“I will access the interior meat!”
Moclans can be pure comedy gold.
Except they seem to have forgotten that Moclans can eat just about anything, including drinking glasses. Why bother cracking it?
(Also, I would think that in the future they would have figured out the easy way to open a walnut—slip a wide knife in the seam at the top and give it a slight twist. Almost effortless.)
It is because of the principle! Now silence!
I was plenty bored for the last half of this episode because nearly every scene was standard trope.
I rewatched the opening exchange between Moclus guy and Telaya. He’s saying ‘Krill are amassing thousands of ships - together we will defeat the Kaylon’ and she replies
I am aware of the threat
The worlds in closest proximity are Vikarris and Xelayah
They will likely be the first targets
Telaya may well have been BS’ing/deliberately misleading to the Moclans. In this ep Xelayah was the staging point of the quantum weapon against the Kaylon. No other mention of Vikarris.
Captain Mercer: For great achievments, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time
Admiral Perry: Churchill?
ISAAC: Leonard Bernstein
Ha! Brilliant.
Shucking a walnut?
How did she get there?
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The Kaylons had allied with the Union. They were no longer the enemy.
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Union officers were dying above her in the name of this mission, and their deaths would have meant nothing if the mission failed.
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Her crew mates were in danger and by volunteering to stay behind and complete it, she ensured that they could get away safely.
On top of all of that, I think she was very willing to martyr herself because she was still grieving for Amanda. Her last words were to her.
I also think it’s consistent for her character. She hated Isaac but still revived him. When he later thanked her, she insisted that she didn’t do it for him. Likewise, I don’t think she sacrificed herself for the Kaylons, she did it for the Union.
Why bother using a tool? I thought Moclans were strong enough that either Bortus or Klyden could crack open a walnut as easily as we puny humans can open a peanut.
Not something I asked.
It is trivially easy to hand wave how she did, mostly that she was a soldier sacrificing herself in service of the mission objective whether she agrees or not, to protect others, and having issues with complicated grief over the death of her unrequited love.
The point is that her path to there, from reluctantly and resentfully bringing Issac back to life, could have made for engaging viewing. She explicitly agreed with Perry’s assessment and would have slept easy with Kaylons all destroyed. Destroying the device and half of its operating team (her and Issac in all of the Union) was potentially an existential mistake. Her wrestling with the enormity of that before committing to it fully, to the degree of barking her team leader back off, SHOULD have been dramatic. Her having to decide that self sacrifice and joining her unrequited love in death was the better option over revenge and assuring humanity’s safety from the Kaylon threat and the Union’s taking the riskiest option, our not knowing what she had decided until the very last, would have been more exciting than the fighter pilots flailing about with permissions to and acknowledgeds.
I agree that it would have been better than doing a Star Wars Death Star trench run.
Seth is a huge Star Wars fan as well as Star Trek, but I thought he already handled that on Family Guy.
I was sick to freakin’ death of her, an ensign>?? telling people what to do?? Meh
I think they were trying to fit in. The nutcracker (which has not been improved in a few hundred years) had some social significance. A metaphor: they did not want to stomp in with their muddy boots instead of using a type of doormat they had never seen.
I’d say this. It’s pretty clear that the Moclans have a pretty big chip on their shoulder about being seen as inferiors by the other civilizations in the galaxy. So they seem to oscillate between “Respect my culture, even when it sucks!” and “Well, if you can do that, so can we!”
Admitting they couldn’t open a walnut the same way humans do it would be an admission of weakness to them.
Yes, there were sf tropes aplenty, but I enjoyed that episode.
Some interesting discussions of the ethics of doomsday weapons and genocide. Good sfx of the gadget that sent out a pulse to destroy Kaylon ships, especially in its first use, which was 'way cool (I would have made a lot more of the gadgets and, after a warning, just used them defensively whenever the Kaylon attacked). There were some great space battles, a cool, no-holds-barred girlfight between Kelly and the Krill chancellor, and a Moclan military research lab that blowed up real good. And it was nice for Charly go out in a heroic, self-sacrificing blaze of glory, with thoughts of her lost beloved at the very end.
BTW, I noticed that all the Union admirals have five-star shoulderboards. Are there no one-through-four-starred admirals in the fleet?
I would have made a lot more of the gadgets and used them whenever I say Kaylons.
How often would you say Kaylons?
I don’t understand.
You said you would use the weapon whenever you say Kaylons.
Ah, thanks. Whenever I saw them.
From what I can tell, there are just “admirals”. They wear a logo described as a “circle of stars”. They aren’t “Five Star Admirals” like the US Army has a “Five Star General”. It’s like the logo on every admiral’s epaulet.
I’ll note that lower ranks wear epaulets with 1 to 4 bars on them (from ensign up to captain); though there is a Lt. Commander with 2 1/2 bars (Bortus, Lamarr, Talla, Dr. Finn have that rank). My WAG is that an admiral’s epaulet would be 5 bars, to denote the top rank, but to really set them apart they become stars instead of bars and put them in a circle. And make the stars gold. Perhaps it was inspired by or a tribute to the fleet admirals in the US Navy.
Note that there is a rank called an “Admiral Adjutant” which serves as an administrative assistant to an admiral. They dress in the typical grey civilian uniform but wear purple shoulder patches and collar, and a command badge. They have no epaulets at all.
I have to say that I really like the uniforms in The Orville. My one gripe is that the red color of the Security staff and the orange color of the Engineering staff are really close to each other. I wish that they’d picked a more distinctive color for either of the divisions.