the rigid adherence to the astrological stereotypes. This wouldn’t necessarily be a dealbreaker, but it might influence who actually goes to the planet. And Ed might have concluded that easing the Regorians into a broader galactic framework would have weened them from their superstition. But then, this approach doesn’t fit the TV narrative structure of the surprise twist.I liked the way the episode portrayed the Regorians as just assuming the rest of the galaxy had to adhere to the same astrological rules that they did. Like they were so baffled as to why it was an issue they would lock up the Gilliacs, as if it surely were an intergalactic burden. Like when the doctor assumed Claire would know just because she was also a doctor. That’s a subtle detail that a more cautious approach to a first contact would have yielded and altered how they approach contacting the planet to begin with.
I think they missed an easy gag with the astrology talk, when they had to explain the concept of it to Isaac. They could have used an example of Earth’s astrology, and then one of the humans says “for example, I’m a such and such,” and then someone else says “that’s why you have problems with such and such.” A subtle showing of how such systems can still affect a culture even if it doesn’t take them seriously, because societies evolve but cultures are still a product of unique histories. As if to say some day the Regorians will move past this, maybe with the help of the Union, and look back and laugh at how stupid they were.
Have to point out that it’s not a standard caste system like you seem to be thinking. Anyone can move into a higher caste if they are born in the right month.
Most caste systems are extremely rigid with no moving up.
Yeah. I bet there has to be a subculture of people hiding babies and falsifying birth records to avoid bad months or achieve good ones.
They showed that they could take a bit of tooth and figure out exact birthdates so not sure how easily that would pass.
I would bet a hell of a lot of people would be planning having their babies for that perfect month where they would become leaders though. A lot of sex 9 months before.
About that. How does the teeth extraction tech know when a baby was yanked from the mother’s womb 2 weeks or a month before what its birth date would have been otherwise? If the technology is about extrapolating age from level of development then the best it could do is calculate a date of conception.And how can it possibly work on aliens without any idea of their biological development cycle. Sure, maybe humans and Regorians are similar, but Bortus came out of an egg with a brief incubation period. How does their tech account for that? Is it really just a miniature time machine?
It wouldn’t even work as a time machine for humans. We aren’t born with teeth, so any test would be useless. They could have just then gone to ask for Kelly and Bortus to be checked, because it wouldn’t have likely worked on either of them to show when they were actually born..
Well, I sarcastically meant they just sent probes back in time and looked at when the kid was actually born, but yeah.
It doesn’t have to be biologically accurate – only socio-politically accurate.
They really skirt the language issue in that hospital scene. I was wondering if someone would call the procedure a “Caesarian” before Claire just said “C-Section” and the doctor knew what she was talking about. So, I suppose a universal translator could account for that. But obviously having an alien say “Caesarian” would raise a bunch of questions since the word as a very specific Earth origin. Not that C-section is much better since the C stands for something in particular, but it’s less messy I suppose. Still, maybe they should have had the procedure called something more official, or have the Regorians have a term for it. Abdominal birth or something.
I personally found the “we could give them fake names” conversation hilarious
When Kelly talks about reputation as currencySo who decides that Alara’s parents reputation gets them that sweet ass beach house?
There’s got to be some board or something that decides whose reputation deserves that sort of limited resource, and it’s gotta be corrupt AF (cause it always is, eventually).
They probably have a lot of followers on twitter..
The episode lost me pretty early on because I couldn’t get past the oddity that this far-away world calls a surgical birth a “C-section”.
Well, no, duh, what kind of crappy flimsy critique is that? No, you don’t go to another culture and then be like “Okay you guys are judging me based on my totally alien system of values right?” What garbage, but Western to be sure, we people in the west have that dumb expectation built in everywhere we go, it’s no wonder we’re considered to be insufferable tourists.That nonsense out of the way the next critique is even more ridiculous. Where is it that we boldly telegraph our religious beliefs and the laws surrounding them to everyone? You’re describing something that doesn’t exist, learning cultural and legal concepts of other peoples takes years, and they don’t put them on pamphlets.Extraordinarily western critiques of the episode, really tone deaf, I will say that it’s used to enforce a rigid hierarchy was the critique of value, the show missed out. I would have liked to see the leadership lean into that more, they understand this is a sham. They’re making progress with those born under Gilliac sign now in camps instead of put to death as was tradition, they’re expanding education and quality of life to more signs. That’s the positive lean anyway, they can’t release them because it would lead to a violent upheaval, the less positive lean is they’re enforcing this and know full well it’s gibberish.They did make reference to it with the Prefect openly admitting even if he did doubt it(he probably does) there would be consequences he can’t abide, but it didn’t get the extra scene to really land his side of the equation.
It’s interesting to read discussions of shows that address superstition and primitive thinking; basically many people in agreement that it is really silly that a technologically advanced planet would govern itself based on astrology and myth.
Then 80% of those people go to synagogue, church, or mosque and pray to the drywall ceiling for blessings, forgiveness, and reward.
But looking down on people isn’t at all about the nature superstition. It’s about feeling superior about ones own beliefs, and that’s what episodes like these are all about.
But most of our governments, excepting a few Muslim nations, don’t base their government and all of their laws on those beliefs. Despite some people insisting that the United States is a “Christian” nation, we are largely governed by secular laws. So it’s not really a 1:1 comparison.
On a more general note about the show; my wife and I find it’s – I dunno, “tone”? to be all over the place, from the writing, to the direction and costumes. IMO it doesn’t handle action well at all, but is better at delivering interesting storylines and messages, although plot often is all over the place and holes abound. It’s tropey too – for instance Bortus and Kelly kill umpteen guards who were trying to kill them back with any given shot they been firing in a hail of bullets- but then when they are caught dead to rights – they aren’t killed. It’s one of the most cliched devices, probably most known from old Bond films and the like. It just sucks dramatic impact out because you KNOW nothing will come of it. it’s just people running around….
Also, everybody has achieved space travel warp drive, but still uses “guns” all over the universe and can’t shoot straight every single time there is a conflict – but maybe they are doing it that way on PURPOSE to be ham-fisted in a dated serial television kind of way? It would be interesting for these apparently older writers to watch some video games and think about ways people could do battle with energy and other devices – or are they purposely being cheesy and simplistic like a B Western movie? The direction and cinematography is blocky and incredibly generic in a time that CGI makes it cheap and easy to alter feel and tone of environments – but they don’t even try. I mean, change our blue sky to red. Tint the rocks – something. Green screen a background…Again, on purpose or just second-rate work? Like the language thing, they are punting on so many details that it starts to impact the reception of the episode and the message- like everyone here is distracted by the incongruities in speaking English, but seeing foreign text, “Cesarean” verbage, obvious holes in having comparative “birthdays” – stuff like that.
This stuff doesn’t ruin the show, but it seems to hold it back to me- unless all of that is their intent all along.
It is trying deliberately trying to evoke a sense of nostalgia for 80s science fiction in general and TNG in particular with the odd dollop of Kirk stuff thrown in there. So, by being 30 years out of date, The Orville is achieving exactly what it is going for. More modern stuff like The Expanse and Killjoys come a little closer to a modern sensibility. None, however, take advantage of modern film tech like Discovery, which is really the high water mark for Space Opera small screen cinematography at the moment, IMHO.
I hear you about the technical aspects of the thing…but I can’t accept Discovery outclassing The Expanse in any metric involving the term “Space Opera”…it must just be a visceral thing, I guess…because I’m pretty sure you’re right if I’m understanding what you said…
How about the Dell keyboards and Dell monitors stands the aliens were using? I mean they could’ve painted them alien green or something but no, just plain old Dell keyboards and monitors.
Exactly. Style is one thing, but playing the audience for idiots is another. A few years ago I was reading a Reddit about TV writing and one guy was on there- saying if his industry cohorts knew he was spilling these beans he would be in trouble – but he wrote about writing for CSI and the like. He was saying the idiocy of things like “enlarge and enhance” and DNA testing in a car trunk in 5 minutes, etc etc…were writers just dicking with the moronic audience for those shows. They would be in their writing run throughs laughing about what incredibly stupid thing could they get away with writing that week. Apparently some writers think the shows are stupid and beneath their skill level – it’s just a lame ass job, so they write crap and excuse it a variety of ways. That’s what I am suspicious of with Orville. There’s honoring the past or having a style – but then there is throwing shit on the wall and laughing at the fan base for seriously debating its merits.
Makes it even sadder when Orvillie cultists try to spread their gospel, when even mildly discriminating people know this show they are raving about is nothing but nostalgia. Still, I don’t think Seth is laughing at the fans. I just think after a career of writing Family Guy he isn’t actually capable of producing anything more discerning than what he does. I think he honestly thinks what he’s doing is smart.
I kind of like that sort of thing, though. For example, in the old Star Trek episode “This Side of Paradise,” there’s a scene where Kirk, packing to leave the Enterprise, takes out what is very obviously a 1960’s era piece of Samsonite luggage. No explanation given. I almost wonder if the whole, “Kirk loves antiques” theme in the latter films was almost an inside joke to explain this and possibly other anachronisms.
I remember watching the 80’s Buck Rogers series and there’s a scene where Buck is lying in bed and controlling or viewing something and the controller was the same electronic game I had gotten for my birthday some years back.
They didn’t paint it or modify it in any way. Just…here’s the game Buck. Push the buttons.
Upside…I was able to find that game and play that I was Buck Rogers.
but still uses “guns” all over the universe and can’t shoot straight every single time there is a conflictSo you’d rather see the leads gunned down the first time a conflict happened. Not just the Orville, but any movie or show ever. James Bond should be dead. Luke Skywalker should be dead. Captain Kirk should be dead. Rambo should be dead. The Doctor should be dead (well, regenerated). I mean, change our blue sky to red. Tint the rocks – something. Green screen a background…Again, on purpose or just second-rate work?Budget. All those little tweaks cost money. And television budgets are already stretched thing as they are. like everyone here is distracted by the incongruities in speaking English, but seeing foreign text, “Cesarean” verbage, obvious holes in having comparative “birthdays”It’s more efficient story telling. You could drop a scene into every episode with a new species where Mercer goes “Well, you see it’s these telepathic nanogene that are implanted into each Union officer upon enlisting that allow quick and easy communication with everyone we meet. . . .” Or you could get on with the story**Unless language is the point of the story, like Darmok or important to the story like Enemy Mine.Daleks and Klingons and Mimbari have all been speaking English for decades now. Why is it an issue for you now?
Pretty limited comprehensive there bud. I also wrote they could use any number of more imaginative weapons like a video game – both sides in fact, instead of predictable “gun fights”. And by citing all those examples you reinforce my point that is a boring trope, done to non-death.
I can change backgrounds and color of video on my desktop using basic Adobe editing software – and I’m not even a video expert. I do it for my design work. It is NOT that expensive to do basic effects like that. They just aren’t bothering to do it, probably because they’ve sold people like yourself that it’s too difficult.They could get on with the story by getting on with the story, instead of filling it with predictable, tropy action scenes amounting to nothing.I mentioned the English thing because it was particularly distracting here, with the “Cesarean” exchange, etc… (And the Dell monitor on the desk was ridiculous too.) They’re just not trying.
“The direction and cinematography is blocky and incredibly generic in a
time that CGI makes it cheap and easy to alter feel and tone of
environments – but they don’t even try. I mean, change our blue sky to
red. Tint the rocks – something.”I don’t know. Doing that would almost make it look more like old Star Trek, not less. It seems like the original series, since it aired on “all color” network NBC, really went overboard in terms of production design, and making everything bright primary colors. Even the first season or two of TNG was criticized for having too many episodes take place on “strange planets” that looked like a stage set with a magenta cyclorama in the background.
The move to neutral to dark color pallets in sci fi was actually seen as a step up in quality in the 80’s and 90’s. Also, even today CGI looks a lot like, well, CGI. And it ages terribly. It’s one of the reasons The Force Awakens was so heavily praised for going back towards more practical effects. So I don’t know, maybe it’s a generational thing – if you were raised on Star Wars prequels maybe you expect lots of elaborate, colorful CGI backgrounds and actors in front of green screens. I don’t have particularly fond memories of that style, but I guess reasonable minds can differ.
Did anyone notice that Tom Paris (Duncan MacNeal?) from Star Trek Voyager directed this episode? Does anyone care?
Well, he does have years of experience acting on a show where the idea was always that the Starfleet crew always had to be morally superior to who every they came across. I’m sure he felt quite at home.
My main problem with the episode is the haphazard way they handled a “first contact,” in fact their very first. Later on, special diplomatic corps are referenced. But first they just went in without special plans (including to determine risk of contamination), in place. Reference to a birthday — a cultural matter that very well might cause issues — in fact might be something avoided by a carefully handled first contact with a diplomatic advisor etc.
The whole escape attempt was rather misguided too — how what are they Kirk and Spock? How are two people going to escape like that? The plot idea is intriguing though the blithe lying to a whole planet thing again is dubious.
The captain trying to address thousands of years of belief by talking reason with the leader (a familiar face from “Crazy Like a Fox” – a 1980s t.v. series — and many other things) was also just dumb. You have to carefully handle such a situation along the edges. Overall, I was disappointed with the episode though the basic IDEA of it all had potential.
The new security officer has potential, I guess.
You know, I’d really, just once, like to see an episode of first contact where there’s nothing sinister behind the scenes, no major conflict, no one to be saved… just the awe and wonder of a new planet meeting “aliens” for the first time and the crew discovering everything about the planet — the way this episode started out. It would be such a nice change of pace and really tap into the essence of what these vessels are supposed to do – explore and discover.
My biggest beef with this episode is that it’s the epitome of lazy writing. I mean the basic plot idea (up to “society that is extremely into astrology”) is OK, but then it’s just one bad trope after another, without regard to any common sense.If you unwittingly violate a society’s law, and you’re an outsider (or an alien), you get processed and then you are quickly extradited (unless you are in North Korea, the Philippines or Myanmar). We are nowhere near being a spacerfarer society but we already know this. You don’t risk major diplomatic skirmish, or even war, with an obviously superior force over someone’s birthdate, for chrissakes. And if you’re stranded on an alien world after a botched first contact situation, I highly doubt your best course of action is to shoot up a bunch of local enforcers, because multiple murder solves everything, right? And most importantly, you do not consider a first contact attempt that results in open hostilities, high-ranking officers kidnapped, said high-ranking officers left to their own devices, said high ranking officers committing multiple homi(nidi)cide, manipulating an entire society’s natural development with a blatant lie a success. Admiral Necheyev would have immediately stripped all involved high-ranking officers of their title and if somehow they would not have been prosecuted, they would have been dishonourably discharged, but then again, that’s another show whose prime directive actually makes sense.Nothing excuses bad writing and employing plot devices that go against any sort of common sense.And my biggest problem with the Orville, right now, is that it’s not the first episode that does this, and still manages to be totally, unexcusably tonally off. You don’t throw a birthday party (let alone a joint birthday party, against Bortus’ express wishes) a few days after you managed to mess up this much.
I mean, asking us to suspend our belief is one thing. It’s yet another thing to ask us to take our belief to the back room, sit it down, then pull the trigger and blow its brains out, and finally piss on its bloody corpse. And after about 10 minutes in, this episode practically begged for the latter.
Come on though, you weren’t already upset that the Union approved of using a new drug that removes the ability to consent to roofie diplomats into stopping a relatively minor conflict, which also had zero repercussions? This is the Orville’s universe and how it works. We all know this by now. This is what the Orville does and how it is going to do things until its mercifully put to pasture.
hominidicide is absolutely a department I’m henceforth convinced exists down at the galactic precinct…thanks for that…
What. The crap.
Look, I’ve been in reddit fansubs for The Orville, so I don’t kick up any fuss there, and try to stay positive. But honestly, this review is more glowing than the fansubs, and the comments are positively incomprehensible. This show is already not that great. It still doesn’t know what it is, unless it actually means to ask the question, “What if all of Star Trek: the Next Generation were first-season-bad, but with sophomoric jokes added here and there?” I mean, bully for MacFarlane; if I were in his shoes, I’d make the network film and air my fanfic, too, but come on. It’s not even good fanfic.
And this episode? I couldn’t believe it didn’t somehow contain a subplot that meta-canceled the show from within, in an implosion of awfulness. This was one of the worst examples of idiot plot mixed with because-the-script-says-so in The Orville’s entire run, and that’s saying something. Seriously, it wasn’t even funny-bad or guilty-pleasure-bad. It was just *bad*.
I mean, “it was a good scene where the crew discussed the moral implication of
lying to an entire planet about the fake star. The show is good about
not letting stuff like that just slip by”? Really?? Ed says they can’t use advanced weaponry to cover the surgical extraction of two crew members from a single prison camp, but The Orville can use their advanced technology to fundamentally alter an entire civilization’s still-developing society with a lie? And MacFarlane shrugging his shoulders with a glassy-eyed “dunno” is “not letting stuff like that just slip by”? The Federation – or Union, or whatever – will stand on principle and condemn two of its citizens to death (a possibility Admiral Good Place mentions with indifferent aplomb) rather than let Ed just land a shuttle and take them home, but altering the Regorians entire cosmology, social order, beliefs, system of justice, etc, with high-tech fakery is worth no more than a, “Yeah. Bummer. So anyway…”
Do I even need to get into how completely ridiculous Ed’s second attempt at using reason was? A primitive culture has imprisoned two of your people, so let’s go down there and insult their most deeply-held beliefs? Has that ever worked anywhere, ever? Seriously, he considered all his options, and the one he landed on was, “I’ll talk them out of believing 3,000 years of cultural tenets by being condescending”?
You know what? I don’t care. All I want out of The Orville anymore is for someone to explain to me – with valid, rational reasons – what is up with the massive blind spot people have for this show. People *love* it. Its writing is terrible, it talks down to its audience, its production is second-rate 1990s, its effects are SyFy CGI-bad, its lead makes Keanu Reeves look like a good actor, it’s utterly gutless – I could go on, playa. And people can’t get enough of it. I’m mystified.
I enjoy this show and am usually able to look past flaws in the writing because I genuinely like the cast and what the show is going for BUT THIS EPISODE DIDN’T MAKE THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF SENSE.
Surely, the Regorians would figure that anyone born in a different
solar system would be bound by a completely different astrological
system than theirs?
The us is currently governed by a man who literally belives that exercise is bad for you because your body only has a finite amount of vital essence, which exercise depletes. His support base believes that global warming was made up by the chinese, that the bible is literally true, except all the stuff about loving your neighbour and giving to the poor. The VP thinks the world is 6000 years old and once we get all the jews to israel, that will make Jesus come back.
Prince Charles believes in Homeopathy. A fuck ton of people belive in ghosts. Something like half of the male babies born in the US are circumcized for no medical reason.
That a roughly 21st century society would engage in magical thinking and steadfastly refuse to look at a situation logically, especially when it required them to reevaluate theirs beliefs is the most realistic aspect of this episode.
“I’m sure this episode was filmed before this exploded as a national crisis and nothing about the storytelling suggests otherwise, so it mostly just stands out as a miserable coincidence.”No, what stands out is your need to make political connections where none exist. The review was good on its own, but no, you couldn’t resist.
If they’ve never made contact before, why did they call their own planet Regor 2? Wouldn’t it just be “Regor”?
Also, wouldn’t astrology be completely different in a different part of the Galaxy?
Also, again… Wouldn’t everyone on this planet just not have sex for the 2 months per year that could reasonably cause a baby conceived then to be born under the wrong sign? Seems like a simple solution that people on this planet would be practicing.
LOL we have concentration camps at our border? News to literally everyone
I know I’m way behind but this episode focused on something that bothers me more than the English speaking issue. How do they measure time on the Orville? They talk about tonight and tomorrow and now birthdays. Are they all just calibrated back to Earth? Seems silly to be tied to one planet’s trip around it’s star so far away. Or has the Federation standardized it? And anyway, wouldn’t it be difficult for the crewmembers from different planets to adapt? Wouldn’t they have developed a different biological clock? Obviously we’re all thinking to much about this and I enjoy the show but just something that bugs me.
I am constantly baffled by the stupidity of the alien races the Union encounters, but this may be the stupidest. This planet just receives visitors from unknown worlds, capable of traveling among the stars, boasting powers we can’t even imagine, and the first thing the chancellor does is decide to imprison two of the crew? I mean, it’s no wonder there are so many Klingon/Cardassian/ type aliens in the galaxy, conquering and enslaving primitive worlds. Imagine if instead of Mercer, it was Gul Dukat making first contact. Hello, New Bajor.
In fact, I would love to watch a story that’s like that for once. A civilization so awful and oppressed that they welcome a conquering alien force with open arms because their lives are actually better conquered than they were by their own government. Obviously, this conquering force couldn’t be as nasty as the Cardassians, but you know.
If I was in a position like Mercer, I would kindly but forcefully explain that there are other civilizations in the galaxy capable of intercepting that message, many of which would be all to willing to lay waste to their world and conquer it. Not everyone is going to be peaceful, and if you treat potential friends like this, you will only find enemies.
I would also point out that constellations are relative. I would show star maps from other points in the galaxy and explain that assigning birth signs to beings from other worlds is pointless, because beings from other worlds don’t have the same stars. Not that a pig-headed buffoon like that prefect would understand, of course.
Also, nice cameo from Ted Danson! The episode is just okay, and like most episodes MacFarlance pens, has a lot of obvious holes in the story. For example, if babies born under the blah blah sign are the “leaders of tomorrow,” shouldn’t the guards and medics in the facility be deeply concerned about ensuring a safe delivery for the child?
In fact, basing an entire system of rule based on something so simple as an astrological sign just…doesn’t happen, because societies don’t develop within a single linear line. The Greeks and the Babylonians believed in astrology, but where are they today? There is still a nation of Greece, but it is a far cry from the collection of city-states that gave rise to some of the greatest philosophical minds of our world. As for Babylon, the capital of the once-great empire is now a ruin in a barren desert. Only in science fiction do civilizations arise that are ruled or founded entirely on primitive beliefs such as the Church of Kelly or astrological signs.
I know, I know, I shouldn’t complain. The episode was fairly entertaining, I like the new security character a fair bit better than Alara (I confess I was never much of a fan), and there wasn’t a lot of silly romantic subplots or awkward humor like the first couple episodes. This wasn’t all bad. I just think the show could be better than it is, and I hope the ratings are good enough for a third season.
And while I complain about Seth’s message episodes a lot, I have to admit his approach to anti-vaccine is perfect, because it’s not a complex issue. You either vaccinate your kids or you’re an uneducated ignoramus. There is no middle ground.
Rewatching because escapism.After the previous ep, with the Krill and the multi-layered ambiguous relationship stuff, this episode is SUCH a let-down. I feel like almost every comment on here is too kind to it. I am so frustrated, I had to post something. :)The good: New security chief is cool. First contact excitement is fun. I think that’s it.The bad: The whole concept is utterly preposterous and makes no sense. Everything on the planet is exactly like Earth – and not just Earth, but white USA Earth. The people, the props, the buildings, everything. The whole planet has one culture, and can’t even notice that the criminals in captivity are just as nice as anyone. Someone immersed in a tense execution scene notices a star appearing in the night sky the moment it appears. It’s all nonsense, and it makes the whole show lose most of the credibility its previous successes were building.Also, The Orville hangs out for a month not doing anything. Not infiltrating, not dropping down any sort of communiques, nothing. They have the technology to make themselves into Krill! They could certainly slip in and out of that camp, get Kelly and Bortus a few hours of escape, bring medicine to the sick, I mean it’s a month! Most episodes like this would have them doing three to five crazy technobabbly things in the first 12 hours.The prisoners don’t do anything all day, just eat undifferentiated slop? Assuming this is all true, which is a lot to swallow, it would have been much more interesting to show that this kind of prison situation, all one’s life, would indeed lead to at least some of the Jellicles being actual criminals and sociopaths – wouldn’t you? But no, they are all well spoken kind people? I do like that they are resigned to their fates, that seems true. But even the subplot about the pregnant woman – did she expect to hide her entire pregnancy from the guards? She’s quite large. Does she think she can have the baby and nobody would notice it?? How long were they planning to attempt to raise a floorboards child? Does this never happen? Do they have no policy of observing the pregnancy? It makes NO sense.There’s basically not a scene that isn’t gapingly full of holes. Even the candelabra is slightly pre-crushed, like they couldn’t be bothered to put a fresh prop in.If you really want to take a stab at astrology (and why, but anyway), you could make it really complex. Have everyone’s entire chart done and refer to it like their DMV record; use it for loan approval. Have everyone check their horoscopes hourly or at least daily and really live by them moment to moment. Use obscure complex pseudoscience to explain anything that needs explaining. If they are advanced enough to use Dell duo monitors on their Linux machines, they certainly would have evolved past ‘everyone born between these dates is a criminal’. The more sophisticated things got, the more complex the astrology, bending over backwards and contorting into staying relevant, because yes, the caste system works for the people at the top. (Agreed, that’s the most interesting idea here.)And if they are so into the stars, and astrology, then it should show up everywhere. Stars on everything for decoration. Mysterious shapes based on constellations. The Stag, The Spoon, The Dragon, all that. And make up your mind about the camp: Is it just a dull place with its own impoverished society, or is it a horrific hellish torture town? It seemed kind of neither. One way to make it cool scarier could have been to take away the universal translators (because whatever those are, of course they would) and have all those scenes include a tremendous language barrier.Oh and last: Instead of dorky 1990s style giant head animations, why not do the Orville equivalent on the Environmental Simulator? That could be creepily uncanny, and bring some humor to the episode which was strangely lacking in it.