The Orville - Season One - SPOILERS!

[Lupine]

^That's good. I'd been hearing rumors of a delay of some kind.

[scottydog]

That's good news indeed

[Jim Gamma]

Episode 4 was considerably gentler than the last two in terms of big punches, but exactly what I'd expect to see from a Star Trek episode. It had a First Contact with a twist - and yes, it's been done before a few times (For The World Is Hollow, anyone?) and the crew resorted to violence only where absolutely necessary - though if I didn't have this cough, I'd have been screaming at Alara; people approach demanding identification and pointing guns at you, you do need to be prepared for them to open fire, which means not advancing on them. True, she'd probably have been shot anyway, but walking forward was needlessly provocative.

The Krill attack was maybe a little too convenient, but it served its purpose in getting the Orville out of support range. I wish more had been done with Bortas' relationship issues, but I guess that arc is a slow burner, which they'll remind us of every so often.

Roll on episode 5!

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, they definitely re-use the old tropes, but there's nothing wrong with that. It was a bit reminiscent of Starlost as well. And it had the religious fanaticism angle. It was a pretty shocking moment when Alara was shot-- I thought she was going to be invulnerable or something because she comes from a high-gravity world, so it was disturbing when she turned out to be so badly hurt. You just never know what will happen on this show.

[Jim Gamma]

Episode 5 was fun, but the logic was extremely wonky at the end there. If the destruction of the wormhole caused Pria to never come to the past, then she never saves them from the dark matter, which means they're destroyed, which means they don't blow up the wormhole, which means Pria does come back...

Ugh, temporal mechanics makes my head spin under normal circumstances and right now I've had a cold virus knocking me out for the last week. *sigh*

In general a great story about how the captain is vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, and how it's not a good idea to have formerly-married couples working as captain and XO - sometimes the XO needs to give the captain a kick up the backside, but the captain is going to simply blame it on jealousy or something.

I love when they fake-out the audience as well as the foe like that, it keeps the show interesting. I honestly thought Isaac had been destroyed for a few minutes.

[RJDiogenes]

Time travel is never going to make sense, so as long as it's clever I'm happy.

The things I remember most about this episode are the cool Dark Matter storm and the groovy future aliens. One of the things this show does really well is capture the sense of wonder of Science Fiction.

[Jim Gamma]

We had The Krill this week. Another morality play with a lot of good points; the children will see humans as monsters because of the death of the adults, but won't see the adult Krill as monsters because they're just doing what their holy book teaches them. And yet, if they'd killed the children as well, then Mercer and the helmsman would really be monsters.

It's a shame they couldn't find a way to disable rather than kill the adults - maybe figure out a lighting level that would have them in pain, but not risk their lives.

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, that episode had a really good moral dilemma, and both Mercer and Gordon came through it upholding the values that we used to expect from Trek. I'm hoping they someday follow up with the Krill children and the surviving adult.

The only thing that disappointed me about that episode was the visuals. I've been spoiled by the colorful, exotic aliens and environments, so the Krill and their ship were disappointingly boring.

[Orpheus]

Episode 5 was fun, but the logic was extremely wonky at the end there. If the destruction of the wormhole caused Pria to never come to the past, then she never saves them from the dark matter, which means they're destroyed, which means they don't blow up the wormhole, which means Pria does come back...

Ugh, temporal mechanics makes my head spin under normal circumstances and right now I've had a cold virus knocking me out for the last week. *sigh*.

My working theory (when the episode first aired) was that the wormhole is what CAUSED the dark matter storm. Destroying the wormhole meant the storm never happened.

[RJDiogenes]

Hmm. Wouldn't that mean that other past events never happened-- like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart? Or am I misremembering the sequence of events?

[Orpheus]

Hmm. Wouldn't that mean that other past events never happened-- like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart? Or am I misremembering the sequence of events?

I'd argue that Earhart would necessarily have disappeared before the wormhole was discovered, independently of anything we saw/heard this episode. It's not like Levesque would run around snatching random aviatrices, hoping that one would capture the public's fascination enough for her airplane to be worth something to a 29th century collector, 1000 years later. Her consortium would be "mining" (as they say) known past anomalies, not causing them.

But, of course, certain past events (from Orville's POV) didn't occur: Levesque didn't come back in time; Ed Mercer never met her; and no one has no regrets memory of any of it. I'd argue that just as Levesque vanished from the Captain's ready room in an indescribable blur of "This has been a special presentation. We return you to your previously scheduled life, already in progress", the Orville itself then disappeared from the region of the wormhole. The only "real" Orville diverged, a day or two in the past) in the region of space where the Dark Matter Storm would have happened but didn't.

Looking a bit deeper, quite a few things would have changed: aside from the Orville, whose destruction was CAUSED by the wormhole itself (in my theory), every-one/-thing the "miners" had collected would have been immediately dead/destroyed at the moment of their pre-existing historical calamity, instead of getting to live on in the 29th century. Bit of a downer, that. (but there a pocket-universe loophole]

A wacko might go on to argue that this is why wormhole travel to the past doesn't happen (or is even more exceedingly rare than one might already imagine). In the fullness of time --millenia or eons-- enough people will use the wormhole that somebody will screw it up retroactively for everyone. Whether it's the first person or the trillionth, it's almost inevitable [*] -- unless maybe it's kept so secret that almost no one ever uses it.

[*] This assumes that such wormholes are even permanent objects to begin with. Maybe they disappear in a quantum flash "at some point" (in N-dimensions) anyway. Given that this one was easily destroyed by a modest 24th century research craft, I doubt they are permanent features in the universe as we know it. The lifetime of a wormhole might appear, to a higher dimensional being, like a pocket time-loop/universe spun off from our timeline, containing this entire episode, the 29th century from the discovery of the wormhole to its destruction, and the lives of The Taken from the moment they were taken.[/i]

A wacko might argue this, but not this wacko.

[scottydog]

^^ I've stopped trying to figure out these temporal paradoxes. She disappears in Mercer's office at the end of the episode, which implies that she was never born, which means this entire episode couldn't have happened.

The only thing that disappointed me about that episode was the visuals. I've been spoiled by the colorful, exotic aliens and environments, so the Krill and their ship were disappointingly boring.

I've grown rather fond of the Krill's chin-horns. I may opt for cosmetic surgery to get my own

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Thank goodness you aren't as fond of the tentacle aliens.

I'd argue that Earhart would necessarily have disappeared before the wormhole was discovered, independently of anything we saw/heard this episode. It's not like Levesque would run around snatching random aviatrices, hoping that one would capture the public's fascination enough for her airplane to be worth something to a 29th century collector, 1000 years later. Her consortium would be "mining" (as they say) known past anomalies, not causing them.

Good point. I do remember them mentioning that. But these time travelers were particularly considerate of the timestream-- others may not be.

[*] This assumes that such wormholes are even permanent objects to begin with. Maybe they disappear in a quantum flash "at some point" (in N-dimensions) anyway. Given that this one was easily destroyed by a modest 24th century research craft, I doubt they are permanent features in the universe as we know it. The lifetime of a wormhole might appear, to a higher dimensional being, like a pocket time-loop/universe spun off from our timeline, containing this entire episode, the 29th century from the discovery of the wormhole to its destruction, and the lives of The Taken from the moment they were taken.[/i]

Hmm. So the wormhole, and, by extension, all phenomena associated with it, is the equivalent of a virtual particle (or Schroedinger's Cat) on a grand scale-- eventually it just vanishes at all points in a wave function collapse. Worlds within worlds, that happened but never happened. This will be fascinating to think about.

[Orpheus]

I'd say "it happened, but only in it's own pocket universe, which spun off from an actual universe".

Wormholes may create pocket universes like fan-fic. They create a universe spun off from the full background of the parent, but anything that happens in them, even time travel, only affects that one fan-fic spin-off universe.

IIRC, nothing from "the Levesque incident" was ever mentioned again in the series. The Mercers continued to heal in their own way in the main timeline.

Orville has shown us pocket universes that operate very differently. Flatland, for example, seems less like a spin-off, yet is still embedded in our universe. Maybe they are fractures or crystal defects in different dimensions. Orville's timespace trajectory may cross teh region of the wormhole defect obliquely in the "time" dimension; such defects in crystals can cause a refraction (local double image). Orville's trajectory in the Flatland episode may have entered a planar dislocation ("flat crack") roughly parallel to the "third dimension". I'll wait until we get to rewatching that episode to see if that idea holds up.

If you want to see another refraction caused by the Levesque wormhole, watch "A Million Ways to Die in the West". I would fancifully say that, as viewed through Ed's still-wounded subconscious, Amanda Seyfried plays Kelly, Neil Patrick Harris plays Darulio (the mustache clearly represents pheromones -- you'll see), Liam Neeson plays the Wormhole that separates the two universes -- and alternate choices are made. Not a great film, but worth a watch if you play this game. (You wouldn't want me in your Film Crit class).

BTW, it has come to my attention that Pria's name is spelled Lavesque (as in "lava-esque"), but I'm not going back to correct my prior (Pria?) misspellings

[RJDiogenes]

^^ It could also be taken as an adventure on their holodeck, I suppose. We know they do Westerns. I'm actually tempted to see that movie, since Orville is such a good homage.