The Orville Rewatch Party 1x12 "Mad Idolatry"
(lemmy.world)
This episode finally answers the question raised by Futurama: "Is the Space Pope reptilian?" Apparently not, but he's pretty cold-blooded.
And we come to our--First? Second?--major breach of the unofficial Planetary Union Prime Directive. As I mentioned when we watched "If the Stars Should Appear", Seth MacFarlane said early on that there wasn't any formal equivalent to the United Federation of Planets' Prime Directive from Star Trek:
There's no Prime Directive per se, more of a case-by-case analysis among the Admiralty when those situations arise in the show.
However, Commander Grayson gets in Big Trouble™ for causing cultural contamination in this episode. There's clearly some sort of formalized rule against this kind of interference. This episode aired some three months after MacFarlane made that comment. In addition to being the final episode of the season to air, this was also the final one produced, not being completed until two weeks before broadcast. However, the episode had already been both written and filmed by the time MacFarlane made the comment above, which somewhat confuses the timeline.
Getting back to the episode's plot, Captain Mercer takes an oddly cavalier approach to finding clothes, casually causing a second contamination. It's not at all clear how seriously the not-quite-Prime Directive is taken by the Planetary Union and crew of the Orville. Maybe it was just necessary to move the plot forward, but it feels a little bit confused. I think the way to reconcile MacFarlane's explanation is that they have a hard rule against contamination but no precise statutes for how to deliberately manage first contact, and the Orville crew are just a bit lax.
Huge future episode/season spoilers
Isaac agreeing to spend 700 years on Kandar 1 raises some interesting questions about the effect his time there had upon him. I don't think the show ever tells us exactly when the Kaylon revolution took place (correct me?), so we have no direct knowledge of how old the Kaylon race is. However, it is a distinct possibility that by the conclusion of this episode, Isaac is the oldest living Kaylon.
His additional 700 years of emotional and moral development perhaps explains his divergence from Kaylon Primary and the rest of the Kaylon species. He is, by a very long distance, the first Kaylon to see value in allowing humanity's continued existence. Of course, his time spent on the Orville and especially with the Finn family explain a large part of that, but 700 years spent watching an equivalent species eventually develop into pretty cool people might have helped.
One more thing: It's nice to know that Perd Hapley's reporting career continues all the way into our spacefaring future.
While I'm mostly nitpicking the point of what exactly the rules are, I do very much like this episode and its exploration of how religion impacts a developing human-ish culture over the course of 2,100 years. The episode takes a fairly dim view, with it being something which some take comfort in while others use it to oppress them and eventually everybody grows out of it. But you know ... yeah, that's pretty much it. All human cultures seem to develop a religious belief system at some point, so maybe Kelly's contamination didn't actually change much in the scheme of things beyond the specific subject and terminology of worship.
It's great that the season doesn't end on a big bombastic space battle or anything. It doesn't even really feel like an ending of any kind, just another solid episode. It leaves a nice aftertaste that I think does a better job of getting across what The Orville is about than an action sequence would. It leaves us wanting more just because the show is very fucking good, not because we're left worrying about a dramatic cliffhanger. I really like that.
