The Orville - Season Two -- SPOILERS

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, there's some kind of music award show on tonight, so we'll probably be synced up for the last four episodes or so.

[scottydog]

Finally got to watch this episode. I suspected the girl was the key to unraveling the mystery, but I never guessed the weapon of mass destruction was her blood.

Overall, a very enjoyable episode. I don't mind Gordon having serious scenes, but he does need to be the class clown. He's a comedic genius.

There were a couple of plot holes, like some fudging around the sensor scans and medical exams, and Gordon failing to just stun the guy in the shuttle, but overall this was another strong episode.

Yes, there are plot holes, but I don't think there are any more in The Orville than in any Star Trek episode.

[RJDiogenes]

Finally got to watch this episode. I suspected the girl was the key to unraveling the mystery, but I never guessed the weapon of mass destruction was her blood.

Yeah, the explosive blood was a good idea-- very Sci Fi. And it was quite a shock when she went from traumatized and mute to holding a knife to Talla's throat.

Yes, there are plot holes, but I don't think there are any more in The Orville than in any Star Trek episode.

Yeah, there's always going to be some plot holes. Most of them are no big deal.

[RJDiogenes]

The Orville returns tonight!

[scottydog]

Will a red-shirt die tonight?

[Lupine]

No dead redshirts, but a nice episode nonetheless. It was reminiscent of TNG's "Booby Trap" but went a little deeper, covering addiction with both the simulation and Bortus's nicotine addiction. It was nice to get back to episodes that didn't have world-shattering crisis's for the crew to deal with. I did half-expect that the girl would turn out to be Gordon's ancestor, but I guess they decided not to go there. Fun seeing Tim Russ show up.

[Jim Gamma]

We didn't get it this week, maybe next week... I wish Fox would put their schedule up more than a few days in advance.

[scottydog]

We didn't get it this week, maybe next week... I wish Fox would put their schedule up more than a few days in advance.

They seem to be taking a few weeks off here, too. Three more episodes remain this season. And still no word about whether there will be a Season 3.

Fun seeing Tim Russ show up.

I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. Tuvok!

It was a pretty good episode. Just as it seems silly for the doctor to fall for Isaac, knowing that he couldn't love her back, it seems silly for Gordon to fall for a computer simulation. Still, I enjoyed the episode and kind of fell in love with Laura myself

[Lupine]

^Yeah she was something.

[RJDiogenes]

Tim Russ is in it? Cool!

We didn't get it this week, maybe next week... I wish Fox would put their schedule up more than a few days in advance.

Aw, still not synced up.

[RJDiogenes]

Well, this was a nice episode. One great thing about Orville is that they don't feel compelled to have a token space battle or cosmic disaster in every episode. This was an actual Sci-Fi story about the effects of future technology on a person.

And for the second episode in a row, we get the continuing rehabilitation of Gordon from goofball to adult. I loved how his attraction to Laura began with his fascination at getting a glimpse into the life of a real person from the past. It reminded me of how I became fascinated with history when I was in grade school-- I'd look at ancient ruins and think of how they used to be somebody's house, and I'd wonder what they talked about and what they read and what jokes they told and so forth. With the technology available to make that come to life, a lot of people would be likely to get swept away in it (I can certainly think of at least a couple of historical women that I would really like to meet). In a sense, it was almost a classic Victorian ghost story where a living person becomes enamored of the dead. The odd thing about the story was the overreaction of the other characters-- I don't think, in a world where people have relationships with robots, that Gordon went over any line. He made one ill-fated attempt to change the parameters of the simulation, but he quickly saw the futility. Now if he had tried to continue the story beyond what was in the phone and compete with Greg, that would have been different.

The message of this episode was a bit more subtle than most, but Grayson was kind enough to spell it out for Gordon and the audience at the end. The Butterfly Effect is not an abstract concept. Every interaction with another human being can have almost infinite repercussions, for that person as an individual and, by extension, for society as a whole-- an idea made real by Laura having a direct impact on Gordon four hundred years after she died.

And just so that we don't forget that it's The Orville, we had Bortus and Klyden become chain smokers, a plot I found both repulsive and hilarious. I can barely stand to even look at people smoking, but I know several who do, so the satire of their addiction was appreciated.

And then there was LaMarr: "I know how you feel. Well, no, I don't...."

[scottydog]

The Butterfly Effect is not an abstract concept. Every interaction with another human being can have almost infinite repercussions, for that person as an individual and, by extension, for society as a whole

That's true. Even my first marriage, which was a painful disaster for me, yielded a few positive effects.

Still, as I mentioned in my earlier comment about this episode, I'm surprised we're still getting sci-fi episodes about "unrequited love" with nonhuman entities. Isaac is incapable of returning the doctor's love. Gordon's situation with Laura is a bit different -- you would think that 4 centuries from now, you could incorporate Laura's personality into a human-like robot for Gordon to have a relationship with in real life.

[RJDiogenes]

That's true. Even my first marriage, which was a painful disaster for me, yielded a few positive effects.

But it doesn't even have to be positive. Negative actions can ripple out as easily as positive ones, maybe even more easily.

Still, as I mentioned in my earlier comment about this episode, I'm surprised we're still getting sci-fi episodes about "unrequited love" with nonhuman entities. Isaac is incapable of returning the doctor's love. Gordon's situation with Laura is a bit different -- you would think that 4 centuries from now, you could incorporate Laura's personality into a human-like robot for Gordon to have a relationship with in real life.

My impression was that humans don't yet have the technology to create a sentient program yet, like Isaac's people did. So Laura could never be anything more than a more elaborate version of Alexa.

[scottydog]

My impression was that humans don't yet have the technology to create a sentient program yet, like Isaac's people did. So Laura could never be anything more than a more elaborate version of Alexa.

Hmmm. 400 years is a long time. I expect sentient robots within 50 years. But what do I know?

[RJDiogenes]

No, I think you're right. But the future Space Opera world of Orville is nothing like what will really happen-- like most fictional universes of this type, the technology is both unrealistically advanced and unrealistically primitive, and generally inconsistent.