Huh. I stand corrected. Less joking, higher percentage of jokes working. I’m shocked. (Sadly, the resolution rested on a weak joke, but…whatever. About 40 minutes of the episode worked well enough.)
I’m shocked that the pot brownie didn’t end up being Chekhov’s Snack, though. ‘I’ll save this, just in case’…and then there’s no ‘case’.
Ulp. One last criticism I forgot. A general note for actors.
Everyone is the hero of their own story. Play it that way. Ex:Malloy isn’t “The Captains old buddy.” Is that how you’d go around describing yourself?? “Hi! I’m the sidekick!” No, you’ve got your own life and your own agenda. If you’re going to be a jerk then be a jerk. But you have reasons.
From McFarlane:
(Spittake) I actually was tempted to ask, ‘Is this MASH in space, tone-wise’? But I thought it was a stretch. Funny he should say that.
Comcast, which is pretty much the only option out there in most of the country, had it on-demand right after it finished airing, which is how I caught it after the first showing got preempted by the Seahawks-49ers post show.
Loved this episode even more than the first one. It takes two major clichés of classic Star Trek - the command team going on Away missions, and a junior officer being left in command, and it does stuff with them ST never did.
I thought it was odd that the ship’s replicators can produce actual alcohol and THC - maybe that’s just a privilege senior officers are trusted with, since the rest of the crew seems to eat in a cafeteria (which also has booze for some reason).
I swear the unnamed Asian crewman in the shuttle bay looked familiar.
I was really impressed with the opening credits sequence - very much an updated version of the TNG/Voyager intros, complete with the ship warping away at the end. The score was great as well, especially considering how rare it is for a TV show to have a full orchestra these days.
I was a little put off by how many modern-day pop culture references got thrown around. I can see Kermit the Frog or Star Wars still being popular centuries from now, but Dora the Explorer? Shamu? Keeping Up with the Kardashians? I can’t imagine that ephemera being well-known enough that you could pop off a reference to it and expect other people to get it. I did like the reactions from the aliens not getting it, like Bortus thinking Kermit is a real person or Avara not understanding “a white guy can go to Compton if a black dude says it’s OK”.
And speaking of Bortus - if it took Michael Dorn 2 hours to get his Klingon face makeup on, I don’t even want to know how long it took to get him into full-body makeup for those gestation scenes.
They did the same thing time and again on ***Voyager ***and Enterprise. I always wondered where the hell Archer got all of those steel plates we saw the crew welding each week; Janeway at least had replicators on board.
Not to mention a court-martial offense. 
I was able to watch it on City TV (cable) at precisely 20:00. I guess it’s a Canadian thing.
So the Zookeeper species has transporter technology–has it been established that PU doesn’t?
Avara seemed pretty impressed that the Calavon(?) had transporters, and we haven’t seen any evidence of PU ships having it yet, so I’d guess it’s either way beyond their capabilities or something that’s not cost-effective yet.
What was the first “ensemble” show where every member of the regular cast had at least one episode that focused on them each year? MTM? DvD? 
It really took off in the late '70s–early '80s with MASH***, Hill Street Blues, Cheers!, St Elsewhere, LA Law…
David Gerrold suggested it in The World of Star Trek way back in the early '70s, when any future iteration of Trek was still just a fan’s wet dream.
Watch for similar canards in the future. This reminds me of the early episodes of The Simpsons, where in the first few minutes the story could go in multiple directions and you could never guess which.
Whoa! I had to Google this one:
Looks to me like it’s pretty much a full-body suit; they probably just zip him into it, for the most part.
Oh god I LOL’d at that!
Husband: What’s so funny about Ensign Parker?
Me: McHale’s Navy? Tim Conway’s part?
Husband: ???
Um, thank you for reminding me just how ancient I am…
When Alara announced they were going on a rescue mission, my husband (Andy L) said, “Hey gang, let’s put on a mutiny!”
And there should be an upcoming episode in which she doesn’t bend to peer pressure, when they expect that she will.
“Early” as in “pulled from the schedule before it could complete its first planned season.” APB and Almost Human aired all of its scheduled first-season episodes…as did Minority Report, The Mob Doctor, Terra Nova, Red Band Society, Alcatraz, and Pitch. A couple of those did have the luxury of being told in advance, “Don’t bother writing episode 14,” so the last episode had some form of closure.
I am under the impression that The Orville has a 13-episode order, and I think it will get at least that, mainly because I don’t think Fox has anything to put in its place that would get better ratings.
Not pre-empted; it aired after the NFL coverage ended (and that ended before the game did; apparently, the NFL will not allow Fox or CBS coverage to continue once the NBC game begins). It also aired a second time in the Pacific time zone, at 8:00.
The intent was to air the episode immediately following NFL coverage in order to get a bounce in the ratings, but nobody figured on Fox having to stick with a blowout game that was running really long.
Also keep in mind the second episode aired at the same time as both the Sunday night NFL game and the Emmys.
Besides, when you mention DVRs, what did you expect Fox to do? It can’t suddenly decide to move the episode to, say, midnight, and then expect every DVR to be able to know about the time change; this is based on the DVR’s schedule, which is provided by a third party that (a) wouldn’t be aware of the change in time, and (b) even if it was, probably wouldn’t be able to coordinate the schedule change with the DVRs themselves.
Even if DVRs had the ability to detect when an episode of a show was actually airing (and I am under the impression that this may actually be available in parts of Europe), this doesn’t work with systems that only send a single channel at a time to each TV, like DirecTV, U-Verse, and any “traditional” cable system that uses Switchable Digital Video.
I don’t recall seeing any evidence that the rest of the crew can’t get intoxicants from the replicators. In fact, the whole point is that THC is as widely accepted as alcohol in the future. See also Capt. Ed and Kelly joking about the joint she gave him before the opera…the ‘weapons-grade weed.’
When did a court-martial ever stop anyone?
There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Worf tells a passenger (it was the episode where they picked up a group of what appeared to be Irish civilians) that the replicators were capable of making actual alcohol, “With all of the deleterious effects intact.”
I expect them to air the episode on time. If that means you don’t get to see the end of your dumbass concussion festival, so be it. If you schedule shit for 8pm, you air it at 8pm. How hard is that?
Fox has been fucking their Sunday schedule with football overruns for years. They did it to Futurama back in 1999 and they’ve done it to everything else since. The only reason they continue to get away with it now is because Sunday night on Fox is basically the Seth MacFarlane show, and he doesn’t seem to give a shit.
NFL football is a live event. The Orville is a recorded program. Do you know how much FOX pays for NFL Sunday Football? Have you ever heard of the “Heidi game”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game
What about all of the Broncos and Cowboys fans? What if the game is tied with 2 minutes to go and its for a playoff spot. Do you seriously think FOX is going to just cut away to show a prerecorded program that they can easily just delay for a bit? It’s inconvenient sure, but I don’t expect it to change any time soon.
The Orville is important.
Football isn’t.