This is a fantastic episode of The Orville; definitely in the top 5 episodes of the show, from the very start up to this point. I really wasn't a fan of Robert Duncan McNeill in Voyager - Tom Paris was just cocky and arrogant in a really annoying way in Voyager (although perhaps he would slot better into the Orville's crew, with that in mind - he would likely get on well with Malloy and LaMarr). However, having not seen any of his directorship outside of Star Trek (the episodes of which I can't remember, or in the case of Enterprise, haven't watched) and The Orville, both the episodes of The Orville that he's directed have been extremely good, so full respect to him there.
It was refreshing to see Ed Mercer escape (for this episode at least) the whole jilted-ex-with-an-axe-to-grind vibe and actually show some real character depth/maturity and genuinely excellent leadership skills whilst under the sort of pressure that would have caused lesser men (even from his own crew) to buckle and resort to indignant retaliation or violence, or both, without any effort to be objective or see the bigger picture in the situation with he and Telaya once they became stranded on the planet. If this were Star Trek then (out of the male crew from TNG onwards) I could imagine that the only ones that would have behaved the same way (emotionally, logically and compassionately) as Mercer, and still made this episode just as good, would be: TNG - Picard, DS9 - Sisko/Bashir, Voyager - possibly Chakotay/HoloDoc, SNW - Pike.
Review by TygerboiBlockedParent2023-07-18T10:24:45Z
This is a fantastic episode of The Orville; definitely in the top 5 episodes of the show, from the very start up to this point. I really wasn't a fan of Robert Duncan McNeill in Voyager - Tom Paris was just cocky and arrogant in a really annoying way in Voyager (although perhaps he would slot better into the Orville's crew, with that in mind - he would likely get on well with Malloy and LaMarr). However, having not seen any of his directorship outside of Star Trek (the episodes of which I can't remember, or in the case of Enterprise, haven't watched) and The Orville, both the episodes of The Orville that he's directed have been extremely good, so full respect to him there.
It was refreshing to see Ed Mercer escape (for this episode at least) the whole jilted-ex-with-an-axe-to-grind vibe and actually show some real character depth/maturity and genuinely excellent leadership skills whilst under the sort of pressure that would have caused lesser men (even from his own crew) to buckle and resort to indignant retaliation or violence, or both, without any effort to be objective or see the bigger picture in the situation with he and Telaya once they became stranded on the planet. If this were Star Trek then (out of the male crew from TNG onwards) I could imagine that the only ones that would have behaved the same way (emotionally, logically and compassionately) as Mercer, and still made this episode just as good, would be: TNG - Picard, DS9 - Sisko/Bashir, Voyager - possibly Chakotay/HoloDoc, SNW - Pike.