Majority Rule

One of the central tropes of the original Star Trek TV series was the planet that's "exactly like Earth, except for..." While The Orville is more of an homage to The Next Generation than the original Trek, and Next Gen (and subsequent spinoffs) relied less on this budget-saving measure, The Orville nevertheless dabbled in that trope with its most recent episode, "Majority Rule."

The Orville crew goes undercover on a planet at a 21st-century Earth level of development, looking to determine what happened to the anthropologists who vanished there while on an observation mission. When LaMarr is caught on video by the locals performing a lewd act on a statue, they find out what happened -- they were forced into the planet's legal system, a televised hybrid of popularity contest and apology tour where the public decides whether to lobotomize the offender. And now LaMarr is in the spotlight.

The "exactly like Earth, but..." trope was also a concept at the core of many episodes of The Twilight Zone, and informed many later series that followed in its footsteps. The most current of those is a show I've really wanted to watch but haven't found the time for, Black Mirror. Still, Black Mirror has been on my radar enough to know that this exact story, that of a planet where people's "up-votes and down-votes" are used as social currency and more, was already presented on that show. So by the time you add that to the Star Trek tropes in general, plus the similarities to the Next Generation episode "Justice" in particular, it might be fair to say that this is the first episode of The Orville that isn't just an homage -- it's actually kind of a rip-off. So the question is, did this incarnation bring anything novel to the table?

Unfortunately, not much. The ending was a little bit different. Classic Trek episodes of this nature often end with some high-and-mighty speechifying about the insanity of the local culture, and a plea to set it on the "right" path. The Orville is content with a less on the nose approach, sprinkling condemnation throughout and ending with the idea that one person, at least, has seen the light by interacting with aliens.

Because the characters of The Orville aren't so polished and highly strung, the actual conflict itself is a different too. This isn't Wesley falling in some flowers because he didn't know better; LaMarr grinding on a statue in public is something he should have known better than to do in the first place (to maintain a low profile, if nothing else, as Grayson chastises him for in the moment). It's a bit silly, but silly is part of this show's makeup. In any case, the episode handles a later scene much more delicately, when Kitan unknowingly offends a local with her headgear -- a cleverly constructed metaphor of "I'm online and you just offended me!" translated into a face-to-face confrontation.

Still, I do feel like this might be the weakest episode of The Orville we've seen. I'd give it a B-.