The Orville: Season 2 Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm demonstrating my ongoing commitment to occasionally posting something to this site that isn't Babylon 5 related by sharing my opinions on some Orville episodes! Not full scene-by-scene recaps or analysis, just opinions.

In fact I'll be writing about the entirety of season two in one go, all 14 episodes from Ja'loja to The Road Not Taken, so for both our sakes I'll be keeping my reviews brief. Though to be honest, I actually wrote about each episode right after watching them, so if it seems like I'm clueless about where the season's going, that's because I was.

Warning: there may be SPOILERS for for both seasons of The Orville, and I'm also going to be talking about the fates of certain Star Trek: The Next Generation characters and a particular notorious plot development in Star Trek: Discovery's first season. Being any less vague would be a spoiler.

Babylon 5 3-05: Voices of Authority

Episode:

49

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

29-Jan-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Voices of Authority, the 49th episode of Babylon 5. Or maybe it's the 48th. It was originally planned to to be the fourth episode of the season, but they needed extra time to get the CGI finished so Passing Through Gethsemane was moved up to take its place.

In the US the first four episodes of the season were originally aired in a block together with the last four episodes of season two, followed by a break. So pushing this down the episode list actually delayed it by two months... making it the first episode of 1996!

That means we're in the year of Independence Day, Star Trek: First Contact, 12 Monkeys, Mars Attacks, Space Jam and that Doctor Who TV Movie. Well I liked two of those things at least... maybe two and a half. Plus Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in season 4 at this point (Crossfire aired the same day), Star Trek: Voyager in season 2 (the legendary Threshold aired the same day), and The X-Files was in season 3. It was also the year we finally lost TekWar, Space: Above and Beyond and seaQuest DSV, three of the most successful sci-fi series of the mid-90s (two of them even lasted more than one season, sort of).

Sometimes I'll mention that I'm watching a B5 episode out of order, but the Lurker's Guide Master List says it actually works better to watch Voices of Authority and Passing Through Gethsemane in the order they aired, so there'll be no confusion about what stories I'll be spoiling this time. There are huge SPOILERS below for this episode and anything that aired before it is also fair game.

Babylon 5 3-04: Passing Through Gethsemane

Episode:

48

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

27-Nov-1995

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Welcome to Sci-Fi Adventures, it's like a podcast with pictures! Except when I say that this week I'm talking about Babylon 5's Passing Through Gethesmane, I'm not literally saying it out loud. So if you're wondering, it's pronounced like 'Geth-seh-man-ee', not 'Geth-semain' or 'Get-hess-man-ee' or whatever.

This one's directed by Adam Nimoy who has a pretty big connection to Star Trek... as he's married to Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia Dax! Plus his dad apparently had a role in the Original Series. Nimoy would return to direct the last episode of season three, and he also directed two episodes of The Next Generation: Rascals and Timescape. I've blocked Rascals out of my memory, but Timescape was pretty good I reckon. Lots of screwing around with time.

Speaking of temporal anomalies, Passing Through Gethsemane was intended to air fifth in the season, but the VFX on Voices of Authority required more time so they aired this in its place. Though the Lurker's Guide Master List I've been following says that the season actually works better with the stories this way around so I'll not be watching them out of order this time.

So there'll be no SPOILERS for Voices of Authority here, but I will be spoiling this episode and I'm considering anything that came before it in the series to be fair game as well.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2-11: Rivals

Episode:

31

|

Writer:

Joe Menosky

|

Air Date:

02-Jan-1994

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally writing some thoughts about Deep Space Nine's Rivals. Not Relics or Rascals or whatever else my brain keeps telling me to type.

I'm not getting back into writing about 26 DS9 episodes a year, because that turned out to be work, but I hope to throw in the occasional episode every now and then. Rivals is perhaps not the DS9 episode most people would pick to write about if they could only choose one, but I promised I'd get around to it eventually so I feel like I owe it to you. Even though I promised it way back in January 2018.

Another reason I picked this one to write about is because it's the next episode after Sanctuary, so it means I haven't skipped any yet. By the way the intro to my Sanctuary review has gotten hilarious wrong in the meantime, and it's getting a little more wrong all the time:

"There will never be more episodes of Trek airing in a year ever again. Unless Discovery gets three spin-offs and they're all released simultaneously."

2019 won't be breaking 1993's 55 episode record, but with Discovery, Short Treks, Picard and Lower Decks in production, plus the other cartoon, the Section 31 spin-off, and a possible Starfleet Academy series on the horizon, it seems possible we'll soon be getting more Trek episodes a year than ever before.

Rivals was the first Star Trek episode to air in 1994 by the way. 1994 was an important time for Deep Space Nine as it was the year that Star Trek: The Next Generation ended, leaving DS9 to represent the franchise entirely on its own... for a dozen episodes or so. Then Voyager started up and got all the attention. DS9 also got its very own nemesis that year, as Babylon 5's first season started airing a few weeks after this episode. (At least that's how it worked out in the US. For folks watching Trek on BBC 2 in the UK, Babylon 5 beat DS9 to television by over a year.)

Anyway there'll be SPOILERS for the whole damn episode below, and I'll probably end up spoiling something from an earlier episode of Star Trek as well. I mean an episode that aired earlier, not an episode from one of the prequels. No Discovery or Enterprise spoilers here.

Babylon 5 3-03: A Day in the Strife

Episode:

47

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

20-Nov-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about A Day in the Strife, an episode with a bad title! It's also the third episode of the third season of cult sci-fi 90 series Babylon 5, which I'm going to have to get through before I can start writing about cult series from the 00s or 10s.

The episode was directed by David J. Eagle and written by showrunner J. Michael Straczynski, but that's not really news as they're all written by Straczynski at this point. Some writing rooms struggle to plot out 13 episode seasons, he wrote an entire 22 episode season all on his own. So I suppose I can't really be too hard on him about the title.

David Eagle had only directed one B5 episode before this, In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum, but he came back many times afterwards for episodes like Severed Dreams, And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place and Falling Towards Apotheosis. I plan to avoid giving SPOILERS for anything other than this episode and the ones that came before it but... that's a pretty encouraging list of stories.

Babylon 5 3-02: Convictions

Episode:

46

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

13-Nov-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing words about Babylon 5's Convictions, the second episode of season three.

There's a weird pattern going on with the titles here, as season two started with episodes called Points of Departure and Revelations, and now season three has started with Matters of Honor and Convictions. Sadly the episode after this breaks the pattern, as the title A Day in the Strife is nothing like season 2's The Geometry of Shadows. They should've gone with The Day of Strife and spared us from the pun.

Okay, I'm going to go through the whole episode now, writing my thoughts under screencaps, so if you want to avoid SPOILERS you'd better stop reading here. Though I'll only be spoiling events up to this point in the story arc, so if you're watching the series for the first time you don't have to worry about me ruining it for you.

Babylon 5 3-01: Matters of Honor

Episode:

45

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

6-Nov-1995

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Sci-Fi Adventures is back and I've finally reached Babylon 5's third season! Hopefully it won't take me three years to get through like the last season did, even if I am going to be taking long breaks every two months this time for the sake of my sanity.

Though hang on, isn't Matters of Honor a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode? Oh, that was A Matter of Honor, singular. This story presumably features multiple matters.

Babylon 5 liked to bring director Janet Greek in to direct the big episodes, like season premieres and finales, but she skipped seasons 3 and 4 entirely, so Confessions and Lamentations director Kevin G. Cremin was at the helm for this one. That was a good episode I think, though he also directed the moderately mediocre Spider in the Web, so this could go either way.

Generic SPOILER warning: Don't read any further if you don't want spoilers for the whole episode and the two preceding seasons of B5. Also you probably shouldn't listen to the DVD commentaries either. Those folks will ruin all kinds of things for you from the whole 5 year run if you let them. Me on the other hand, I won't say a word about what's coming. If you're a new viewer you'll be safe here.