After the last few episodes it's pretty clear to me that the best Star Trek talent is working on The Orville.

This is a fun show with some larger points to be made. It does so irreverently, but The Orville reflects the humanity that Gene Roddenberry wanted at the core of Star Trek.

And this was just a fantastic episode.

Paramount could learn a lot from these people.

This episode also featured Trek vets Tony Todd and F. Murray Abraham. Frakes directed Abraham in ST: Insurrection.

As soon as I heard his voice I knew it was Tony Todd (I didn't see his name in the credits). I also recognized Abraham. What a great cast for this episode! (All the Admirals together, too! Including Ted Danson.)

Right, I thought it had already been mentioned here by someone. Looks like it was in the thread for last week's show. They mentioned Frakes was directing and Sirtis would be appearing.

I kind of knew where the episode was going, but it was pretty good anyways. I really wish they would concentrate on a race other then the Moclans.

Wondering why Bortus hasn't stuck a knife in Clyden's chest yet.

Also the show is inconsistent. In the time capsule episode they appeared totally clueless about the 20/21st century yet they still make pop culture references all the time. Tuvok also said that this time period's cultural records were wiped out by some kind of cataclysm yet that doesn't seem a problem in the next episode.

Also the show is a TV show.

Not sure what your point is. Are you saying because it's on TV the world they're trying to build can be inconsistent?

It was a good follow up to the previous episode from with the same subject matter.

Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. Although I would take issue with the phrase "the world they are trying to build."

There is no contract between TV show producers and TV show watchers that the fictional world within the show be logically consistent from episode to episode.

I just watched the first five seasons of MASH. The show was noticeably inconsistent with regard to Hawkeye's background. Was he from Boston or a small town in Maine? Was his mother dead or alive? Did he have a sister?

It is okay to notice such things, and it is also okay to voice that you notice such things, but if those kinds of things bother you enough that they affect your ability to enjoy the show, then I maintain you are watching it wrong.

Why are the crew very familiar with 20th century music and movies in some episodes, and then not so much in other episodes? Because each script has its specific demands to be coherent and entertaining within itself.

It's not a world. It's a TV show. And to a certain extent, each episode is a world unto itself.

I appreciate that you like The Orville enough that you also want to make demands of it, but it is frustrating for me to read criticism of a TV show for being exactly what (probably) 90% of all TV dramas have been like for the past 70 years.

A friend of mine effectively stopped watching, -or at least stopped failing to complain about, -MASH once they did "the entire year in one episode" episode, because it forever violated any continuity on the show.

They're basing the show entirely on Trek. Not have any continuity at all totally negates that.

Seth MacFarlane is clearly world building here- he is diving deep into topics like alien races and cultures- to say one thing one episode, and then go against it even in the same episode is confusing. We discussed some of that during the time capsule episode.

Orville has ongoing story lines, how could there not be any continuity? You can make the argument "it's a show" about anything.

I just wish Seth would stop with the preachy Politically Correct point he makes near the end of each episode.
Although common in ST, it's just not necessary here.

It also makes the episodes too predictable.
I want my Sci-fi to by UNpredictable...I want to be surprised by a Universe of Infinite Possibilities.
(what can I say? I'm old and old-fashioned )

But you are not pointing out discontinuity in the story-lines or the characters' personalities or the broad strokes of the fictional world being presented.

You are pointing out discontinuity in production choices regarding the inclusion of 20th Century pop culture in a TV show set hundreds of years in the future.

Why would a the music of Dolly Parton "realistically" play any part in the lives of human space travelers and alien races, 400 years from now? Of course it would not. So why did Dolly turn up? Because it is a TV show created by Seth MacFarlane. He wants to include humorous and (outright) silly things in his TV show.

Look, as I have posted before, I am a huge Star Trek fan, and I will spot a divergence from canon in an instant. But I also realize that "canon" has severely hampered creativity in the production of ST shows, boxing in the potential of storylines.

One of my all time favorite things in all of Star Trek was when Worf explained away the changed appearance of Klingons by refusing to explain it.

If you want to complain about logical inconsistency and world building in this episode, then ask why Ed and a bunch of admirals were the decision-makers for Earth in what should clearly be a diplomatic and political matter for the highest level of whatever govt Earth has at this time.

I didn't care for this one. Another Bortus/Moclan episode. Too preachy. Too similar.

Wow, I never considered the possibility that in Seth's vision of the future, Earth was a dystopian society controlled by the military!

https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Earth

Not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic but that's the point I'm trying to make. We know almost nothing even about The Union and how it operates. In Trek there was a united Earth government, with The Federation being totally separate. In The Orville that doesn't appear to be the case.

I’ll never not see this now.