There is so much data now, I have a hard time believing that the people in the future wouldn’t know how we lived in 2015.
I don’t think the story implied that anyone was surprised or confused at what they were seeing. Sure, Gordon didn’t know the type of smartphone he’d use, just like we wouldn’t know the difference between two different types of similar 17th century agricultural tools. It was just old history to them.
Just like if we, today, had a VR experience that recreated going to a 17th century farm town that was very historically accurate and realistic. We wouldn’t be confused as to why people were wearing what they were, and living like they were, but it would still be foreign to us. We’d be awkward trying to fit in.
Although we would be less foreign to them as someone 400 years ago would seem to us, since our pop culture survives into their world in a way that the 17th century’s pop culture wouldn’t make it to us, since they have all kinds of archived movies and music and TV shows from our period, much more than we do from 400 years ago. And if we’re about to fuck up our planet and go through some tough times, as seems to be canon in The Orville, it would make sense for our time now to seem like some pop culture golden age to them, before a darker period.
The focus of the episode wasn’t on the crew remarking on how weird the 21st century was, but rather, a specific story of a specific person whose memory was retained and recreated, and the relationship Gordon had with her. If this was a TNG episode, it almost certainly would’ve focused on the characters having confusion/disdain over 21st century living in a preachy way, but that wasn’t the story the Orville tried to tell.
Really, the meta-message of the story is to appreciate our own history. We don’t really think about people who lived hundreds of years ago as people who just got by as best they could, who had their own stories and gossip and humor and culture. By having the Orville crew appreciate people from our time, and how we’re real people, it’s telling us to enjoy history and understand that people who came hundreds of years before us were just as real as we are, whose lives are in their own way as rich as our lives. It’s actually a very wholesome and empathetic message about the nature of civilization and humanity, I think.
I get pretty verbose about the Orville, don’t I? I’ve gone from “I like it, it’s entertaining, but there are lots of problems” to in love with it in the span of the last 6 episodes or so.
This might register as a bit of a “duh”, but I’ve been thinking about the subtextual or meta-message of the latest episode:
Part of the message that the episode was trying to get across is that people tend to think about those who lived hundreds of years before them as just some sort of vague historical notion, and not as real people. We think of people from the 17th century as farmers who probably lived boring lives who farmed all day and went to church and were kind of bland and without personality.
But by using the mechanism of looking at ourselves, in the 21st century, through the lens of people who lived 400 years after us, we realize that they would look at us in a similar way that we’d look at people from 400 years ago. To the people of the Orville’s future, we are those historical, foreign, boring, and vague people that we see the 17th century people as.
So the meta-message of the people of the future realizing that 21st century people are just as interesting as they are, who lived their lives and had their hopes and dreams and their humor and their flaws and their gossip and their hobbies, is actually telling us to look back at our own ancestors the same way. To realize that they were real people with lives that were as interesting and important to them as ours are to us. In a way, it’s teaching us the lesson that Gordon learned, and to change our perspective on history to be richer and more human. It’s trying to give us a more connected, human understanding of our past that enriches our ideas about ourselves.
I think this is something that will stick around in my mind, which is one of the greatest praises you can give to science fiction.
My point was more when Tuvoc said that they only saved the data to give a good impression of hte past. I don’t think that’s possible, there is so much endless data out there that you’d need to live in a totalitarian state to not understand how people actually lived if you were inclined to learn about it. Tuvoc implied that the smartphone was a great way to get an unfiltered view into people’s lives.
Which is ironic because smartphones and social media are used to present a false life (one that is happier and more fulfilling than people actually are in real life). If you believe people’s social media profiles then you are getting a false impression of how happy and fulfilled people were, which is what Tuvoc was implying happened with their history and how it was whitewashed.
Also I wonder what the implications were for this being a message about smartphone addiction. The fact that they played it alongside the nicotine addiction storyline probably wasn’t a coincidence. Was it a subtle dig at smartphone addiction?
I do think there was a deliberate but subtle aspect to that. The woman being simulated is too perfect, too charming, almost manic pixie dream girl and nearly flawless. I would suggest that a computer recreation of her would tend to be too optimistic like that exactly because the computer would see a lot of the material she was putting out there for social media, trying to only emphasize her best attributes, making her unrealistically appealing. I do wish they’d have put a line in the episode to address this as to whether this was an intentional part of the story or not, but it seems plausible to me.
From the moment she said her dad’s name and Gordon acted surprised because that was his dad’s name I assumed he was influencing the program. I don’t know that I’m right but that’s just how I felt watching, like his choices were influencing the program even before he removed the one character.
Hey, I didn’t actually notice that until you pointed it out just now. Good eye!
“Nobody lived in the past, if you stop to think about it. Jefferson, Adams, Washington—they didn’t walk around saying, ‘Isn’t this fascinating, living in the past?’ They lived in the present just as we do. The difference was it was their present, not ours. And just as we don’t know how things are going to turn out for us, they didn’t either. It’s very easy to stand on the mountaintop as an historian or biographer and find fault with people for why they did this or didn’t do that, because we’re not involved in it, we’re not inside it, we’re not confronting what we don’t know - as everyone who preceded us always was.” - David McCullough
From here: Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are - Imprimis
Except, we have heard of those guys. No one had ever heard of Laura Huggins. She was just a normal person whose mark on the world was subtle.
Which kind of takes a swipe at Star Trek, and fiction in general. The stories we hear and have heard are about larger than life figures that tend to be important and powerful; this was a story about an otherwise forgotten person, which makes it especially poignant.
Social media, sure. But you don’t think digging into someone’s texts, including all the exchanges with ex-boyfriends, exchanges with friends complaining about said boyfriends, etc., would give a more complete picture?
For my money, the best episode of the series was actually the one right before that episode: “All the World is Birthday Cake”.
Right. The only suspension of disbelief required is that Laura chose not to curate her content before putting it in the time capsule. Unfettered access to her email, texts, social media, photos, browser history, music, cloud data in offline storage, etc., would have given a pretty good snapshot of her life.
Think about how much Facebook/Amazon/Google knows about us based on just our browsing history. Imagine how much it would know if it could see **everything **on our phones, and was also a hyper-advanced supercomputer.
I really enjoyed “Lasting Impressions.” We’ve seen all manner of space battles in the past, on this show and elsewhere; I’ve come to appreciate these character-driven stories more and more as we get to know the crew better. And Scott Grimes continues to impress, bringing more depth to Gordon Malloy every week. He’s fast becoming my favorite character.
The only thing I found weird was the fact that the other crew members found Gordon’s actions weird. Think about it:
- You’re stuck on a spaceship for who knows how long.
- As a result, you see the same people day after day, severely limiting your romantic opportunities.
- Even if you did get together with someone, the close quarters of the ship and the work environment would make it difficult to sustain.
- You have access to a simulator that can realistically produce any person you could possibly imagine, for any activity you could possibly imagine.
I would expect simulator relationships to become extremely commonplace under such circumstances.
The big irony here is that Laura’s “realness” is what Gordon found so compelling, unlike some generic off-the-shelf porn program. Yet that very realness is what doomed their relationship.
I was wondering why Gordon was wandering all over the ship with Laura’s cell phone, given that it’s a precious 400-year-old relic and possibly delicate. (I wonder if any of the components of a modern cell phone would have deteriorated in that time?) Plus once they upload all of the data, he can access any or all of it without needing it.
My wife and I agreed that this was the best episode yet of the series. Which is extremely odd because from the moment Gordon saw her video on the phone, I probably could have outlined the entire plot. (Likewise for the Moclan plot from the moment Bortus picked up the cigarettes) And yet despite being utterly predictable, it was still fascinating. I credit the actors immensely. Gordon never really had a chance to shine beyond comic relief, other than last week, and that one kind of fell flat. But here, he was amazing, and in what could have been a throwaway guest spot, Leighton Meester brought a perfect mix of “perfect girlfriend” and self-aware humility. Together, they made it really special. And I love that they didn’t shy away from the Big Questions raised about reality vs simulation, and how much of our lives we leave behind, how we are impacted by our relationships, etc. (Would have liked to see some mention of the creepy factor of this woman’s life becoming effectively Gordon’s porn without her consent, in a way should could never have predicted could happen by donating her phone to the time capsule. But then, if the simulation of her was as accurate as it was presented to be, one could argue that her simulation of consent was what the real Laura would have given. Anyway, maybe delving too deeply there would have ruined the romance of the story.) Reminded me in all the best ways of stories like The Inner Light, Shadowplay, The Sound of Her Voice (and yes, Booby Trap)… while still managing to put a new spin on it.
I couldn’t get over how weird it was to see someone on TV smoking after all these years of it being pretty taboo. We’re wondering what Bortus will become addicted to next, after porn and cigarettes. I’m thinking gambling…
Oh yeah, browser history! Great point–I didn’t even think of that.
Did anyone else find it odd that the characters in Gordon’s simulation noticed his uniform? :dubious:
Good point, and Laura wasn’t expecting anyone to actually see it until centuries after she and everyone who knew her died. Plus it’s not like the computer had to rely solely on the contents of the phone to create the program; the Orville has an extremely expansive archive of Earth history and popular culture to fill in all of the background details. I was kind of expecting to see a glitch or too, but that would’ve been too comedic for this story.
The problem wasn’t that Gordon was having a fake relationship courtesy of the [del]holodeck[/del] simulator, it was that he was loosing touch with reality and becoming obsessed with it. He even went so far as to replicate a phone and sync it with the program so that “Laura” could communicate with him when he’s outside the simulator and presumably her program isn’t fully running in the simulator.
Wasn’t the original replicated?
The original was an artifact that had “degraded” over the century which required completely unnecessary and nonsensical technobabble to fix. Gordon replicated a copy of her phone later to be able to interact with her via texting and calling.
I did find it surprising that they noticed his uniform. I thought on Trek, the holocharacters did not notice such things. But I could be wrong.
Yes, I wondered about that. Perhaps it was so they could have the women dress in contemporary attractive clothing.