Command Performance

The Emmys were last night, and while I often use the day after an awards show to share snarky comments my friends and I lobbed at the screen, the truth is that show just wasn't our priority this year. We watched some of it (get ready for hundreds of Sean Spicer think pieces, why is the announcer always YELLING AT ME?, Jeremy Piven looks like he showed up at a Halloween party in a Jeremy Piven costume), but we spent the bulk of the night watching last Monday's season finale of Preacher, the new Rick and Morty, and the new episode of The Orville.

The Orville did inch along slightly from the pilot in finding the right formula: it was a little bit more consistent with the humor this week, and leaned a little more into the "everyone talks and acts like a normal human" conceit. And, of course, it remained a loving clone of Star Trek: The Next Generation, scooping up plot threads from at least three episodes of that series (the captain is abducted by aliens, a junior officer has to command for the first time, an alien crew member has a baby), and putting them through the blender.

The Orville was trying to weave in a new element this week, a dash of Star Trek's high-and-mighty moralizing. It came in the form of speechifying about how future humans have moved past zoos and imprisoning animals for entertainment. That was pure Star Trek right there (and about as bluntly delivered as in any Trek episode that actually articulated its moral in dialogue). I prefer to let the viewer read between the lines on their own, though I will admit that it changes the lens a bit to hear futuristic morality speechified by people who use words like "sucks" and make marijuana edibles with their replicator.

The budget, though still substantial, seemed far more realistic for a weekly series this time around. We got a few digital sets for the zoo, a lot of replicator visual effects, and a healthy number of background extras, but overall this seemed more like the level of execution we can expect in a regular episode... and it still made the whole thing pleasing to the eye.

I appreciated the focus on character -- Mercer and Grayson revisiting everything good and bad about their relationship, Kitan's command dilemma and Dr. Finn's "Obi-Wan"-like advice. Still, as the show learns to deploy more weapons from the arsenal, I do hope they learn to do so with more subtlety. This was a small step in the right direction, but only if you're staring right at the needle looking for it to move. I'd give this episode a B.