I kept expecting a massive Krill/Moclan sneak attack on Earth that would kill millions and destroy New York throughout the first half of that episode, especially when the whole Union fleet left Earth. They just keep building up how beautiful and serene Earth was and giving us all these idyllic wilderness shots and shots of future NYC. The show does a good job of making you think one thing is going to happen and then defying your expectations and going in a completely different direction.
It was a shame about Charlie making the ultimate sacrifice. Her character could be a little one-note (but understandably so) in her initial hatred of Isaac and Kaylons in general, but it was nice that she had started to grow out of that and had come to appreciate Isaac in a more nuanced manner, maybe not as a friend, but as a colleague, and still performed her duties admirably. She was also quite likeable in the times when they allowed her character to branch out beyond "Grrr, I hate Kaylons" and show her true personality. When she started talking about "thinking four-dimensionally" while setting up the self-destruct, I thought perhaps she might have known some time-travel shenanigans to escape her fate, but no dice. Isaac's eulogy and the analogy about Charlie being like the first domino to fall that will leave a lasting effect for years to come was quite nice and brought a tear to my eye again, like almost every episode of the show this season, which is quite remarkable.
Fucking Ted Danson. Fucking Union. You've got the most powerful and dangerous potentially genocidal and war-deciding device in the universe right now and you just have it sitting in a room with a couple of guards that can be easily accessed and stolen by just one rogue admiral? I mean, they're not crazy ass Starfleet admirals who go rogue all the time, but still. It should have been in some secret bunker on some otherwise uninhabited secret planetoid far from Earth with a battalion of trustworthy lifer soldiers guarding it, and not even the admiral in charge being able to have access to it alone without two other admirals (one from medical/counseling and one from internal security/intelligence), their equivalent of the Secretary of Defense, and the President also signing off. Sucks to see Ted Danson's character going out like a colossally stupid punk, though, because he was otherwise likeable up until today.
I thought for sure either Malloy or Lamarr were going to buy the farm in the aerial battle, but they had their plot shields at full power.
Is it just me or did the central detachable spheres of the Kaylon ships suddenly get a lot smaller, like going from frigate-sized to shuttlecraft-sized so one could conveniently dock in the Orville's hangar bay? I could have sworn that the big spheres were much larger than the Union ships and that the detachable central spheres were smaller but still big enough to engage capital ships in battle because they were about a third of their size.
I was also surprised by how tiny the Moclan ships were next to the Krill warships. I knew they were behemoths, but the Moclan ships were always shown to be pretty large as well. The Krill warships looked even larger than Romulan Warbirds this time. Not a complaint, I was just surprised to see the tiny little Moclan ships being dwarfed.
I know the Kaylon were not willing to listen to Isaac's earlier report about the Union peoples beyond what they wanted to hear, but there's should have been plenty of recorded examples of people making sacrifices to save others or to ensure peace with an enemy if all it took was just seeing Charlie make a sacrifice for the sake of saving her friends and preserving the peace with the Kaylons. I'm glad they were swayed to reconsider their murderbot ways, but it seemed a little easy because the Union needs an ally to defend against the Moclan/Krill alliance.
Still, another very exciting and suspenseful episode that kept me on the edge of my seat thinking it was going to go a certain way, and then it changed gears on you, in a good way. It was shocking, emotional, dramatic and immensely enjoyable. This has been a great season.
Me too.
