THE ORVILLE S2, E5: "ALL THE WORLD IS BIRTHDAY CAKE"

[Mudd]

I think that "contrived" might be the perfect word for it. You could dissect why this culture couldn't exist from a dozen angles, but...the effort would be superfluous. Shooting fish in a barrel.

For a bit I thought that, bad as the premise was, they might use it to make some other point about cultural tendencies to criminalize people because of prejudice against arbitrarily defined groups. But the script was not that smart.

 

[DonIago]

I definitely feel like maybe there's supposed to be some subtext that I'm missing...but if there is, I'm missing it...

I mean, it doesn't seem to be (another) shot at organized religion, and if it is, then it's not well-handled.

Speaking of not well-handled, Ed's meeting with the planetary leader made it pretty clear why he and his crew aren't considered the best of the best. One wonders whether Picard might have been more successful.

Of course, the other captains probably would have just located Kelly and Bortas and extracted them (and I'm not quite clear as to why that wasn't considered a serious option since everyone already knew they were from outer space).

 

[Mudd]

It was a shot at superstition in general, which is MacFarlane's go-to.

 

[eschaton]

Okay that was...average. Just like a pretty unremarkable middle-of-the-road TNG or VOY episode.

It's pretty damn clear that the seed of this episode was in part because Seth wanted to do a show about how stupid astrology is. I mean, I agree with him, but the show went out of its way to lecture the viewer. For example, when he is begging with the planetary leader for Grayson and Bortus to be released, he doesn't make the obvious appeal - that there are totally different constellations in the sky where they are from, that the months are different - hell, that the years are different lengths. Instead he decides to insult the leader's cultural beliefs to his face, thinking that will somehow work. I mean, I know a lot of the comedy comes from Mercer being a naive fool, but he should have some level of self-awareness right?

Jessica Szohr just isn't doing it for me as Talla either - at least yet. I've not seen the actress in anything else, but she seems about a tier below everyone else on the show in terms of range.

The worst element of this episode to me was that there was essentially no character development. I think an opportunity was missed here to develop Kelly apart from her tension with Ed. Without any real character development, there's not much here besides the plot and the premise - both of which are ho-hum.

 

[Marc]

I saw ST: VOY alum John Rubinstein in that preview. The crossover continues.

Robert Duncan McNeil directed the ep for another Voyager link.

 

[DonIago]

You're kind of judging an actor based on a single episode there....

It was deeply disappointing to me that, belief in astrology or not, the new race we were introduced to started out fairly interesting and then left-turned into Pointlessly Belligerent(tm), a la any number of one-off races on Voyager. Seth should have spent more time watching "First Contact" (the episode, not the film). That said, as noted, Ed didn't exactly score any diplomacy points either. However, I doubt taking a "science" approach would have made any difference.

 

[LJones41]

Why didn't the planetary leader handed over Kelly and Borgus and demand that the Orville leave? Why was it so important to keep two people who were not from their world on their planet? Halfway into the episode, it should have been obvious that the Orville crew did not share their beliefs.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think that the worst part of the episode was putting the fake star in orbit around the planet. They should have put it out beyond their Pluto and made it techy enough to capture enough sunlight to shine brightly enough. That way it could act kinda like a Clarke-type Sentinel, to give better odds that the aliens wouldn't discover the fake until they were ready.

I like the new security chief.

And I really liked the reveal that they were doing C-sections to avoid the bad astrological sign.

For me, this was all in all pretty average for The Orville.

 

[thribs]

Why didn't the planetary leader handed over Kelly and Borgus and demand that the Orville leave? Why was it so important to keep two people who were not from their world on their planet? Halfway into the episode, it should have been obvious that the Orville crew did not share their beliefs.

Yeah. One day they will do this to a race that will just declare war on them.

 

[LJones41]

Why did the Planetary Union official allow Kelly and Borgus (Bortus?) remain prisoners in the end? Who wrote this?

 

[thribs]

Why did the Planetary Union official allow Kelly and Borgus (Bortus?) remain prisoners in the end? Who wrote this?

No. They were going to bring diplomats in to negotiate their release.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Well, that was just dumb. I'm just not feeling this season. Five episodes in and only two of them were as good as last season's episodes. Jessica Szohr was ok. She looked a little uncomfortable. Hopefully that's not the case going forward.

 

[guyute03]

10 minutes in and I'm struck by how "Star Trek" this show really is. It seems to get better by the episode, and becomes less a comedy than a drama with comedic undertones. Also, new security chief is awesome.

 

[KennyB]

Well, that was just dumb. I'm just not feeling this season. Five episodes in and only two of them were as good as last season's episodes. Jessica Szohr was ok. She looked a little uncomfortable. Hopefully that's not the case going forward.

Yeah the premise and execution of it were just a bit too unbelievable for me. The actors did fine with it and Ted Danson was a bonus, but just not good writing this week IMHO.

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm kind of shocked to see the dislike for this episode. I don't see how it was "that bad."

 

[Aragorn]

Bad wouldn't be the word for me, but with some of these episodes, I feel like they have an idea, don't really know how to work it into a plausible 43 minute episode, but go ahead anyway. Does that make sense?

Also, this show has the most awkward commercial breaks.

 

[Mudd]

Well, that was just dumb.

Yep.

This is the first one I haven't really liked this year.

I wouldn't call it average - way below average for this show; even below the average of Star Trek.

 

[KennyB]

Evil Birthday? PRISON!
Kill 12 of our guards? No problem
Party on THE BRIDGE?

 

[Jayson1]

I liked the episode. I think maybe if astrology is going to be the source of the problem though then maybe you should do more comedy with that premise. GIve them mood rings and have the doctors use new age medicine. Basically make it hippie planet.

Jason

 

[Mudd]

I will say I adored how everyone treats finding a new inhabited world like kids on Christmas morning.

It should be like that. Never really was on Trek.