It hasn’t aired on the west coast, so I’ll spoiler it.
[spoiler]I thought the episode spent far too much time on the porn plot and nowhere near enough on the rescue, which was criminally short shrifted.
You could have filled the entire show with the conflict involved in deciding who to choose. There are so many things that would make for great TV (someone rigs the choice, half of a family is left behind, even the the reaction of the aliens as they leave their world behind). [/spoiler]
What a piece of drek.
[spoiler]Last week we got to focus on Bortus pissing. This week his sex life. I shudder to think what they’ll show us next time.
And the rescue plot made zero sense.
They never bothered to ask WHAT SIZE are the aliens, anyway? before announcing how many trips the shuttle would have to make. Suppose they were the size of squirrels, they could have taken the lot in one load. If they were elephant sized? Maybe only one would fit in per trip. You really shouldn’t assume every single sapient life form in the universe is exactly the size of a human in a rubber suit.
What was the point of the pilots having to get out of the shuttle anyway, and stroll slowly over to the hatch? Why not discuss the plan with the aliens on the way, and have the aliens waiting at the landing site in their radiation gear so Bortus wouldn’t have needed to be exposed on the surface at all.
For that matter, why did they need to have TWO pilots on the shuttle? Just last episode the Captain took one out by himself. Why couldn’t Isaac, who is apparently completely immune and super-competent at everything, have gone alone? Then they could have saved at least one more, or two if they’d picked children.
[/spoiler]
I couldn’t believe how awful this episode was. Every single minute of it.
I haven’t watched more than the Sunday episode of the new season, but the one thing the first season left me wishing for was some humor closer to Hyperdrive. I generally like the idea of an office comedy in space and I’m going to keep hoping it goes more in that direction.
Okay, spoilered for West Coasters:
[spoiler]
LOL, yeah: I was thinking the same. I guess we can fanwank (heh) it as being unlocked because of the virus.
Pretty good episode overall. I wonder what people who didn’t know it was from last season thought about Gordon suddenly having his sunburn again, or the new navigator character being nowhere to be seen.
The whole evacuation and lottery plot was a cool idea, but I agree with Chuck: it could have benefited from being given more time rather than being squeezed in near the end of the episode. I don’t think that means getting rid of elements of the porn plot so much as moving that to another episode. Although I guess the virus was a key aspect of that, so IDK. So, yeah, upon further reflection: tighten up that plot some to fit more of the other—although I guess there’s only so much they can do there if the problem is time.[/spoiler]
Spoilering for those who haven’t seen episode 2 yet.
[Spoiler]I thought that parts of the porn plot were really funny. The simulated Moclans trying to look sexy and pestering them while they were working in the control panel were hilarious.
Like others, I had problems with the rescue plot. Why was it necessary for Bortus to go along when Issac would have been sufficient?
Don’t they have more than one shuttle? If they have two crew members that can withstand the radiation then why not send two shuttles?
Regarding Bortus’ family situation; it seems like a large part of Klyden’s problems stem from boredom.
Wouldn’t it make sense for him to have some sort of civilian employment, maybe working in the galley or something? He wouldn’t be cooped up in their cabin all day and would get to see and interact with other crew members. Their son looks old enough to be in school so he shouldn’t require supervision during the day. By the way, he has certainly grown fast. I suppose that’s normal for Moclans?[/spoiler]
I agree with Realitychuck.
The Moclan divorce method does have something to be said for it, though.
Those were all obvious concerns, and the Bortus subplot was necessary in the sense that they needed to ramp up the tension by having the virus hinder them. But it could have been cut considerably; it grew tedious and was too patly resolved.
The real conflict was in the rescue. The aliens should have been discovered well before the half hour point and there were some big issues that were glossed over. The aliens just accepted their lot and moved on, and the script made it even easier for them – only 70? Why not 700? They should have been twisting the screws on the drama, not sloughing it off. Even the people who made it on the ship – none of them were more than vaguely sad that everyone they knew was now dead. They should have been emotional wrecks, not just people sitting sadly in a ship.
“My name’s Dann…”
I think this was the first episode where I really re-examined my choice to watch the show. Damn that was a bad episode.
Bortus works well in small doses. The character can’t carry an entire episode like this.
Yeah, that episode definitely could have been better. But I did love the creepy alien porn/pill/what-have-you dealer
Haven’t watched it yet. Was it really two hours? That’s how much my DVD recorded.
One hour of what you all are describing would be bad enough, but two? yuk.
I’d say either plot would have made a fine episode on its own. Jamming them together didn’t really work.
Two Bortascentric episodes in a row was not a good call.
So did I- the face, in particular, was fantastic. This show, and Star Trek, needs more non-humanoid aliens.
I did wonder, though, why he didn’t wear any sort of uniform or rank indication. It also really bothered me that the underground aliens looked completely human- so much so, that at first I wondered if they weren’t aliens but rather a lost human colony.
Speaking of which, would have liked to have seen some follow-up on alien Lieutenant’s fate. Given that he was the source of the virus in the first place, he should be well and truly on Ed’s shit list.
Overall, however, really lazy writing, IMO. The Bortus A plot wore out its welcome pretty fast. Doomed Planet’s residents look like a bunch of New Yorkers, despite no known previous contact with humanoid races, and of course just happen to be precisely the right stage of technological development to efficiently interact with the Orviille’s crew. Isaac magics up a solution to a peril that was a completely unnecessary complication to a plot that had already been resolved, and seemed an afterthought inserted to pad out a slightly too-short script. Ugh.
Left an acrid whiff of late-season Next Gen, unfortunately.
I enjoyed both of this season’s first two episodes, but agree the rescue was rushed (and why were only some of the aliens wearing the survival suits, anyway?). How to choose the survivors? A lottery’s one way, but how about - since this is the last of their race - having every survivor being young and fertile enough to breed? Seeing the doctor explain, and do, couples counseling was interesting. I laughed when the Captain did a drive-by of the First Officer’s cabin in a shuttlecraft. I also liked the Chief Engineer’s bar pick-up simulation (“Level 10, she’s married and has a gun”). Given all the erotic possibilities of a holodeck, I’m glad they did an episode on porn addiction.
The various incarnations of *ST *did have some scenes of the characters off-duty and letting their hair down: Kirk and McCoy drinking and talking, Spock playing his Vulcan lyre while Uhura sang, Picard and Dr. Crusher sharing meals, Data and Geordi joking around ("‘Lunkhead’?"), Sisko and his son talking baseball, Dr. Bashir and O’Brien - and Paris and Kim - palling around, etc. But The Orville clearly has more.
One would think they could have sent more than one shuttle…
… Possibly remote or computer piloted. We could do either right now, in the real world.
They had to make modifications to the shuttle for it to withstand… whatever it had to withstand. Presumably, they didn’t have enough time to do 2 shuttles.
I hope the rest of the season is better. And I hope the rest of the season isn’t about bortis.
I’d like to see more episodes about Isaac and his home planet if possible. That’d be interesting. How they turned into machines, who built them, how they’ve evolved, etc.