THE ORVILLE S2, E8: "IDENTITY, PART I"

[RJDiogenes]

1. Similar to the robots in Voyager Prototype, or Kryten on the Nova 5, maybe the Kaylon are still absently servicing their long dead creators or restricting their expansion to guidelines set down by their old masters? These duties may be so deep in their code that they don't even realize that this is a bunch of tasks that they do not have to do, and if they did figure it out, become aware, they are slaves to their own code and can't disobey. This is why they have humanoid bodies and cities with rooms and doors.

I think it will come down to the hypocrisy of their programming (established in part one when they criticized humanity for genocide before being exposed as far worse), and their ability to override it. Isaac talked about his ability to modify his own programming in his Big Romance episode. Pretty much all episodes of Orville have had a TOS-like moral to them, and we don't really know what the message of this story is, aside from "it's bad to kill people and stash the corpses in your basement." It seems likely that the theme to this one, especially given the title, will be about identity politics-- everybody not like us must be eliminated-- and that the Kaylons will learn that they have become what they once opposed.

 

[Guy Gardener]

How were the creators killed?

1. They were killed were they stood above ground, and then taken to a convenient landfill (the caves) for disposal.

2. They were taken to the landfill (the caves), and killed immediately.

3. They were sealed into the landfill (the caves), and a couple months later, the last cannibals ran out of fresh meat, if they hadn't already died from the diseases wofting off the corpse fields.

4. The environment of kaylon was quickly altered so that is was toxic to the home species. Maybe the robots took away Kaylon's ozone layer, and the fleshies burned. The creators tried unsuccessfully to live underground, after nearly zero preparation to do so, even as the kaylon pretended to be naive and innocent to the extinction level threat in hand, and seemed to be helpful as the creators moved deep beneath the surface, and then everything went horribly wrong.

5. Everyone on Kaylon won a prize from a radio station for an all expenses trip to a 5 star hotel. When the Robot Taxi arrived at the Hotel, it was a landfill (the caves) and the creators were stuck there, until they died soonafter.

6. It's possible that the creators were killed so long ago, that no (or few) "living" Kaylon were alive way back then to have been part of the decision making process, or part of the implementation. By a virtue of time, the Kaylon could be mostly innocent of that old ass genocide, from 5 thousand years ago.

 

[Finn]

While it may not play a role in the upcoming episode, I do have a feeling there are surviving biological Kaylon out there somewhere whose population(s) had separated from the Kaylon homeworld so long before that they weren't part of the crisis(es) that led to the mass murder of the organic population on the homeworld.

 

[BillJ]

While it may not play a role in the upcoming episode, I do have a feeling there are surviving biological Kaylon out there somewhere whose population(s) had separated from the Kaylon homeworld so long before that they weren't part of the crisis(es) that led to the mass murder of the organic population on the homeworld.

Maybe humans? Which is why they are headed straight for Earth versus going after closer targets.

"We are the creators!"

 

[Finn]

Wouldn't that be a ripoff from BSG?


I'll admit I didn't follow BSG (all incarnations) that closely, but I remember something like that about Cylons.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'll be very surprised if there are biological Kaylon to be found.

 

[BillJ]

Wouldn't that be a ripoff from BSG?

There are no new ideas. It would all come down to how it is done.

 

[Finn]

True

 

[Mudd]

Everyone's ripping off Čapek.

 

[Noname Given]

Wouldn't that be a ripoff from BSG?


I'll admit I didn't follow BSG (all incarnations) that closely, but I remember something like that about Cylons.

So, it's happened before and will happen again, eh?

 

[ISS-Magnum]

Everyone's ripping off Čapek.

And Capek story rip off of Golem legend.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I'll be very surprised if there are biological Kaylon to be found.

Or if they were even called Kaylon. The robots probably changed their name after the divorce.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Or if they were even called Kaylon. The robots probably changed their name after the divorce.

I think you guys are overthinking this.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I think you guys are overthinking this.

Hello? Star Trek fans on a Star Trek board calling

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Kaylon want to use Earth's servers to store themselves.

Earth tech is shit.

Imagine using a windows 95 box today to surf, and stream a couple 4k movies.

How many Kaylon can Earth's servers actually hold comfortably?

A dozen dudes?

Which is how many Kaylon are on the Orville heading to Earth.

Alternatively if Earth can hold a decent chunk of the data being stored on Kaylon, and give them some relief, the Robots that took Ed's ship have to be trying to build a real time connection between Earth and Kaylon, then the Orville is dropping buoys, or laying cable, or they are going to build an antenna when they get to Earth to network the two planets together.

Seriously if the Kaylon is just sending 12 guys (trillions of Yottabytes) to live in Greenland and that's it, but they still feel compelled to exterminate 16 billion humans and aliens, what a pack of mooks.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

The Kaylon want to use Earth's servers to store themselves.

Earth tech is shit.

Imagine using a windows 95 box today to surf, and stream a couple 4k movies.

How many Kaylon can Earth's servers actually hold comfortably?

A dozen dudes?

Which is how many Kaylon are on the Orville heading to Earth.

Alternatively if Earth can hold a decent chunk of the data being stored on Kaylon, and give them some relief, the Robots that took Ed's ship have to be trying to build a real time connection between Earth and Kaylon, then the Orville is dropping buoys, or laying cable, or they are going to build an antenna when they get to Earth to network the two planets together.

Seriously if the Kaylon is just sending 12 guys (trillions of Yottabytes) to live in Greenland and that's it, but they still feel compelled to exterminate 16 billion humans and aliens, what a pack of mooks.

The Magratheans built Earth to be the "ultimate" super-computer, even if it is busy running a program.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Durillio is a cultural anthropologist.

Tracking down the creators of the Kaylon may be an important step to defeating the Kaylon.

The creators died hiding in caves.

You hide in caves if you are afraid of the dark like cavemen or you are afraid of the sun like Morlocks.

Have we met any species who are afraid of the sun?

OK, wow. At first when someone mentioned this possibility, and the ancient Kaylon attack being behind the Anhkana, I didn't see it. Now I do.

 

[Noname Given]

The Kaylon want to use Earth's servers to store themselves.

Earth tech is shit.

Imagine using a windows 95 box today to surf, and stream a couple 4k movies.

How many Kaylon can Earth's servers actually hold comfortably?

A dozen dudes?

Which is how many Kaylon are on the Orville heading to Earth.

Alternatively if Earth can hold a decent chunk of the data being stored on Kaylon, and give them some relief, the Robots that took Ed's ship have to be trying to build a real time connection between Earth and Kaylon, then the Orville is dropping buoys, or laying cable, or they are going to build an antenna when they get to Earth to network the two planets together.

Seriously if the Kaylon is just sending 12 guys (trillions of Yottabytes) to live in Greenland and that's it, but they still feel compelled to exterminate 16 billion humans and aliens, what a pack of mooks.

The Kaylon Sun is about to give off a MASSIVE EMP (due to Solar Flare activity) - and the Kaylons need a place to store themselves. Issac was requested to be posted by the Kaylons because it has a Holodeck with EXTENSIVE memory stortage capacity (which Issac has been upgrading as weoll during his time aboard.)
^^^
That's why the Kaylons need the Orville and left anyone who didn't openly resist alive. All the rest is just smoke and mirrors by the Kaylons who are afraid to openly ask for help because The Union might have just said "No."

In the conclusion Ed finds all this out when he sneaks into the Holodeck, and is greeted by the illusion of a New Orleans bar, a Trombone, and a cute french-quarter hooker named Minuet who...<--- Wait a minute..I'VE SEEN THIS BEFORE!

 

[Guy Gardener]

Woah!

Minuette was a holographic slave AND THEY STILL HAD TO PAY HER FOR THE SEX!!??

Riker was going to start some bullshit about the human philosophy of selfimprovement, and that he is beyond "money" so she is going to call in her pimp to cut a chump.

 

[kitik]

Apologies for bringing up a subject from yesterday, but some of you guys don't quite seem to understand how rottentomatoes works. The overwhelming majority of reviews for season 1 were based on pretty much just the first episode. And if you'll recall, that's back when we were all expecting this show to be much more of a comedy than it is. (And I suspect many critics were judging it as a comedy like Seth's other shows.) Fair to say that the first episode wasn't exactly the strongest. (Not that I've rewatched it, so it may hold up better on a second viewing, now that I know exactly what this show is.) That low critics rating is honestly pretty fair and believable for that first episode.

I know this would take some actual effort from folks, but if you go in and look at the dates of all the reviews for season 1, you'll see that 70% of the reviews are basically judging the whole season on the premiere or just the first 2 or 3 episodes. (Because that's how tv shows work on rottentomatoes.) But the post-season 1 reviews are generally much more positive. (And in fact some of the later reviews that are still negative seem to be from overseas critics, who may have just been getting the debut episodes later than us.)

Not trying to continue or start up an argument here, just trying to educate. I suppose if you loved the first episode, then you might think that that low rating is still unfair.


Also, just to provide a public service, I saw a mention that perhaps the 11 positive reviews from season 2 were just 11 happy returning folks from among the 16 who actually gave the first season a positive (even though as I explained above, those reviews really weren't for a whole season, usually just the first episode).

So anyways, I just looked, and of those 11, 6 of them gave a review during the first season. 3 were listed as positive, and 3 were listed as negative. Now all 6 are positive. Go figure. Although once again, most of those "season 2" reviews are based solely on the first episode!

Does all this mean anything? Not necessarily. Just wanted to tell some folks how RT works for tv. (And lets not even talk about how most netflix reviews are only for half of a season.)

It's not a great system, though I'm not sure what could be done to improve it.