Ep 9: Cupid's Dagger

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Graham Kennedy
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Ep 9: Cupid's Dagger

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Loved Bortas singing-not-singing! I really thought they were going to show him singing! I so badly want to see him sing now!

And it's nice that we get to see the crew just hanging out and having fun quite often on this show. The Orville looks like the kind of ship it would be fun to be on!

Nice to see the blue guy come back. And I like the character.

Orville was originally called a "midsize" ship. We've seen a big heavy cruiser in "Krill", and now we've seen what is presumably a low end ship. I like that the Union fleet is being fleshed out, but I gotta say, the three designs we've seen differ in size and details but are very similar to one another overall. I find that a little bit disappointing.

I'm still liking the alien designs they're coming up with. Most of them are standard Trek "rubber forehead aliens", obviously, but they seem a step above what we've seen before.

Loved the whole "elevator music" bit. I hope the elevators keep the music permanently as a running joke. But they didn't use The Girl From Ipanema, which is surely the go-to song for elevator music!

In fact, I admit, I laughed a hell of a lot in this episode, probably more than any previous episode.

And kudos to Seth again. I've seen people say that the Orville is a vanity project for him - casting himself as the lead in a sci fi show he created - that he created specifically because he's always loved Star Trek and badly wanted to see a real Star Trek show back on the screen again. I'll grant that it takes a certain ego to do that, but this really isn't the "Seth MacFarlane is awesome" show. He's open to making himself the butt of the joke, and he does that a LOT in this episode.

I guess people might complain about the fact that the subject matter was treated so lightly. Blue Guy basically has periods when he's a living date rape drug, and he really doesn't see it as any kind of a big deal. That's fair enough - we've already established that the Orville universe is going to have aliens with alien standards and customs, after all. One could complain that even the humans didn't seem all that bothered by what happened either, when one might expect them to be. Personally, whilst the thought did occur to me, I didn't really mind it. This was obviously a lighthearted episode rather than a serious message one. In the end, it made me laugh and that was enough.

Oh, and on that note... I thought it was kind of nice that they didn't have Mercer all freaked out because he had sex with another guy. I presume he's straight, but the attitude here seems to be that women are his thing, but sex with other guys is just not to his taste, rather than being the "ewwwww! Guy cooties!" attitude some comedy does.

And I definitely liked that they left it ambiguous as to whether he was in heat when Kelly slept with him. "Yes I was" would have been too trite an ending, absolving Kelly of any wrongdoing. "No I wasn't" would have been better, but I can see the arguments continuing on both sides after "maybe!"

Overall, I liked this one! A nice return to form after two weaker episodes in a row. Still so very happy to be getting another season of this show!
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Re: Ep 9: Cupid's Dagger

Post by Monroe »

I agree with everything you laid out. I do hope we see more different designs. One thing I really like about Star Trek is the multitude of Federation designs though when you think about it, there's no reason to have ALL those designs. You could probably get what you need out of ten designs and the Union is far less militant than even the Federation is from what we can tell.

The question of rape was really strange with this show and bad timing with everything happening right now. The doctor basically was raped though the slime ball didn't mean to do it. The blue alien also knew he was taking advantage of Mercer and Kelly but he went ahead and slept with them. My GF and I were talking about this as we watch the show together. She didn't think it constitutes rape but just influence like putting on a nice smelling cologne but I think if we had a love potion and you used it it would be rape right? I wish they had taken it a bit more seriously and explored that theme.
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Re: Ep 9: Cupid's Dagger

Post by Graham Kennedy »

I actually get kind of annoyed with the Federation having so many different ship designs. Beyond a certain point it just gets ludicrously impractical. There's like fifty different designs! Not to mention that many of them are a hundred years old or more.

I'd much rather they had cut back all those Federation ships to a reasonable number of designs and then given us a few more Romulan and Klingon designs. A TNG era D-7 and BoP to go with the Vor'Cha would make sense, and surely the entire Romulan fleet isn't made of those gigantic D'Deridex class behemoths?
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Re: Ep 9: Cupid's Dagger

Post by Mikey »

Agreed 100% that this was a strong comeback after a couple of less-than-stellar eps. While the "alien pheromone" bit was easy to see from about five minutes in - if that much - it still played well. I believe that one of Darulio's comments to Alara was meant to mitigate the "walking Rohypnol" vibe, it just wasn't direct enough to alleviate the date-rape ethology.
Graham Kennedy wrote:Loved Bortas singing-not-singing! I really thought they were going to show him singing! I so badly want to see him sing now!
I do too, but I also kind of want to see a "Bortas about to sing but doesn't" gag every week now.
Graham Kennedy wrote:I like that the Union fleet is being fleshed out, but I gotta say, the three designs we've seen differ in size and details but are very similar to one another overall. I find that a little bit disappointing.
IDK, as you later commented, to me it's a bit nonsensical to have quite the variety that we see in 'Trek. It makes sense to me that all the ships of a certain culture would be variations on a similar aesthetic. OTOH, the non-Union configuration of Charlize Theron's ship didn't faze anyone at all regarding her cover story...
Graham Kennedy wrote:I thought it was kind of nice that they didn't have Mercer all freaked out because he had sex with another guy. I presume he's straight, but the attitude here seems to be that women are his thing, but sex with other guys is just not to his taste, rather than being the "ewwwww! Guy cooties!" attitude some comedy does.
Indeed, I was waiting through the whole ep for that penny to drop, and I'm glad it never did. Kelly was simply jealous of a rival, rather than making a thing of it relating to their history; Malloy was surprised more because of Ed's history with Darulio rather than gender orientation; there (thankfully) wasn't even some self-important monologue about "look how evolved we are that we're not mentioning it." Just a complete non-issue, which is how it should be.
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Re: Ep 9: Cupid's Dagger

Post by stitch626 »

They managed to treat the issue with more respect comedically than anything serious has ever managed. I was impressed and enjoyed myself through the episode.


Interesting to learn about Yaphit: his race is asexual in reproduction but still able to experience sexual pleasure with other races? Or he is just weird by their standards.
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Re: Ep 9: Cupid's Dagger

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Mikey wrote:I do too, but I also kind of want to see a "Bortas about to sing but doesn't" gag every week now.
That would be fun. Like Morn and talking.
IDK, as you later commented, to me it's a bit nonsensical to have quite the variety that we see in 'Trek. It makes sense to me that all the ships of a certain culture would be variations on a similar aesthetic. OTOH, the non-Union configuration of Charlize Theron's ship didn't faze anyone at all regarding her cover story...
I don't really want to harp on it because it's very early days yet and to have three different designs is pretty awesome - contrast to TNG, where it took until mid season 4 to get another new Starfleet ship (excluding reuses of Miranda/Excelsior models obviously).

But I'm thinking that trek ship designs offer a lot of variation in the shape and configuration of the hulls/nacelles. In comparison Union ships are all the same basic configuration. I'd like to see more variation.
Indeed, I was waiting through the whole ep for that penny to drop, and I'm glad it never did. Kelly was simply jealous of a rival, rather than making a thing of it relating to their history; Malloy was surprised more because of Ed's history with Darulio rather than gender orientation; there (thankfully) wasn't even some self-important monologue about "look how evolved we are that we're not mentioning it." Just a complete non-issue, which is how it should be.
Yeah, Malloy is a very typical "dude" and even he just took an attitude along the lines "Oh, you hated that guy but now you're into him? Well, okay." The fact that it was a guy at all wasn't even mentioned.
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