The pop culture stuff on Orville is satirizing the pop culture stuff on ST. They’re doing it on purpose.
This episode reminded me a little of John Varley’s “Millennium”. (Except that they’re not just stealing people from the past, they’re stealing the ship too! And for different reasons…)
Also, Jonathan Frakes directing!
My wife thought Kelly’s cleavage in the cocktail party scene was sufficient fan service for one episode.
While I liked the episode overall, and the leg falling from the roof was the first laugh out loud moment of the show, I feel the whole time travel element was a bit unnecessary. Charlize Theron could just as well had been a traditional temptress/swindler, ala Our Mrs. Reynolds, trying to lure ships to a trap for resale. Maybe with a twist at the end that Mercer decided to trust his XO (off screen) and then being prepared for whatever trap Theron’s character was setting up. Would be nice to show that, despite their personal history, the captain and the XO always put the safety of the ship before their own issues.
Yep, but I didn’t see it coming. Obvious she would try to take over the ship, but I didn’t see “sell it to the future.”
Of course, “time traveling technology theft” has also been done on TNG, on Voyger, on Dr Who, etc. But very hard to come up with a plot nobody has used before.
You can never have too much cleavage. :o
Have you seen Worf? He defines bad security officer. He’s like the reverse of the “hero’s death exemption” - he gets trashed even if there’s no reason.
More importantly, they need to come up with references that the audience understands. The show has to be understandable to the audience, and a reference to the classic “Not on My Gorb” episode from the 21st Century comedy “Bigorb and Hox” will land with a thud for audiences today. This is basic storytelling and the show would have landed with a bigger thud than a severed leg if they did something like that.
Overall, not as good as the last two, but still like watching a fourth season of TOS (the one after Fred Freiberger was fired). I spotted the parallel to Varley. Millennium was published when MacFarlane was 10; he may even had red it during the golden age of science fiction.*
It still could dial down what they call humor. But Malloy actually came off with a touch of depth here.
*“The golden age of science fiction is twelve.”
With respect to your wife, she is incorrect.
I saw what Captain Mercer sees in her. Number One indeed.
What, you never heard of Rebo and Zooty?
The problem is, in (a), they did encounter the dark matter storm, and were killed by it; that’s how she knew which ship to get, and in (b), when she disappeared after they destroyed the wormhole, their choice affected the past, so the crew (and the ship) should have “disappeared” and ended up where they would have been - i.e. killed.
But Seth seems to think time travel works the way it does with Stewie’s time machine on Family Guy, and the response to people who call him out on it is probably what Brian said in a similar situation (when Stewie asked him how, being only seven or eight years old, he fathered a child 14 years ago - or, for that matter, how Brian and Stewie went back 10 years into the past and nobody was any younger) - “You know what? Go complain on the Internet.”
They could give it a whirl from time to time. The usual pattern in Star Trek, I thought, was a pattern of [19th century or earlier], [20th century], [fictitious reference from at least decades later than the episode’s airdate]. So, something like “Great novelists like Melville, Roth, or Q’igguroth…”.
Yup, me too. Yet I still am attracted to those kinds of stories, and every so often someone does it in a way that is at least less nitpickable than most. This was not one of those times, but I still enjoyed the episode.
I definitely thought that was the implication: that no one will remember.
I actually thought she looked worse than I’ve ever seen her (including on Friday Night Lights, where she was smokin’ hot–two of the hottest babes ever on that show). Too much makeup, and her boobs looked fake.
OMG, that’s insane! Please tell me this is cherrypicking, and he gets to kick ass sometimes. (I’ve only seen ten or fifteen TNG episodes.)
It would be funny if we could see familiar routines done by aliens or Earthers of the future; the “Junior Mints” sequence performed by green slime creatures, f’rinstance. The implication, of course, being that these things are never forgotten or go out of style—they just get endlessly recycled.
Generally, no. Being the most physically resilient of the regular cast, he’s the one who has to bear the brunt of the villains’ badassery until someone else gets in a lucky phaser shot.
Yeah, that was the one rough spot in the episode - ill-thought-out time travel mechanics.
Me, too.
When B5 had Penn and Teller playing the comedy duo “Rebo and Zooty” they played with this idea - almost everyone on the show was very familiar with their act and its catchphrases, but they were (realistically) opaque to the 20th century audience.
By the way, what’s the deal with everyone’s prejudice about mining company’s record-keeping practices?
I should add that in addition to the resemblance to “Millennium” there’s a resemblance to ST:TNG’s “A Matter of Time” (though Picard didn’t sleep with Matt Frewer), and to the character of Vash who is an artifact-trader looking for something in the wrong time period (and Picard did sleep with her).
The episode would have been a lot more interesting if he had.
I picked up the Varley vibe as well and I was going to mention Rebo and Zooty but Smapti beat me to it.