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Seth MacFarlane's The Orville

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The Orville is a satirical science fiction drama created by Seth MacFarlane and modeled after classic episodic Star Trek with a modern flair.

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The Orville Rewatch Party 1x11 "New Dimensions" (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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WARNING: This thread WILL contain unhidden spoilers for this episode and every episode before it. You are allowed to talk about future episodes of the series, but put ANY information that comes after this episode behind spoiler tags.

The Orville season 1, episode 11 "New Dimensions"

Written by Seth MacFarlane, directed by Kelly Cronin.

After playing a practical joke on Yaphit (Norm Macdonald) during Chief Engineer Newton's going away party, Commander Grayson discovers that Lieutenant John LaMarr has a genius-level intellect and wants to place him in the running to be the new Chief Engineer. Captain Mercer initially objects but allows her to test his command abilities by letting him lead the team in charge of investigating a two-dimensional anomaly the ship almost crashed into. Their debate leads Mercer to discovering that Grayson, his ex-wife and acquaintance of Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber), may be the only reason he got command of the Orville in the first place. As he begins to question whether or not he was actually ready for command alongside LaMarr's reluctance to be in a command role in the first place, the Krill suddenly force the Orville into the unknown anomaly with no guarantee of escape.

Originally released: 30 November 2017

Check here to find out where you can stream or digitally purchase The Orville in your country. The Orville season 1 is also available on DVD.

What did you think?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

I'm not sure if this comes across as the compliment I mean it as, but on my last rewatch of this episode I was trying to remember which TNG episode it reminded me of, only to realize that I was thinking of ... this episode of The Orville. The 2D universe feels like something that could have made a great TNG episode, but instead it made a great Orville episode. Phrased differently, I'm just very happy with this episode as a spiritual successor to old-school Trek.

It's nice to get some background on how society operates in a post-scarcity culture. The answer is kind of "the same way it works in Star Trek," but having the Kelly describe how a person's reputation has replaced money as the marker of success is a nice bit of world-building which doesn't really change much about this episode beyond making the world a bit deeper.

I'm also glad to see a bit of character-repair for LaMarr after what "Majority Rule" did to him. As I said on that episode, I do like the character in other episodes and this one explores his nature much better. MacFarlane has talked about trading the LaMarr and Malloy comedy double-act for a deeper character:

There's a little bit of sacrifice because they're so good together; you can no longer have them sitting next to each other, but what we gain is an identity for the character that really ended up A, giving us a story, and B, gave us an anchor to this rogue's gallery down in engineering.

On first viewing, I remember being kind of disappointed to see LaMarr get Scotty'd, but having somebody important down in engineering does make those scenes more compelling in future episodes. Compare to "Firestorm" last week when that redshirt got bonked: it felt quite disconnected from the main cast, since our only inroad there is Larry Joe Campbell's Lt. Commander Newton, who we know very little about. It's a solid change.

Lastly, it's a small bit of work, but Isaac reassessing LaMarr after he chews out the science team for mocking Yaphit is more great faceless acting from Mark Jackson. Love to see him convey his changing opinion of LaMarr with just a "look", if it can even be called that much.