Apart from presumably their creators, who possessed the technology to create such weaponry and presumably would have some agility just from being an evolved bipedal species.
And it doesn’t fit with the Kaylons’ character. They are spending all their time studying what?
If they were planning combat, they would have studied combat.
An ant is no threat to me. But if someone wanted to squish an ant I am not going to sacrifice my life to attempt to save it.
Isaac sacrificing himself implies he puts huge value on humanity’s survival. But earlier in the episode he put zero value. But earlier in the series he is behaving as though he puts huge value. And finally the premise is that prior to that had to be another heel-face turn we did not see.
I loved these two episodes: some of the best TV I have seen in months. But it was not flawless.
And consistency is a well, consistent, problem for the Orville. Characters temporarily behave massively out of character. The consequences of an action are ignored so everything can be back to normal next episode.
The Union needs to work on its codes for “my ship has been taken over”. First of all, that “13 button salute” just screams “wink, wink” even if you don’t know the codes. But to make it worse, apparently that code is in the data banks they can access once they take over the ship.
What they should do IMO is regularly change the code, and only disclose them to captains (and probably also first officers) in verbal form in face to face meetings between those top officers and the admiralty. Or they could have captains pass them on to other captains when ships encounter each other–but not through electronic communications. And have it be something subtle that won’t sound out of place, but which can still assiduously be avoided unless needed.
I just wanted to point out that the lights on most Kaylon are orange. Primary had red. Also, the color scheme on most Kaylon are darker than on Isaac, and the shape of the armor pieces on Primary were different.
As to why Isaac looked different from others, my assumption is that he was an attempt to improve upon the original design. They wanted to make something better than their creators had made. The different colors of the lights/eyes and lighter metal colors might have been a side effect from those upgrades rather than an aesthetic choice.
One other thing I noticed is that the light emitted from the Kayons’ headguns was the same as whatever color the “eyes” were. OK, clearly just a choice of the production designer, but hard to justify for a race of robots that appear to have little use for purely decorative items.
This wasn’t mentioned so I’m probably wrong, but Ed’s old flight instructor (he of the 13 button salute) looked an awful lot like Ben Affleck. I didn’t see his name in the credits so I wasn’t sure.
I thought it was weird that they established that Ed knew the other captain previously, but they didn’t use any sort of personal code that was subtle that would only be meaningful to them, to let him know something was up. Why even bother to make him a guy Ed knows if they’re just going to use the standard union code? I guess to make it seem more important when they kill the ship.
I thought the awkwardness of integrating a “thirteen button salute” into the conversation was a little disdainful of the audience’s intelligence. Like it was awkward and telegraphed and might as well have come with a wink. I wish they had at least tried to make it seem subtle and plausible.
SenorBeef just said exactly what I was thinking about the “13-button salute.” I expected Ed to say something like, “Marcos! I haven’t seen you since we served together on the Enterprise!” And, never having served on the Enterprise, Marcos would know something was up.
I also thought there was pretty much zero reason for the Kalons to keep any of the crew alive. I think they were meant to essentially be hostages to get Ed to cooperate. But their ultimate plan was to *kill all life forms in the galaxy. * Given that, a few people in a shuttle bay aren’t that much of a bargaining chip, really.
And they didn’t even need Ed or the senior crew at all. They were heading to Earth with a giant, nearly invincible armada. I doubt the element of surprise was of paramount importance.
Another thing that bothered me. If the Krill are able to get to Earth that quickly with a fleet capable of driving off a force that Earth’s local defenses couldn’t defeat then that implies that they are stronger than Earth’s defenses, so why haven’t they already destroyed Earth?
I didn’t get the impression that the Kaylon were driven off because of the combined forces. Earth seemed to be pretty much on the ropes by that point.
A cool detail about the show the director revealed on the podcast: unlike most shows, “The Orville” has all its scripts done before any are shot. So when they come up with story ideas later in the season, they go back and sprinkle foreshadowing or setup for them in the early scripts. So it’s not so much that they plan ahead, as that they were able to use omniscient 20/20 hindsight.
Early on in the series, Isaac is quite clear that he is acting like a typical (though superintelligent) Union officer (which includes acting like he cares about human life) because it is his assignment from the Kaylon to do so. Going back to his normal behavior when his assignment is over isn’t changing character - we see the change in character as he turns out to have developed actual concern about human life (particularly the lives of the kids) later in the episode.
Agreed - an improvised code makes more sense, particularly when Ed knows that he’s had an enemy agent onboard for months, who might easily have learned the code.
The Krill may have called on more forces than they can normally afford to deal with the Kaylon - forces that aren’t usually available for use against Earth (who isn’t a major threat to them). We know that the Krill do have enemies that can hurt them - so they can’t normally risk a two-front action just to deal with Earth.
The disabling pulse may require knowledge that only the Kaylon have. That also may be why the Kaylon didn’t bother with shielding - they didn’t anticipate that a Kaylon would betray them.
The problem with “13 button salute” isn’t because it’s obvious, it’s because the robots had clearly read the book. There’s no intrinsic reason that “13 button salute” would be any weirder than “21 gun salute” or “high fives all round” to an alien race.
We look for things. To make us go. That was a rather long way to make a rather short point. I can’t believe I read the whole thing too. Brings back memories.
The delivery was still super awkward and would make any human suspicious. The way that Ed shoehorns it in there, and the other captain looks and says “yes… I understand” - if you were watching this happen in real life you’d know some sort of code was just exchanged.
It just felt like it was dumbed down because it expected the viewers to be dumb - that people wouldn’t catch on to them using a secret code unless they really explicitly showed us having them awkwardly acknowledge it.
I guess it’s pretty nitpicky, I just dislike when shows assume their audience are too dumb to observe basic plot points and it has to be hammered into them.
If Ed had used a subtler, personal code, and the Kaylons had figured that out (through some sort of clever deduction) it would’ve made them seem even more threatening - that you couldn’t outsmart them or sneak something by them.
It’s a minor point, but it’s this sort of thing that separates things that treat their audiences like smart people vs treating your audience like idiots.
