To show how much the show is different from tng Orville is going to promote their underused black guy from the helm to chief of engineering in a move they hope will add more dimension to the crew of ……………….
So with the chief leaving to design his dream space station it seems the job of chief engineer will go to Yaphit. You know the blob with a fixation on the C.M.O. He would be celebrating but it he’s not feeling all there at the moment. See while Malloy complained about Issac hacking his leg off while he slept he doesn’t seem to have learnt anything from that escapade or learnt the wrong thing because he and LaMarr have managed to hack a part of Yaphit off him and hide it in the creme brulee to be eaten. Which it is, thankfully by old iron stomach himself, Bortus. Whether they made sure Bortus would be the one to eat him or they just left it up to chance is left up to the viewers imagination. Either way, after a scene that looked like it was straight from a Japanese gentleman’s interest documentary, Gordon and John are taken into the commanders office for a sound slap on the wrist. While she’s adding these demerits to their records however she notices something unusual about LaMarr and that is that he is apparently the second smartest person on the ship. Behind the advanced cybernetic life form of course. As we will learn later he grew up on a hick farming world and didn’t want to stand out so all his life he’s been dumbing down to fit in.
Rather than writing this of as a novelty it’s decided that this would make him ideal for the post of chief engineer despite the fact that he has shown no leadership initiative nor any desire for the job. So with one fully trained officer next in line for the post and another who was last seen being put on death row for dry humping a statue after receiving direct orders to keep quiet and blend in on a duck blind mission. With no way to choose between the two it’s lucky that the ship manages to hit an alternative dimension and someone is going to have to figure it out.
This leads us into the sci-fi plot line of the episode to run along side the more character driven plot line. This alternative dimension is not a mirror universe leaving the cliche’d plot line free for Discovery. Instead they have found a 2d dimension that is harmful to 3d lifeforms such as ourselves and or the crew. This wouldn’t be so bad if the ships didn’t have to dive into said dimension to hide from a Krill fleet that is looking for a stolen cache of weapons. Now first off it’s easy to see that we have come back around to LaMarr’s turn for an episode which only now have I realised means that Malloy has been completely overlooked for a starring episode. Despite this he still feels more fleshed out and realised than LaMarr.
This is a decent episode, not great but good. A solid episode that doesn’t build up hype before the final part of the season but also doesn’t make you question if you’ll bother coming back next year. The notion of a 2d realm and it’s connection to the famous novella ‘Flatland’ is name dropped and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. While it’s admirable that they aren’t trying to claim this is their wholly original idea it seems a bit shallow to just point it out themselves rather than leaving it for something for the viewers to find out about or notice themselves. But maybe I’m just bitter that I can’t point it out and feel smug for getting that reference.
Other than that the 2d realm is decent enough though a little too much like an old style Tron game and the notion of flattening the shuttle with people inside felt a little too strange and out there even for someone who gets how the Tardis manages to be bigger on the inside than the out. Still I didn’t feel like this was something I had seen before.
As for the character driven plot line the thing works on a meta level as you realise that aside from the doc we have every main cast member on the bridge and LaMarr is really struggling to stand out there simply sat slurping his soda. If we have him elsewhere in the ship it gives us more range of stories and gives him a bit of breathing room from the other slightly more successful characters. The problem is that the reasoning from the writers of why he should get the post is a little shaky and it revealing him as a boy genius feels a bit off when compared to his last episode. The humping the statue fits in with playing the lovable idiot but not learning more about his situation or how to get out of it when the votes were against him now feels ever worse knowing that he is the smartest person on the ship. So if you write it of as a necessary teething issue from behind the scenes then it’s fine but if you try to view it as one continuous tale, which is more the style these days, then it’s going to come up sour.
Also with some people gravitating to LaMarr and Malloy as the two blue collar working stiffs on the ship, I will be interested to see how they would react to him being a super genius in charge of engineering.
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