When Kitan freezes during a crisis, she blames herself for the death of crewman and questions whether she's fit for duty. But soon there's a new problem to face, as a series of bizarre and terrifying events begins to occur aboard the ship.
All episodes of The Orville have a Star Trek vibe, and some feel like they're re-mixing one episode in particular. "Firestorm" feels like more of a cocktail, mixing the scariness of "Schisms," the am-I-going-mad elements of "Remember Me," the self-doubt of "The Loss," and a few other elements as a garnish. It turns out in the end that what's really being played on is a good, old-fashioned "danger on the holodeck" episode.
Up until that final turn, I found the episode pretty good. Alara's self-reproachment was perhaps a bit over the top, but within the bounds of setting up a typical episode of television. All the various scares were well delivered. It was fun to speculate at what sort of fear demon/space monster might be at the heart of it all.
Contributing a lot to the atmosphere was a fantastic musical score by John Debney. He's actually a Star Trek alum, and you got to hear what a big difference it makes when an executive producer (Rick Berman) isn't tamping down any attempt at interesting music. This score was brazen, energetic, and tense. And scattered throughout were a number of phrases that seemed carefully curated to evoke particular movies -- the cargo bay search conjured Alien, the fight with Isaac seemed to mimic Total Recall, and more.
Unfortunately, the idea that everything we saw was all just hologram nonsense really undercut the whole thing. It did actually explain why the fears were so scattered and random -- the scenario was itself stitched together in a manner with internal logic. But the lengthy scene in which everyone gathered to explain what we'd just seen was too long and laden with exposition -- mind wipes, special regulations, who contributed which fear. On and on it went, retroactively sapping more and more of the fun out of what we'd just seen with each line.
One last bit of fun worthy of comment was the cameo appearance of Robert Picardo as Kitan's father. So far, two Star Trek main cast members have been by to direct The Orville (Robert Duncan McNeill and Jonathan Frakes), but none had found their way in front of the camera. It was inevitable that eventually someone would put in an appearance. My money would have been on Patrick Stewart, who voices a regular character on American Dad and would have been an easy phone call for Seth MacFarlane to make. But Robert Picardo got there first.
Though it didn't stick the landing, I liked "Firestorm" overall. I'd give it a B.
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