• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

THE ORVILLE - S1, E5: "PRIA"

Rate the episode:

  • ***** Excellent

    Votes: 23 26.7%
  • ****

    Votes: 36 41.9%
  • ***

    Votes: 19 22.1%
  • **

    Votes: 7 8.1%
  • * Fear the banana

    Votes: 1 1.2%

  • Total voters
    86
...For me, the best joke of the series to date was right after a massive serious moment. The Orville is in a battle. It's serious. It's tense. And LaMarr fires the shot that destroys the ship. The second the ship blows up, LaMarr pumps his fist and yells, "booyah! Yeah bitch!" Perfect timing...

My favorite joke is from "About a Girl". After the shuttle flies through the "impromptu" munitions testing area. Malloy asks for new pants, when Mercer says he was joking about the pants, Malloy says "No I wasn't". That cracked me up.
 
If Kronos is 110 light-years away from Earth, like Star Charts says, the NX-01 was covering 27 light-years per day in "Broken Bow". The Enterprise covered 990 light-years in 12 hours in "The Gamesters of Triskelion". There are other examples of Trek ships being much faster than 3-4 light-years per day.

So the Voyager should have been home in a couple of months? Talk about taking the scenic route.

Goddamn, "Broken Bow" had such terrible writing about the Enterprise's speed and the distance from Earth to Qo'noS.
 
I hate that I have to wait an extra day to watch the epiosode and can't take part in the discussion as much :(
 
I really hope we get another episode soon to focus on a crewmember. We've had a "Bortus" and "Alara" episode so far, plus enough development for Mercer and Grayson they don't need focus episodes. But I'd like ones focusing on Finn, Malloy, LaMarr, and Isaac as well.
 
"Oh my god, you found a rectangle!"

That was a fun episode and not quite as predictable as I thought it would be. I also thought Pria was lying when she said she was from the future a la "A Matter of Time."

Looks like someone has been watching Interstellar because that was a terrific rendering of a black hole. That being said, the physics in this episode was otherwise completely off, between a "dark matter storm" and collapsing a black hole with torpedoes. :lol:

They missed the obvious "I'm a doctor, not a!" joke, but I guess the joke was subverting that expectation. I think it would've been funnier if they went with the obvious in this case.
 
I wonder if the Amelia Earhart joke was a callback to the (crappy) Voyager episode The 37s
 
I don't know, this episode just didn't do it much for me. The A plot is really predictable, of course Pria has an ulterior motive regarding her advances on Ed, of course Kelly catches on and of course Ed ignores her and ultimately ends up with egg on his face when Pria's true motives are at last discovered, Fortunately, the character interplay among the main cast continues to impress not to mention the B plot between Gordon and Isaac was awesome and hilarious. And we finally get an indication of Yaphit's job, he's an engineer.

On the nitpick side, how likely is it that the term "hell" has disappeared at some point between the 25th and 29th centuries? The mythological concept of hell has already existed for thousands of years, I don't see what's going to change after the 25th century that it's no longer known four hundred years later. If Seinfeld, Kermit the Frog, Destiny's Child, Rudolph and the bloody Kardashians last into the 25th century, hell will last into the 29th century.
 
I totally accept the idea of taking the rules as they are presented (for example, though I don't "like" the rules in "Frequency (2000)", they are presented well and followed (until the end where they too screw it up), and I appreciate the movie's attempt at consistency. But in this episode the only time you see the effects of time travel, they are inconsistent and make no sense. Pria disappears, but nothing she did is undone. If Pria disappears, at the very least you have to agree that her little box disappears, and thus she could never have diverted the ship, thus none of the events that led to the destruction of the wormhole could have happened. The episode is not consistent with itself
I used to find such inconsistencies irritating and spent a considerable amount of effort and time on trying to reconcile them or, more often, providing ironclad explanations of what was wrong with them. But, eventually, I decided such efforts were a waste of time and energy, as no time travel story avoided logical flaws and inconsistencies. Moreover, it was interfering with my enjoyment of the stories. Back to the Future is a lot more fun if you just go with the flow. So are all the other time travel stories out there. These days, if I'm disappointed in a time travel story, it has nothing to do with "the rules". But, to each his own.
 
There are few shows - sitcom or dram-coms - that make me laugh out loud at moments. This is one of few that does.

Yes, it's not perfect. But it has a genuine heart, and in the right place.

I really loved the character & scene direction in this one; really noticeable change to previous episodes. And I continue to love the use of old-school musical cues. A shorthand, but

The biggest canon recognition I felt in this one was the dark-matter storm. Really reminded me of ENT S3 Zindi arc when they were negotiating Sphere Builder anomalies.

ps: kudos to Charlize for negotiating her techno-babble!

pps: I never got until this episode that the green blob was called 'Yaphit'. Obviously made me wonder if nod to Yaphet Kotto in 'Alien'.
 
I used to find such inconsistencies irritating and spent a considerable amount of effort and time on trying to reconcile them or, more often, providing ironclad explanations of what was wrong with them. But, eventually, I decided such efforts were a waste of time and energy, as no time travel story avoided logical flaws and inconsistencies. Moreover, it was interfering with my enjoyment of the stories. Back to the Future is a lot more fun if you just go with the flow. So are all the other time travel stories out there. These days, if I'm disappointed in a time travel story, it has nothing to do with "the rules". But, to each his own.

Yeah, I can see what your saying. But for me, I was really enjoying this episode, about ready to call it "awesome"; I was looking forward to how they would wrap it all up, finding out what hard decision Mercer would have to make or avoid making, or how would they be changed or not changed. And then, thud. The non-ending. Where things are wrapped up or rather not, but with no reason or consequences. It just brought the episode down a level for me. I didn't intend on grading it harshly over its science (cause they aren't going for that), but it was such a weak ending that it affected my enjoyment of the rest.
 
On the nitpick side, how likely is it that the term "hell" has disappeared at some point between the 25th and 29th centuries?
I don't think Hell is completely forgotten, but the meaning of "go to Hell" may be. To Pria it could mean "go to Hell and burn in damnation", or it could mean "go to Hell and live to come back and tell about it because you're so tough." Or she could think it refers to the community of Hell in Norway or Hel in Poland, etc.
 
I don't know, this episode just didn't do it much for me. The A plot is really predictable, of course Pria has an ulterior motive regarding her advances on Ed, of course Kelly catches on and of course Ed ignores her and ultimately ends up with egg on his face when Pria's true motives are at last discovered, Fortunately, the character interplay among the main cast continues to impress not to mention the B plot between Gordon and Isaac was awesome and hilarious. And we finally get an indication of Yaphit's job, he's an engineer.

On the nitpick side, how likely is it that the term "hell" has disappeared at some point between the 25th and 29th centuries? The mythological concept of hell has already existed for thousands of years, I don't see what's going to change after the 25th century that it's no longer known four hundred years later. If Seinfeld, Kermit the Frog, Destiny's Child, Rudolph and the bloody Kardashians last into the 25th century, hell will last into the 29th century.

Stuff like this: Which words disappear or how they change their meaning is impossible to predict. Take a word like "gay" which completely changed its meaning in just a few centuries.

And of course, the 29th century is far from the 25th century as the 25th century is from the 21th, so I'll give them a pass.

Same with the time travel stuff. It's entirely possible that even though Pria disappeared the minute they destroyed the wormhole, the stuff that she did WASNT undone because the crew of the Orville was still there and interacted with her gadgets.

Time travel is complicated stuff, and it's entirely possible that it doesn't always follow logical rules that we'd expect. Just like quantum physics (for example) doesn't always follow the rules we'd expect from Newtonian physics.
 
After the set-up the other week between Yaphit and Finn, it struck me that the slimeball was getting away with a lot when he extended his, uh, pseudopod to Pria for what she thought was a handshake.
That crossed my mind as well but I don't think they actually intended to go there. I liked Norm's delivery last night, he seemed to put a little extra mustard on it.

On the nitpick side, how likely is it that the term "hell" has disappeared at some point between the 25th and 29th centuries?
I thought it was just the expression "Go to Hell" she wasn't familiar with.
EDIT: I see @ChasFrink beat me to it while I was idling writing this.
 
I think I was half watching this one and it didn’t do it for me like the last two episodes did. I think I need to see it again. Also Theron was surprisingly wooden. Wish she would have brought some furiosa to the role.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top