dhmac

https://www.fox.com/the-orville/

S2 E5 All the World Is Birthday Cake

The Orville makes first contact; a new crew member joins the ship.

Aired 1-24-19 • TV-14 LV



Episode Link at Fox.com

DWilson

Wow. I thought this episode was just awful, as dull as any episode of Next Generation. The one bit of levity at the end (the birthday video), -like many of their jokes, -is not really even current, let alone something that would be considered "of the future". Wasn't terribly impressed with the new hire, either.

barelypure

With Kelly and Bortus killing so many guards you have to wonder if they would have just let them go free or try them for murder.
As to the new hire she's not as attractive as Alara but I'll withheld judgement until I see if she can pull off the role.

dhmac

I liked this episode and think the dilemma was very TNG-like (a good thing, IMO). That the first contact situation degenerated from happy to tense because of the society's strong superstitions is a great sci-fi theme to base the story on. And the lack of transporters on the show made the task of rescue much more of a challenge than on actual Trek series. The main flaw was the resolution was a bit too quick given how their plan would have no easily predictable effect on the society. That it worked out perfect was just pure luck.

General Zod

SteveA

Also stupid for the fact that the stars look different at different places in the universe, and more importantly, planets revolve around their suns at different rates, so a year on one planet is not a year on another. Thus Kelly revealing her birthday does nothing to denote where the stars were on this planet when she was born. I know, I know, there's a lot about this show where you have to suspend disbelief more than you ordinarily would. But the whole astrology thing was just plain stupid.

whotony

Bill Needle

This is why I wish they would focus on comedy/sci-fi satire. The "serious" plots on the show are trite and paper thin, completely falling apart under the slightest scrutiny. If they are going to be this bad at incorporating traditional sci-fi someone needs tell them they shouldn't bother.

windom

So the captain can just request that the new security chief be from one planet? How about getting the best person regardless of origin? Or does the extra strength of people from that planet make them automatically the best for the job?

So everyone on this new planet just happens to speak English? Or do they have some kind universal translator like on Trek? Even so, how would it work for a completely new language?

Everything on the first contact planet seemed to be to close to what we have on Earth. I think the baby blankets were even the same exact pattern that you see in every hospital for a baby blanket. Kind of like last season where they were on that planet where everyone gets rated and the alarm clock sound was the same exact sound from most modern alarm clocks today.

whotony

So this limited commercial interruption episode was 47 minutes of tv show is that more then usual for an hour show?

wishbone

I found a recap since I do not watch this show... https://showsnob.com/2019/01/22/the-...sode-13-recap/

A.1. write-up!

Bill Needle

All the better to take in the first-day-on-the-job security chief's snarky insults.

This felt like a recycle of a season 1 episode, so it seems appropriate to recycle one of my season 1 comments:

General Zod

That's a sci-fi thing you just need to look past. I mean there are 6,500 spoken languages just on this planet Earth but outside of this planet it's totally English dude. And, you know, like American west cost English not any of that funny accent English. It totally makes sense if you don't think about it.. at all.

windom

This episode was directed by Robert Duncan McNeill who played Tom Paris on ST: Voyager. Looks like he also directed one last season.

MLBFan24

PhantomStranger

An underwhelming episode that felt like a badly recycled ST: The Next Generation plot. Like some others mentioned, the new cast member didn't shine.

Deftones

I never realized Klyden is Chad Coleman. Holy shit.

Cusm

I feel they were trying to be way too PC with this episode. I feel any entity would say, you invited us, didn't inform us of this item. We will take our people and leave in peace or we will take our people and leave you in pieces.

rw2516

Network tv is around 42-43 minutes.

whotony

dhmac

Episodes of hour-long network TV shows tend to be around 40 minutes long these days, with the rest for commercials. It used to be longer decades ago, around 47 minutes, but has been gradually shortened over the years to allow more commercials.

The sad part if they shorten episodes of old shows made in the longer episode days by editing down some scenes to make them fit just as many commercials as new shows. (Why it's better to watch old shows on disc or commercial-free streaming, otherwise you're missing some scenes.)

rw2516

Even in sci-fi it is an error. That is why we get the throw away lines like, "We have scanned your minds and learned your language" or in non sci-fi, "I attended your college at Oxford".. It's required when people who would speak different languages encounter each other. To make it worse there were signs all over the place in an alien language. The script writer fucked up.
It's different when everybody speaks a language other than English yet everybody speaks English in the show. The Ten Commandments for example, or Dr. Zhivago. In this case the story is being told in English.

Red Dog

I guess you didn't see Kelly and Bortus kill about a dozen guards with machine guns.

If you think this was too PC, you should never watch a Star Trek episode.

Trying to place what show I know the new Security Officer from.

stvn1974

I liked the new security officer but I miss Alara already.

The Cow

She looked familiar to me as well, and I've seen some of the things she has been in, but nothing that I would recognize her from. Might be the raspy voice and I'm thinking of someone else, dunno.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Szohr