User Reviews

Some reviews complain about the fact that the plot is unbelievable/flawed. That the Orville should be destroyed after the wormhole is closed because Pria will not be there to save the ship. However, would the Orville have been caught in the dark matter storm in the first place, if they hadn't gone to investigate the signal from the crashed mining ship Pria was "rescued" from?

It seems to me that this episode in fact deals with a time loop. Pria in her time targets the Orville as a recoverable artifact because it's history reports it as being destroyed in a dark matter storm. She goes back in time through the wormhole and tricks the Orville into rescuing her, unwittingly causing the ship into the location that would have destroyed it. In effect making her time travel the cause of the destruction.

Destroying the wormhole broke the loop and therefore the Ship never entered the Dark Matter storm and so it was never destroyed.

Reminded me a bit of the time loop in the "Time Squared" episode of TNG. (The one where the Enterprise picks up a confused future version of Picard drifting in space in an Enterprise shuttle craft.

Definitely did not expect that Ending.

Kind of a strange way to depict Dark Matter. Looked like black colored water floating weightless in space.

Kind of reminds me of "Sound of Thunder", rich people go back into the Prehistoric time to hunt dinosaurs (that according to history will die seconds before being shot by the hunters as to not damage the timeline).

******SPOILER ALERT******

Star Trek connection - This episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes.

Special MacFarlane connections - Seth MacFarlane and Charlize Theron were 2 of the 3 main stars of MacFarlane's Western comedy "A Million Ways To Die In The West". The 3rd was in last week's episode - Liam Neeson.

The episode began with the Bridge crew watching an episode of Seinfeld. {Hindsight Point #1: It was the 1993 episode "The Junior Mint".} Then they receive a distress signal from the Horizon, a mining ship that, apparently, crashed on a comet plunging toward a star. The signal is from Captain Pria Lavesque (played by Charlize Theron). Because the signal is from a hot babe, Gordon recommends an immediate rescue mission. Ed, Gordon, and Alara take a shuttle to the Horizon and find only Pria on board. {Hindsight Point #2: Why was she the only one on board? Hindsight Point #3: When Alara rips open the Horizon's doors, Pria says, 'Easy with the merchandise.'} They barely return to the Orville, then Ed becomes very smitten with Pria - and Kelly becomes jealous.

When Isaac was watching Seinfeld, he didn't understand the humor. Gordon decides to teach Isaac about practical jokes by putting a Mr. Potato Head face on Isaac while he was regenerating. Later, Isaac pulls a stunning practical joke on Gordon by cleanly amputating his left leg. Fortunately, 25th-Century medical technology can regenerate the leg.

Source of local pride: Ed and Pria are from Massachusetts (Ed is from Boxford and Pria is from Andover). Actually, Seth MacFarlane is a New Englander, born in Kent, Connecticut.

Things That Make You Go EWWWWW: Pria touches Yaphit.

Kelly has a good reason to warn Ed about Pria: the Vega Mining Consortium has no record of a Pria Lavesque. When Kelly convinces Alara to search Pria's quarters, they find a small metal box that is impervious to sensors (and lasers). Ed is furious over this invasion of privacy, but he isn't being objective, either. He tells Pria that he wants to 'take this slow', then does the Horizontal Tango with her.

The Orville is hit by a dark-matter storm. Pria not only knows how to detect the dark-matter blobs, but also how to maneuver away from them. However, the storm apparently knocks out the communications array. Then Chief Engineer Steve Newton finds that metal box connected to the navigation array. He uses an old-fashioned diamond-tip drill to puncture the box (why didn't Star Trek's Scotty ever use one?), then Isaac tries to interface with it. Apparently, the box sends a fatal shock to his body.

Pria confesses that she is from the 29th Century - 4 centuries in the future - and came to prevent the Orville from being destroyed by the dark-matter storm. But her motives are selfish - she planned to take the Orville through a wormhole to the 29th Century and sell it to the highest bidder. She uses that metal box to hijack the ship, but Isaac stops her. He transferred his mind to the ship's computer (his secret message: 'Would you like a Junior Mint, Captain?'). While the Orville returns to the 25th Century, Kelly pounds the snot out of Pria. (I like Kelly!)

Pria altered history by saving the Orville. Acting on Isaac's analysis, Ed has the wormhole destroyed, which removes Pria from 25th-Century history. Ed was emotionally hurt by Pria using him, but now he knows that he always can trust Kelly. (That is one complicated relationship!)

{"This is no time to talk about time. We don't have the time." - Deanna Troi to Will Riker, the movie "Star Trek: First Contact"}

I loved the heck out of most of the episode. Pria is a fascinating character who you want to know more about. The plot, up until the resolution, is probably the best so far on the Orville. Unfortunately, it messes up the resolution. The way Pria's plan is thwarted is honestly lame, which is a shame for a series that has so far had satisfying and innovative plot resolutions.

Some of the implications of the time travel mechanic are questionable as well. If you had to leave the future and go back to your time without even exploring it a little bit, wouldn't you regret the missed opportunity? None of the crew seem to be remotely interested in the prospect of time travel, which is quite weird. As for the dark matter storm, I liked the concept but more could've been done to contextualise it, a bit of science (even bogus science) to make it seem scarier, Doctor Who is good at that sort of thing.

Overall I really liked the episode: the characters, the situations, the practical jokes gags and the plot, even though the ending brought it down a little.

While the story drama was exactly the right flavor for a Star Trek show along with the correct music and pacing, they ask too much suspension of disbelief of the viewer.

The science in this episode touches on teleportation, dark matter (storms), wormholes, time travel, future science, limb regeneration, and unidentifiable metals. The viewer needs to accept all of that science babble as props for the storyline. However, if the view spends a few moments to reflect on the outcome of the episode, you realize that it should have been the last episode of the series.

Pria is a time traveling antique broker who removes doomed things from their timeline and delivers them to buyers in her own future time (ala 1992's FreeJack). However, instead of taking people like Emilio Estivez (who might have been OK to leave our timeline in 1992), she takes collectable items.

The Orville was meant to be destroyed in a dark matter storm encountered on the episode, but Pria saves the ship to be delivered as an antique to the future via a giant wormhole that acts as a stable gateway to and from Orville's future. At the end of the episode, the Orville destroys the wormhole and Pria disappears. This is explained with the logic: "the wormhole never existed for Pria, so she never came back, so she then vanishes". The Orville and crew apparently go on with life. However, this is flawed.

There are two main time travel theories: one of a multi-universe timeline and one of a single timeline. In the multi-universe theory, she splintered their timeline from the original when she appeared back in their time. If they then destroy the wormhole, she doesn't disappear because she now exists in their time. However, they made her disappear, so the show is going with the single-timeline theory.

The single-timeline theory is problematic because if they destroy the wormhole (which they didn't originally do) then she can't come back to save them in the future so not only is she erased from the timeline, they are reset to being dead in the dark matter storm and the wormhole is also reset to being not destroyed so that she can come back again in 400 years.

These sort of logical problems is why smart shows stay away from time travel because to explain it properly, it has to be written really well and paradoxes like this have to be avoided. Some stories get it right (ala Primer, Time Crimes), but most have huge flaws like this episode.

So that's it! That's logically the last episode of the series. Sorry everyone!

Not the best episode of The Orville thus far. Some decent writing but a bit on the conservative side. I'd rather have seen the Orville being trapped in the future and to see how a 25th century crew will survive in a 30th century environment from this episode on. Would have been a nice nod to ST voyager with potentially interesting writing possibilities. Instead I found the ending disappointing and a sort of an anti climax.

Charlize Theron is a fine actress, but not a spectacularly good actress. A bit overrated in my opinion.

Overall, disappointing.

Original teleplay, but I'm loving the way this series borrows concepts from other science fiction sources without being completely derivative. The writers are clearly fans of science fiction, not just writers who think they have ideas that turn out to be cheesy. The key concept in this episode was that the way to get something valuable in the past without changing time, is to get that object and remove it to the future just before it would be destroyed in its own time line. Saw this theme originally in Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" (1952) where big game hunters could kill a T-Rex just before it would have died anyway from a tree falling on it. John Varley's "Millenium" (1983) was a short novel where future man was rescuing people from our era by removing them from airplanes just prior to a crash.

I don't like the show consistently featuring TV clips to try and showcase a previous world, but when you include Seinfeld in the mix I am fine making an exception.

Seth cashed in that A Million Ways To Die In The West favor with Charlize Theron guest starring here, but her spot and the storyline she was given wasn't anything noteworthy. The episode had few laughs opting for a very clichéd jealous ex premise instead of the usual Star Trek- heavy parody.

Not a bad episode, but a lot of flaws. If it was so easy to destroy the dark matter in front of them, why didn't they just do it and not worry about their visitor?

While this episode's comedy plot was the most audacious the show has attempted so far, it wasn't well-enough executed to work. As in all episodes so far apart from About A Girl, nothing in the story has any consequences. We've seen the hoary old "conwoman fools the crew/seduces the male lead" plot hauled out on all kinds of shows before - there were echoes of Vash from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the terrible Mrs Reynolds episodes of Firefly here, as well as TNG's A Matter Of Time (which, while a bad episode, was still better than this). Did MacFarlane just write it so he could kiss Charlize Theron (again, apparently)? Five episodes in, with every script so far by Macfarlane, the show is crying out for some stories by other writers. I was bored throughout this week's episode, there was nothing new or entertaining - the show's beats are so obvious. While The Orville has charm, too many of its plots are dumbed-down rehashes of old Trek and too much of its "comedy" is rehashed from previous Seth MacFarlane shows. The special effects look cartoonish and cheap, and the talking blob (Yaphit) is more irritating and superfluous than any comic relief character seen on Star Trek. It's basically bad fan fiction with a budget. I feel bad for Penny Johnson too, who's largely been wasted so far; in Deep Space 9 she got to act off Avery Brooks, here she gets to act off a CGI blob that makes sexual wisecracks at her.

I can't believe the same show that gave us About a Girl, Majority Rule, Firestorm, and Cupid's Dagger gave us Pria. There's no intrigue, tension, or drama at all. The jokes fall flat, and Theron's performance is nothing more than passable. She's an Oscar winning actress! Maybe give her some more to work with?

Anyway, this episode just wasn't good.

So, Im still trying to figure out what this series is/wants to be. Its seeming like early TNG right now with the tired but true scifi tropes and giant reset button...thats other than About A Girl. AAG gave me hope that this could be something of consequence; but that hope is fading; because beyond the 180 that was them still changing the gender, this show acts like so many before. I did hold out a little hope that we would have another 180 that would have opened up a new universe in a new time (giving a Andromeda like feel with a slightly less annoying ship's pilot); but we've got the honeypot and the giant reset. It looks like I got my hopes too high with AAG, and Orville is probably nothing special other than a melding of a couple different genres. I haven't closed the door on this series, but its getting close.