Episode Title: THe Blood of Patriots (2×10)
Original Airdate: March 7, 2019 (watched later via HULU)
Grade: B
Notable Guest Stars/Directors:
Ted Danson (Admiral Perry) – Danson returns as Admiral Perry, this time assigning the crew to the peace talks. I always love the Admirals on this show because they are always exciting cameos.
Mackenzie Astin (Orrin) – I spent the whole time feeling he was familar in some way and it turns out there is a reason. He’s the younger brother of Lord of The Rings Actor Sean Astin (and the son of actors Patty Duke and John Astin). He has also guest starred on quite a few procedurals so if you find him familar its probably because you have seen him before.
John Fleck (Ambassador K.T.Z.) – I know him best as Silik from Star Trek: Enterprise. He has a diverse filmography, including True Blood, so he is probably familar from other places as well. I think he uses a different tone, because it wasn’t till I was rewatching some clips that I recognized his voice, which if you have ever seen him is pretty recognizable.
Notable Quotes:
Capt. Ed Mercer: I hope that this marks the beginning of a new era of nonviolence between our two peoples.
Ambassador K.T.Z.: We will see. A peace is only as strong as those who uphold it.
Cmdr. Kelly Grayson: And, of course, trust is earned.
Ambassador K.T.Z.: We agree on that, Commander.
copied from IMDB.com
SPOILERS BELOW
This episode is a common one on futuristic space traveling shows like Trek and the like. We have made peace with a war focused species and now must do the peace talks. In this case it is the Krill, which is surprising as the show hasn’t really had a chance to develop the conflict between the two species. However, that is not actually the plot, or at least not the main plot of the episode.
The main plot focuses on Orrin, a friend of Gordon’s who they find fleeing a Krill vessel. The Krill insist he is a terrorist who has killed countless Krill. Gordon can’t seem to figure how this could be. His friend was captured by the Krill 20 years ago never to be seen again, nor his young daughter.
When Orrin boards the ship, he brings a grown woman he claims is his daughter and while Ed is just trying to figure what is going on, Gordon immediately trusts them. Ed goes out of his way to investigate and make sure everything adds up and is finding it…well, doesn’t.
I liked this episode giving more back story on Gordon, showing he had a life outside of his friendship with Ed. Also it shows that Ed, despite being Gordon’s best friend, does not put his duty to the side when it comes to this situation. He didn’t want it to end badly, but he investigated anyway to make sure everyone was sure. So it developed Ed’s character as well.
I also liked that it dealt with the idea of the good guys not always been the good guys. Often times you’ll read things in history and the side you’ve thought were the ‘good guys’ in a conflict do some unmentionable things to succeed.
I did find the biology of Leyna’s species a little hard to take seriously. It doesn’t sound plausible, but I’m not a biologist or a medical person so perhaps my non-knowledge is getting in the way here. I’m pretty much handing that over to “for the sake of drama!” trope.
I am also noticing that it seems Talia is getting a lot more storytime/development then Alara.
Pros:.
- Character development for Gordon and Ed
- Classic Cinema shown (Planet of the Apes)
- Humans act like humans instead of being “beyond that now”
Cons:
- I am pretty sure that if a character had explosive blood that reacted with nitrogen was in a earth-oxygen level environment they would explode. Our air mix is pretty much more nitrogen than oxygen. (atmosphere of earth). We stopped making our ships pure oxygen after the 1961 fire that killed 3 astronauts during a test launch (Apollo 1). So my guess is that the Orville, if using earth standards, probably has a nitrogen rich atmosphere.
Sokorra Lewis 