Deflectors (Spoileriffic)

[Graham Kennedy]

Liked this one, though not my favourite of the season.

Kelly's breakup was very 'adult', I thought. Clearly teacher-guy wanted her back, but he wasn't being a whiny bitch about it, and gave up pretty fast once it was clear that she wasn't interested. Frankly neither of them seemed that upset about the whole thing, and I like the idea that such things don't have to be depicted as the end of the world. And I LOLed at Ed's pathetic attempt to sound sad about the breakup.

Wow, they really do push the Moclans as uber-masculine. I think the joke is starting to stale a little for me, though, to be honest. Can we never have any aspect of their culture that isn't "take an alpha male thing and ramp it up 500%"?

My god, that Moclan engineer guy is tall. I half expected to see little clouds drifting around his head!

I LOLed at Talla saying this has to be the weirdest thing that's ever happened on this ship. "One time I almost died because I humped a statue." "Isaac once cut my leg off." "The Captain and Commander, they got put in a zoo." "And Bortus almost crashed the ship because of porn." This ship has had some wacky adventures, alright.

The big talking plant. It took me a while to place it, but that was Bruce Willis.

I kind of guessed that Engineer guy was into girls. What do you even call that for a Moclan? Straight? And of course, that's a huge no-no on his world.

I guessed that the recording had been tampered with to reveal the wrong killer. But I thought it would be somebody else being the killer, like Bortas or somebody from the Moclan ship. I didn't guess that he would turn out to be still alive.

Now I'm thinking about it, this is kind of a take on TOS's Court Martial - dead guy turns out to be alive. But there are a lot of differences... no trial, death supposedly caused by murder rather than negligence or error, and the victim had good reason to hide.

I was impressed by Ed and Kelly talking about the Moclans. They preach tolerance to Talla, and that's fair enough, but I like that they acknowledge that the Moclans have fundamentally different value to Humans and ponder whether an alliance with them can hold for long. Trek generally took the attitude that any cultural or political systems can learn to coexist, but IMO there was an implication there that they learn to coexist because in the end everyone adopts the Federation generic leftie stance on any and all issues. I like that the Orville's take is that Humanity is pretty liberal (by 20th century standards) and that whilst they don't expect everyone else to be identical, they do at least question the idea that one can live with any and all differences.

Speaking of that... how cool would it be if the Moclans eventually broke with the Union and actually became rivals or even enemies? I don't think they'll go there, though.

[Atekimogus]

I guess the writing is on the wall. At some point there will be problems with the Moclans.....at which point Bortus will have to break up with his husband. It is already hinted at multiple times and this is how it will play out.

I find that a bit unfortunate...they are still the most functioning...family unit...we can see. Now I get that this needs to be ultra modern, ultra political correct, super liberal and all that...but come on...have at least one character in a settled "traditional" relationship. Not EVERYONE needs to be a special little snowflake, no?

That's why I loved Chief O'Brien....just a normal bloke doing his job;).

[Graham Kennedy]

I guess the writing is on the wall. At some point there will be problems with the Moclans.....at which point Bortus will have to break up with his husband. It is already hinted at multiple times and this is how it will play out.

I find that a bit unfortunate...they are still the most functioning...family unit...we can see. Now I get that this needs to be ultra modern, ultra political correct, super liberal and all that...but come on...have at least one character in a settled "traditional" relationship. Not EVERYONE needs to be a special little snowflake, no?

That's why I loved Chief O'Brien....just a normal bloke doing his job;).

The trouble is that relationship issues is good drama. Writers have a hard time resisting it! I bet somebody high up at DS9 decreed that O'Brien and Keiko were together forever.

But there's an incredible number of broken families in Trek. Spock and T'Pring. Chapel and Korby. McCoy's divorce. Kirk seriously fell in love twice, and both women died. Riker's dead mom and estranged dad. Pulaski, multiple divorces. Wesley and Crusher, dead father/husband. Troi, broken engagement. Geordi, dead mother. Sisko, dead wife, Jake, dead mother, Janeway, boyfriend left her. It goes on and on.

Hell, even Sisko abandoned Jake in the end - and don't think people didn't talk about the "Absentee black father" angle, either.

[Atekimogus]

Let's just hope they don't get too hung up on it. I think we already covered all or most of the more obvious modern "issues" and so far they have managed to tackled those without becoming "too" preachy.

Having the Moclans become "enemies" because of their intolerant culture could be quite interesting but still....the divide Bortus family is already there, it seems a bit too obvious to go there...I'd rather show us how they manage to repair this divide than anything else, simply because..that would be actually something new for once.

I think now would be a good time to introduce something of the equivalent of the borg. Or just something which moves the action a bit away from the interpersonal relationship problems and let us get to know a bit more about the orville universe.