I was screaming every minute for everyone to stop being such shitlib robo racists and it never stopped and they never even got a real reprimand for their utterly abhorrent behavior (which fully vindicated the Kaylons' views of biological life btw, like, they literally cannot separate isaac from the rest of his species and wish they could hate him to death, real classy). I kept wanting at least SOMEBODY to get sent to the brig or something, but woops, they didn't even get some b.s. sensitivity training or other slap on the wrist.
The captain even goes like "yeah I agree with you i'm a little robo racist" like what the fuck seth MacFarlane, people told me this season would be better and this is like 20 steps backwards. How hard is it to double down when Ensign Scratched-Liberal tells you Isaac's heroic betrayal of his own people, at great cost to himself, was "too little too late" because people died? Guess what ensign, if it weren't for him everyone would be fucking dead, you included!
Isaac is literally only guilty of being a spy and they just let this bullshit about him being responsible for these deaths fly without real argument. Isaac only directly killed other Kaylons, you're welcome dipshits! Yeah he was a spy but if it weren't him, it would have been another unit, and they should fucking pray it would make the same decisions Isaac did, because if not, good bye. Extinction. They act like Isaac told them to declare exterminatus when they make it obvious the Kaylons were gearing up for that anyway. Every single person on that ship indirectly or directly owes Isaac their life and that should be drilled into their heads in fucking reeducation camps if necessary.
And then they hinge his recovery on Ensign Racist Cracker, and her magic fucking brain, deciding to save him. I wish so badly the episode had ended with her asking to go back to her post only for her to be told she's still fired for refusing a direct order. At least SOME kind of reprimand for her gross attitude, especially when she leaves with another snide fucking comment after her magic brain helps fix him. But nope, she Did the Thing so her almost letting him die a permanent death because she's a fucking bigot is forgiven.
I'm really hoping they just wanted to get this tension about him being a Kaylon out of the way in one episode because if the rest of this season has people being petty dicks to Isaac because they're bigots incapable of handling their own trauma i'm gonna lose it
I do not recall Cochrane wanting sex slaves? Or even being libertarian in any sense except for living in a collapsed state
I wonder how many actors read for a part and realize that not only are they reading a villian role but that the role was created to shit on a real person who could use to be knocked down a few pegs and just bring their own silverware when they start eating the scenery?
This is a solid take, and thanks for the effort dissecting it. I'll say I'm not much of a ST movie guy so I haven't had the time to really go through it. I just watch ds9 over and over again until I get bored then tng for a season then back on the ds9 train to check in and make sure worf and O'Brien are doing alright
But, from what I've seen of it. You seem to be definitely doing a good job critiquing what's going on there and it's helpful for my Trekkie ass perspective.
Why can't more stuff be like the Foundation series (at least the first 3 books). The whole plot of that series is the unstoppable force of societal and collective power. The conditions of the empire lead to its own demise, it's predicted (not brought about!) by Hari Seldon. The whole concept of psychohistory is basically a sci-fi version of dialectical materialism. The great men in the series aren't great men so much as they're the ones who happen to be in the right place at the right time as the inevitable social crises of the developing Foundation society come to fruition. Something that a lot of them end up realizing later.
I do think that eventually it's revealed that in the background there were thousands and thousands of psycho-historians planning out the history of the Foundation, but even then it's a much more compelling way to approach the history of an entire planet/galaxy than just saying "ah yes, then one individual came along and singlehandedly changed the course of Galactic history"
I love Star Trek and the Orville, but their politics are often pretty perverse, even though their values are generally okay and sometimes they have excellent surface-level critiques of capitalism. I hate the historical background for the setting especially; In a later episode of the third season, Kelly says that humanity only overcame capitalism when the invention of industrial replicators made scarcity a thing of the past, making competition irrelevant, and then less than a couple minutes later she says with a straight face that humans overcame capitalism just by “becoming better people.” That same episode in the Orville pretty explicitly condemns any attempt to work towards socialism or communism before the availability of post-scarcity tech, which is weird, because their justification for the prime directive is that too many alien civilizations in the past went boom because Union explorers gave them technology they weren’t ready for.
huh... I may have to rewatch that episode.
spoiler
My takeaway from Kelly's story was that before Earth people figured out (or were given) replicators the people were already kinda on their way towards a more global solidarity with each other. So when the tech came about, instead of hording it, it was shared with everybody for everybody's benefit. Then the Union explorer fleets go out and stumble across a civilization at a point mirroring Earth's recent past. Thinking "Hey, we've been there and it sucked, how about we give them a magic box that makes anything you want" and hoping it would be used for things like clean water, food, medicine to be shared by the people of that alien world. Unfortunately the gift of the tech didn't keep them from wiping themselves out. Now, the Union can't know for sure that the addition of the tech caused them to whip themselves out but also cannot rule out that their interference had no effect. So the default position winds up being, "Stay the fuck out of the affairs of pre space flight species" because the first time we tried they went extinct a few years later.
Yeah, the eternal conflict. Do you play god and accept the consequences or do you stay in the background and let whatever happens over there just happen?
It's pretty rough, yes. It's the classic case of the main cast suddenly becoming dumber so the episode can theme itself on the importance of learning something, despite it being completely out of character for everyone.
The season does pick up, though. By next episode, Isaac is basically back to being one of the crew, except for the new character who is constantly taking potshots at him.
It irked me too but I absolutely love the Orville so I kept watching anyway.
Yeah I'm not going to stop watching since it's the best new star trek we're gonna get but
By next episode, Isaac is basically back to being one of the crew, except for the new character who is constantly taking potshots at him.
Ughhhhhhhhhh my god. She should be sent to the brig until she gets over it, that's what Kirk would do :angery:
I guess they need to keep her around because of her magical 4th dimensional brain
I guess they need to keep her around because of her magical 4th dimensional brain
More or less. I think the writers wanted someone who couldn't just let it go that there's a Kaylon on board, and didn't want to turn one of the main cast into a bigot.
Ugh but then they have Gordon being like "yeah I agree with you" and I thought he was like taking part in a sting to figure out who did the graffiti (like when he was playing along with his friend who destroyed those krill ships) but, no, he was just agreeing with her :yea:
At least John's still cool, keeps his fork with him, literally ran out on some alien lady lovin' to go maybe save his friend, A+
I was a bit conflicted about this part of the season 3 plot.
Either 1) the humans who were about to be rendered extinct by the robots would just act like nothing happened and it would be something that would have driven me batty.
Or 2) the humans, when faced with an extinction level threat act pretty hurt and defensive after narrowly surviving only due to a member of the robots decided to side with humans which would be frustrating to keep watching throughout the season but more realistic.
spoiler
There are some explanations for some people's actions and resolutions by the end of the season, so I can't wait to see how you react. I didn't find them the best or most satisfying but it does give some "future humanity is still messy bitches" color which I do respect.
I agree, I think the issue with that episode is that it's very hard to calibrate that reaction.
It should feel like there's this dark growing racism brewing among portions of the crew and society in general as a reaction to such a traumatic event, but that the level heads are simultaneously not accepting that shit but also sort of questioning themselves, because being targeted for genocide is a powerful corrupting influence on your own ethics.
It just sort of felt like they didn't thread the needle very well on that. It was still a good episode and the rest of the season is even better.
Yeah. I'd be interested in hearing stories from the writers room about this show.
Yeah! there was that post a while back about how this was better than TNG, so I tried to watch season 3. It's so shit and poorly constructed, I had to stop. That whole "magic brain girl" was so jarring! oh she's got this special ability to rotate shapes in different dimensions in her head!
also, I think it's weird how everyone is like a casual alcoholic. "Oh jeez, we did a space crime today, time to blow off some steam and get blackout drunk later, lmao."
i like the casual alcoholism, I think they have a cure for actual alcoholism so they're like fuck it, let's get pissed m8s
If not a cure for alcoholism, there's definitely med tech that can quickly get rid of a hang over.
yeah they had to make the gay white lady a turbo racist and me and bf were like yelling QUICK CUT THAT RACIST HICK IN HALF WHILE NO ONES LOOKING all the time
