Episode Title: Lasting Impressions
Original Airdate: March 21 2009/Watched June 17 2009
Grade: A
Notable Guest Stars/Directors:
Tim Russ (Dr. Sherman ) Mr. Russ is probably best known for being Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager and I was happy to see him on Orville.
Leighton Meester (Laura Huggins) – Ms. Meester is best known as Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl, which I’ve recently watched. She has a wonderful voice which I wish Gossip GIrl had utilized more. Orville doesn’t make that mistake and she gets to sing twice on the show. This also reunites her with Jessica Szohr (Talla ) who played Vanessa on Gossip Girl.
Notable Quotes:
Look at this. She’s clearly asking her friend where to find the nearest repair service for her device. But instead of writing “wireless telecommunications facility”, she just wrote “WTF”. Now, we can decode things like this by applying historical context.
Dr. Sherman
People have been living and dying for as long as humans have existed. Most are forgotten. But not this one. She reached across four centuries and got a guy to fall in love. We should all be so rare.
Cmdr. Kelly Grayson
SPOILERS BELOW
This episode pleasantly surprised me. They open with the characters viewing a time capsule from 2015, an idea that is sort of unique. I’ve seen episodes where they come across an artifact but rarely is it set up like this. Dr. SHerman isn’t exactly how I would expect an anthropologist to act about the exhibit. Considering the age of these items, I would have thought he would have made them wear gloves to handle them if at all.
So this is where it splits into two plots.
Plot A: Gordon falls in love with a woman featured on an Iphone. Her name is Laura, an ode to the 1944 film Laura which has a detective falling in love with a dead woman. He creates an holographic program to allow him to get to know her, and ends up falling in love with her. However the program, based on her phone data, does not turn out well for him. On the bright side, we get to see the crew in “era-appropriate” clothing
Plot B: Bortus and Klyden get addicted to cigarettes. Its played off humorously but does have the touch of pretentiousness that Sci-fi tends to breed when it refers back to the audience’s time period. Also it simplifies the reasons why people to smoke to just “they are addictive.”
Pros:
- Seeing TIm Russ and Leighton Meester again
- A less pretentious look at history. While it still shows humanity has developed past a few current issues, it doesn’t act like they are completely above us now
- The amount of cinematic throwbacks and references in this season
Cons
- bad artifact handling
- Why an Iphone? I would have kept it system neutral. I suppose Apple probably paid a bit to be showed on the show.
- Everyone jumped to maybe Gordon was working too hard and not considering he was simply lonely.
Sokorra Lewis 