The Orville Marathon

[BunBun299]

So, my opinion on these episodes.

Episode #2: This is the episode that kicked off Alara being my favorite character. I liked how she struggled with having Command thrust upon her, even if she's physically strong enough to break the rest of the crew like twigs, she's still unsure of herself. Still, the episode is overall only so-so. They were clearly still finding themselves here.

Episode #3: The biggest problem I have with this episode is that I think it should have been a season 2 episode. We should have gotten to know Moclan culture a bit through Bortus and Klydan before dropping them having a female child. Bit of a theory on female births. Isaac mentioned it happening about once every 75 years. Likely a very rare genetic anomaly among Moclans, unless they're lying big time. But I think advanced in medical sciences are inadvertently making it more common. We know Klydan was born female as well, and was altered as an infant to correct what is to them a deformity. Doing something similar with modern medicine would leave the child sterile. Yet, Bortus and Klydan are clearly capable of making children together. Unless Klydan contributed nothing to their offspring, and I don't think this was the case, I think Moclan medicine has advanced to a point where it can take a female infant, and make her a fertile male. But, still genetically female, or at least, still carrying that genetic anomaly that made them female in the first place. And so these former females are going out into society, marrying and producing offspring, and spreading that female genetics around, where as before the past few generations, a female Moclan would likely never have the opportunity to reproduce at all. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

Episode #4: I'm a bit more forgiving of Mcfarlane not using this setting to it's full potential than Chuck is. After all, as has been pointed out many times, he's a comedy writer expanding into Sci Fi. He's still learning this new craft. Though overall, not a remarkable episode.

Episode #5: Now here we start getting interesting. Interesting little twist on time travel. She came back in time to steal their ship, and in the process, saved all their lives. This was a step up.

To be continued when I have more time to type....

[Madner Kami]

Episode #3: The biggest problem I have with this episode is that I think it should have been a season 2 episode. We should have gotten to know Moclan culture a bit through Bortus and Klydan before dropping them having a female child. Bit of a theory on female births. Isaac mentioned it happening about once every 75 years. Likely a very rare genetic anomaly among Moclans, unless they're lying big time. But I think advanced in medical sciences are inadvertently making it more common. We know Klydan was born female as well, and was altered as an infant to correct what is to them a deformity. Doing something similar with modern medicine would leave the child sterile. Yet, Bortus and Klydan are clearly capable of making children together. Unless Klydan contributed nothing to their offspring, and I don't think this was the case, I think Moclan medicine has advanced to a point where it can take a female infant, and make her a fertile male. But, still genetically female, or at least, still carrying that genetic anomaly that made them female in the first place. And so these former females are going out into society, marrying and producing offspring, and spreading that female genetics around, where as before the past few generations, a female Moclan would likely never have the opportunity to reproduce at all. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

There's some minor nightmare fuel in there. Think about, what if actually half their population is indeed genetically female and all they are essentially doing is educate and cosmetically alter the females to be virtually indistinguishable from males? The sole reason that Bortus and Klydus can reproduce is the hidden fact, that Klydus is indeed not a male in the first place. This makes even more sense from a genetic and evolutionary point of view, because a female gender would, as far as I understand, not develop in such a species to begin with. Worse yet, they are already aware of the different genders existing and actually call themselves all males, which makes absolutely no sense if there were no females to begin with, as they'd need to be functional hermaphrodites to reproduce in the first place, as someone else noted earlier. And if they'd not reproduce sexually then the distinction into male and female wouldn't make sense to begin with.

They always had females. The females were always important for the reproduction. Their male-centered war-culture just made everyone behave, dress and appear male.

[Darth Wedgius]

Episode #3: The biggest problem I have with this episode is that I think it should have been a season 2 episode. We should have gotten to know Moclan culture a bit through Bortus and Klydan before dropping them having a female child. Bit of a theory on female births. Isaac mentioned it happening about once every 75 years. Likely a very rare genetic anomaly among Moclans, unless they're lying big time. But I think advanced in medical sciences are inadvertently making it more common. We know Klydan was born female as well, and was altered as an infant to correct what is to them a deformity. Doing something similar with modern medicine would leave the child sterile. Yet, Bortus and Klydan are clearly capable of making children together. Unless Klydan contributed nothing to their offspring, and I don't think this was the case, I think Moclan medicine has advanced to a point where it can take a female infant, and make her a fertile male. But, still genetically female, or at least, still carrying that genetic anomaly that made them female in the first place. And so these former females are going out into society, marrying and producing offspring, and spreading that female genetics around, where as before the past few generations, a female Moclan would likely never have the opportunity to reproduce at all. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

There's some nightmare fuel in there. Think about, what if actually half their population is indeed genetically female and all they are essentially doing is educate and cosmetically alter the females to be virtually indistinguishable from males? The sole reason that Bortus and Klydus can reproduce is the hidden fact, that Klydus is indeed not a male in the first place. This makes even more sense from a genetic and evolutionary point of view, because a female gender would, as far as I understand, not develop in such a species to begin with. Worse yet, they are already aware of the different genders existing and actually call themselves all males, which makes absolutely no sense if there were no females to begin with, as they'd need to be functional hermaphrodites to reproduce in the first place, as someone else noted earlier. And if they'd not reproduce sexually then the distinction into male and female wouldn't make sense to begin with.

They always had females. The females were always important for the reproduction. Their male-centered war-culture just made everyone behave, dress and appear male.

Maybe there were two genders, but the species has a backup that allows two males to reproduce if there aren't any females around, with the offspring almost always being male. Some real animals can reverse sex, which is kinda sorta similar. Then, the two genders didn't really need to get along and drifted apart until armed conflict broke out (and even Moclans only talk about The Great Toilet Seat War in the most hushed of tones) and the females were wiped out. Females are changed not because they are really inferior in any way, but because Moclans fear another civil war, but they don't want to admit that fear of combat is their real motivation.

[Riedquat]

There's some minor nightmare fuel in there. Think about, what if actually half their population is indeed genetically female and all they are essentially doing is educate and cosmetically alter the females to be virtually indistinguishable from males? The sole reason that Bortus and Klydus can reproduce is the hidden fact, that Klydus is indeed not a male in the first place. This makes even more sense from a genetic and evolutionary point of view, because a female gender would, as far as I understand, not develop in such a species to begin with.

I could run with that as a concept. All females I can just about run with (e.g. the asari in Mass Effect) but all male, instead of simply monogendered or hermaphrodite doesn't make much sense.

Worse yet, they are already aware of the different genders existing and actually call themselves all males, which makes absolutely no sense if there were no females to begin with, as they'd need to be functional hermaphrodites to reproduce in the first place, as someone else noted earlier. And if they'd not reproduce sexually then the distinction into male and female wouldn't make sense to begin with.

There could simply be other species on their homeworld with males and females.

They always had females. The females were always important for the reproduction. Their male-centered war-culture just made everyone behave, dress and appear male.

To human eyes of course.

[Mickey_Rat15]

On "About a Girl", I expect McFarlane simply thought that the Moclans being all male was funny, and he had an idea for a story that became that episode, which is why it came up early in the series. Unfortunately, not being a science fiction writer normally, he did not think deeply on the implications about what that would mean for the Moclans biologically and culturally. Possibly he also feared he would only get the one 13 episode season make and do the stories he wanted, so he did not feel he had time to let the audience get to know Bortus and Klydus before springing the baby on them.

Or perhaps he just did not care. That is also possible.

[Dan Green]

So, ep 3 is a message show. Yep, I got that. But I think Chuck missed the "why" of why they failed. Yes, they did the court wrong - because they are not experts in court, because they are not the best of the best, they know how to do some things and are decently smart, but this is a bunch of just normal people - not the high level of intelligence that Trek has, these are normal people - in space.

So, yes they of course used bad arguments, they did the best they knew how. They "had" to fail. The society is against females and that is just how it is on there planet. I think its unrealistic even if the crew had known how to argue that you could change such a strict society via one court trial. Sure they could have showed them all Rudolf or talked about the benefits of working with other sex/ different people, but you can not change everyone instantly. The ending was "right" for there culture.

I think it would have been better, actually without them finding any women on the planet at all. This is just how things are, suck it up.

Eh. Ah well.

[bluebydefault]

If there was one complaint I would have about the show is using too much modern pop culture and entertainment. Every bit of Earth entertainment shown being from around the year 2000 seems just as bad as Trek with its everything before the 1950s, is there no contemporary entertainment in those universes (atleast none that I can recall)? Enjoying stuff from the past is fine but it'd be cool to occasionally see something from their own time periods to show that culture didn't stagnate after some time period.

That is always something that kinda bugged me about Trek. I find it hard to believe they quit making new movies, tv shows, plays, and music. And yea having a holodeck would most likely mean that movies and shows wouldn't be as prolific, but sometimes you just want to set back and watch something not participate every time.

[bluebydefault]

This show super rubbed me the wrong way the first time I watched it. With the only character I liked being Dr. Finn. I stuck it out to the second episode but when she replicated a pot brownie and they fell for an obvious trap (like this is weird and he really couldn't try to communicate with his parents on earth to make sure there isn't something up with this.) I had to tune out.

I can't stand how unprofessional some of the characters are and they don't take their jobs seriously. It's better if the comedy comes from real drama. There are moments here and there, but then something always undercuts it. Either the drama isn't enough or the comedy isn't enough. It's so uneven for me. It isn't like there aren't jokes to be mined from the Trek universe. Even though I love it I can still poke fun at it. I think his brand of comedy doesn't work well with parody like this.

The only episode discussed here that interested me was Majority Rule because it did hit on something on Internet culture and passing judgement. There are several stories I can think of where people where condemned but the whole story hadn't come out yet and there is a whole other side of it. Again this seems like something McFarlane may had issues with since he is a public figure and that Intels more scrutiny on the internet.

I haven't seen Into the Fold just this review so if I'm wrong about this its cool to let me know. But if the guy holding her hostage was ill and didn't seem as bad as the others could she not just try to strike a deal with him to help her find her kids in exchange for medical aid. Even if I wasn't sure help was on the way or close I would still tell him about our advanced medical care or at least tell him we would get him off the planet where he could be more comfortable. There wasn't anything there that led me to believe he was beyond bargaining with.

[Karha of Honor]

I can't stand how unprofessional some of the characters are and they don't ta ke their jobs seriously.

First “Trek ” show to be open about that

[Uldreth]

I can't stand how unprofessional some of the characters are and they don't take their jobs seriously. It's better if the comedy comes from real drama. There are moments here and there, but then something always undercuts it. Either the drama isn't enough or the comedy isn't enough. It's so uneven for me. It isn't like there aren't jokes to be mined from the Trek universe. Even though I love it I can still poke fun at it. I think his brand of comedy doesn't work well with parody like this.

Odd, cause this is exactly what I dislike about Star Trek. Most characters there have a fricking pike up their asses basically. Most characters are often way too stiff and way too "inhuman" for lack of a better word, where here "inhuman" means they seem to often lack any kind of human impulse or characteristic unless the specific story specifically demand it.

Case in point, there were very few romantic relationships on Trek which I have found believable or sensible, for the most part they seem like as if they were written by 14 year olds basically.

And also in the worse Trek series, many characters are unprofessional and incompetent too, with way too many "informed abilities", except unlike The Orville, they seem to be completely unaware of this fact.

Yeah, Malloy's and Lamarr's bridge antics are somewhat unprofessional, but at least these people feel like actual human beings.