The Orville - Second Season Thoughts

I freely cop to being a total Star Trek: The Next Generation mark. It is obvious that this show has had an effect on MacFarlane and you can see its influence on his Fox series, The Orville. I didn’t watch the first season but was asked about the show so I gave it a go, just today finishing the second season. I loved the second season, although from different fan/critics I seemed to be within a mixed response. I especially thought “Identity I & II” were exceptionally good, and the final two parter of the second season, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”, and Tomorrow & “The Road Not Taken” left me quite satisfied. Within the second season you had Captain Mercer of The Orville dealing with a Krill posing as an officer he falls for, having to come to terms with her manipulating him, all the while hoping that within her was something real, that the entire infiltration of his ship inside a human disguise was a fraud. You had the Moclan bigotry against female birth, with a female populace escaping “gender correction” to a hidden world (nebula cloaking them, which I thought was a neat revelation), soon to be discovered by an angered Moculas government whose weapons The Union desperately depend on to even combat the Kaylons (cybernetic beings created by mortals they soon execute, feeling threatened by them, this same fear motivating them to pursue all life forms elsewhere). And the irony of that particular episode, “Sanctuary”, is that it was directed by Jonathan “William Riker” Frakes (Rena Owen, as the female Moclan leader, Heveena, on the nebula planet will get special mention because she’s just equipped with mad integrity and conviction, with a presence that is regal and impressive). The final two episodes deal with time travel (one of my favorite themes in science-fiction) and how a decision not to act on something can create a terrifying ripple effect that leads to all on Earth perishing to the Kaylons because Ed Mercer didn’t reach the Captain’s chair of The Orville.

The final episode of the second season will certainly appeal to Star Wars fans as Mercer and Malloy must evade Kaylon attack-pursuit ships on a planet, having to use debris of falling ice to avoid certain death, with Gordon’s superior piloting genius and ingenuity coming in handy, guiding their space shuttle through narrow openings between natural landscapes, causing the collapse around them while also bobbing and weaving around it all. They were detected on another planet, looting a Union station for a food-replicator, which resulted in the near-death of them both! Later caught in a tractor beam by a scavenger ship, Mercer and Malloy are introduced to Kelly, Finn, Finn’s two sons, LaMarr, and Talia, an organized gathering by Kelly in order to correct a mistake she made when a memory swipe didn’t work in the previous episode. In the season finale, there is even a neat retreat into the event horizon located at the periphery of a black hole, as time goes slow for the assembled former members of The Orville in the alternate timeline reshaped by Kelly while two days of Kaylon ships continuing to monitor where they were last seen. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” featured a navigational “wave” “commandeering” The Orville, resulting in a time distortion due to a device being experimented on by LaMarr and Issac, catapulting Kelly from seven years ago onto the ship because First Officer Kelly Grayson was thinking about the next morning after her and Ed’s first date—a previous scene has Ed once more trying to rekindle his relationship with her, denied by Kelly because of their duties on the ship—resulting in two Kellys onboard. This creates all kinds of awkwardness as you might expect. Kelly of the present is quite different than the “young, naïve” young woman she once was. I loved this episode just for the complications that result for Ed, who considers a romance with the past Kelly, who is interested in him, and the present Kelly who thinks they should avoid doing so for obvious reasons. The marriage between Kelly and Ed that was done in my his derelict of duty to the relationship due to his complete devotion of his duty to being the Captain of a ship in the Union. Knowing the pain that resulted after Kelly and Mercer decided to become an item, Kelly from the past decides (because a memory wipe due to a protein “discrepancy” from Dr. Finn didn’t remove all of her experience on The Orville in the future) to never have except a second date, resulting in a chaotic alteration in the timeline which led to the Kaylons destroying life at every planet they came in contact…including Earth, with a moon broken apart in fragments! In the altered timeline, Ed and Kelly kindle a fresh romance, offering a potential marriage that is imaginary, in a nice conversation in the ship’s version of Ten Forward. Great chemistry between MacFarlane and Palicki in every scene, the painful ones and congenial ones, has been a significant part of my enjoyment of the second season. The results not always to Ed’s liking, but perhaps the mature and rational decision by Kelly not to continue past their divorce in a romantic way. The past Kelly advising of a perfect trick to foil the Kaylons locating The Orville during “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by hiding under ice within rings of a planet is another impressive evasive maneuver that conceals the ship from detection and prevents destruction. But the alternate timeline of “The Road Not Taken” even produces The Orville exploding as all functions on the ship (after leaving the bottom of the Pacific (Bortus, the lone Moclan and officer on board, learning that his homeworld was destroyed by the Kaylons, through Kelly and company) are needed to send Finn back in time to correct the memory swipe and fix what was “broken”. I have to mention the Kaylons with their disconnecting domes that produce mini-guns; they are an intimidating foe, for sure!