When I first started this show I found it to be a really awkward mix of comedy and seriousness. It had some jokes thrown it at the most inopportune times as some kind of comic relief from a really serious situation. Perhaps the first half of the first season was actually a bit rough or maybe the show just grew on me, but by season 2 I found myself loving this show.
To me it seems as every bit as comfy, intellectually interesting and even funny as some classic Star Treks while still clearly being its own thing. I wish more comfy space shows like this would get made.
What are your thoughts on The Orville? Also I miss Alara.
I really liked it.
The early seasons were less serious than later ones. But overall, it did well with serious social issues and addresses some very relevant topics.
The storyline with Topah was absolutely amazing. At every step, each character was portrayed well, and respectfully. It's rare that there is a story like that that still has conflict without having a clear villain.
The time travel episode with Gordon was also especially brutal with some great performances from everyone on screen.
There were a few misses. I found the Isaac / Doctor relationship... forced, even if it did bring us the best line in decades ("As I am incapable of stuttering, I must conclude that you heard me."). I also don't think I'm alone with disliking the Charlie character in season 3.
I loved how Klyden grew through that story line, realizing what his prejudice was costing him and growing!
The Klyden storyline has so many nuances to it. It's not just that Klyden is a bigot. "He" was also re-gendered so he knows what Topa is going through and feeling far better than anyone else. A big part of his intransigence comes from a place of, "If I had to deal with this trauma, so should everyone else." It helps explain his extreme position without letting him off the hook and I really liked that.
For sure. I'm calling him "he", because thats what he appears to identify with.
Hes undeniably a bigiot at the beginning, but i think a lot of that comes from... a gamblers fallacy, worrying what hes already invested in his identity, and knowing he might have been wrong, and it reaches a crescendo, before Klyden is forced to realize hes made the wrong decision, and rejoins his husband and daughter.
so good.
I think it's deeper than that. Klyden exists to represent Moclan society as a whole. He is the stand-in for their traditions, world, history, and culture.
We, the audience, are presented at the onset with a society that is male-only. The ship's crew, along with us, are sort of hand-waved away when asking questions about how things work in the bedroom, but on the whole, no one seems to have a problem with their culture. In fact, we even see this male-only species reproduce successfully before we learn that there are the potential for female infants.
In Moclan society, being born female is an aberration. It's not a biological necessity, and, for whatever reason, the Moclan culture views "being female" as a birth defect, one that can be easily corrected. It's sort of how, today, we view children born with a clef palette. There's no good reason to keep it around, and lots of reasons to repair it as soon as possible. Klyden represents this mindset and viewpoint perfectly.
Imagine someone fighting tooth-and-nail to not repair a cleft palette, or some other easily-fixable birth defect. Imagine them standing up in court and declaring that this obvious flaw is something that no one has the right to fix. Klyden is, from his own experience, outraged, and furious. Put yourself in his shoes, and his actions have nothing to do with bigotry, or hate. He's not angry at his child for being female, or at his husband for supporting her decision to become female. He's mad at the world because his entire world-view is challenged by his family.
In fact, he sees his culture, history, society, and even legal system saying that he is right, that the child should be male, and then he sees his husband and child, serving on a Union starship, talking nonsense about a "choice." That line where he says he wishes she'd never been born wasn't anger at her. It was anger that he is being forced to choose, and no matter which thing he chooses, he will loose a huge part of himself -- either his family, or his history.
And if he chooses his family, he has to confront the fact that what was done to him was just as wrong as what he did to his daughter.
Few people, even space aliens, have the emotional maturity to handle that kind of revelation in the moment without doing something regrettable.
But fuck, this kind of novel is why I love this show so much. When was the last time you had a long talk about that time Riker killed all his clones?
Well put!
I think this comparison doesn't really work. In this analogy, Topa would be going to the doctor and saying, "For some reason, my lip feels wrong to me. I can't put my finger on it but I feel like I have the wrong lip. Can you help me?"
It's a bit of a different dynamic when the person who was 'fixed' is telling you over and over again that they don't feel fixed; Rather they feel broken and don't know why.
The season 3 episode, perhaps, but remember, there was an entire episode when Topa was born in season 1. It was like, episode 3 or 4 or something early in the show, where the doctor refused to perform the surgery, and they went all the way back to Moclan. It's where we first meet that Dolly Parton female Moclan lady whose name I can't remember at the moment. This is the incident I was referencing here.
I agree on the doctor/Isaac arc (some spoilers), I thought it was all absolutely ridiculous. Isaac is only there to gather data about humanity and characterised as unfeeling and non-emotional. Then the doc pulls a fit about how he doesn't have feelings for her and everyone on the ship is behind her, ostrasising Isaac. It felt like there was no logic at all to the situation and everyone had gone bananas. The Isaac breakup scene was hands down my favourite in the show.
I think they screwed up the ending of the Gordon episode. If they'd cut from the captain and the team walking out of the door to Gordon being back on the ship packing away the phone and other things, it would have left it more to the viewers to decide if the decision was right or wrong.
Maybe.
On the flip side, the way it ended worked as a sort of "what if?" story about what Gordon is capable of.
Maybe plans for some later season involve Gordon turning on Mercer for similar reasons, again?
I don't know. Given what was taken from him, and how grateful he was that it was done, I think they took that option away.
Best part of season three is Charlie's death. Felt almost forced in a way, but not in a good way. Like Charlie is an ensign but is on the bridge because she's really smart at 4d maneuvering or something, and they bring her everywhere. Definitely great when she finally went.
The Gordon/Time travel episode was brutal. It's the episode I keep referring to when attempting to get my girlfriend to suspend her dislike of Seth McFarlane enough to give the show a shot. I will be very disappointed if there isn't a 4th episode.
All I could think with how forced Charly was as a character was like is this a producers wife or girlfriend or something? I never looked into it, but I've never seen a show introduce a new character and focus on them so hard, even to the detriment of OG cast members, before. Like they pivoted to the Charly show. Some of the plots were good like her prejudice towards Isaac's race but like why did she get introduced and become the main character in one season? Lol