I thought that “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” was a pretty good episode. It’s not full of drama, of course, so it feels very much like a ST:TNG episode from about season three, where everything they did was exploration of personalities. But there are some very interesting points made in the course of the episode, and it’s clear that there is no one “correct” way to view what happened to Kelly and Ed, not to mention how Young Kelly and Ed would have worked out compared to Older Kelly and Ed. In a way, it was sad that they decided to send Kelly back, because, of course, a lot of things that could have been fun about having the two around got lost.
The last scene, of course, is excellent. It is clearly a cliff-hanger in its feel, because not only don’t we know why she said that, we don’t know what the ramifications will be. After all, Young Kelly said she knew the thing would work out because it obviously had in the “past”, which was why no one knew about it having happened back then. But now, it hasn’t happened the same way, which throws all those assumptions in the meat grinder.
I continue to be impressed with the episodes this season. It’s a very watchable show, and has managed that much more quickly than most of the Star Trek children did.
Yeah, that was great. I also just liked seeing them have fun with each other for once; they’ve often seemed like the most dysfunctional couple on TV recently.
I wonder if the twist ending with Young Kelly will go anywhere (maybe as soon as next episode?) or not be touched on. They certainly left it open-ended enough with a lot of possibilities.
I liked Ed’s reference to fans arguing about time travel. Loosely, “I’d rather eat glass than argue time travel logic!”
Did anyone notice the Journey ESC4P3 album cover on the office wall? Pretty cool! I think it was Kelly’s office. It was quite obvious over Ed’s left shoulder when he and Kelly were leaning against the desk talking to younger Kelly. I agree they needed a different name for her.
I wasn’t crazy about this episode, it was predictable for me, but it’s Trek, er, Orville, so I still enjoyed it. The end was interesting and I look forward to next week.
Present Kelly thinks it’s a bad idea for the captain and XO to have a relationship. Lt. Kelly has no official position on the ship - she’s essentially a passenger, not in the chain of command. Now if she were actually assigned to the ship, that would be a problem - but that didn’t happen yet.
Agreed. I was struck by how this episode showed how Ed had grown since the first season. His explanation of why he and Kelly got divorced would have been very different in the early part of the first season.
In the first season episode where Rob Lowe returned, it was left open ended if Kelly had cheated because he was giving off his irresistible sex pheremones. But in this episode Ed seems to have confirmed it.
This episode was another example of what The Orville does well:
Exploration of personalities
Refusing to offer easy solutions to problems
The cool thing about the ending is they could go back to it for more stories or never touch it again. How do we know that’s not how it actually happened, after all? Maybe that is the same event that happened in the unaltered timeline - she rejected him on his first call and then thought better of it and later he called again and she went out with him. Memory is a funny thing.
If I can offer a nitpick, it really felt to me like a time lapse of seven years wasn’t enough. We don’t know for sure how old Ed and Kelly are, but roughly 40ish is a good guess - Seth MacFarlane is 45 and Adrienne Palicki is 35 but the characters don’t seem that far apart in age so let’s split the difference. So if they’re roughly 40 in the show, that would make them in their early 30s when they met.
The idea that you cannot get along with a much younger version of yourself, or of your spouse, makes a lot of sense. It’s inconceivable to me that I, a 47-year-old man married to a 42-year-old woman, would be compatible with the 22-year-old version of the exact same woman, and the idea the 42-year-old version of my wife could date the version of me in my 20s is just comical. You’re just in a different place in your life. But with the 35-year-old version? Sure. You aren’t THAT different seven years apart in full adulthood. “Young Kelly” couldn’t have been that young - it’s only seven years, she’s out of school and already seriously pursuing her career. The dynamic would have made a lot more sense in the difference in time was greater.
I think you took a bit of a leap there. It’s easily plausible to argue that the age difference of the characters is half what it is for the actors. But Kelly is not five years older than Palicki. Women actors don’t do that, and I don’t blame them. So Kelly is in her early thirties or 35, max.
This has to be a whoosh… right?
But yeah, on the whole episode, I kind of thought 7 years was a bit close in time for a pair of mature adults to have significantly changed. I mean, if we were talking 18 vs. 25 or 24 vs. 31, then we’d be on to something. There’s usually at least one, if not two major life changes somewhere in there for most people.
I guess the point was that the divorce was that major life change, but they were trying to make it sound like there was all this massive personality change for them over that period, and that’s not as realistic. I mean, it’s unlikely that a career-focused military person at say… 32 wouldn’t have been acutely aware of being viewed as irresponsible, and would have kept everything more in check than they implied she did.
I think it would have been better had they acknowledged that Kelly of 7 years ago was NOT significantly different, save for the divorce, and that Ed would be attracted to her for all the same reasons he was in the first place. And have Ed realize that it’s not really a do-over like he was thinking- HE’s the one who’s changed, not her.
There’s no mutual discovery. Say they start to become involved, and Kelly says, “let me tell you about this time in my life that was very important.” And Ed already knows the whole story. He’s met the people involved. He’s visited the location. He has the commemorative T shirt.
It’s not going to take too much of that before young Kelly gets annoyed.
And from Ed’s POV: Is he going to tell her all his secrets, again? Is he going to teach her how to cross one eye, again? The whole idea sounds good in theory: let’s redo our relationship again, but not make the same mistakes. But in practice it won’t work.
Let alone what Cmdr Kelly is going to think watching it. “well, it must be about time he told me/tells her about his father.” With Ed on one side with his prescience, and the Commander on the other “Did he tell you about his High School yet?”, poor Lt Kelly is going to run screaming.
No wonder she turned him down in “the past”. Even if her memories were erased, the echoes through time were still there.
Beyond that - Ed now remembers all the little things that the younger couple did that he is no longer interested in or can’t do - like the binge drinking. She still expects to do these things.
Reminds me of a novel by Ken Grimwood (Replay - highly recommended). The main character is transported back into his 18 year old body (he’s 43) - attempts to recreate his first meeting with the woman who would have become his wife do not go well.
Seven years is still not a huge difference, and in the future one gets the sense people live longer; it’d just make a little more sense if the spread was longer.
It worked though. Thematically the concept was clear, and it makes sense. We are different people at different ages.
but then on the next go around, didn’t he woo her in the manner of the times, and marry her and have the “2.5 kids and yard with picket fence” life?
That’s what really worked about that book that The Orville only lightly touched. You CAN try all the different variations. (Just the end was unsatisfying).
It also evokes Groundhog Day, how Phil keeps “perfecting” his one-day date with Rita.
I also appreciated how time travel in the Orville universe works according to my favorite unified theory. That reality is controlled by thought. That minds are really the ultimate power in the universe. If you want something bad enough, it does happen. The trick is, knowing how to “want it” the right way. (it’s always the details!)
For example, Q doesn’t use the power of his mind to physically reshape the entire universe. He’s not “moving things with his mind”, as it were. No, he alters quantum probabilities, and the universe does all the heavy lifting. Change a single tiny thing, a single sign from minus to plus, a bit from one to zero, and the whole universe adjusts accordingly. Changing the bit is the “skill” that Q has that humans don’t, but knowing which bit to alter is what gives Q his power.
It’s also why Marty McFly disappears slowly - because he hasn’t altered enough probabilities at that point to make the change exact.
And that’s what the time travel experiment in The Orville did. Just like Dr. Crusher in the static warp bubble, Kelly’s mind made time travel happen. The machine that Isaac and co. were working on was just the tool.
A pretty good episode, I thought, although it went over pretty familiar *ST *ground.
Why the shorter opening credits?
Did they do anything to the actress to make her seem younger other than using a wig (which I kinda liked, BTW) and slightly rosier makeup? A couple of times I thought they might have done some CGI de-aging, but I couldn’t be sure.
Hiding in the planet’s ring ice was a pretty cool (no pun intended) gambit.
Did they iron it, too?
Yes!!!
“My advice in making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple: don’t even try.” - Capt. Kathryn Janeway, USS *Voyager *
And did you notice how Ed pitched dating Lt. Kelly to her older self? Not “Would you mind if…” but “If you don’t think there’s any chance of you and me getting back together, then…” Not cool, dude.
I’m surprised the most obvious argument against a captain dating a subordinate on a starship hasn’t been made. Would Ed ever feel able to order Kelly on a dangerous mission if they became lovers again?
I love Replay, too! I remember how badly he botched his “first” meeting. Dumbass.
