The Orville (2017) s03e09 – Domino

Once again, I don’t know how “The Orville” gets away with it. A lesser show would be entirely undone by the strange John Debney score. It’s bombastic and enthusiastic but altogether over-the-top. Despite Domino being a not-even-loose remake of Episode VII, ending with a combination Deaths Star and Starkiller Base homage (the latter already being an homage to the former), Debney doesn’t do a Star Wars score. He does a… I don’t know what.

And then, at some point… it starts working.

Because Debney’s score doesn’t have to handle the gravitas of the situation, the situation’s got its gravitas. The first half of the episode is awkward, too; the plotting’s rushed, and director Jon Cassar’s got no summary flow. So the episode digs itself a relative hole (especially since it isn’t as obviously strong as last episode) and then launches itself out to excellence. Not the best episode of the season, but in serious contention for second and a phenomenal hour and twenty minutes of television.

Domino is very much television. The commercial breaks in the action are very noticeable and sometimes jerky in this episode. The smoothness and gracefulness they’ve found with the “network on streaming” format are gone here. It’s very much commercial break for emphasis stuff. But it still works by the end. It’s marvelous.

The episode starts with the Krill and Moclans making peace; if the Moclans can handle having a female partner in Krill chancellor and Orville captain Seth MacFarlane’s baby’s mama, Michaela McManus. They’re both sick of the Union and their progressive ideals, which the episode will put to the test because the supervillain team-up is only half the main plot. The other half has MacFarlane and crew making a Kaylon maker. The Krill and Moclans are teamed up against both the Union and the Kaylon, but the Kaylon’s are after all biological lifeforms.

Anne Winters, this season’s new cast addition, hates the Kaylon. Her being shitty to Kaylon defector and “Orville” Data Mark Jackson has been the main subplot this season. Except it’s not really a subplot because it ends up tied directly to the main plot, as she’s got to deal with the Union wanting to take her Kaylon-killing super weapon and not use it to wipe out the robotic aliens.

The second half is two parts Death Star homage (because there’s the space battle alongside the trench runs), one-quarter Adrianne Palicki action hero stuff (I really hope she does something good next), one-quarter Winters and Jackson working their shit out on a Kobayashi Maru. Even though it’s kind of obvious where the episode’s going the entire time—including the traitor’s identity—it’s obvious because it’s the right story. Cassar, the writers (script credited to Brannon Braga and André Bormanis), and the cast do a fantastic job.

There’s some terrific acting from Jackson this episode, and MacFarlane does well with the more than usual he has this episode, though he’s still primarily support.

It’s great. I can’t believe they got away with it.

The bar’s even higher for next week’s season (and de facto series) finale.

The Orville (2017) s03e08 – Midnight Blue

Midnight Blue is less an extended regular episode than a combined two-parter or even an “Orville” TV movie. It’s entirely dependent on previously established subplots and story details—going back to season one of the show—but it’s also completely self-contained. It’s an incredible hour and a half.

Jon Cassar directs, contributing his best work on the show so far. He doesn’t have much time left to top it. There’s a great score from Joel McNeely, also his season best. But the script—credited to Brannon Braga and André Bormanis—is the far and ahead winner of the episode, which brings closure to the season’s subtly developing Moclan arc. The Moclans are the all-male (they just surgically alter the occasional female to be male at birth) warrior society in the Union. Everyone’s getting sick of them being gross and physically and psychologically abusing their children, but the Union needs them to stand up to the Kaylon.

I swear “Orville” makes spelling the alien species names worse than any other franchise.

Anyway.

This episode’s all about Imani Pullum, who was born in the show’s first season and grew up to her tweenage years incredibly fast. She’s a Moclan female who was surgically altered and who’s recently been restored. She’s also the season’s protagonist; at first, it seemed like it’d be Penny Johnson Jerald (who’s reduced to a cameo here), but it’s definitely Pullum. Including her asking her first crush out to dinner in a phenomenally awkward scene. And the episode’s only comedic relief. They open with it, clearing the room of distress vapors, then just pour in the tension.

In addition to Pullum, this episode’s main characters are Adrianne Palicki, Peter Macon, guest star Rena Owen, and then Seth MacFarlane in a distant fifth. Everyone else gets a story arc; MacFarlane’s just the captain. Owen’s a Moclan female who started a colony for the other females; she’s a repeat guest star, basically once a season. The sanctuary is a political minefield for the Union and the Moclans. First officer Palicki and recently divorced now single parent to a daughter Moclan Macon are going to inspect the sanctuary. Pullum wants to go; Palicki helps her talk Macon into it.

While the trip is inspiring for Pullum, things soon go wrong—the Union inspection is timed with the Moclan inspection—and the sanctuary quickly becomes dangerous. Palicki and Macon will execute an impromptu “black bodysuit” “Star Trek: The Next Generation” mission while MacFarlane finds himself in a diplomatic nightmare thanks to Owen, who’s obstinately no help.

Good thing the show’s got a baller guest star to drop.

It’s a taut action and political thriller. Many of the scene setups harken back to Star Trek IV and VI, with a fantastic Tony Todd cameo as the Moclan ambassador. Excellent acting from Owen, Pullum, Macon, and Palicki. While Pullum’s the de facto season protagonist, Palicki’s the show protagonist. She’s gotten really good at this part. Hopefully, it translates to something else in the future. And Macon’s acting-in-makeup is sublime.

Only two more “New Horizons” to go… Midnight Blue’s raised expectations for them.

The Orville (2017) s03e06 – Twice in a Lifetime

I was expecting a lot more from a time-traveling romance episode written by Seth MacFarlane. “The Orville: New Horizons” seems to be focusing on a character an episode, sometimes a character and a half, but usually a character. There are nine principal cast members. There are ten episodes. They should get to everyone (it’s going to be weird if they don’t, especially since Penny Johnson Jerald got two episodes). For this episode, it’s Scott Grimes’s turn.

After a comedy opening—Grimes is throwing a party where he plays acoustic guitar (it ties into his later arc but isn’t important)—he shows off his replica iPhone to Anne Winters. Grimes got the iPhone in a previous episode from a time capsule, which had him falling for a long-dead twenty-first-century woman (Leighton Meester). Meanwhile, robot Mark Jackson asks J. Lee for help bonding with Winters. Winters, of course, is angry Jackson helped his robot species try to annihilate humanity, including killing her best friend. Winters’s unforgiving animosity is “New Horizons”’s longest-running subplot, and I really hope it pays off because it’s leaden.

Once the seemingly unimportant but actually essential setup is done, it’s time for the first act sci-fi action. Lee and Jackson have developed a time laser, which can easily be weaponized, so the Union wants it protected. Only the Kaylon (Jackson’s robot race) somehow already know about it and ambush the Union convoy. The Orville manages to escape after doing a previously untried energy pulse maneuver. That energy pulse activates the time laser and zaps Grimes into the past.

“The Orville”’s time travel operates with Somewhere in Time mechanics; your subconscious wills you to your location, so obviously, Grimes goes back to crush Meester. While it’s entirely obvious what’s going on to the audience, the Orville crew are completely bewildered at Grimes’s eventual destination. In the present, they quickly discover he’s missing, then where he’s ended up. They can use the device to get back in time to save him, only it takes up too much fuel.

Actually, it seems like it was always going to take too much fuel, and they shouldn’t have been surprised. Regardless, Jackson and Winters will have to team up and head to the naval base in Alameda, where they keep the nuclear wessels. MacFarlane and Adrianne Palicki are going to go get Grimes back. In another apparent gaffe, neither MacFarlane nor Palicki read the lengthy obituary of time-stranded Grimes because they’re surprised when they discover details mentioned in that obit.

Jackson and Winters have a somewhat comedic subplot, with some great acting by Jackson, but it’s getting hard to sympathize with Winters. Especially since her big reveal, this episode isn’t a reveal at all. The audience knew about it in the season premiere. The scenes are decent enough, just redundant and familiar.

MacFarlane and Palicki also get a less than fun arc as past Grimes doesn’t want to go back to the future. Instead, he’s tracked down Meester and wooed and married her using information from her smartphone. There’s some surprisingly good acting from MacFarlane—little, textured stuff, which he usually can’t do—and some unfortunate characterization and acting from Meester. It’s a bad part, but still.

Andrew Cottee does the music again, and it’s great. Jon Cassar’s direction is pretty good. But it’s not quite the episode it should’ve been, especially for Grimes; it’s “his” episode, but it’s entirely disposable.

The Orville (2017) s03e04 – Gently Falling Rain

Gently Falling Rain came out on June 23, 2022. One of its briefest plot points would play differently if it had come out on June 24, 2022. The episode compares and contrasts future cultures; there’s the Union (the Federation), inclusive, diverse, progressive, and there is the Krill. They’re a combination of Romulan and Klingon, but they’re also religious fanatics who are xenophobic fascist capitalists. Abortion comes up eventually. The scene goes hard and then harder. It’s a very brief scene—and doesn’t come back later when it seems like it might—but it’s rough. I’ve been wondering how media will adjust, and Gently Falling Rain is a jarring reminder from the immediate but significantly different past; life’s constantly getting worse, just maybe not for as many people.

The episode plays like Seth MacFarlane’s Star Trek: Nemesis, sadly without any dune buggies, though there is a big future car chase. Only MacFarlane didn’t direct and doesn’t have any script credit. So instead, it’s Brannon Braga’s Star Trek: Nemesis, with co-writing credit to André Bormanis, with Jon Cassar directing. The Krill and Union are going to sign a peace treaty, which gets the brass—recurring guest stars Victor Garber, Ted Danson, and Kelly Hu—very excited. Garber’s going with the president (Bruce Boxleitner in full makeup) to the Krill home world to sign the treaty.

Only we’ve already seen the Krill home world, where populist upstart Michaela McManus is campaigning for the chancellorship on the peace treaty being weak and un-American. Oh, I mean, un-Krill.

Sure I do.

McManus is also a returning guest star; long time ago on “The Orville,” she had genetic surgery to appear human and seduce Orville captain MacFarlane in order to ruin him as payback for destroying a Krill vessel. She’s been back a few times since, with the two having an adversarial relationship with some underlying… romance might be too far, but something. This episode explores why McManus might feel a connection, also clueing MacFarlane in. I have questions about the timeline; the episode seems to have questions about the timeline; they do not get addressed, instead focusing on the character relationship and specifically how it plays out for MacFarlane.

MacFarlane’s a Captain Kirk in a Captain Picard episode of “Next Generation.” It’s a good episode for him, but it doesn’t give him anything particularly challenging to do, so he never gets to achieve (or fail). It’s intentionally constructed to get around MacFarlane maybe not having the most depth as an actor, no matter how hard he tries (though they’ve never tried bringing in a director who isn’t doing “Orville” style).

Anyway.

MacFarlane goes down to the planet with the away team; things go sideways; he tries to reason with the Krill. Meanwhile, up on the Orville, Adrianne Palicki is ready to nuke them from orbit if anything happens to the away team.

The finale’s not good. There’s a good car chase through the alien city, but everything preceding it is blasé. They go for a cheap resolution, entirely shifting the dramatic weight from the show to MacFarlane but then away from him again. But then the wrap-up scene’s really good.

It’s the best “Orville,” not “New Horizons,” episode of the season. It feels very much like regular “Orville,” in good ways.

McManus is a great recurring villain for the show, but since this episode’s four of ten, it seems unlikely she’ll have time to come back.

There’s some good comedy early in the episode, but the show seems to resent including it, just using it to give Anne Winters another chance to be an asshole. She gets some more later on, but her character’s been entirely one-note since the season premiere. To the point I was wondering if she was going to get Yar’d this episode.

But, otherwise, smooth sailing.

The Orville (2017) s03e03 – Mortality Paradox

Well, here’s where it turns out “Orville: Season Three: New Horizons” is not making Penny Johnson Jerald the de facto series protagonist. Instead, Jerald’s in a scene or three but entirely superfluous to the main plot. Though the main plot is also entirely superfluous, so she didn’t miss much.

I wonder if this episode would play better if you’re unfamiliar with its sub-genre of “Star Trek” episode. It’s modeled after an original series episode, with the flare (and budget) of later series and the inevitable punchline out of “Next Generation.” Though there’s one more sci-fi franchise reference—non-“Trek,” non-Wars—and it’s arguably the cutest. Though they miss a golden opportunity for a “Simpsons” dig.

Anyway.

The episode begins with Jessica Szohr returning from leave, which will be important later. Doing routine long-range scans, the ship discovers a settlement where there shouldn’t be a settlement. Some barren rock in the ass-end of space. The Orville goes to investigate, the ship’s sensors reading signals while the visuals don’t match. Captain Seth MacFarlane, first officer Adrianne Palicki, helmsman Scott Grimes, security officer Szohr, and second officer Peter Macon head down to investigate.

Instead of a bustling civilization, they find a Class M planet with endless tree coverage, which is just as inappropriate on this particular planet. Walking through the forest, they find themselves at a twenty-first-century high school.

The planet will continue to change locations, making one appropriate for each of the crew members to have a close call with impending doom. Though it seems like Grimes gets the brunt of it. Everyone else has relatively quick brushes, while Grimes gets a double in the first setting, then has to do all the work in the second.

The episode’s also got more “we moved to Hulu late” commercial breaks than any of the previous entries and doesn’t fit the “mini-movie” or extended episode vibe of the two previous episodes this season. It’s stretched to fit its hour, not scrunched. Given the eventual reveals—which both drain the dramatic heft of the proceedings—it’s doubly pointless filler material.

There’s some good acting, at least. Grimes gets the most to do in a while, ditto Macon. MacFarlane gets a Jim Kirk moment, which is fun, though otherwise, he and Palicki are in the background.

Jon Cassar’s direction is good enough. He’s not great at segueing between physical locations; it often feels like the crew’s going through a funhouse, but with poorly executed transitions. The reveal suggests the transitions should be better. Or at least different.

And then I was going to compliment how much John Debney’s score sounded like a John Williams riff, but Joel McNeely actually did the music, and Williams riffs are his whole thing, so no wonder. Music’s solid.

The problem’s the plot and the eventual reveals. If there’s a way to do this episode well, the script (credited to Cherry Chevapravatdumrong) didn’t crack it. The reveal also requires a lot of familiarity with previous “Orville” episodes, which seems like a flex for a show advertised as “New Horizons.”

But it feels most like a script intended for an ongoing broadcast television series, not one in its final (for now) season on a streaming service.

The Orville (2017) s03e02 – Shadow Realms

I guess the next episode will be the deciding point—or at least forecast it better–but this season of “The Orville” isn’t treating Penny Johnson Jerald as the “heart of the show” so much as its protagonist. This episode, like last, is mostly about her, which is excellent. Jerald’s fantastic; there’s also some subtext to nineties “Star Trek” writers (Brannon Braga for this episode, co-writing with André Bormanis) doing a show where the lead is the ship’s chief medical officer and her kids aren’t annoying.

This episode’s full of callbacks and homages, though. The last episode felt like “Orville” Star Wars at times; this episode feels like “Orville” Alien. Down to the music: John Debney does an excellent Jerry Goldsmith but peppy score for the episode.

It’s also the Borg episode. It’s also a “truth behind the religion” episode, calling back to original series “Star Trek,” and it’s also an homage to schlock sci-fi of the fifties. The monsters look like—terrifying, grotesque—rubber fifties monsters.

There’s also the episode’s “micro-movie” feel. It doesn’t feel like an extended episode or a truncated two-parter; it feels like an “Orville” adventure. The Orville Into Darkness, actually. Quite literally.

The episode begins with guest star James Read arriving on the ship to conduct negotiations with the former bad guy, current tenuous ally aliens, the Krill. The Union wants safe passage through their space to explore beyond their star empire’s borders. The Krill haven’t explored it because it’s full of soul-sucking demons with eight eyes.

The Orville crew, mostly Seth MacFarlane and Adrianne Palicki, give the religious mumbo jumbo an eye-roll, and the Krill don’t care if the ship goes off and gets soul-sucked, so they get the go-ahead. The beginning of the episode is a very “Star Trek” diplomacy bit. After that, it becomes an undiscovered frontier exploration episode—the “New Horizons” subtitle suddenly makes more sense for the season.

Well, at least for a while.

But the bigger deal is Read’s former relationship with Jerald. Twenty-five years ago, he was one of her professors and something more, but it’s not something she talks about anymore. He’s interested in rekindling; she’s not. Read’s continued interest leads to him consulting with AI robot and Jerald’s ex Mark Jackson for a sidesplitter scene.

Read’s also gung ho to accompany the ship on the exploration—at the beginning of the episode, it wasn’t clear the Orville would get the mission, but after the negotiations complete, there’s never a question of it. Maybe they cut a scene. Once guest star Victor Garber gives the okay, they’re off to the Delta Quadrant.

Or whatever.

There they discover a bitchin’ nebula and a terrifying section of empty space—the something-something Expanse, where there’s no starlight and a distress beacon going off. Going to the beacon, they find themselves on a bio-mechanical space station of some sort, unknowingly walking into an inspired Alien and Borg hybrid homage.

Jon Cassar directs the episode, doing a fine job, especially with the actors. While the first half of the episode is mostly Jerald, Read, Palicki, and I suppose MacFarlane (he’s the anti-Shatner, making room for everyone else), the second half gives the rest of the crew more to do. There’s an away mission with J. Lee and Jessica Szohr, then Peter Macon gets a bit (Scott Grimes and new cast member Anne Winters get the least—they’re the helmsmen after all—but they had more last episode). It’s a very nice balance.

The episode makes big swings in terms of character development, season baddies, and so on. The resolution’s a little abrupt, but the last scene is absolutely fantastic. No surprise, “Orville” is real good.