THE ORVILLE S2, E10: "BLOOD OF PATRIOTS"

Even if there isn't a John LaMarr centered episode this season, I hardly think the Mayweather comparisons are appropriate. In two seasons of this show, John already has more presence and personality than Mayweather had in four years of Enterprise.

 

True. There are no Mayweathers or LaForges on this show - even the walk-ons have personality and make an impression.

I felt badly for Burton on TNG, because almost every time they wanted to do an episode about him they had to invent backstory or something to try to make LaForge interesting - he was treated so completely as a plot function most of the time that he remained a cipher. And when they did find a kind of entry point for the character, they made him into a creep.

 

Geordi was nothing more than a plot device., Blind guy wears gadget on his eyes to let him see. What an advanced future. I hate to say it, but Disco actually made the right call making their blind guy wearing a visor a background player.

 

Very enjoyable, really have enjoyed S2 so far.

 

To my mind it's still not right to let her go. Her only justification for destroying the ships was "her own reasons". For all we know she's a serial killer who gets off on this sort of thing.

 

^That's more reason to hand her over. She clearly does not share Union values....

 

Well, the Krill didn't ask for her to be turned over and I doubt that she will be. For one thing, no extradition agreement.

 

Perhaps. The Krill would go nuts trying to figure out how Orlin destroyed three ships without any apparent weapons on that Krill shuttle Orlin had in his possession...

 

Was Orrin a bad guy? He escaped whatever dungeon they were torturing him in and blew up military ships. Doesn't that make him a hero or something? What am I missing?

 

Continuing to attack targets after a ceasefire makes one, at the very least, in the wrong. It jeopardizes the possible peace settlement AND directly violates official Union “foreign policy”. Escaped POWs do not have legal cover for such actions after a ceasefire has been put in place.

 

I guess that depends on if the Union is corrupt. Even Star Wars created a backstory that showed the rebellion only started after its government fell to the hands of Palpatine.

 

I like the bit of an arc that's developing with the Krill.

 

The Union is a civilization. It is corrupt.

 

As per the title (my interpretation of it), he is literally a patriot.

 

But was he aware of said cease fire (and even if the Krill told him; WHY (after all they've put him through), would he believe them. Also, one would think that the Krill would return POWs at that point (and the Union would do the same); so in the end, the Krill keeping him a Prisoner would imply they still consider themselves 'at War' and his actions would still be justifiable in that context.

 

I thought the title was a little more ironic than that.

 

The question really is how "official" the cease fire was at the time.

At the start of the episode, the cease fire between the Union and the Krill had the legal standing of a "handshake agreement:" Union officials flew into Krill space to ask for help against another enemy and the Krill provided that help, but nothing was written down. There were no treaties, pacts or whatevers written to state officially that a state of cease-fire existed between the two powers, so there were no stated requirements for them while the cease fire was in effect. The whole point of this episode was for Captain Mercer to get all that stuff rolling.

That means that the Krill were under no obligation to release any of their POWs (nor was the Union for that matter), while Orrin, as a POW, was still under obligation to escape and do as much damage to the enemy as possible on his way back home. The Krill calling his actions a violation of the cease fire, in legal terms, was just political posturing, and the only reason they got away with it was because they could hold the actual agreement hostage. The axe was going to fall on Orrin no matter what under those circumstances. Whether he saw the wider picture or not was immaterial.

 

Fair enough. Good point. The title was also apparently a reference to the blood of the woman from the Bomb People.