1x06 Krill

[6.4/10] This is another episode with a great idea and so-so execution. Starfleet officers having to infiltrate enemy ships/outposts is a good old chestnut, and there’s a lot of potential in the idea of humans having to pretend to integrate into Klingon/Romulan/Krill culture so as not to be discovered. The catch is that The Orville does this through a watered-down Abott & Costello routine with Mercer and Lloyd, where the jokes are half as inspired and the omnipresent references to 20th century pop culture and implausibility of the pair to pass as genuine Krill saps all the tension and suspense from their undercover efforts.

But it’s an interesting idea. I have to admit, I found it interesting that a show created by Seth MacFarlane, who has been very critical of the George W. Bush administration both in interviews and his T.V. series, painted its major villains as religious zealots with a nuke akin to an “Axis of Evil” country with a WMD. It is definitely in keeping with MacFarlane’s professed views to see technologically advanced cultures who are still so devoted to religion as misguided and even dangerous. But regardless of the real world analogues, it’s an interesting idea for an antagonist community in the series.

What’s more, I like the moral dilemma at play here. Mercer and Lloyd are theoretically just there to get intel on the Krill’s holy book, so that the Union can use that to make peace with them, or at least better understand their enemy. Then they find out that the Krill are planning to use a space nuke on an innocent farming colony, prompting them to try to destroy the Krill ship they’ve infiltrated. Then they find out that there are Krill children, some of whom question the indoctrination they’ve received and seemed poised to accept humanity as an equally ensouled species worthy of appreciation.

There’s some clichés there, but also some nuance. The catch is that the episode peppers so many of these developments with lame gags that it becomes hard to take the implications seriously. The running jokes about the Krill worshipping a deity who has the same name as a 20th century rental car company are such a stretch and elicit no laughs, and asides from Mercer about what he has written on his “tramp stamp” are just painfully unfunny. I had hope, since this is the first episode where Seth MacFarlane doesn’t have a writing credit, that we might be spared some of this stuff. But no, tis still here, dragging down what could otherwise be a decent, even great episode.

We do get some classic Trek action in the form of Mercer and Lloyd having to figure out a way tod disable the Krill crewmen while sparing the Krill children (and the Krill teacher they’ve befriended). There’s enough Treknobabble and wrinkles there -- from Mercer remembering that the Krill grow up in darkness and using that against them to Lloyd’s holographic disguise no longer fooling the bad guys -- to make the story work.

I particularly like the bittersweet ending, where Mercer saved the day, but the teacher suggests that the children he worked so hard to say will now be radicalized against the Union. That feels like an acknowledgement of the complexity of the political allegories at play here which feels true both to the shows The Orville is aping, and to the infinitely complex tangles of the real world.

That said, I continue to wish that The ORville would just give up the pretense and go for being a straight Star Trek impression than trying to inject so much of this tepid comedy into the series. I know it’s MacFarlane’s trademark, and I suspect I’m just going to have to accept it as a cost of doing business when it comes to watching this show. But I nevertheless wish that the series would spend more time on its Trek-imitation and less on its Family Guy imitation.