Praised be Kelly!
(This review contains
spoilers!)
We’ve made it to the end of our first
season onboard The Orville, and what
an interesting ride it’s been. Thankfully I won’t have to go on another crusade
to get this thing renewed since Season 2 is already on the way (who knows when
it’s gonna premiere though), but for now, let’s look at the season finale and
see how it wrapped things up.
Overall this episode felt like business
as usual, with nothing much to really make it feel like a “season finale”-type
of episode. The subplot of Ed and Kelly considering getting back together gave
a little more insight into their characters, but at the end of the day they
remained in essentially the same place as they started. I have to wonder if
this is a case of scheduling mishaps winding up with a normal episode turning
into the season finale.
The crew has come across a planet that
seems to periodically phase between dimensions. The crew go down to
investigate, but the Prime Directive Cultural Contamination prohibits
them from interfering with the civilization. Kelly breaks the rule to save a
girl’s life, but later on things get messy.
It turns out the planet jumps 700
years into the future every 11 days, and Kelly is now considered a deity on the
planet because of her supposedly miraculous healing powers. She tries to
convince them otherwise, but that only makes things worse.
It’s a great concept, but overall it’s
pretty predictable and has a bit of an underwhelming conclusion. Everyone in
the room while we were watching was able to figure out the route this episode
was taking in the first 5 minutes. Even more disappointing is that the episode
ends with the planet reaching the space age and essentially admitting that they
would’ve figured out that Kelly wasn’t a god on their own. There’s no impact to
it, and it just feels like a bit of a rehash of the biosphere episode from
earlier in the season.
The ending sees Kelly telling Ed that
they can’t get back together for the good of his command, since he tried to
hide her Cultural Contamination from the admiral. It’s a good ending, but as
the cap off to a season it kinda lacks a punch. Not much if anything has
changed in the dynamics or characters aside from Ed admitting he still has
feelings for Kelly. Since this is still just the first season it’s not too egregious,
but I’ll admit I was expecting more.
Overall, this was a weak end to the
season, but I’d like to take this time to talk about the season as a whole. For
me The Orville started off looking
like yet another cheap Seth MacFarlane show, taking an interesting concept and
filling it with childish poop humour. But as the season went on, things got
better and better. The episodes got more ambitious, the ideas got more complex,
and the characters grew more lovable. In short, The Orville became the true spiritual successor to Star Trek: The Next Generation for me,
and became a better Star Trek show
than the actual Star Trek show that
was airing simultaneously.
I still think the show still has a lot
of growing to do in the next season, especially since this season had quite a
few low quality episodes throughout. This season finale especially was pretty
underwhelming. But overall, I loved watching The Orville, and I’m already looking forward to returning.
FINAL SCORE
6/10
Okay
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