If it is just the frequency of sunlight, sure a covering will protect her. How do they move about in daylight in previous episodes, environmental suits?
They probably have advanced technology that will keep them safe from the effects of sunlight - but she just escaped from a ship that was blowing up, and perhaps didn’t think to bring that technology along. Absent a real solution, a jacket over the head will at least make the situation tolerable.
(it’s analogous to cold weather - being outside in 0 degree weather will kill me in a matter of hours. There’s technology (jackets, etc.) that will prevent this, but if my house just blew up, I might not think to grab a jacket. Stuffing my shirt with fallen leaves would be better than nothing, but it’s not what I would prefer under optimal circumstances.
Invisible sombreros. You could tell, from the inaudible mariachi music.
Yeah. CGI push button helmets, check out the season 1 trailer.
they’re not as consistent with the light levels as they should be – I’m having trouble figuring it all out. They killed the Krill by programming a massive burst of UV from the Krill ship’s lighting system. Thing is, the ship wasn’t that dark when Kryss and De’von were walking around. But whenever she’s a prisoner, they dim The Orville lights down to half-way moody sci-fi levels. The Krill must know that, without encounter suits, they’re one “tanning booth” burst away from being killed, the extra dimness isn’t adding anything. Just so long as the light’s aren’t on at “burn Gordon” level, all the Krill are fine. In fact, does anyone want the ship at that high UV level? It will at least cause most of the crew to be really uncomfortable. Unless, they’re all secretly, possibly, Krill.
So with massive cellular and tissue replacement, they can pass for human. But with only moderate tissue replacement, they should survive UV for a little while. Yeah direct sunlight is pretty bad, but if a cloth cover is all that’s needed, they the Krill aren’t really in danger from less than weaponized light levels.
The vibe I’m getting is low light is just to be accommodating, polite, or friendly. Like when Mercer asks how uncomfortable it was, working on the Orville with the brightness. They replaced all her tissues, so she’s fine, health and safety-wise. But they still suggest shielding her from the light, but not for a really compelling reason – on the Orville, or on a sunny day.
Arguably, shielding her from stuff was the running theme in this episode.
As much as she hates Mercer, as kind as he was to her, and her plan failed, she must be immensely pissed off. She is probably making plans to destroy the quadrant Sol occupies.
Why can the Krill ship lights produce that much UV? It is as though Terran ships had x-ray emitters through out the decks.
They evacuate those decks and then use strong UV to disinfect them periodically
[/fanwank]
That is the best I could come up with, and thought they would set up some UV generating devices rather than have it built into the lighting system.
Perhaps they have some lice or bedbugs that breed very quickly, and the UVs are built in.
I don’t recall how difficult it was for Gordon to make it work. Perhaps he did something to the circuitry that is not usually done, like feed more power to UV generators that usually run on a small amount of current. Yeah, I’m going for the last, just as you could drive humans nuts by running high frequencies through the comm system.
Blinded by the Light?
You know, I have a theory. Obviously, nothing cultural has occurred in the last 400 years- no movies no films, nothing. Clearly once you invent the Holodeck/Simulator, you dont bother with such, you do porno, live D&D, other fun fantasies. No one makes any new music or film.
They have simulator rooms also, and as a Theocracy, clearly* every*body uses those for sex. Thus, UV to sterilize.
Favorite line: “I liked you a lot better when you were using contractions”. I had to think for a moment before I got it, then laughed.
I didn’t guess the twist. I didn’t see the resemblence, and still don’t.
OK, so we’ve got yet another new security officer. I know this was hinted at in the previous ep, but what happens to Patrick Warburton? He just disappears, never to be heard from again?
Also, hope we get a bit more of Ted Danson than tonight’s cameo.
Meanwhile, I found the premise of tonight’s ep…problematic. A civilization that clearly understands and, in most cases practices the scientific method completely ignores science in favor of astrology when it comes to government policies on social behavior?
contemplates some recent actions of our own government
Oookay. Still, might have been more plausible with a less-technologically-advanced civilization, but in this universe, the Union apparently doesn’t show up unless they’re invited, and that seems to require some sort of electronic transmission tech, at minimum.
Then there was the denouement:
Setting aside the highly convenient timing for Kelley and Bortis of the appearance of the fake star, that’s one mighty forgiving civilization to just let them go after they wiped out half a platoon of camp guards. Were they all as Nazi-like as the commander? Did none of them have families?
OH well, I’ll quit bitchin’. A somewhat intriguing premise, just think it could have been taken a bit further, I guess.
And nobody pointing out the obvious fact that Kelly and Bortas are from different freakin’ planets, with different month and year lengths and different constellations in the sky.
This is The Bad Place!
Came here to express my aggravation that this never came up. Thought this would be a good argument against their whole astrology system entirely. How can astrology be accurate when there are so many other worlds so far apart, and the stars are all in different positions?
I would have liked the astrology episode a lot better if they hadn’t shown the exact same episode last season.
This season isn’t working for me. The last two episodes were an improvement on the first two, but they’ve gone from “what if you had star trek TNG but with a c+ crew and lots of humor” to “what if you had star trek TNG again”
A lot of what Star Trek TNG could get away with in the 80s was simply due to our lower expectation of what we found acceptable out of a TV show back then, and because it was a little more groundbreaking and unique within that period of time. But being served up Star Trek TNG episodes, played almost entirely straight, is not compelling in 2019. Especially when they’re the not so interesting “human looking aliens with a slight twist of the week” format. And this episode was targeted at my sensibilities - being able to mock a culture based on pseudo-scientific beliefs should be very satisfying to me, but I couldn’t get into it.
Unfortunately this is apparently what the show was meant to be, since McFarlane said that he had to work more humor into the first season to please the network but this season is closer to his vision. I was on board with his fantasy of getting to play a star trek captain himself so long as I found the episodes amusing, but not so much now.
These wouldn’t have worked so well back then either.
A C+ crew doping First Contact would still have had some protocols in place to research the culture by observation more before the meet, there would be established norms for what to do if things went south for whatever reason, including inexcusable ignorance of native belief systems. Officers killing a bunch of the natives when understood policy was that extraction was too intrusive also would never have made the script.
This show can get away with very inferior TNG plots by buffering it with decent funny. Short shrift the amount and more so the quality of the funny and it does not work so well.
Maybe the only line that worked for funny this time was the Bortus line of it is easier with an egg. And as played that only worked a little. Not sure why, maybe just not good comic timing.
Also Mercer’s smiles creep me out.
Earth sent out its first purposeful interstellar message in the 70s and I’m sure you’ll agree that not all our policies on social behaviour were science based at the time. This planet was basically a theocracy with a caste system. The twist in the caste system, being birthday based rather than ancestry, seems to me would be less vulnerable to social change for that reason. You’re clearly allowed to game the system so your children don’t get put in the untouchables caste.
Can’t say I loved the episode but I did like the first officer’s justification for the break out attempt: “hey, they think we’re bad so being bad doesn’t break first contact principles. We’re giving them what they want”.
Hah. Literally my reaction when seeing [del]Michael[/del]Admiral Perry.