3x07 From Unknown Graves

There were some very interesting and quite Star Trek-y points presented to us in this episode. The Kaylon origin story was predictable, but fascinating, nonetheless. The way it lead to some sort of bonding between Isaac and Charly (who is still the most annoying character on the show, for me) felt natural and endearing... Unlike doctor Claire's side of things. I didn't like her imposing her own desires on Isaac, forcing him to do something he had expressed no intention in doing (which was, interestingly, kind of a reversed TNG's Data thing). As such, I appreciated the outcome of that plot line, by having Claire admitting she loves Isaac just the way he is, specially considering Isaac had already expressed himself several times in the past (in his own particularly logical and robotic way) that he does love her.

The Janisi story, on the other hand, was the Achiles' heel of this episode, since that plot line started broken right from the start: how could the Union expect to gain their trust though a lie? Bad writing.

As a short but worthy side note, Gordon's "I'll do it!" has got to be one of the finest low-key, out of nowhere, quick fire, funniest jokes to have ever graced The Orville.

Overall, quite a heartwarming episode, regarding Isaac (fuelled by an exquisitely excellent performance by Mark Jackson), giving us a better understanding of the Kaylon's existence and objectives as a species.

So, let me start with some critique: the whole Janisi story line was really bad. And, NO, not because it put women at the center. I don't mind that. But trying to build trust by lying or misleading. When did that ever work out ? The solution wasn't very good either. But Bortus had some cool one-liners.

What I liked was to see into the history of the Kaylon. Now, of course we already knew about all of this but finally seeing it was great. It might be a common theme in scifi, the cration overthrowing its master, but when you see the treatment of K1 you actually find more than a shred of understanding. I was surprised though they showed the killing of the children. Most shows wouldn't go there. Of course the Kaylon then made the false assumption that all biological lifeforms are like that - just like Charlie assumed all Kaylons are evil. But she finally beginns to understand that she's on the wrong side here. And not too soon I might add.

We also delve again into the relationship between Claire and Isaac, two of my favorite characters (to be honest, aside from Charlie there isn't one I didn't like). When the possibillity appeared that Isaac's emotion are there to stay I wasn't sure where I stood. At the moment it felt to easy that he could get them just like that. It felt convenient to introduce another Kaylon with emotions and that we just copy/paste it onto Isaac. But the scene between him and Claire was amazing. Marc is such a terrific actor and it's almost a shame he has to hide his face behind the helmet most of the time. How he switched from an emotinal state to full Kaylon in an instant was great. Now, for the sake of the character I'm glad he can't keep the emotions. It also gave us another great moment when he offered, for all intense and purposes, his life. Because that's what erasing all his memories stands for. He would not be Isaac any longer. That's the definition of love. And for the same reasons Claire rejects his offer. That's the type of stories I love to see. Those moments between characters.

The "stuff" between John and Talla was also cool and funny. Althought I thought the final scene between them was a tad to much.

Overall some weak spots and maybe a bit too much thrown into one episode. But even with those small points of critique it was another great episode.

[7.2/10] Good lord, there is too much going on in this episode. I enjoyed some of it. I thought some of it was misjudged. But you probably have three episodes’ worth of material crammed into one episode here, and even the extra-long runtimes of season 3 aren’t enough to full contain it. Let’s take them one-by-one.

The prime story here, I think, is Isaac (briefly) getting his emotion chip, a la Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The theme the show’s exploring here is good. What “love” would mean in a romance between a human and an android is a worthy question to interrogate. The relationship between Claire and Isaac is, for my money, the richest in the show. Whether it can exist with a being who technically cannot feel, and whether it’s right to ask someone to change themselves to make you happy are both worthy themes to anchor your story around.

But I have qualms about how “From Unknown Graves” goes about it. On a practical level, the fact that our heroes randomly run into a Kaylon who’s been given empathy after he just randomly ran into a world renowned cyberneticist is a tad contrived, but I’m willing to accept a little contrivance in the name of a good story.

The bigger problem is, frankly, that such a major decision of whether or not to accept the volcanic eruption that is suddenly having emotions is framed in terms of Claire and Isaac’s relationship rather than this being a monumental decision for Isaac’s psyche and well-being. Stories get to be about what they’re about, rather than what we may like them to be about, but it feels churlish to take such a huge, impactful decision about a person and reduce it to how it might impact their romantic life.

Hell, I even have come concerns about the scene between Claire and Grayson about whether it’s okay to ask someone to change themselves for the good of a relationship. There's a ton of nuance to these sorts of issues, which is what I like about The Orville and its Trekkian forbears. Nevertheless, maybe I’ve been bombarded with too many “Loving someone means accepting them for who they are” stories over the years, but I was uncomfortable about how the writers make the leap from “Every relationship involves mutual sacrifice” to “It’s fair to ask someone to drastically change themself for your relationship.”

That said, if you can accept the conceit, I like what they do with Isaac and Claire here. Claire is right to wonder whether she can be truly fulfilled by this relationship by someone who cannot necessarily love her in the way she expects. Isaac’s brief interlude with emotions, while a little overdone, is still moving, with the two of them reflecting a passion that’s as infectious as it is tragic when it disappears. And the idea that even if Isaac can’t feel, his willingness to sacrifice his memory, and with it, his identity, in order to give Claire what she needs in their partnership is a true form of love, is a profound one. There's a lot of moving parts in this story, and it left me wringing my hands at times, but I’m still ultimately on board with what The Orville is trying to get at here.

I wish I could say the same for the LaMarr/Keyali storyline. I like the idea of exploring the fact that interspecies relationships could have practical problems even if the emotional connection is there. But again, from a practical perspective, it seems difficult to believe that there's no some kind of lower-impact sex that could work for them despite Keyali’s extra strength. Even taking that for granted, the show wants to both play it for laughs and play it as a serious emotional hardship, which is a tough line to walk.

Frankly, they both seem mildly immature for not recognizing that their connection is valid and worth holding onto even if they have to manage things differently with respect to their physical needs. I want to give the show some leeway, since I don’t think this storyline is over, but the fact that they treat this as some insurmountable obstacle rather than a practical but understandable thing that’s worth managing because of how they feel about one another weakens this one.

Speaking of oddly-calibrated storylines, the visit from the woman-dominated Janisi people is the most “This should have been its own episode” part of this one. Again, the show can’t pick a tone, since it wants the audience to take seriously the moral dilemma of accommodating this sexist culture in light of the Kaylon threat, but also wants us to laugh at the sitcom-ish antics of Mercer and Malloy having to pretend to be ensigns and haul around the Janisi’s luggage.

Yet again, there's the germ of a good idea here. One of The Orville’s recurring motifs has been the “How much do we tolerate intolerance in the name of practicality” and this fits right in. Likewise, The Orville does a better job than “Angel One” from The Next Generation of exploring sexism through a species that flips Western misogyny around and thereby makes it seem that much more absurd.

Still, the resolution is bizarre. It’s not clear to me why the “common ground” that convinces the Janisi that the Union can be trusted is Grayson explaining that she cheated on Mercer, but they still trust each other. I get the idea that the Janisi practice polyandry, despite expecting the men in their society to be faithful. But there's some underpants gnomes logic to the implicit argument of “I also practice polyandry, and yet my ex-husband and I still trust each other, so you should trust us.” I’m not sure how the one follows from the other, and it feels like this story is missing a beat or two to really complete things. Plus, it seems pretty shitty and antithetical to Federation (if not necessarily Union) values to put on such an elaborate lie to a potential ally like this.

I already mentioned the arrival of Timmis and Dr. Villka. I assume the show is going to keep including them or has somewhere else to take their story. But despite the contrivance of their arrival in the first place, it seems like a pretty big thing to drop into an episode with so much going on. I wish we’d had one episode about the arrival of Timmis the Empathetic Kaylon and his people’s backstory, a follow-up episode about Isaac considering whether to undergo the same empathy chip procedure, and a third episode about dealing with the Janisi (and maybe excise the whole LaMarr/Keyali thing). Then each story might have had time to breathe.

All of that said, Timmis was instrumental in my favorite storyline in the episode. Maybe it’s just the fact that I recently rewatched The Animatrix, and have read my share of Asimov, but I really dug the series of vignettes we get explaining how the Kaylon were mistreated and why they eventually rose up against their masters. They do a good job of helping the audience see, not just hear, how the robots’ budding sentience was squelched and eventually punished by their would-be benefactors. The boardroom scene where the head honchos knew this would happen, and chose to enslave sentient beings rather than save them, in order to protect the bottom dollar, is abominable. And the scenes of the masters torturing their mechanical slaves for fun is downright horrifying.

In brief, it makes you understand the show’s Big Bad better. The Kaylon are still a terrifying, malevolent entity to be up against. But these scenes make them comprehensible, their point of view as understandable as it is wrong, and that’s what good Trekkian stories do.

They also ground the philosophical and grandiose in the intimate and personal. I know some fans have objected to Charly’s Pulaski-esque racism toward Isaac. And candidly, I’m not crazy about the character since I don’t think the performance is very good. But I can appreciate the writing because it gives the character a journey, from resenting every Kaylon because an attack took away the woman she loved, to accepting Isaac because she understands, in a way only Timmis can explain, why his people revolted from bondage in the first place. It’s the sort of mutual understanding and acceptance this subgenre of Trek-like show is built around, and Charly’s apology, mixed with Isaac’s willingness to have her join him in diagnostics, is only so earned and so solid a character beat based on where the two of them started.

Overall, this is a real mixed bag of an episode, if only because several commendable ideas in this one are miscalibrated in the execution, and even the best storylines are crammed in with three or four others plots that don’t especially belong together. There's plenty of good material here, but I wish more of it had been separated and refined.

I hope the series doesn't continue regressing. Yet again, the character of Charly is pushed and, yet again, their presence lowers the quality of the show. They would've been demoted to dishwasher on a back moon long ago - or kicked out of the service. It's out of character for this type of behavior to occur in front of Ed (or other characters) and it to slide. No. Not kosher.

Also, the forced romance betwixt security and engineering is still being pushed, as well. It doesn't work.

On the other hand, the - Oh, the romance between the good doctor and our friendly neighborhood robot. It lifted my heart. As an aside, that dress! The doctor looked so beautiful... as beautiful as the all-too-brief moments between she and Isaac. What a wonderful tragedy.

...and on an appendage temporarily produced by Yaphit, just throw Charly into an airlock already. Seriously, why is this wholly unpleasant character, an ensign, crammed into so many scenes/situations she doesn't belong in? Again, within this universe, Charly would've been court martialed and dishonorably discharged or relegated to scrubbing a backwater port-a-potty long ago. At least at the end she displays a semblance of positive humanity, although it does come across as writers quickly attempting to course correct everything done over many episode in a hot minute after realizing how much everyone despises her (the character, not the actor).