Consider that during the Napoleonic Wars some British naval vessels were never in action.
But they’d be on war patrols, right? Doing something for the war effort, even if it’s just a show of force patrolling around a colony. They wouldn’t be doing tea supply runs to some random colony unrelated to the war effort or taking an admiral on a nice Caribbean vacation.
They’ve thought it through exactly as far as they wanted to and needed to; it’s just like “Star Trek.” In Star Trek, the various ships - usually Enterprise - are all of the above. Enterprise is a warship, an explorer, a utility vessel, a diplomatic ship and a travelling science lab. The vessel is meant to do it all, and that’s pretty much the deal for Orville. I mean, MacFarlane could not possibly be more obvious that this is a tribute to classic Star Trek and ST:TNG without actually just having the cast wear T-shirts that say THIS IS A STAR TREK HOMAGE.
There is a certain logic to this if you’re imagining that the Union (or Federation) is both a sort of nation-state and also an actively exploring entity; it would make sense that its independent ships would be multi-purpose. But of course it also makes a lot of sense in terms of scriptwriting, because you can do lots of different kinds of stories.
I agree with someone already said - Gordon and Lamarr sprinting through the hallways was hilarious, the funniest sight gag they’ve had in some time.
A tea supply run to some random colony is related to the war effort, in the sense that it’s trade, and trade (and tariffs on trade) is what kept the British economy going. So warships in the Napoleonic wars would absolutely escort trade convoys to/from colonies all over the world.
Even at that, you’d have the captains and officers chafing at the bit to get into action, rather than doing boring old convoy escort. Which we don’t see anything of- I get the impression the *Orville *is doing exactly what they all signed up to do. Plus, if it was a warship, I doubt they’d have families and children on board.
And I’m thinking the Union isn’t at war, per-se. I suspect that it’s more of the kind of situation where they’re at a sort of uneasy peace most of the time, and there are occasional raids, but there aren’t major Union/Krill fleet actions or anything like that.
Also, I’d like to have an idea of just what sort of ship the *Orville *actually is. I kind of have the impression she’s more like a frigate of the Napoleonic Wars period than anything else- a mid-sized ship capable of independent action. Which is why we see them doing such a variety of missions- that’s basically what they do. But it would be nice to see them run across a Union dreadnought, or maybe smaller ships as well.
Just more information to give us an idea of what they’re doing would be nice; TOS had the 5 year exploration mission, Voyager had to get back to the Alpha Quadrant, “Enterprise” was a mix of exploration and warfare, DS9 took place on a space station for the most part, and only TNG was as vague.
I never liked that about TNG either, for the record. It always seemed like they were doing whatever the writers wanted them to be doing for that episode, and for the most part with little time reference to anything else- we never knew whether “The Inner Light” was a few days, a week, a month or half a year before “Time’s Arrow” for example. Or for that matter, if they necessarily took place in the same order that the episodes were shown.
I guess I like backstory- for me, I’d want to know what the Orville’s job is, where they are, where they fit in the Union command structure, etc… And it doesn’t have to tie them down much- there’s plenty of opportunity for an independent frigate to get up to all sorts of shenanigans a-la *HMS Surprise *or HMS Lydia.
That was always one of my TNG issues- you have the “flagship of the fleet” and what was clearly a huge capital ship along the lines of an aircraft carrier running around doing a weird mixed bag of missions. I’d have thought logically it would be doing one of two things- deep space exploration since big ships might be more self sufficient, or fleet maneuvers.
I think shows like this may be deliberately vague about the overall mission in order to allow for a variety of stories.
Reality and logic have to be sacrificed at times for the sake of story lines.
If you think about it, why do they have human (and alien) crewed ships investigating threats like the Borg or the Krill? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have AI controlled ships confronting such threats, leaving humans for exploration and diplomacy?
Considering where AI tech is at currently, hundreds of years from now it should be beyond human level. Why risk lives unnecessarily? But if they did that you’d have some pretty boring stories.
It would be stretching reality (even more) to think the Union would put Ed Mercer, in his first command, on a front-line warship, in a hot war situation, with that much autonomy. He’d be given a smaller ship in a battle group.
Someone has already thought about theships in the Union fleet, and the Orrville isn’t the top of the line.
Well, the big problem there, is that in sci-fi, a “strong AI” is almost always implied to be conscious.
Possibly including here on the Orville. However, I feel they have dealt with it particularly skillfully here; Isaac’s reasons for continuing the relationship with Claire are abstract enough that we (all) could have a real debate about whether he is going beyond his programming and what exactly that means.
In other sci-fi it’s usually very clear that we are meant to infer that the android is somehow developing something akin to emotions.
Anyway, point being it’s not obvious in most sci fi whether sending a ship full of androids prevents loss of “life”.
If anyone who liked this episode wants to see a deeper examination of how a human/AI relationship might work, watch “Her”, it’s fantastic. It’s on netflix.
To clarify, I wasn’t suggesting a ship full of androids. I was suggesting a “ship” that is essentially an intelligent drone. Whether or not the brain of that drone has to be sentient in order to carry out it’s mission is an interesting question.
There was a NG episode where AI drones of some sort become self aware and Picard decides that they are slaves.
I thought that was Voyager and a bunch of holograms?
Yes. One of the little guys sacrifices him (it?) self to save humans, settling the question about self awareness and ending their “slavery”.
>yawn<
Thanks, Darren.
But again; a generalized intelligence, in fiction, usually becomes conscious. So even a smart enough drone would often become conscious.
Of course, you could have an AI that is not localized (exists in some kind of cloud), so is in no jeopardy at all if the Krill start blasting. As you have said though; very hard to write stories within this kind of framework.
A similar thing happened on the Voyager episode Warhead.
ETA: On reading the synopsis, maybe this one is not such a good example as it’s debateable whether the warhead actually went outside its programming.
The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks heavily feature just that: sentient ships that are characters in their own right (and hilariously self-named to boot). They usually have human crew and passengers, but the AIs have a great deal of autonomy and tend to treat their fleshy co-habitants with a polite disdain.
I have much enjoyed most of Star Trek and homages such as the Orville, but IMO Banks’ stories are far more weighty and sophisticated, maybe too much so as, for whatever reason, AFAIK no one has attempted to bring one of them to a TV or movie screen.
That’s great news, if it ever comes off. Consider Phlebas is one of my faves.
The Orville has been called a “mid-level exploratory vessel”. But that doesn’t explain why two of its officers were sent on a Krill spy mission, so the point is fair as far as it goes; also fair is the counterpoint that this is similar to TOS and the Klingons.
The ships on the Roddenberry-created “Andromeda” (which was actually good in its first season) were sentient AIs.
Enthusiastically cosigned! This is my favorite movie, of nearly 1500 I have ranked on Flickchart.