# The Orville Season 2 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted\ **Created:** [December 31, 2018, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966 "2018-12-31T06:20:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 61
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1201 "2019-04-15T03:17:37Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Yet he’s infatuated with the doctor. Well, yes, that’s part of why _we_ perceive him as male. But there’s no reason to suppose he, or another of his species, might not fall in love with a male human, or other male-seeming alien. It wouldn’t be “sexual” in nature so much as simply “pleasure seeking”. They’d go for whatever they personally found attractive, just as we choose one woman or man over another based on looks and/or personality. Think of it like the relationship between a human and a cat. There’s (hopefully!) nothing sexual about it, but we like petting them, they like being petted, and we love hearing them purr. There’s definitely a give-and-take of pleasurable experiences, even if we end up looking to our own species for reproduction. > [@RickJay](#): > > 1. Maybe Moclans are more tolerant of conflict than we are but why hasn’t Bortus dumped Klyden? What an asshole that guy is. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > Wouldn’t Bortus have to kill Klyden to dump him? Obviously he doesn’t want to do that and if he tries to dump him otherwise maybe Klyden wouldn’t accept it, or he’d be deeply shamed or something. Yes, Moclan divorce is kind of all-or-nothing. If they haven’t pissed you off enough to kill them, then you might as well stay together. Maybe not the healthiest way to run things, but it does kind of cast some of our petty squabbles in a new light. “He didn’t put the toilet seat down!” “Is that worth killing him?” “Well, no…” “So let it go.” ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1202 "2019-04-15T12:31:48Z")
If they were approaching this a little more realistically, the Moclan divorce should actually be a huge civil rights issue for the Union, arguably more so than the issue that has gotten all the attention on the show (the treatment of females in Moclan society, and of males who are attracted to them). ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1203 "2019-04-15T15:16:36Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes, and showing his kid that baby was also incredibly stupid. In fact Bortus has acted really stupid on a number of occasions. The moment his brought in his kid my wife and I said “well, that’s what will screw all this up.” This thing is that the kid telling on his father turned out to be essentially an irrelevance. The ship they subsequently took vanished from its stated flight plan. That right there could have been the moment of crisis; there was no narrative purpose for Bortus’s stupidity and dishonesty. The fact they had a baby wasn’t even something they had to hide; they could have simply claimed it was male, and no one would have known. Then the ship makes a run for it and the story proceeds as planned. My other nitpick would be that the fight on the planet surface was a chaotic jumble of nonsense. Greater dramatic tension would have been achieved had no one ever fired a weapon, but if there had simply been a really tense standoff where the stakes are that someone might get killed. I nitpick only because I love the show and want it to get better. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1204 "2019-04-15T15:25:36Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > My other nitpick would be that the fight on the planet surface was a chaotic jumble of nonsense. Greater dramatic tension would have been achieved had no one ever fired a weapon, but if there had simply been a really tense standoff where the stakes are that someone might get killed. So, the unanswered question - are those deadly weapons? Was everyone shot killed? Somehow I don’t see Moclan weapons having a stun setting, especially not in that situation. I have enough trouble with badass Kelly and SuperWorf Bortus just standing perfectly still and upright there in a firefight against trained soldiers and not getting a scratch, but if all those Moclans are dead, that’s kind of a permanent mark on the issue. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1205 "2019-04-15T20:26:43Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The moment his brought in his kid my wife and I said “well, that’s what will screw all this up.” One always hopes that one’s Spouse will realize that s/he is in the wrong, but somehow it rarely happens. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1206 "2019-04-15T21:44:00Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > If they were approaching this a little more realistically, the Moclan divorce should actually be a huge civil rights issue for the Union, arguably more so than the issue that has gotten all the attention on the show (the treatment of females in Moclan society, and of males who are attracted to them). I’m not sure I see it that way. Getting married is a choice they make, in the full knowledge of what divorce requires. Being born female or being attracted to females isn’t a choice. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1207 "2019-04-16T12:09:59Z")
During the shout-out I started thinking about the ethics of combat when your weapons can effectively and reliably stun. During a normal earth gunfight, if I sneak up behind an enemy and cut his throat, that’s a justified use of force. Hell, I literally brought a knife to a gunfight; go me! But what if it were a phaser shoot-out? You can’t sneak up behind someone and kill them in a stun fight, can you? Seems to me the limit of justified force level might be just punching and some light grappling. (Lower your shoulder and slam them into a wall, etc…) And even punching seems like it would be an “Oh, it’s like _that?_” moment for whomever you punched. As in, punching would somehow _escalate_ a shoot-out when it’s a shoot-out with phasers instead of guns. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1208 "2019-04-16T14:00:33Z")
> [@EllisDee](#): > > During the shout-out I started thinking about the ethics of combat when your weapons can effectively and reliably stun. During a normal earth gunfight, if I sneak up behind an enemy and cut his throat, that’s a justified use of force. Hell, I literally brought a knife to a gunfight; go me! > > But what if it were a phaser shoot-out? You can’t sneak up behind someone and kill them in a stun fight, can you? Seems to me the limit of justified force level might be just punching and some light grappling. (Lower your shoulder and slam them into a wall, etc…) And even punching seems like it would be an “Oh, it’s like _that?_” moment for whomever you punched. As in, punching would somehow _escalate_ a shoot-out when it’s a shoot-out with phasers instead of guns. I’ve said before about The Orville and the various Trek franchises - it’s remarkably easy to “respect all life” when you’ve got a weapon which can reliably but harmlessly incapacitate an enemy from a distance. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1209 "2019-04-16T14:08:45Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > So, the unanswered question - are those deadly weapons? Was everyone shot killed? Somehow I don’t see Moclan weapons having a stun setting, especially not in that situation. > > I have enough trouble with badass Kelly and SuperWorf Bortus just standing perfectly still and upright there in a firefight against trained soldiers and not getting a scratch, but if all those Moclans are dead, that’s kind of a permanent mark on the issue. Kelly and Bortus killed a bunch of guards in a prison breakout they started, so they don’t seem to really care about killing people. I mean, that’s just plain murder, and it’s been forgotten already. But I didn’t see any bodies remaining on the ground so I guess it was a stun fight. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1210 "2019-04-16T14:24:11Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Kelly and Bortus killed a bunch of guards in a prison breakout they started, so they don’t seem to really care about killing people. I mean, that’s just plain murder, and it’s been forgotten already. In a post-scarcity world, the only thing of value we have is our lives. So the more lives you take, the richer you are. I’m only half-joking. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1211 "2019-04-16T19:58:18Z")
Despite some nitpicks, a pretty good ep, I thought. Good to see the politicos or ambassadors of Planetary Union Central at last. > [@terentii](#): > > Did it \*have \*to be Dolly Parton? :mad: Heh. I didn’t mind. They put “9 to 5” to good use in the second _Deadpool_ movie, too, as he goes on a very funny killspree to the tune. > [@simster](#): > > I really thought it should have been Cindi Lauper. Noice. > [@E-DUB](#): > > … (In fact, the children produced by two females would invariably be female themselves, so there’s that.) I don’t think we know that for sure about Moclans. > [@simster](#): > > I think you’re putting way more thought into this then they did. I _know_ he is. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > …All this talk of Marina Sirtis and Tony Todd, and no love for F. Murray Abraham?.. And Ron Canada, as one of the admirals (scroll down here): [Ron Canada | Memory Alpha | Fandom](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ron_Canada) > [@Horatius](#): > > Well, yes, that’s part of why _we_ perceive [Yaphit] as male… FWIW, Yaphit looked an awful lot like Norm Macdonald when we saw his simulator persona. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1212 "2019-04-16T20:01:52Z")
One admittedly nitpicky thing about the use of the Dolly Parton song was the bit in which the admiral recognized the lyrics as the origin of the speech give by the Moclan woman. This is supposedly more than 400 years in the future, so that song isn’t likely to be familiar to anyone. (Who knows, though? Maybe Dolly Parton made a comeback centuries after her death.) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1213 "2019-04-16T20:34:38Z")
Maybe, but Ed didn’t recognize it. He had to check the computer to get the name of the artist. I thought that was a nice touch. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1214 "2019-04-16T20:35:44Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > And Ron Canada, as one of the admirals (scroll down here): [Ron Canada | Memory Alpha | Fandom](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ron_Canada). I recognized him first from Law & Order, oddly enough. I figured him for a Repeat Offender, but he was in just one episode. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1215 "2019-04-16T21:51:58Z")
But the divorce is not a choice on the part of the person getting killed! Some people go into marriage with a clear-eyed or even cynical attitude that it may well end up in divorce. But most people think that’s not in the cards for them. That’s for “other people”. People who aren’t as decent, or at least not as deeply in love. I’m reminded of a scene on “The Sopranos”: Adriana shows up in public with a black eye, clearly given to her by her boyfriend Christopher, Tony’s nephew and a capo in the crime family. Tony upbraids him, but not on a general principle of opposition to domestic violence. He tells Christopher if he’s going to beat her, he’s got to “put a ring on her finger first”. That’s the custom among this clan of Italian-Americans. She does still become his fiancee. Do we just shrug and say that she knew what she was getting into when she accepted his proposal? If there were a country where this custom was legally tolerated (either de jure or de facto), would it not be an issue for human rights organizations to raise? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2019, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1216 "2019-04-16T23:06:45Z")
Things Moclans[tell their children.](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=21594352#post21594352) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1217 "2019-04-17T01:57:03Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > (Who knows, though? Maybe Dolly Parton made a comeback centuries after her death.) Given the amount of plastic surgery she’s had, she may elude death entirely. Yeesh, that was one preachy-speechy episode; at least when Picard started moralizing, his delivery was better. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1218 "2019-04-17T03:55:44Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But the divorce is not a choice on the part of the person getting killed! > > Some people go into marriage with a clear-eyed or even cynical attitude that it may well end up in divorce. But most people think that’s not in the cards for them. That’s for “other people”. People who aren’t as decent, or at least not as deeply in love. > > I’m reminded of a scene on “The Sopranos”: > > Adriana shows up in public with a black eye, clearly given to her by her boyfriend Christopher, Tony’s nephew and a capo in the crime family. Tony upbraids him, but not on a general principle of opposition to domestic violence. He tells Christopher if he’s going to beat her, he’s got to “put a ring on her finger first”. That’s the custom among this clan of Italian-Americans. She does still become his fiancee. Do we just shrug and say that she knew what she was getting into when she accepted his proposal? If there were a country where this custom was legally tolerated (either de jure or de facto), would it not be an issue for human rights organizations to raise? “Human rights”. Why the very term is racist! There’s lots of choices we make in life that stick us with potential consequences if we want to change our minds later. In human marriage, in lots of jurisdictions, it’s accepted that you’ll have to give half your stuff to your ex-spouse if you get divorced. Would you accept “I didn’t choose to give them all that!” as a reason to not fulfill the legal requirements of divorce? Their version is just more extreme than ours, which is pretty much true of their entire culture. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1219 "2019-04-17T12:49:52Z")
Is this how jurisdictions work in the future; no matter how far you get from your home planet, its laws still apply to you? If a human is in interstellar space, is he or she still bound by Earth laws? Can members of the Earth military detain or arrest that person at will? Does Moclan jurisdiction extend to literally everywhere there are Moclans? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966/1220 "2019-04-17T13:47:15Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Things Moclans[tell their children.](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=21594352#post21594352) Heheh. Thanks! I added a few. > [@Horatius](#): > > …In human marriage, in lots of jurisdictions, it’s accepted that you’ll have to give half your stuff to your ex-spouse if you get divorced. Would you accept “I didn’t choose to give them all that!” as a reason to not fulfill the legal requirements of divorce?.. “Next time I’m just gonna find a woman I hate and give her half of everything I own.” - Merle Haggard (attrib.), after a divorce > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Is this how jurisdictions work in the future; no matter how far you get from your home planet, its laws still apply to you? If a human is in interstellar space, is he or she still bound by Earth laws? Can members of the Earth military detain or arrest that person at will? Does Moclan jurisdiction extend to literally everywhere there are Moclans? I don’t think we know yet, or that the scriptwriters have thought it through. Certainly the Moclan government appears to believe that all Moclans everywhere are subject to its authority. I doubt that the Earth government could do that legally, or would be that overreaching. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966.md?page=60) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-orville-season-2/826966.md?page=62)