The Orville S01E04, If the Stars Should Appear
This is the best episode so far, this season. Quite a bit better than a typical episode from the first season of Star Trek TNG.
Some minor spoilers ahead
Read my previous review of the Robert Heinlein novella Orphans of the Sky. As you see, the idea of a huge generations spaceship, in which the inhabitants forgot they are living on a spaceship and society turned into a theocracy, was first done by Heinlein in 1941.
The episode’s disdain for religion is classic Star Trek (and what became missing in Voyager). The best comment was by the robot Isaac, who says, “the common impulse of biological life forms to attribute the origin of the universe to an omnipotent being is most curious.” I definitely like Isaac a lot better than I ever liked Data.
While I thought that a lot of the story was too simplistic and unsubtle (but maybe not more so than a typical TOS episode), and that the black woman who plays the ship’s doctor is either a horrible actress or has really bad lines written for her (a combination of both, I think), overall it was an enjoyable episode.
I also enjoyed the opening scene showing Bortus and his spouse Clyden having marital problems. It is just always funny seeing the two of them acting like a married couple. Some of the other humor in the show seems a little out of place. But at least the show avoids the problem of a lot of Star Trek TNG which took itself too seriously.
Hopefully, down the road, there will be stories that are more original and mind-blowing and not just simplistic rehashing of old stories.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
Lion, have you ever watched Farscape? That should be the next show you watch and review. It is a lot more fun than Star Trek: Voyager. Also, this was the best episode of the Orville yet. I liked the uniforms they gave the leader’s thugs. The classically styled building reminds me of something the original Star Trek would use instead of everything being the post-modern architecture like in Voyager or Enterprise.
NotWesley
September 29, 2017 at 12:23 AM
Yes, I have watched Farscape, and have forgotten it. Muppets in space?
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 29, 2017 at 8:08 AM
Yeah, muppets in space…
NotWesley
September 29, 2017 at 12:31 PM
This was very much a rip off of the TOS episode, “For the World is Hollow and I have touched the sky.” But that’s OK. This show is pretty clearly a homage to Trek and seems to follow the formula pretty well, but with it’s own touches, and of course dropping the ridiculous Roddenberry Rule, that there shouldn’t be any interpersonal conflict between the crew, since they are so highly evolved blah blah blah…
But I do like this show so far. I would much rather live in the Orville universe than the Trek one. On the Orville, Earth pop culture rules, and even the aliens watch old Earth movies.
Mike Street Station
September 29, 2017 at 10:26 AM
http://www.silive.com/news/2017/09/in_oct_1_announcement_grimm_wi.html YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
IHTG
September 29, 2017 at 11:12 AM
The guido is back!
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 29, 2017 at 11:39 AM
MacFarlane’s treatment of religion in this episode is disappointing. The subject of religion has been addressed a thousand different ways in science fiction. This episode adds nothing to that literature. Surely he could have done better than depicting the religionists as mustache-twirling baddies. MacFarlane should have shown the Reformers to be equally violent and power-mad, if not more so. That would have made the episode more morally complex and true-to-life.
Comic Book Nerd
September 29, 2017 at 3:40 PM
For people who missed the Heinlein novel and missed the TOS episode For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky, this was a great introduction to the topic.
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 29, 2017 at 4:09 PM
“this was a great introduction to the topic.”
Not a great introduction. MacFarlane fundamentally misconceives the relationship between a religion and its alternative. He writes as if the entire history of the 20th Century (with its various experiments in applied, large-scale atheism) never took place.
Comic Book Nerd
September 30, 2017 at 1:13 AM
You’re expecting too much from a 42 minutes episode. Heinlein’s 1941 novel also didn’t include “the entire history of the 20th century”.
Star Trek is classically atheist, and Orville is holding to that tradition. Good for them.
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 30, 2017 at 8:42 AM
“You’re expecting too much from a 42 minutes episode.”
Atheism kills. It doesn’t take much to show that. MacFarlane could have shown the Reformers brandishing Kalashnikovs, shooting “facists” on sight, and locking nuns in churches to burn them alive. This would have made the story more morally complex, true-to-life, and entertaining!
Comic Book Nerd
October 1, 2017 at 12:12 AM
The belief behind Star Trek is that RELIGION kills, and that in the future mankind gets along with itself because it has thrown off the chains of superstitious belief. If you don’t like it, don’t watch Star Trek. Or shows that pay homage to Star Trek.
Lion of the Blogosphere
October 1, 2017 at 8:07 AM
“The belief behind Star Trek is that RELIGION kills”
The Inquisition killed a few thousand, and that was over a few centuries and across an entire continent. Atheists in the 20th Century killed that many before breakfast.
“in the future mankind gets along with itself because it has thrown off the chains of superstitious belief.”
Interpersonal conflict is unlikely to disappear any time soon, and certainly not because of atheism.
“If you don’t like it, don’t watch Star Trek. Or shows that pay homage to Star Trek.”
I watch because I enjoy picking the shows apart.
I watch because something can be learned from a bad example.
I watch because politics follows culture. You can ignore popular culture, but it won’t ignore you, due to its effects on the people around you. If the Orville is anything like Star Trek, it is likely to influence people who are or are likely to become influential, like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.
Comic Book Nerd
October 2, 2017 at 1:21 AM
MacFarlane is an atheist and presented the standard atheist line on religion; at best, it’s stupid, and at worse, it’s evil. I agree that a plotline showing the reformers as worse than the theocracy they overthrew would be interesting, but that’s asking too much.
And sometimes when MacFarlane speaks I hear Brian the dog.
Mike Street Station
September 29, 2017 at 11:23 PM
” I agree that a plotline showing the reformers as worse than the theocracy they overthrew would be interesting, but that’s asking too much.”
It’s never too much to ask a writer for verisimilitude.
If MacFarlane really wanted to be mischevious, he could have been more explicit about the establishment religion as a community of earth-worshipers (“Everything for Mother Earth. Nothing outside Mother Earth”) and the reformers as a band who believes (without evidence) in Something More who lives in the Great Beyond. This would nicely explain the origin and persistence of the established religion for two thousand years. (An interesting number that. What significant historical event happened approximately two years ago?)
Comic Book Nerd
September 30, 2017 at 1:26 AM
That last sentence should read, “What significant historical event happened approximately two THOUSAND years ago?”
Comic Book Nerd
September 30, 2017 at 1:34 AM
Star Trek was not atheist, in season One Kirk yelled at an alien claiming to be one of the Greek Gods, namely Apollo, that “we have one God, and we do not accept your claim to be a God.” How can you not know that?
howitzer daniel
September 30, 2017 at 8:51 PM
i didn’t think asperger’s was a real thing until…is lion a real person? a 50 y old man doing tv reviews, not a 15 year old girl? he did used to be a libertarian, and all libertarians are austistic. so this is confirmation.
ron burgundy
September 29, 2017 at 4:24 PM
The vast majority of non-elite Americans watch TV, are they all Aspergers? And what’s wrong with having Asperger’s Syndrome anyway?
If you don’t like the TV reviews, you are free to read another blog. Don’t be like NFL viewers who complain about the players disrespecting the National Anthem, but then keep watching anyway.
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 29, 2017 at 4:28 PM
“a 50 y old man doing tv reviews”
Politics exist downstream from culture. One of the great things about this blog is that it takes pop culture seriously.
Comic Book Nerd
October 1, 2017 at 12:56 AM
I think this was indeed the best episode so far. Indeed, it was actually good. The jokes sucked. MacFarlane just needs to stop being funny (except when they destroyed the enemy ship – that was mildly amusing). Sans the humor, the episode was actually interesting. I’m optimistic about this show now.
JayMan
September 29, 2017 at 7:32 PM
Maybe this kind of stuff is just a pill you have to swallow when watching sci-fi, but I can’t get over the alien race looking exactly humans except for a few doubts on their heads and speaking English. I mean, Americans and British have been separated for a few hundred years and we have noticeably different accents. Yet the earth crew and the aliens on the spaceship are indistinguishable in speech, despite having no common lineage. I don’t know if you can get over this and still tell the story.
Jeremy Cooper
September 30, 2017 at 2:28 AM
It’s classic Star Trek that all of the aliens speak English and look almost-human. And since Orville doesn’t take it itself seriously, it can get away with stuff like that.
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 30, 2017 at 8:44 AM
I can’t judge The Orville for doing the same thing that virtually every SF TV show has done for decades. I would prefer that aliens actually look alien, but you could never get through a single episode of Star Trek if you had such exacting standards.
Mike Street Station
September 30, 2017 at 10:34 PM
Seems like the language thing would be solvable by just telling us that in the future we all get implants in our heads that serve as universal translators. I think that existed in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Did Star Trek ever have anything like that?
Jeremy Cooper
October 1, 2017 at 10:28 AM
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