The Orville
Season 3
Almost-live-reviewing here, let’s see what we think of each episode as we do the daily(ish) binge watch…
Episode 1 - In the aftermath of the battle there is resentment aboard the Orville about the reinstatement of Isaac to active duty. The initial dream / battle sequence was a bit long and tedious (don’t spend all the budget on special effects for episode 1 guys). The story was OK, and it was a good way to introduce Charly as the new navigator, although again the testing of the new little runabout was too long and ultimately a bit pointless, it didn’t advance the plot at all. In general I don’t think they are making good use of the extra running time so far.
Episode 2 - an opportunty to explore uncharted space leads to an unfortunate alien infection - despite the warnings of the Krill. Mildly interesting little bit of back story between Dr. Finn and Paul the admiral but again this episode was just too long (I did skip some of the corridor chase scenes). Other than the personal relationships this episode was very derivative, which is ironic for a show that derives almost everything from Star Trek, but in this case they also brought in all “The Thing” style horror tropes, which I personally dislike so much. And no-one seemed to give a toss about the loss of all the expendable crew members turned in aliens and then variously shot, virus-ed and broken into pieces by the security chief. All seems to be going a bit heartless and they forgot the fun and banter that made previous seasons so good.
Episode 3 - well, that was much better! The crew investigate a once barren planet now apparently teeming with an advanced civilisation. A genuinely intriging puzzle piece, nicely acted by the various away teams and some clever mis-direction in the plot twists. There were even some funny bits with Gordon almost regaining his season 2 mojo. The big reveal at the end was a nice call back to a previous episode and the motivation for all the illusions was interesting, plus there are hints of further contact with the Q continuum! Sorry, I mean inhabitants of the multi-phasic planet…
Episode 4 - this served to move the story arc along on the grand galactic stage rather than focussing on our favourite crew. The sets and the CGI planet of the Krill were very impressive, as were those of future New York, and I did like the multi-racial cast of ‘Annie’. I’m not a big fan of space battles they are cheap in narrative terms (even if expensive in CGI terms). In this case the battle didn’t achieve anything on either side and as usual, no-one seen to care about lives or ships lost. Would have better writing perhaps to have the fleets stand-off facing each other and to extract the landing party by some stealthy means rather than the Star Wars derivative speeder chase - also rather lazy. Too much noise and explosions not enough smart writing.
Watch this space for more…