Ep 10 : Firestorm
Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 12:58 am
My thoughts on episode 10
Curious episode this, and the first one where I'm not sure how to feel about it.
On the upside... nice to again see an episode that focuses on somebody other that Mercer. I don't mean to imply that most have... rather, I mean that they have avoided this so far, and it's nice to see that continuing.
No explanation of what a "plasma storm" is supposed to be. Nothing like it could really exist, but what with this and the Dark Matter field, Orville just seems to take the view that weird crap like this is just up there in space, yet to be discovered. No it isn't, but I can accept that as part of the show much as I can accept Ion Storms in Trek.
A beam fell on somebody and they call Alara? What do they do on ships that don't have an Alara? Surely there are procedures... jacks, inflatable lifts? How about a mini tractor beam, we know they have those.
So she freaks out at the fire and then fails to rescue the guy. Would it have made a difference if she'd been five seconds faster? Time will tell.
Nice to see a redshirt (orange shirt, whatever) get a memorial service for a change. And nice to see Mercer speak and then turn it over to the guy's his boss, Newton. I like Newton, and would like to learn more about him. Could he wind up as the Chief O'Brien of the Orville?
Alara can punch a punchbag to pieces in a simulation? Wouldn't her simulations have stuff in them that was robust enough to stand up to her?
So the Doctor says he would have died anyway. She couldn't have saved him. But that isn't really the point; the point is that she couldn't try because she was paralysed with fear. We know Alara worries about whether she can cope with things on the Orville, they've already used that as the theme of one episode. But I don't see this as a repetition because in that case she was left with command of the whole ship, a job she's not really expected to be ready for yet. Here, the concern is whether she can do her own job. And especially because there is a tendency for everyone to think of her as "the muscle", and now she finds that she can't even be counted on for that.
Bortas in a powdered wig! Oh my god. Clearly it's going to be a running joke of the series to stick this guy with weird and unexpected sides - "I sing" - and so far I am loving that joke. Especially because it generally really doesn't make him seem foolish or ridiculous... just like a super serious guy who has a bit of a hidden streak for trying the weird and unexpected.
I felt a bit weird about Mercer and Malloy talking about writing the letter. I won't say it's offensive, but the Orville walks a line between serious and comic, and I would have thought this scene should be more the former than the latter. It was a nice touch to see a redshirt get a funeral because it brings home that those little guys you see in the background are people too, and their deaths should matter - to their shipmates, if not to the audience. Then they turn around and do a lighter scene about writing to his family. Bit weird.
Alara tries to quit. Wow, the girl does take this stuff to heart. I thought Mercer handled her well here. Quiet, calm, stopped her from resigning and then above all, gave her practical, sensible advice about the situation - if you were paralysed by fear, then look into why you were. Find the problem and work to fix it. Mercer is a good leadership role model in this scene.
And Robert Picardo! Yay! It makes me oddly happy to see Star Trek people on this show.
I have to laugh as his description of Humans as "The hillbillies of the galaxy." Trek tends to hold Humans up as being a race greatly admired by other species... we may not be as strong or smart but we always have to have that scene where the alien comments on our endless curiosity, our drive, our willingness to take risks... something that they admire, respect or fear. To find that some Union members just look down on us amuses me.
And wow, what terrible parents Alara has. They talk to her like she's a dimwit. So I like this... thus far her insecurity has generally stemmed from her youth, but now we start to see that it goes deeper than that. Has she grown up being told that she's incapable? It seems like it. And now her running away to join the Union fleet makes sense too, I'd want a few lightyears between me and that as well.
And Xelayans look down on military service in general, interesting. Hey, I just noticed that Xelaya is pronounced Seleya... Mount Seleya, on Vulcan? A deliberate nod, I wonder?
"Why might I be scared of fire?" "Well there was that time you almost burned to death as a child..." LOL. Well that turned out to be easy! Reminds me of that joke, "To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad." Um, yeah...
Lol, and here's a clown! Okay, at this point who thought they had picked up something weird from the Plasma Field? Who thought Alara was imagining it all? Who thought some space mind monster was attacking the crew?
And again, Mercer is the common sense guy in the room. Report of somebody hallucinating a creepy clown? Check the camera footage and see if it was real! As an aside, those must be some really small cameras. There's no sign of a camera in any corridor or set I've seen, yet they are apparently all over the place. Guess they are tiny little pin sized cameras OF THE FUTURE!!!!
I was shocked, the clown actually was there! I would have bet money that he wouldn't be.
"Weapons on stun. I want the clown alive." Lol.
"I think it's only prudent to warn everyone to watch out for pies." Bigger lol.
"Pies, seltzer bottles, balloon animals... be alert." Biggest lol.
Oh, cool, Union pistols can disintegrate people! We haven't seen that before!
And Grason does the exact same thing Picard did in Naked Now. Okay, something very weird is going on, what is happening cannot be real.
Oh wow, the medical scene was intense! Penny Johnson Jerald does scary bad lady extremely well!
Big-ass freaky spider!!! Very well done one, too. The CGI on this show is pretty damn good. And Malloy got eaten! Okay, this confirms it - what is happening is not real. Don't kill a main character like this, the audience KNOWS it will not stick, so you don't ramp up the tension, you lessen it.
Evil Isaac, also extremely good. He does red eyes very well!
Aha! It's a simulation!
Okay, I am a bit weirded out here. On the one hand, it's tempting to think of this ending as "it was all a dream", and thus meaningless. But on the other hand... it works as an exploration of Alara, and tells us fun facts about many of the other crewmembers. Plus it's ingenious - all the possibilities I listed above, 'not real' was a definite option but I never came close to guessing it was a deliberate simulation she'd put herself in with the consent of the crew.
But it makes sense! We learn that she came to Mercer and requested this right after talking to her parents. Remember, right before she talked to them Mercer's advice was to find out what her fear was and do something about it. So here she is, doing exactly that. It's actually quite clever, and thinking that makes me less ambiguous and more positive towards it.
LOL, there's a regulation forbidding bare feet in the engineering section.
And one allowing the security chief to override everyone's clearances with the computer, including the Captain! Interesting. It's for instances where a Captain goes mad, gets drunk, etc. But... what happens when a security chief goes mad or gets drunk?!
And yowsa, the Orville exploding is beautiful. More good CGI! And I like that the entire ship didn't just explode into a fireball. Sections hit by plasma thingies explode into fragments, but the bulk of the ship is left adrift. Makes sense, looks great.
Mercer gives her a free pass on abusing her computer thing. The Union in general seems to have a go-easy approach to regulations and orders. We've now seen several occasions in which violating rules and orders is overlooked if things turned out well. Mercer commented that it's because he and Kelly play office politics very well, which is an interesting spin on it. We do know right from the pilot episode that Kelly has good friends in high places, after all.
Overall, I liked it. Having thought through it in the process of writing this, I'm ready to call it - another strong episode.
Curious episode this, and the first one where I'm not sure how to feel about it.
On the upside... nice to again see an episode that focuses on somebody other that Mercer. I don't mean to imply that most have... rather, I mean that they have avoided this so far, and it's nice to see that continuing.
No explanation of what a "plasma storm" is supposed to be. Nothing like it could really exist, but what with this and the Dark Matter field, Orville just seems to take the view that weird crap like this is just up there in space, yet to be discovered. No it isn't, but I can accept that as part of the show much as I can accept Ion Storms in Trek.
A beam fell on somebody and they call Alara? What do they do on ships that don't have an Alara? Surely there are procedures... jacks, inflatable lifts? How about a mini tractor beam, we know they have those.
So she freaks out at the fire and then fails to rescue the guy. Would it have made a difference if she'd been five seconds faster? Time will tell.
Nice to see a redshirt (orange shirt, whatever) get a memorial service for a change. And nice to see Mercer speak and then turn it over to the guy's his boss, Newton. I like Newton, and would like to learn more about him. Could he wind up as the Chief O'Brien of the Orville?
Alara can punch a punchbag to pieces in a simulation? Wouldn't her simulations have stuff in them that was robust enough to stand up to her?
So the Doctor says he would have died anyway. She couldn't have saved him. But that isn't really the point; the point is that she couldn't try because she was paralysed with fear. We know Alara worries about whether she can cope with things on the Orville, they've already used that as the theme of one episode. But I don't see this as a repetition because in that case she was left with command of the whole ship, a job she's not really expected to be ready for yet. Here, the concern is whether she can do her own job. And especially because there is a tendency for everyone to think of her as "the muscle", and now she finds that she can't even be counted on for that.
Bortas in a powdered wig! Oh my god. Clearly it's going to be a running joke of the series to stick this guy with weird and unexpected sides - "I sing" - and so far I am loving that joke. Especially because it generally really doesn't make him seem foolish or ridiculous... just like a super serious guy who has a bit of a hidden streak for trying the weird and unexpected.
I felt a bit weird about Mercer and Malloy talking about writing the letter. I won't say it's offensive, but the Orville walks a line between serious and comic, and I would have thought this scene should be more the former than the latter. It was a nice touch to see a redshirt get a funeral because it brings home that those little guys you see in the background are people too, and their deaths should matter - to their shipmates, if not to the audience. Then they turn around and do a lighter scene about writing to his family. Bit weird.
Alara tries to quit. Wow, the girl does take this stuff to heart. I thought Mercer handled her well here. Quiet, calm, stopped her from resigning and then above all, gave her practical, sensible advice about the situation - if you were paralysed by fear, then look into why you were. Find the problem and work to fix it. Mercer is a good leadership role model in this scene.
And Robert Picardo! Yay! It makes me oddly happy to see Star Trek people on this show.
I have to laugh as his description of Humans as "The hillbillies of the galaxy." Trek tends to hold Humans up as being a race greatly admired by other species... we may not be as strong or smart but we always have to have that scene where the alien comments on our endless curiosity, our drive, our willingness to take risks... something that they admire, respect or fear. To find that some Union members just look down on us amuses me.
And wow, what terrible parents Alara has. They talk to her like she's a dimwit. So I like this... thus far her insecurity has generally stemmed from her youth, but now we start to see that it goes deeper than that. Has she grown up being told that she's incapable? It seems like it. And now her running away to join the Union fleet makes sense too, I'd want a few lightyears between me and that as well.
And Xelayans look down on military service in general, interesting. Hey, I just noticed that Xelaya is pronounced Seleya... Mount Seleya, on Vulcan? A deliberate nod, I wonder?
"Why might I be scared of fire?" "Well there was that time you almost burned to death as a child..." LOL. Well that turned out to be easy! Reminds me of that joke, "To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad." Um, yeah...
Lol, and here's a clown! Okay, at this point who thought they had picked up something weird from the Plasma Field? Who thought Alara was imagining it all? Who thought some space mind monster was attacking the crew?
And again, Mercer is the common sense guy in the room. Report of somebody hallucinating a creepy clown? Check the camera footage and see if it was real! As an aside, those must be some really small cameras. There's no sign of a camera in any corridor or set I've seen, yet they are apparently all over the place. Guess they are tiny little pin sized cameras OF THE FUTURE!!!!
I was shocked, the clown actually was there! I would have bet money that he wouldn't be.
"Weapons on stun. I want the clown alive." Lol.
"I think it's only prudent to warn everyone to watch out for pies." Bigger lol.
"Pies, seltzer bottles, balloon animals... be alert." Biggest lol.
Oh, cool, Union pistols can disintegrate people! We haven't seen that before!
And Grason does the exact same thing Picard did in Naked Now. Okay, something very weird is going on, what is happening cannot be real.
Oh wow, the medical scene was intense! Penny Johnson Jerald does scary bad lady extremely well!
Big-ass freaky spider!!! Very well done one, too. The CGI on this show is pretty damn good. And Malloy got eaten! Okay, this confirms it - what is happening is not real. Don't kill a main character like this, the audience KNOWS it will not stick, so you don't ramp up the tension, you lessen it.
Evil Isaac, also extremely good. He does red eyes very well!
Aha! It's a simulation!
Okay, I am a bit weirded out here. On the one hand, it's tempting to think of this ending as "it was all a dream", and thus meaningless. But on the other hand... it works as an exploration of Alara, and tells us fun facts about many of the other crewmembers. Plus it's ingenious - all the possibilities I listed above, 'not real' was a definite option but I never came close to guessing it was a deliberate simulation she'd put herself in with the consent of the crew.
But it makes sense! We learn that she came to Mercer and requested this right after talking to her parents. Remember, right before she talked to them Mercer's advice was to find out what her fear was and do something about it. So here she is, doing exactly that. It's actually quite clever, and thinking that makes me less ambiguous and more positive towards it.
LOL, there's a regulation forbidding bare feet in the engineering section.
And one allowing the security chief to override everyone's clearances with the computer, including the Captain! Interesting. It's for instances where a Captain goes mad, gets drunk, etc. But... what happens when a security chief goes mad or gets drunk?!
And yowsa, the Orville exploding is beautiful. More good CGI! And I like that the entire ship didn't just explode into a fireball. Sections hit by plasma thingies explode into fragments, but the bulk of the ship is left adrift. Makes sense, looks great.
Mercer gives her a free pass on abusing her computer thing. The Union in general seems to have a go-easy approach to regulations and orders. We've now seen several occasions in which violating rules and orders is overlooked if things turned out well. Mercer commented that it's because he and Kelly play office politics very well, which is an interesting spin on it. We do know right from the pilot episode that Kelly has good friends in high places, after all.
Overall, I liked it. Having thought through it in the process of writing this, I'm ready to call it - another strong episode.