A Few Words...

Article by R. K. Wigal

I saw the trailer a few months ago.  "The Orville" looked promising.  In the pilot episode, 25th-century Union command officer Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) divorces his wife, Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), after he catches her cheating on him.  A year later, Mercer is promoted to captain and gets command of a mid-range exploratory vessel, the U.S.S. Orville.  He is thrilled beyond compare... until he finds out, to his dismay,  that his ex wife is to be his first officer.  During their first mission to a science station, a ship belonging to the hostile alien krill race arrives at the station and the Krill attempt to steal a device that accelerates time, which can have beneficial as well as dangerous applications.  Both Mercer and Grayson, through an ingenious ploy, turn the tables on the Krill, destroying the device and their ship.

Nine episodes in, "The Orville" is off to a fine start.  The members of the crew all mesh exceedingly well.  The helmsman is Captain Mercer's good friend, Lieutenant Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes).  Lieutenant John LaMarr (J. Lee) is the ship's navigator.  He and Malloy strike up an immediate friendship based on their ironic view that they are both "jerks."  Doctor Claire Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald), having expertise in molecular surgery, DNA engineering and psychiatry, is the Chief Medical Officer.  She never found the ideal opportunity to marry, so she chose to become a single mother.  She has two sons, Marcus and Ty.  Lieutenant Commander Bortus (Peter Macon), the second officer, is from Moclus whose inhabitants, the Moclans, are a single-gender species.  Bortus has an air of stoic formality about him.  Isaac (Mark Jackson), the Orville's Science and Engineering Officer, is a member of an artificial, non-biological race from the planet Kaylon-1.  He views biological lifeforms, including humans, as inferior.  Lieutenant Alara Kitan (Halston Sage), the Orville's 23-year-old Chief of Security, is a member of the Xelayan race which inhabits a high-gravity planet, giving her greater-than-human strength.  She can't fly, but she can leap over tall buildings in a single bound, and there isnt a door or a wall that she can't knock down or smash through.

I had high hopes for "The Orville," and I haven't been disappointed.  While there are varying opinions about the show's humor (my own sense of humor is admittedly passé), the show is well directed and the acting is excellent.  The writing, I'm happy to say, is highly intelligent.  The story lines are quite clever and a few of them are cutting edge.  So it's no surprise to me that "The Orville" has been renewed for a second season.  I'll be watching.  Will you?