Review: ‘The Orville’ Loses Its Sunny Tomorrow In “Gently Falling Rain” – TrekMovie.com

2022-06-24 22:55:36 By : Ms. Alice Lou

| June 24, 2022 | By: Dénes House 8 comments so far

The Orville Season 3 (New Horizons), Episode 4 – Debuted Thursday, June 23, 2022 Written by: Brannon Braga & Andre Bormanis and directed by: Jon Cassar

As the Planetary Union moves toward signing a treaty with their longtime foes, the Krill, everything seems to be moving in a positive direction. But a change in the political winds on Krill strands Captain Mercer and his delegation on the wrong side of the new administration, which is headed by a familiar face. Can a lasting peace be salvaged from a mess of demagoguery and fear? Can Mercer and his friends even survive? And how does this strange child fit in?

The fourth episode of The Orville’s third season is a fascinating story, with fantastic makeup and CGI effects, and some compelling performances. It deepens the universe of The Orville without significantly broadening it, and it links up with contemporary issues in a way that is at times thoughtful, at times hamfisted, and at times deeply weird. The result is a mixed bag–mostly good and worthwhile, but with some puzzling decisions along the way.

President Alcuzan (Bruce Boxleitner), Lt. Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes), Speria Balask (Lisa Banes), Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber), Charly Burke (Anne Winters), and Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane)

Top-level criticism time–out of the first four episodes of this third season, three of them have involved returning to stories begun in the previous two seasons. Only episode 2, “Shadow Realms” has involved exploring new worlds and situations. This has the benefit of deepening our understanding of the universe of The Orville, but it doesn’t expand it much. In some fandoms this is known as “small universe syndrome,” as every major character and situation in some way is picking up a thread from before.

This episode picks up the Krill threads that started in episode 106, “Krill,” in which Captain Mercer and Gordon Malloy infiltrated a Krill battlecruiser to try to steal a copy of the Anhkana, the Krill holy book, in an effort to understand them better, but in the process wound up killing the entire ship’s crew to prevent the unleashing of a powerful bomb over a Union colony. They spared only a schoolteacher, Teleya, and her classroom of children, but in the process, Teleya was radicalized against humanity. In episode 204, “Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes,” Captain Mercer discovered his new girlfriend was really Teleya in disguise, seeking revenge on him for killing her brother and shipmates the previous season. Mercer and Teleya have to cooperate to reach rescue from a dangerous planet, and Ed releases Teleya to his people, hoping he’s established common ground.

In this episode, Teleya has become the voice of a populist uprising against the Krill Supreme Chancellor, Korin, and is running against him in the current Krill election. Her demagogic speeches warn of the “looming nightmare” of “the inevitable erosion of our ideals and our identity” if “the false prophet” is re-elected. With every speech, she paints the election as an existential battle for the Krill people between the forces of goodness, religion, and morality and traitorous enemies of all that is decent. Korin and his cronies are not just political opponents, they are “enemies,” “traitors,” and “heretics,” and they don’t just need to be defeated at the ballot box, they need to be executed at the hands of “justice.”

There is clearly some intent on the part of the writers to comment on recent American (and international) politics, depicting some of the dangers of political extremism and polarization. But it avoids hanging a lantern directly on the point, and never goes as far as Mirror Lorca’s “Make the Empire great again!” slogan in Star Trek Discovery season one. Mercer and company experience the joys of falsified videos painting political opponents as vicious evils, the Krill calling them “influence operations.” Mercer admits it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not in that environment, a sentiment that I’m sure many in the audience can relate to.

When Teleya unexpectedly wins the election for Supreme Chancellor, the Union delegation–consisting of Union President Alcazar (Bruce Boxleitner, unrecognizable in thick alien makeup, but with his unmistakable voice and charisma intact), Senator Balask (Lisa Banes, former Trek guest star who died between filming this episode and its release, and to whom the episode is dedicated), Captain Mercer, Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber), and Ensign Charly Burke–is caught between the two administrations. I thought this was a compelling moment, and found myself wondering what that would be like, to come at the invitation of one administration, and suddenly find yourself the prisoner of the next.

Charly Burke (Anne Winters), Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane), President Alcuzan (Bruce Boxleitner), Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber), and Speria Balask (Lisa Banes)

Teleya’s actions upon assuming power are somewhat confusing. She first establishes her power base by assassinating former Chancellor Korin with a knife before a massive cheering Krill crowd that is apparently always gathered around the Krill government building. She then has a sneering conversation with Mercer, to establish for herself that he is actually part of the Union delegation. Then she orders her guards to take him back to his cell to prepare for his execution–which they immediately do not do, apparently obeying earlier, unspoken orders from her to take him back to his ship. Those guards are then bushwhacked by other Krill, who take Mercer to meet his half human, half-Krill daughter, whom Teleya has hidden away to avoid political embarrassment.

This whole sequence is long and confusing. It gives the viewer a wonderful, on-the-ground look at Krill society, which is great, but the motivations of the characters are unclear and at points specifically contradicted by clear dialogue. There’s a meat-on-a-stick salesman who confusingly won’t take no for an answer, and all of it is made more obscure by the fact that Krill costuming and makeup make it hard to tell one Krill from another. Mercer is shuffled around in a robe and hood to disguise his humanness, but because no Krill on the street wears anything on their heads, or wears a robe, it actually only serves to draw a target on him.

Mercer and Teleya’s daughter, Anaya, is a beautiful girl with huge eyes, and in the year, year-and-a-half since she was born, has grown to the size and maturity of a human nine-year-old. And when Mercer confronts Teleya again, and the show brings up the topic of abortion, it is handled about as badly as a show can, treating the question quickly and with zero depth, and then forgetting that they ever talked about it in the first place.

Capt. Ed Mercer with his daughter Anaya

The rest of the cast of the show are involved throughout in space battles and rescue missions. There’s a conflict between the Orville and three Krill battlecruisers that is intense and makes sense, and that serves as the beginning of a “Directive 21” mini-plot-mystery that pays off near the end. Malloy gets to try an “expanding helix maneuver” that he made up on the spot and leaves Bortus (of the famously iron Moclan stomach) losing his lunch.

Then there’s a huge fleet-on-fleet battle commanded by Kelly Hu’s Admiral Ozawa, that is almost on the scale of the Battle for Earth in Season Two’s “Identity, Part Two.” In that battle, the goal seems to be to effect a military rescue of the delegation, but there’s no dialogue or visuals that indicate how a military rescue might be underway. “Directive 21” is mentioned as their fallback plan, but in the end, it seems to have been the only plan actually in motion. As a result, this battle seems wasteful and perhaps misguided. Not every military objective is worth the destruction of half a dozen ships and their crews.

Finally, there’s a ground-based car chase through the streets of Dalakos, the Krill capital city. “Directive 21” turns out to be an in-disguise rescue attempt by John Lamarr and Claire Finn, infiltrating the Krill government building, rescuing the delegation with some light grenades, and then flying their hover-car back to their cloaked shuttle. This is a thrilling chase sequence that unfolds in parallel to the gigantic fleet battle taking place in orbit.

Each battle is cool, and the effects are great, but taken together, this all feels like a bit much. When every episode is kitted out to be the equivalent of a feature film, every climax has to be super-explosive and has to outdo the previous episode. That can quickly become tiring, and I’m sure will be exhausting for people binge-watching Season three.

Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) and Lt. Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes)

There are a lot of great pieces in this episode, and everyone involved seems to be at the top of their game. But there are also a number of pieces that don’t fit, which makes the overall picture confusing at parts. All in all, it’s probably the second- or third-best episode of the season so far, with “Mortality Paradox” as the best so far, and “Shadow Realms” as the worst.

Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane)

Ambassador K.T.Z.(John Fleck)

Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) and Charly Burke (Anne Winters)

Keep up with all The Orville news and analysis on TrekMovie.

It was an ok episode i did find that Captain Mercer having a child with Teleya much like Ash Tyler/Voq in Star Trek Discovery finding out he had a child with L’rell. In fact a lot of this episode reminded me a bit of the Discovery episode s2 e3 ‘Point of Light’ even the political discourse with Korin/Teleya reminded me of L’rell dealing with Kol-Sha. I still can’t stand the character of Charly she doesn’t deserve to be on the bridge let alone wear that uniform. I hope we get to see more of Mercers child Anaya and have her aboard the Orville eventually.

They really need to give Charley a personality beyond just being mean to Isaac.

The first few minutes of this episode sucked, but it got much better once everything went to hell on Krill. Overall, this episode felt more like a movie than an episode and it was certainly better than this week’s Star Trek Strange New World.

I am 99% certain that in the saloon scene, Seth MacFarlane is wearing his costume from A Million Ways to Die in the West.

Denes House – “Mortality Paradox” Though maybe yes there was some question as to the morals of what Dinal did…

This episode had everything in it from light comedy, to drama, to a space battle and car chase. Crazy good production values . . . like a whole movie. But the most important thing to me was that the writing was sound. You could close your eyes, imagine different uniforms and terms, and it would feel like good old Star Trek. Right down to a theme where bad things were happening, but there was a hopeful and optimistic message of peace. <3

The problem with the episode was how on the nose they felt they needed to be in their critique of Trumps election. The government in place is sure it will win until the last moment when districts go in favor of Trump.. i mean Teleya! The “lock her up” parallels with Teleya promising to punish those in charge, and then immediately taking the previous Chancellor prisoner. The “fake news” stuff with the manufactured videos showing the opponents doing horrible things. Even the religiosity of the new regime mirroring (I guess) the perceived religiosity of those that voted for Trump… Admittedly in a world where everyone is religious to some extent or another. The show has never been subtle about these things but wow my entire screen is one big nail head and the hammer is repeatedly smashing it.

The second problem was ofc that Teleya and Ed could have a child together… two separate species on two separate planets evolving from two separate events… We can’t even have children with orangutans and they are nearly genetically identical to us… This is laughable I cannot enjoy such silliness. I had been sort of hoping for a 4th season but man atm this episode has got me questioning my own sanity.

Teleya (Krill woman). Xelaya (Alara’s homeworld). Seleya (mountain on Vulcan). How about a little variety?

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