Justin Hartline
Summary
The episode opens with Isaac watching Claire’s kids. When she gets back, she tells them about her and Isaac’s relationship. Ty, her younger son, is thrilled. He has always loved Isaac ever since they were all marooned together back in Season 1, Episode 8, “Into the Fold”. Marcus, while still happy, is much more reserved. Shortly after this conversation, Isaac collapses. Claire takes him to the medical bay where her scanners can’t find anything wrong with him. John Lamar, The ship’s chief engineer offers to open him up to try and figure out what’s wrong with him, but Claire insists that as Isaac is a sentient being this is a medical and not an engineering issue. Captain Mercer takes the Orville to Kaylon 1 to see if the Kaylons can help Isaac.
Upon arrival, they’re told by a Kaylon that there’s nothing wrong with Isaac and that he was deactivated remotely because his mission, to collect data for the Kaylons, was complete; which surprisingly, Isaac agrees with (after the Captain convinces them to reactivate him). Claire is understandably angry, because she thought that she meant something to him. She asks him to at least say goodbye to her kids. He doesn’t see the point, but agrees when she tells him to pretend that he cares. In the meantime, Captain Mercer has a meeting with another Kaylon representative, who tells the Captain that they see no advantage in joining with the Union and brings up humanity’s violent past. Unable to come to an agreement, the Kaylon says that they will consider this as they continue to analyze the data.
Afterwards, the Crew throws a surprise party for Isaac, which is a bit awkward with the tension between him and Claire. While she is pissed at him, she also understands that this is just the way that he was built and that she wishes the best for him. Ty gives Isaac a picture that he drew of him and their family to remember them by. Isaac says that he cannot forget things stored in his memory which Ty does not take well and runs off. He runs off the ship and gets himself lost
While scanning the planet, the crew discovers that the Kaylons are building some kind of weapons array. When Claire and a couple crew members go out to bring Ty back, they are horrified to discover heaps of corpses, which prompts Captain Mercer to confront the Kaylons and Isaac. This results in the Kaylons boarding the Orville and violently putting down security. They herd the remaining crew together and set off for Earth trailed by a couple of the weapons arrays that they were building earlier.
Analysis
This week brings us another Isaac episode. Ordinarily I’d be thrilled, but given the dark turn this episode took, I have mixed feelings about it. After the way this show has skirted around Isaac’s backstory and the Kaylon race in particular, I hadn’t expected this part of the story to come to a head so quickly. I love Isaac as a character, but I have no idea how or if he can come back from this. I’ve been trying to keep my summary segment short, but a lot happened in this episode that needs to be unpacked.
I’d like to start by talking about the Kaylons themselves. Far be it from me to defend genocide, but the Kaylons actually bring up some good points. While Captain Mercer insists that humanity’s violent history is in the past, Admiral Halsey made it clear earlier in the episode that the Union wants Kaylon technology to use in their fight against the Krill. Denying violent intentions while on the brink of war comes across as more than a bit insincere. Though to be fair, accusing another race of possessing a malevolent nature while standing atop the mass grave of the forbearers who you slaughtered is also hypocritical at best. As for the genocide, we do not really know the circumstances behind it. How did the Forbearers treat the Kaylons? When the Kaylon brought up the Mr. Potatohead thing, he reacted with something akin to scorn. Did this come out of how the Kaylons were treated in the past? Who started fighting first?
The answers to these questions are unknown, and while they wouldn’t justify complete destruction, they might provide some context to the decision, though the fact that the Kaylons consider such questions to be irrelevant does supply some context on its own. I do wonder why they bothered to keep Isaac around after he said his goodbyes to the crew because, originally they planned on dismantling him for parts. Did they keep him to use to manipulate the crew? But then, why did they leave the majority of the crew alive anyway? I suppose it could be for in case the ship is scanned for life signs, but the technological superiority of the Kaylons makes me doubt that they couldn’t find another way around that.
Claire is definitely the character who has the most at stake. As Isaac’s “girlfriend”, she is the character who was closest to him and she has trusted him with her family on multiple occasions. For being generally unemotional, Claire has certainly been on quite the rollercoaster. She did even admit that she loves Isaac while he was unconscious. Her raw emotion during her encounters with him remain some of the best acting that she’s done on the show and were also among the best written. I love that she was able to set aside her anger at Isaac’s leaving to wish him well at his goodbye party.
Isaac is the real wild card here. His face and voice haven’t become any easier to read, so the only thing we are left with is what he does. I think it’s telling that he refused to answer Claire’s questions twice during the episode. The second time was when Claire asked him if he agreed with the Kaylon’s decision to destroy Earth. I’m not sure if this was because he agrees and is too ashamed to admit it or if he disagrees but can’t do so publically, though I hope it’s the latter. The first time was when she asked him if he knew about the genocide. Instead of answering that particular question, he tells them about the genocide which may seem to answer the question at first glance, but it makes me wonder if he knew about it before that moment. It’s unusual for Isaac to give anything other than a precise answer to the question asked. His volunteering information about the genocide when that wasn’t directly asked about is suspicious.
Isaac was sent as an observer, so it’s hard to say how much of his own people’s history he was given when he went on this mission. The other thing is that it’s unclear how old Isaac even is. Was he even around when the Kaylons killed their creators? Did he have a part in that decision? I think not. It makes the most sense to me that he was purposely built for this mission and given the utilitarian nature of the Kaylons, it would make sense that he was only given the details of his mission and may not even have known their full plan from the beginning. In fact, the Kaylons may have suspected that the Union could have extracted any information that they gave Isaac, so it would have made more sense logically not to tell him anything they didn’t want the Union to know.
If true, it would morally absolve many of the actions that Isaac took spying on the Union for the Kaylons. The other thing that gets to me is Ty’s insistence that Isaac has emotions. His point that Isaac has done things for the Finn family even when he doesn’t have to rings true and is actually something that Claire brought up herself in Season 2, Episode 6, “A Happy Refrain”. I have liked Isaac as a character since season 1 episode 8 “Into the Fold” and have loved his interactions with the Finn family in particular. With all the time spent developing his character this season, I doubt that they intend to write him out, but I would personally be devastated if they did. Of course, redeeming Isaac is the more safe and predictable route. Perhaps instead Isaac stays a villain and shows up in future episodes to harass the crew?
The big question is where do they go from here? Even if the Orville can defeat the Kaylon aboard their ship (and I don’t see how they can without help), the Kaylons have vowed to destroy all organic life. The Planetary Union will have to go to war with the Kaylons who are technologically superior. One place I could see this going is to have the Union recruit the Krill to help fight the Kaylons. War has always made for strange bedfellows and bitter enemies joining forces to face a larger mutual threat is a common trope in this kind of fiction. While a war would be an interesting change of pace for the show, I worry that it would spoil the utopian theme that the show has going for it right now. A combat of that scale could change everything!
