So while I'm not the biggest fan of the whole Mockl'n what if everyone was gay and straight people were outcasts thing. I kinda worry we're going to tap that well too often. But to be fair it's not as if they've run out of ideas. The other episodes are interesting and creative and this episode wasn't bad.
the synopsis is basically a whodunit focusing more on a mystery (albeit very lightly in order to make room for social commentary). It is generic upgrade season and they invite a Mockl'n Engineer that is the ex-boyfriend of Bortus with a secret. He's into women not men. This is an, as you would expect, forbidden nature for men to have. Since Mockl'ns are a violent species, this is a death sentence. Inevitably over the course of.. what felt like maybe 3-4 days the Mockl'n engineer falls for the Talia and she takes on the role of "that one girl who is super accepting of everything" and reciprocates those feelings. While they stroll through the set piece of the week (old timey New York), someone kills the Engineer and masks their identity. The identity is revealed to be Clyd'n mate of Bortus. Someone who discovered is "filthy deviant secret" and killed him for it. When they finally put him away there is a plot twist. Maybe it wasn't Clyd'n and maybe our Engineer is still alive. Yes he is and they turn him in to save Clyd'n condemning him to death from a culture that doesn't understand "free love".
So the humor didn't cross the line this episode as it does so rarely. This is a very classic Trek:TNG style episode but with like two jokes but they're restrained and amusing jokes that don't go on a bender. The first where they double check that they said "no torpedoes" had me considering whether or not the engineer lied and they were going to legitimately take over the ship. The second was a tally of the crazy things that happened on the ship. It all worked.
The flaw of this episode is that the plot doesn't work. So our visiting Engineer expert has a secret and someone kills him for it. The problem is that the person in the brig would be revered by the Mockl'ns for killing the Engineer. The Mockl'ns wouldn't want justice because the Engineer's secret is a shame to the Mockl'ns. They would have killed him themselves. They DO kill him themselves. So this whole drama of the Mockl'ns trying to get justice doesn't make sense. It only peripherally makes sense in that for whatever reason the Mockl'ns never got to confirm with the prisoner that the secret was real which doesn't make sense because they would have already sent the message. And maybe the Federation would still have locked him up. I suppose that makes sense and it's not crazy to believe. It just feels like it could have been written better.
But overall a solid episode that I didn't really care for.
EDIT: On re-watching another thing I wanted to highlight is that while I like our new security chief, heck I even think they gave Alara a good goodbye and Talia has a pretty respectful welcome that both keeps the momentum of the show while acknowledging our attachment to Talia. The problem is Talia is a newcomer. Yet she knows all the hot gossip [until she doesn't because it makes for a great joke]. It's a weird gap that and the lack of characterization. She appears to be a mix of Riker and Kirk in that .. sort of slutty way. But it only feels that way because we don't really know much about her.
[Keyali] This has to be the most insane thing that's ever happened on this ship
[LaMarr] One time I almost died 'cause I humped a statue.
[Malloy] Isaac once cut my leg off.
[LaMarr] The captain and commander, they got put in a zoo.
[Malloy] And Bortus almost crashed the ship 'cause of porn.
[Keyali] I see.
I think I might just prefer season one of The Orville to season two.
Every episode lately feels like it's own short story, too much so.
We had two episodes in a row that dealt with dating someone in a situation where romantic feelings might be deemed unacceptable socially.
And we don't see as much of the captain. In season one, it was more centered about his struggles. Now he's seen as much as everyone else. But that said, this was a good episode.
Ooooh, a sort of subversive episode, where heterosexual relationships are forbidden and homossexual love is considered to be the norm. Interesting subverted criticism on current human society.
The Orville keeps going beyond the comedy, nurturing its own philosophical nature — the latter being always a very important part of the core of Star Trek —, whereas Discovery keeps going pew pew pew.
I'm surprised they did not use the "heartbeat sensor" to locate Finney Locar. :)
[Court Martial (Star Trek: TOS)]
I just came from Star Trek Discovery to have some good laughs. I enjoy both shows, hell, I am a star trek core fan. However, star trek discovery became so dark, specially today's episode, that when The Orville came with its fun way.
You are my only egg, Topa., imagine if someone just heard it out of context, that would be hilarious XDD
Oh, No.
Wow, that was really convincing, these two together are really amazing <3 Ed-Kelly show XD
And that Isaac and coitus, sex positions thing is making the episode funnier than it already is XD
My goodness, how many legitimate punches to the gut can you fit into a single season of a FOX sci-fi?
[7.1/10] Well we’re back to doing reskins of various Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. This one is of a piece with “The Outcast” from TNG (e.g. Riker dates an alien from a mono-gender species). And there’s bits and pieces of various murder mystery episodes from lots of Star Trek installments -- though the one I’m most clearly reminded of is “Meld” from Voyager (Tuvok investigates a death on the ship) given our detective here.
Mixing those two together pays some dividends. The episode pivots more quickly away from the “What would it mean for someone to love a gender they’re not supposed to?” issue which is, thankfully, less foreign or challenging a thought to viewers in 2019 than it was in 1992. Likewise, the potential prejudiced/personal motivations help add complications to the whodunnit at the center of the episode.
And yet, a lot of this one left me cold. Maybe it’s just the focus on Lt. Keyali, who doesn’t feel fully integrated into the cast yet. I don’t want to slate her as an actress -- it takes time for a new cast member to jell with the rest of the group, and her final scene with Klyden in particular was nicely emotional and well-done.
But a lot of her meat and potatoes scenes were less convincing than they needed to be, and makes me a little more hesitant about her getting focus episodes like this in the future. That said, some of it comes down to the writing, which gives her Locar about 5 minutes of goo goo eyes to develop a romance so that they can get onto the murder mystery, and then has to treat their connection like the most important thing in the world.
Still, at least it’s not the insipid Grayson/Mercer/Cassius love triangle. I don’t know how to feel about what happens with them in this episode: Should I feel frustrated that The Orville wasted our time with an obvious Baxter character in a storyline that went nowhere? Should I be annoyed at the hacky, cliché fashion in which the show ends Kelly and Cassius’s relationship and turns the already drippy Cassius into a needy lovelorn middle-schooler? Should I just be glad that at least this phase of this continually unavailing storyline is done?
Suffice it to say, I didn't care about Mercer/Grayson last season, and this season has done nothing to make me care more. Coming up with a contrived, cliché-filled break between her and Cassius, with Mercer conspicuously positioning himself for the rebound and emotional support despite being her ex-husband does nothing to improve that. Casssius was always more of a device than a character, but they could have come up with a more convincing break-up for him and Kelly than this. This is CW teen drama-level crud.
Thankfully, the Lt. Kiyali/Moclan investigation material is, if nothing else, much better by comparison. There’s some good twists, from possible suspects (Bortus and Kylden, obviously) to clues (the fabricated simulator files, the familial banishment on Moclan), to Locar’s engineering skills that help justify the somewhat overfamiliar “I faked my own death” ending. A lot of the emotions don’t work, because again, we don’t really know Kiyali as a character to begin with, and we barely get time with her and Locar, but there’s at least some good ideas there.
The mystery comes with another question of moral relativism amid cultural exchange. It presents hard questions for Bortus about how he could have wanted to protect Topa against immoral Moclan cultural practices but be unwilling to extend the same protection to Locar. There’s an interesting notion about Moclan’s rigid cultural practices being a reaction to the need for survival on a desolate planet (or at least an artifact of that). There’s even some hints about the Union having core differences in values with the Moclans but needing their support which suggests an interesting, albeit largely unexplored, realpolitik approach.
It also creates a nice tension between Kiyali’s duties as a Union officer, her personal moral principles about a person’s sexual orientation, and her feelings for Locar. She’ll turn Locar in, but it pains her tremendously, and she hates Kylden for the harm his intolerance has caused.
Locar himself makes for an appropriately tragic figure, having to fake his own death in a failed effort not only to escape persecution but spare his family, and the closing montage is a piercing one. The actual plotting of this one isn’t bad, and it almost makes me wish we could have done it as a two-parter to get more meat off the bone here (or at least ditched the terrible Mercer/Grayson love triangle crap).
That said, I keep coming back to my usual hobby horse with this show -- namely that the ideas are often good and sometimes, as here, trenchant, intriguing, and poignant -- but I can’t help but wish we got to see them executed on a show with the capabilities of The Next Generation, rather than a series that’s only semi-successfully imitating it.
This episode was cruel. Like that one about their daughter in season one. I like how truly serious these series can be.
The idea that for Moclans if a male loves a female, it needs coming out is great. But the execution is shabby. As is many of this show's stories.
Prejudices that no matter how much you have advanced technologically have not been left behind
Shout by FinFanBlockedParent2019-02-17T15:22:22Z
I am all for character based stories and this was not a bad episode by any means. But can we please do something other than romance, relationships and sexuality for once ?