THE ORVILLE S2, E11: "LASTING IMPRESSIONS"

Bortus seems to have an inclination to addictive behaviors. I really expected him to not have any reaction to the nicotine since he can eat literally anything with no problematic results. I guess inhaling a stimulant is different for Moclans than ingesting it is. Makes me wonder what his next addiction will be.

 

It was creepy when he tried to apply it to the real woman.

 

It was creepy with the holodeck too.

 

Biddi biddi beep.. that's great, Buck!

 

The Moclans will break from the Union and go to war, and will be defeated by nicotine and virtual porn.

 

To be fair, pretty much everything we've watched in our lifetimes were ripoffs of something from long before we were born in one way or other.

 

I mean, yes, it is a holodeck addiction story, a story Star Trek has handled dozens of times. But as usual when Orville covers story ground Star Trek trod upon, Orville does it much better. Where Trek's holo-addiction stories always carry the theme that holo-addiction is bad and the addicted character has to overcome their addiction, usually with the holodeck malfunctioning and threatening their lives in the process. This instead just follows Gordon getting unhealthily swept up into the program until its narrative takes a turn he doesn't like. He tries adjusting it more to his liking, ultimately realizing this makes things worse instead of better and he realizes it's time to move on. This was definitely a far more satisfying holodeck story than Trek has ever done.

The subplot with Bortus and Klyden taking up cigarettes was hilarious, and it was nice to see Tim Russ again. Solid episode.

 

Where's the "addiction" in Gordon's behavior?

I mean, let's assume for the sake of argument that the word "addiction" still means something. People now are "addicted" to whatever they feel like they're doing too much of - or more often, pronounce other people "addicted" for doing too much of something that's to be somehow disapproved of.

Gordon reacts to his friends' concern about what they consider to be his problematic relationship pretty much as people often react to their friends attempts to counsel them on problematic relationships. He's defensive, protective of the relationship, and...eventually comes to understand the problem with Laura in pretty much the same terms his friends do.

And then he ends it.

Yeah, but the Orville writers have an unfair advantage - they get to write about people, instead of the solemn little roddenberries that have come to populate Star Trek shows.

 

It's not really about holoaddiction, it's about Gordon's creepy obsession with a woman he doesn't know. Then when she doesn't go along with what he wanted he tried to change her to benefit himself.

 

This. It started off innocently enough, but yeah, once it became an obsession, he needed to stop. I am gratified that once he realized what he was actually doing, he came to his senses, but yeah, for a bit there it was creepy with how obsessed he became with a woman who had been dead something like 350-400 years.

 

The moral of the story is that women are human beings who deserve to be allowed to live their own lives

 

Exactly. I think that's right at the heart of it. No matter how much you love someone (or think you love someone), trying to force your idea of their happiness upon them is wrong.

 

Orville occasionally has human insights that the Star Trek episode didn't make, but when it does it's drenched in enough weak comedy, frivolity and ridiculousness to undercut the impact.

 

Like most fanfiction.

 

I don't know. She wasn't a real woman and he could do nothing to limit her -- "she" was only a shadow of a long dead person. The problem was that he was obsessed with the fake woman to the point that it was affecting his real life. Just like the Moclans were addicted to something that was affecting their health. Gordon's mental health was affected by his obsession.

 

Seriously?

He was late to work one morning because he overslept at the apartment of a woman he'd fallen in love with and got laid for the first time in...what, forever?

That's not exactly the beginnings of a morbid spiral.

Oh, and he insisted on his friends meeting Laura.

He was a little carried away with the fantasy...and when its limitations became apparent to him, he stopped.

Gordon wasn't "obsessed" and wasn't having mental health issues.*

As for Laura...okay, Laura's been dead for four hundred years. We never meet her; we meet her own notion of who she was and how she chose to present herself to others.** It's not her story, it's a story about Gordon getting wrapped up in her story.

*Yes, I get that as sensitive human beings we now agree that all disappointment, frustration and hardship is traumatic and leads to severe mental health issues.

**Texts aren't journals, diaries, or notes to oneself; they're presentation to others. Actually, so are journals, diaries and notes to oneself; because language is formulated to communicate with othes, there's always somebody inside looking over our shoulders.

 

While watching the episode I did think of Geordi's holodec lady and Minuet, but not that one. I guess my brain is blocking those VOY Irish episodes.

 

I thought about Minuet when I saw the preview, then in the first few minutes of the show saw that this wasn't that story.

 

Well, I thought it was a little weird that he insisted his friends take part in his fantasy, and he didn't recognize that they were immensely uncomfortable with it. I was mainly saying that I didn't think the moral was about "women as human beings who deserve to be allowed to live their own lives" as was posited by a previous poster. Sorry if I torqued your shorts by connecting it with the Moclans' nicotine addiction. But I think he only stopped his fantasy fun once she wrote him out of it in favor of Greg and he couldn't "fix" it without destroying the fantasy. I think the show was exploring addictions in a couple of different ways.

 

I missed the previous comment. Agreed, that's arrant nonsense.

Hardly.