A brilliant Moclan engineer named Locar comes aboard the Orville to upgrade its deflector shields. He's the ex-boyfriend of Bortus, but its not between those two that the sparks fly. Locar is attracted to females, and Keyali specifically. But a romantic relationship between them is a tremendous risk, given the attitudes of Moclan society.
The Orville and Star Trek: Discovery have gone two different routes with their handling of LGBT issues and characters. Discovery simply has gay characters in its crew; it's pure inclusion and representation. There's no couching anything in analogy or metaphor, and that's an approach I greatly appreciate. But there's still room for the good old-fashioned Star Trek take being served up by The Orville: let's transpose things into a sci-fi package so you can view something from the outside. And as with season one's "About a Girl," this episode of The Orville actually did that better than The Next Generation did.
Still, I'm not sure I love the Moclans always being the access point for these kinds of stories. The way they allow the script to be flipped is fun -- in "About a Girl," the evil was forcing gender confirmation surgery rather than shunning it; here it's the heterosexual relationship that's taboo rather than the homosexual one. But I'm not sure the situation makes much sense here when you scratch the surface. It has been established that females are exceedingly rare among Moclans. How many Moclan males could even possibly discover they're attracted to females? Wouldn't the only likely way be through contact with alien species? Locar seems to do that a lot in his work, so I suppose it all lines up. Nevertheless, there's another aspect of this story, of literally interracial relationships, that feels like something the story could have touched upon more.
This episode starts up seeming like it's going to be about more marital strife between Bortus and Klyden. Instead, it evolves into the first significant story line for the new character of Keyali. It was a good showcase for her, helping to differentiate her from now-gone Alara. Keyali is more self-assured, more direct and willing to speak her mind. We learned that she's very duty-bound, but she will voice her feelings when she has them:it was summed up in the episode's conclusion, when she helped exonerate someone she felt personal animosity toward.
Subtly, though, this was indeed a big episode for Bortus and Klyden -- at least in how it further took their relationship down a road that feels like it must end soon. As Mercer noted near the end of the episode, Moclan culture is crashing hard against Union ideas, and we're seeing that in Bortus and Klyden's relationship too. Put simply: Klyden is the worst. He's now forced a sex change on his daughter, tried to murder his husband, and destroyed a prominent life and career in the name of bigotry. He's probably beyond redemption at this point, but the series either needs to try soon, or cut ties with the character. My bet would be on the latter, using the Bortus/Klyden relationship as the "writ small" version of the larger souring relationship between Moclans and the Union.
Other aspects of the episode weren't quite as strong for me. The sudden breakup of Kelly and Cassius felt totally unearned and out of nowhere. Cassius was always a marginally developed presence, telegraphing that he was just the latest bump in the road for the larger "will they, won't they?" tale of Ed and Kelly. Still, I'd hoped for something less mechanical than this, some indication that Cassius was on the outs before now. This sort of came off as "well, we booked the actor for this many episodes, and his time is up, so.... bye."
The episode got a bit too clever in the confrontation where Klyden confronts Locar. ("I know what you are.") In most cases, it's not great to put the audience too far ahead of the characters. Showing us that the "mysterious figure" was Klyden was such an obviously bad move that it in turn made the intended bait-and-switch of his innocence obvious. It was an attempt to make the audience only think they were ahead of the characters, but it only served to put the audience even further ahead.
The comedy of the episode was a bit of a mixed bag this week too, something that's usually a strong suit of The Orville. Many moments played well, like Malloy's "good at this" speculation about Moclan traditions, Dann's reaction to cupcakes, and catching Keyali up on all the weird things that have happened on the ship. But then there was the giant distraction that was Groogen, the giant plant. If the idea itself wasn't weird enough, the stunt casting of Bruce Willis certainly took it over the top. Perhaps concern over this kind of distraction is why we don't see (or hear) actors of that prominence showing up on Star Trek: Discovery. But Seth MacFarlane seems to be opening up his Contact List every other week. (Rob Lowe, Jason Alexander, Bruce Willis... who next?)
I'd say "Deflectors" works out to a B grade. There was plenty here to like, and you didn't have to work hard to find it. Still, there were enough missteps to keep it from being a truly exceptional episode.
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