THE ORVILLE: S1, E7: "MAJORITY RULE"

Shh!!! You're not allowed to say that, Discovery fans might be listening!

 

Yeah! And it's spelled Star Trekky! Or Trekesque! Or Trek-like!

 

What I'd say is that The Orville exemplifies much of the style, storytelling postures and entertainment values that I've enjoyed about Star Trek over the decades. The tone, energy and pace of the show is refreshing.

Of course it could not work as it does sui generis; in order to be produced as it has been required the existence and familiarity of Star Trek. It basically treats Trek as prologue: "Okay, you got all that? Now, let's go."

I don't know anything about that - I mean, there are a few minutes at the beginning of Generations, and it seems just like very other TOS-based movie.

There are three basic eras laid out in some detail in Trek continuity because of having had productions set during them. Call them the Archer, Kirk and Picard eras, or the ENT, TOS and TNG, or the 22nd, 23rd and 24th. There are occasional allusions to or glimpses other supposed time-frames but which have never beent the setting for self-contained stories.

 

The adventures of the Enterprise-B and C are almost totally unknown. Canonically, (unless I am forgetting something) we know about only one adventure each, the one of the launch of the B and the one of the destruction of the C. There's a wide gap in years between the TOS and TNG eras there that is bookend by those adventures that is fairly untouched canonically.

 

I really liked it. It's the shows most philosophical episode yet. And doing Planet Reddit is a neat way to look at direct democracy through the lens of modern communications and social networks. There's a good half-dozen different allegories there; everything from social media network voting to fact vs. option to the fact that John was saved by a bot spreading misinformation

 

What I really liked is that this show gave us a glimpse into this society, with the crew not present. We saw how the society function - how people get likes, how people get dislikes, and how the children are indoctrinated into believing that this is normal. This is a brief window, at least for me, made this world more believable.

Another aspect of the world building here is that we led at first to believe this planet has one culture. It is revealed through Alara's mishap that there are many other cultures on this planet and there is a suggestion that this world might have more than one nation.

Was anyone able to read the feed?

About the correction, I think some of the people know what it is. In one of the feeds, one of the posters writes,

We chaired a dog-puncher last week. Let's chair him, too.

 

Yeah, a veteran returning home from deployment suggests multiple nations.

As the weeks pass I'm appreciating McFarlane more and more as a writer who understands this kind of show - being a big Trek fan, he appears to have given a lot more thought to what works and doesn't work on those shows than people actually running Star Trek sometimes seem to have.

He seems to get, for example, the foolishness of presenting the Union Way - or our own values - as self-evidently right or superior to whatever benighted practices the locals are indulging in. Mercer briefly explains representative government to Lysella, and she - not a particularly reflective personality, mind you - responds with the simple "But doesn't everyone deserve a voice?"

Well, there are certainly answers to that -- but they involve more of a conversation than Mercer/Kirk/Picard just reading the Preamble. McFarlane knows it, and McFarlane knows that we know it.

 

I'm fortunate to enjoy both. They each have their pluses and minuses. I do love the fun, fast paced adventure style of The Orville and the Abrams Trek movies. I also loved SG-1 for this as well. Red Dwarf is a great SF comedy series that I love, which also has a new season.

But, I do enjoy darker series as well with serialized storytelling. For example, The Expanse and GoT are awesome. Less serialize but a bit darker, I also enjoyed nuBSG and DS9.

Basically The Orvile and Discovery scratch different itches for me. What I love is that we have both right now. Usually it's one or the other. And, I appreciate The Orville because it's been awhile since we've had a series primarily designed to be fun (yet still thought provoking).

 

I very much agree with the two pilots being overly juvenile. For this episode, I'll forgive LaMarr for being dumb enough to hump a statue but the moment he realized he could be effectively lobotomized by an audience of angry downvoters, he should've reacted much more like someone would react and not continue his class clown act.

That weird disconnect was the reason I rated the episode a 3--I liked the premise quite a bit as unsubtle as it may be but the execution fell short and could've been tuned up by replacing the statue humping with one of the crew doing something like not realizing he had to give up his seat to a pregnant woman on the bus.

That said, I'm practically dying for the episode where Bortus sings...I don't even care what plot contrivances they have to do to make that happen!

 

But LaMarr (and no one in the landing party) realizes until a good while later what the downvote penalty is. He was caught up in being an idiot and finally gets away from the statue after repeated orders from the superior officer. They didn't know what was going on at the time and how their society worked.

 

We did see the stealth/cloaking suits and the holographic rock face in Insurrection.

Here's TV Guide's description: "Ed and the crew set out to save Dr. Finn, her two sons, and Isaac after their shuttle get thrown into uncharted space and they crash-land on a moon that is light years from the Orville"

I loved this one. It felt like exactly the kind of episode we would get from a modern TOS/TNG style Star Trek show. I have admit, even though I am enjoying Discovery, it is a little disappointing we probably won't see the do these kind of stories from.
I do agree that the relationship between the up and down votes was a little unclear, but it still wasn't enough to ruin the episode for me.
As for the number of votes, I really don't think 10,000,000 votes is really that bad. The chances of the average person getting that many down votes is probably very very low, unless they manage to have bad enough luck to get caught doing something like John or the anthpologists did and have it go viral.

 

Yeah, I wasn't interested in the mechanics of the voting, just the premise and result.

 

Spaceship. Aliens.
They could have told me they were Communist cannibals and I'd be like "you have a fucking spaceship?! Sweet!"

Anyhoo, loved the episode!

Yes, this! It was disturbing to watch the media immediately slant things against John, fanning the flames of his public indictment. Every dislike, every press of that down arrow, was sending a man who made a simple mistake to a fate worse than death, and people were engaging in it gleefully.

 

Awesome episode! A good meditation on the pros and cons of a direct democracy.

With a few good digs on self-centered reddit culture and social justice warriors run amok too.

Thinking about the whole “That hat is mocking my culture!” part.

 

Yeah, I liked that part as it's up there with the "snowflake" mentality that afflicts a lot of people and generates reactions on the internet and sometimes in real life. I'm not one to throw around the "snowflake" term at just anyone, I think it's over used and often times wrongly used (like when it's used at a person concerned about genuine problems and unfairness between classes and groups of people), but the thing over the hat seemed like the meaningless type of over-reaction that happens a LOT, you see someone wearing some article of clothing or something and automatically assume they mean harm or disrespect by it. (This does not apply to symbols with actual meanings rooted in hate and bigotry like the Nazi Swastika and Confederate Battle Flag)

I'm sure there's some equivalent in our culture to the thing over the hat but I can't think of one off hand. The guy assumes she's wearing the hat and (somehow) knows she's not part of his religion and that her wearing of the hat is meant to be taken as or assumed to be a direct insult to him and his group of people, rather than her wearing it simply because it's a cute hat on her! (And to go with her off-the-cuff cover story of it concealing a wound.) That kind of over-reactionary stuff sort of irks me and feeds into the "snowflake" mentality that people have on why they think so much of our society/culture is doomed.

The episode does have a lot of depths to it and a lot to say.

FWIW. I'm not entirely sure it's meant as any kind of commentary on a 'direct democracy" form of government since one really doesn't exist, the closest is Switzerland and even then it's not anywhere near what is shown in this show. The show just used the direct democracy form of government to amplify the reactionary, majority rule, quick-to-judge based on little information society we have with people through social media and it bleeding over into real life.

Jesus, so much in this episode of the way the aliens reacted reminds me of so many Facebook story comments sections, and I go in and try and be something of a voice of reason and people are quick to call me an idiot because I don't think a woman should be fired and have her whole life shaken up because of something dumb she said in a Tweet. (Like a woman who posted an, admittedly, insensitive Tweet about getting on a plane and not yet seeing any Muslim/Middle Eastern terrorists before boarding, while she was in flight the tweet went viral and after the several hours long flight when she was able to get back to her Twitter feed she'd seen that the Tweet had gone "viral," people overreacted and started calling for her head and the company she worked for fired her.

That's the kind of bullshit this episode was talking about. A person's life being upended and destroyed because of one stupid little thing and people taking it to an extreme, taking it out of context, or overreacting to the offense caused by it. The woman is a bit of an ass and an idiot for making the comments she did but not to the level of having people react so heavily to it and have her life screwed up as a result.

This episode was all about that kind of nonsense with the focal alien girl making the quick judgment on the "TV" in the morning, and how everyone quickly reacted to Lamar's "viral video" and took great offense to it to the point that inside of a few days he'd gone to within a few points of the lobotomy? It's that kind of judgment the episode talks about. Hell, look at Rebecca Black, she gets one shitty music video made for her and how much did it disrupt her life and it was only "hated" because of the just the crumminess and genericness of the video and all of the Auto-Tune.

Interesting stuff.

I do wonder why Lamar was directed so much into lying or "playing" the audience in his apology tour? Why not just explain the circumstances of why he did it and that he meant no disrespect towards the figure the statue represented and it was just a prop in his little act. Apologize for doing it, but be honest about WHY you did it. (And, really, the PR guy didn't prep him on the person the statue was of since Lamar's behavior should have clear shown he had no idea he did anything wrong and, ergo, didn't know who the person was?)

 

While this episode might be a little too "on the nose" to be as entertaining as some of their other episodes have been, it's still a bold choice to make it, & it's pretty well executed, right down to a sneaky little jab at cultural appropriation, over Alara's hat. All in all, I still liked it, & can forgive (As usual) some flaws, because it's still enjoyable to an old Trek fan. In some ways it's one of their better episodes, but I also enjoyed some of their others more, & something about that teaser for next week, looked pretty interesting too, though I can't put my finger on it yet

In fact, one of the gags for next week's teaser has Mercer saying "We need better people" After Gordon is going on about getting a cat or something lol

I think it's been pretty evidently illustrated that most of the crew, captain included, are fringe officers, with the exception of the doctor & maybe 1st officer. Ed's a sap getting a lucky shake at a ship. Bortus clearly has social issues relating to crewmates. Alara seems fairly unsure of herself for her position. Isaac doesn't even seem like he's really a crew member at all, but more an observer, and Gordon & Lamarr are a couple boobs with very minor responsibilities. It's a wonder that anyone thinks its a smart move to include either of them in away missions at all. What reason do those officers have to be there?

 

This was an absolutely brilliant episode. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

 

I was very disappointed with this episode. They pretty much copied Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" with the point system and copied the punishment used in Voyager episode "Random Thoughts". The way they saved him at the end was not very admirable either.

 

One thing that seemed very contrived was that in a society which held so fervently to using this like/dislike badge system, that 4 people just wandering around without them would go unnoticed long enough, that the 1st person they spoke to was someone who sold black market ones, is a little hard to buy. That black market ones are so easily obtainable in broad daylight, around a public area kind of undermines the pitiable 500K lady. Who could possibly stomach decades of social ostracization, if any other option, even illegal, were available?

Like I said. It has its flaws, but when you can sit back & still have fun watching it, I let it slide

 

Didn't I see Liam Neeson in an episode about the bio-sphere ship where the people didn't know they were on a ship?