Justin Hartline
Summary
This episode picks up right where the last one left off, with the crew of the Orville held hostage by the Kaylons as they head for Earth. The crew cannot get any answers from their guards as to their plans for the ship. Ty, Claire’s youngest son, wants them to go to Isaac for help. Claire tells him that Isaac won’t help them because he’s made his choice and has done bad things. Ty refuses to accept this and runs off. The Kaylon guarding them tries to shoot him, but Talla jumps in the way. Captain Mercer convinces the Kaylon to let them bring her to the sickbay to be treated for her injury.
After treating Talla, the Kaylons bring the crew to the conference room. Once there, they tell the crew that they want them to assume their usual stations and get Earth to relax its defenses, leaving the planet vulnerable to attack. Captain Mercer attempts to secretly send out a distress call, but it’s intercepted by the Kaylons. To punish him, The Prime Kaylon has a crew member ejected out of the ship’s airlock, despite Isaac’s logical argument that just the threat would show the Captain what was at stake and that killing the crew member might only further the Captain’s resolve to resist. After this, The Prime Kaylon has a private talk with Isaac, during which he accuses Isaac of having sympathy for humanity.
Meanwhile, still trapped in the hold, the crew discusses options to meet the Kaylon threat. First officer Kelly Grayson points out that while the Union fleet doesn’t have a shot on their own, they may be able to beat back the Kaylon attack if they can secure the help of the Krill, a long-time enemy of the Union. The Krill and the Planetary Union may be enemies, but as fellow organic species, the Kaylon will also try and destroy them and neither species has a chance facing them alone.
They secure this escape, by sending Yaphit through the ventilation system to secure some weapons. While the crew’s revolt is quickly put down, Kelly and the ship’s helmsman Gordon Malloy barely manage to escape aboard a shuttle. The Kaylons dispatch one of their Weapons arrays after the shuttle. After the departure, the crew decide that they have to get a message to the Planetary Union to warn them of the impending attack. Yaphit says he can make it to the communications hub through the ventilation system, but he needs another crew member to help him scramble the signal.
Reluctantly, Claire agrees to let Ty go, realizing that the crew has no other option and that if they can’t find some way to survive the attack they will all be killed anyway. After sending out the message, they both get discovered by two Kaylons. Yaphit manages to disable the one by seeping into its body and shorting it out, but in the process gets hurt himself. The other Kaylon manages to capture Ty before he can escape. While this is happening, Kelly and Malloy manage to escape into Krill space, where they promptly get captured by the Krill.
At first the Krill believe that the two are trying to lead them into a trap, however they become convinced when they get attacked by the weapons array sent out by the Kaylons. The Prime Kaylon calls Isaac and orders him to kill Ty. Isaac tries to reason with the Prime Kaylon, but the robotic leader tells him that if he doesn’t do it he will have him deactivated. Isaac draws his weapon (laser blasters that come out of his eyes), but instead of killing Ty, he takes out Kaylon Prime along with the rest of the Kaylons on the bridge.
Isaac then releases an electromagnetic pulse that disables all of the other Kaylons on the ship, including himself. Ty frees the rest of the crew who take back control of the ship. They arrive back on Earth to see that the Planetary Union has received their message and assembled a fleet. The Orville joins the Earth forces and they engage the Kaylons, but take heavy losses. Just as it seems they are going to lose, the Krill arrive and assist the Union in driving off the Kaylons who retreat. The Krill depart under the agreement that they and the Union now have a common enemy.
The crew assembles around Issac’s unconscious body. Half of them think that they should leave him disabled, but the Captain decides to try and fix him. Yaphit, having apparently survived his last journey into a Kaylon volunteers to go into and restart Isaac, which he does. Captain Mercer has a meeting with Admiral Halsey about what to do about Isaac. Admiral Halsey suggests that they either deactivate him or mine him for data, but Captain Mercer persuades him to let Isaac stay on the Orville.
Analysis
This might be controversial to admit here, among fans of this great show, but I am not a Trekkie. I’ve seen the new movies, but I have never watched any of the shows. That said, I am a big fan of Star Wars, and the space dogfights in this episode would have felt right at home on the big screen. The special effects budget for this episode alone must have been massive compared to previous episodes, and they did a really good job with it.
There are some fans who will be disappointed by this direction this episode has taken. Isaac catching feelings and turning on his own kind was always the most clichéd and also the most likely scenario. If you do feel that way, I can understand it, but I respectfully disagree. I think Seth McFarlane nodded to that in a conversation Claire has with Isaac at the end of this episode. When Isaac says he can’t ever go home, Claire responds by saying that “home is where you make it”. Isaac says that that is a cliché, but Claire tells him that clichés get endlessly repeated for a reason. Regardless of whether the story has been done before, it’s still a good story.
Claire herself, was awesome in this episode. The scenes between her and her son were emotional and very well done. I especially liked the last scene with her and Isaac. Isaac mentions that he is alone now. Claire tells him that he will have to be alone for now, but humans practice forgiveness given time. That she can acknowledge that she will probably be able to forgive him while still being mad at him is one of my favorite things about Claire as a character. This reminds me of how she wished him well despite his leaving in the last episode. How she handles her emotions makes her so much more complex and interesting and makes her the perfect person to help Isaac come to terms with his when he’s ready to accept them.
Yaphit and Ty were real heroes in this episode. Previously relegated to humorous side plots, mostly involving his trying and failing to seduce Claire, Yaphit never had the chance to show his bravery before. He risked his life multiple times in this episode and almost sacrificed his life to try and help Ty escape from the Kaylons. I wonder if this will change Yaphit as a character, or if it will at least change his relationship with Claire. This was also only the second time that Ty had ever been in any danger on the show. His willingness to try and help the crew reminded me of an Episode 1 Anakin Skywalker (in a good and much more believable way).
I also think that this episode had a bit of a twist on the robot gains emotions storyline. It’s impossible to deny at this point that Kaylons, as a whole, have emotions. I said last episode that it felt like the Prime Kaylon reacted to the Orville’s crew with scorn. This time, he barely tries to mask it. For one thing, when he reveals that Isaac was built after their creators were destroyed, he says that even though he was programmed with the data about what their creators did to them, he cannot understand what it was like, because he wasn’t there.
If emotions are not a thing, why would knowing about an event and being there be different? As he talks about what was done to his race, he is making an emotional plea, something that I’m sure he would deny if it was pointed out to him. This means that there’s another reason besides his own feelings for Isaac to turn on his race. Now I’m not going to say that Isaac wanted to kill Ty or that he didn’t care for him. I think it’s pretty obvious that that’s not the case.
What I am saying is that Isaac had presented logical reasons for the Prime Kaylon not to kill crew members several times and the Prime Kaylon insisted on death anyway. The Prime Kaylon also accused Isaac of having sympathy for the humans (something he should not have thought was possible) and singled Isaac out to be Ty’s executioner because he thought that he was compromised.
There is hypocrisy in saying that organic beings are too emotional when you are also guilty of that yourself. I think that if the Kaylons can acknowledge that, then there may be a solution to the hostilities between biological and mechanical life that doesn’t involve the total destruction of one side.
Justin Hartline has a degree in Chemistry and puts his science knowledge to use as an investigator at a liquid coating company. His Dorky credentials include a love of Science Fiction (especially Star Wars), Fantasy (especially Game of Thrones), and superhero (especially Marvel) genres. He’s also a big fan of Nintendo games!
Contact: Twitter
