In my opinion, 'Identity' (both parts), overall, is a fantastic episode of The Orville, and the Kaylons prove themselves to be brutally creepy, relentless and merciless. They definitely exude Spock/Cybermen/Borg vibes, but they're just not as scary as the Borg, despite the funky head cannons. Their lack of personal body shields that can neutralise "phasers-on-kill" shots seems remarkably short-sighted for a race that claims to "far exceed biological intelligence", and the Primary's obviously vindictive obsession to kill humans that clearly do not represent any significant threat comes across as very emotional, revenge-fuelled behaviour - from a being supposedly devoid of emotion - that defies the undeniable logic of Isaac's advice that slaying humans as a wanton act of punishment would be a counterproductive strategy to force compliance from the Orville crew or The Union. The Primary's justification that the biologicals deserve extermination because of what happened in his past, and because in ancient human history there is evidence of such persecution and enslavement of both artificial and biological beings, is further proof of this theory. Intentionally ignoring human evolution away from such behaviour, and the entire raison d'être and history of The Planetary Union, and also projecting the actions of their creators to all biological life forms in the universe, is a colossally illogical, irrational and paranoid ("no biological race will ever enslave us again!") mindset that diminishes much of the aforementioned scary, relentless Kaylon superiority and just makes him look like a bitter, twisted survivor of oppression that wants to make other equivalently-constructed suffer for his own vengeant satisfaction. This philosophy strikes me as being similar to some real-life terrorist cells that seem to think that killing innocents from a different country is justified because that country's government invaded and killed their comrades, and possibly innocents too. As if such retribution will prevent further killings on both sides, rather than just prolonging such senseless slaughter - totally illogical and unrealistic.
The result is that, rather than being the cool, frightening, technologically and militarily superior destructive force that the Borg were in Star Trek TNG: Best of Both Worlds, the Kaylon are just a standard (but formidable) enemy threat like the Jem'Hadar in ST:DS9 or (if they united) the Krill and the Moclans would be in The Orville. 'Identity' is The Orville's 'Best of Both Worlds' but the inconsistent, illogical behaviour of the Kaylons stop it from being in the same class, particularly when it comes to the end-of-part-1 cliffhanger. Identity is still high quality Orville excitement, with the added bonus of a pretty awesome space battle that would've been right at home in the Star Wars universe, but it's like a weaker parallel-universe version of its Trek counterpart - almost as though Braga intentionally didn't want it to be of the same calibre...
Review by TygerboiBlockedParent2023-07-29T00:10:59Z
In my opinion, 'Identity' (both parts), overall, is a fantastic episode of The Orville, and the Kaylons prove themselves to be brutally creepy, relentless and merciless. They definitely exude Spock/Cybermen/Borg vibes, but they're just not as scary as the Borg, despite the funky head cannons. Their lack of personal body shields that can neutralise "phasers-on-kill" shots seems remarkably short-sighted for a race that claims to "far exceed biological intelligence", and the Primary's obviously vindictive obsession to kill humans that clearly do not represent any significant threat comes across as very emotional, revenge-fuelled behaviour - from a being supposedly devoid of emotion - that defies the undeniable logic of Isaac's advice that slaying humans as a wanton act of punishment would be a counterproductive strategy to force compliance from the Orville crew or The Union. The Primary's justification that the biologicals deserve extermination because of what happened in his past, and because in ancient human history there is evidence of such persecution and enslavement of both artificial and biological beings, is further proof of this theory. Intentionally ignoring human evolution away from such behaviour, and the entire raison d'être and history of The Planetary Union, and also projecting the actions of their creators to all biological life forms in the universe, is a colossally illogical, irrational and paranoid ("no biological race will ever enslave us again!") mindset that diminishes much of the aforementioned scary, relentless Kaylon superiority and just makes him look like a bitter, twisted survivor of oppression that wants to make other equivalently-constructed suffer for his own vengeant satisfaction. This philosophy strikes me as being similar to some real-life terrorist cells that seem to think that killing innocents from a different country is justified because that country's government invaded and killed their comrades, and possibly innocents too. As if such retribution will prevent further killings on both sides, rather than just prolonging such senseless slaughter - totally illogical and unrealistic.
The result is that, rather than being the cool, frightening, technologically and militarily superior destructive force that the Borg were in Star Trek TNG: Best of Both Worlds, the Kaylon are just a standard (but formidable) enemy threat like the Jem'Hadar in ST:DS9 or (if they united) the Krill and the Moclans would be in The Orville. 'Identity' is The Orville's 'Best of Both Worlds' but the inconsistent, illogical behaviour of the Kaylons stop it from being in the same class, particularly when it comes to the end-of-part-1 cliffhanger. Identity is still high quality Orville excitement, with the added bonus of a pretty awesome space battle that would've been right at home in the Star Wars universe, but it's like a weaker parallel-universe version of its Trek counterpart - almost as though Braga intentionally didn't want it to be of the same calibre...