Spoilers The Orville: New Horizons Season 3 Discussion

In honor of the last episode:

 

I feel the episode didn't quite hammer home the potential dangers of Gordon messing up the timeline and thus Ed and Kelly came across as monsters, erasing Gordon's family "to get their friend back". It get why they didn't SHOW anything negative happening (it removes the ambiguity of the whole thing, which was the hook), but 95% of their fans are die-hard Trekkies and we've seen Kirk pluck a whale keeper out of time with no consequences, and recently seen

Spoiler: Picard season 2

Rios live on in the past without anyone minding.

This is their attempt at Tuvix.

 

But Tuvix was a creepy fucker. I was glad she did that.

 

This was my issue with the episode and when they were reading Gordon's obituary, nothing had really changed. Ed and Kelly did come off as Monsters and I wish there was a scene where it was Ed and Kelly having a conversation about what to do. Yeah the 2025 Gordon doesn't exist (unless a multiverse was created) but calling him selfish makes the union seem pretty hypocritical. What was Gordon supposed.to do in those 10 years, go insane by isolation?

 

Yeah, I wonder, if going less Children of Time and more The Girl Who Waited would have been better.
Where they end up in the situation of having rescue teams in both time zones but only the ability to save one of them without creating a paradox.

 

Kill himself in such a way that his remains do not leave any impact on the timeline.

1. Union Time law was invented before time travel was proved. Therefore Union Time Law may have been been based on theories about how time travel works that are wrong. If they wanted Union Time Law on the books but there was more than one contradictory theory about how time travel worked, they may have written and codified time law contingent on all the leading theories of time travel, which were right and wrong. At some point in the future when time travel is firmly figured out, it is then that all the time law based on bad made up fake science would have been purged from the legal code.

2. There may have been proof that Time travel was real, without anyone from the "present" in the Union having Time Traveled. Historical records, or aliens from far away having said that they have time traveled without supplying "proof".

3. After Pria, they started writing Union Time Law, and then everyone in the union fleet took an oath. So the oath is from 3 years ago, not "graduation" from the academy.

4. Time Travel might be possible from unreliable natural phenomenon while until very recently Time travel was not yet possible from reliable scientific devices. So history is littered with verified time travelers, even if making a time machine was impossible to Union science before the pilot of the Orville.

5. The oath might be a consequence of Gordon being lost in time, that did not exist in the timeline that was, before he was lost in time, and stopped existing after he was recovered.

6. People from the future are assholes who always lie and never share their technology because the young are untrustworthy dolts who need to be protected from their own $ucking hubris. The Union could have seen Time Travelers all the time from species that they recognized, and species that they did not recognize, even if the tech was as until the moment of this very episode, beyond them.

7. Union Time Law was written by arrogant over achievers some time ago, even though they did not know how time travel worked, or if time travel was possible. So if Union Time Law is based on poor science it doesn't matter, since time travel was impossible until very recently, so the Union Time Law didn't matter since it was completely theoretical and never intended to be practical.

8. Union Time Law is Bullshit. They create a situation were suicide is preferential to following the law. They want you to kill your self, but they are too wussy to make that a law. If you are lost in time, destroy your technology and kill yourself. If this was the black and white law, only time criminals would join the Union Fleet who had no intention of killing themselves if they became lost in ltime.

9. Union Time Law was not written by the Union, or by Union citizens from the "present". It's a gift from the future, or a trick from the future. You cannot trust $$$ts from the future. They kill babies, to wipe out the family trees of their enemies. Shoot on sight before they trick you into killing yourself.

10. They (everyone in the present) thinks that Union Time Law is based on a perfect and correct understanding of time and time travel, but it is not, or might not be, and they are wrong, which is going to eventually lead to unforeseen awful consequences, or it won't.

 

Very enjoyable.

That realtor left them in the basement for a long time.

 

You can't move into a house you haven't had a shag in.

Its a question of acoustics, feng-shui, and ghosts.

Realtors know this.

 

Never heard that one before.
Our realtors gave us 5 min or so.

 

1. Concrete floors downstairs. It may have been uncomfortable, but you can clean up the mess with a high pressure hose. No fuss, no muss.

2. Maybe it was a trap? The realtor wants prospective tenants to bang because she has several web camera s all over the house and a dirty peepshow website on the dark web.

 

if that’s the case she’ll have quite a surprise this time!

 

2025 Gordon still exists. By going back to 1 month after he arrived, he never sent the message telling the Orville where he was, which was after 6 months. That paradox created a split timeline. Also the timeline the Orville left from, the one where they read the Obituary, no longer has an Orville, they never returned from traveling into the past (because they traveled forward into the new "rescued Gordon" timeline instead).

 

I think this actually makes perfect sense that the laws are nonsensical because time travel was only theoretically possible until the first episode of Orville and the wormhole.

So all of the laws are completely unrelated to reality and have no ability to deal with any of the consequences.

Such as the obvious, "A man will go insane in solitary confinement."

NO sign of a multiverse so far.

 

this unfortunately was not addressed in the episode. We literally don’t know when he sent that message, but since he was expecting them to rescue him one month after arriving I think he had done so already. Which makes sense, since sending it would be kinda a priority.

 

Didn’t he say in the message how long he‘s been there? Or where did the 6 month figure come from?

 

I'm 99% percent sure he said it had been 6 months in the message. There was no need to bring up splitting the timeline with the sandwich if it wasn't going to be relevant. I think that when the sandwich shows up again in 3 months, Gordon will think to ask how they knew when and where to find him, and they will realize they split the timeline, and 2025 Gordon is OK.

 

Well, the noisiest element of the right in the US right now are xenophobic totalitarian conservatives.

I can't imagine anyone being able to go through an abortion and not have strong, conflicting emotions. What the right wants people to believe is that women treat it as casually as birth control.

That's just Seth's meta commentary on the quality of most "director's cuts".

As for my own thoughts after seeing the first four episodes, one thing I can say is that the show looks absolutely fantastic. Every episode has effects and camera shots that have just blown me away.

I felt really conflicted about "Electric Sheep" because I haven't liked how the show has handled Isaac since the Kaylon invasion. I understand that Seth wanted to subvert the Data trope where every time he does something bad it is because he is being controlled, but the season 2 plot line turned Isaac into an intentional war criminal. I have not liked how the show keeps him around and acting as part of the crew when he should have been tried and convicted for crimes against the Union. As such, I found myself really siding with the crew members who were wary of him--and kind of wishing the story would have ended with the character leaving the series.

However, I have to say that both "Shadow Realms" and "Mortality Paradox" were really poorly written and executed--and both stories have been done better elsewhere. At first I thought that Shadow Realms was going to set up an ongoing story with the Orville exploring the expanse all see (ie. New Horizons) so I was a little disappointed when Mortality Paradox just seemed to move on from the arachnid people threat. It was nice to see the call back to the first season episode with the time travel people and how they have moved on. "Shadow Realms" did set up the Anaya episode and it seems this season will follow the developments with the Krill.

Gently Falling Rain however, really showed what the Orville is capable of. We really see a more nuanced version of the Krill society than I expected. They are a capitalist, democratic society with neither Telaya nor the current Chancellor being shining examples of democratic values--and the Union shows a sense of smug self-righteousness in their values that we currently see IRL. None of the parties emerge free from criticism in this episode. And ultimately, we are not left with a tidy resolution. Rather we have a set up that I'm sure will be addressed in future episodes. Overall it was a great bit of world building and one of the more complex and morally ambiguous stories we've seen on The Orville. This episode should have been the series premier, with Electric Sheep being the second.

I'm looking forward to the next episodes.

 

if that’s the case the paradox is very definite!

 

I suspect the sandwich will reappear and have important repercussions in 3 episodes time. Hence the three weeks.

 

Wasn’t it three months?