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Posted in: Hulu, Review, streaming, TV | Tagged: hulu, New Horizons, Review, season 3, seth macfarlane, The Orville
The Orville: New Horizons S03E06 Review: A Road Traveled Too Far
While it's a coincidence that the season finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and The Orville: New Horizons sixth episode of season three in "Twice in a Lifetime" deal with time travel, there's surprisingly no overlap between the two. The episode premise of the Seth MacFarlane-created series is that they have an experimental time travel device that naturally becomes potentially dangerous. In a bit of foreshadowing, Gordon (Scott Grimes) voluntarily surrenders his synthesized egg salad sandwich for the device before the ship goes to a rendezvous point. This is your minor spoilers warning.
After finding their destination destroyed, they're ambushed by the Kaylon who've taken an interest in the time travel device, naturally. As things appear initially hopeless, Gordon volunteers to try to destroy it but ends up transported back in time to 2015. The only way that the Orville knows of his whereabouts is through the cryptic message he sends from subspace that reaches their destination. Thanks to the efforts of LeMarr (J Lee), they're able to travel back in time, but as per the narrative of something experimental, they traveled to 2025. Ed (MacFarlane) goes with his first officer Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) to track down Gordon while Isaac (Mark Jackson) goes in disguise to pass off as a human goes with a reluctant Charlie (Anne Winters).
The emotionless Isaac, who is unable to grasp human remorse, repeatedly attempts to engage in a dialogue with Charlie, who's still upset about his part as a sleeper cell for the Kaylon invasion and the loss of her best friend. While I would have preferred to see the two develop more social in the healing process, and perhaps find some common ground, we do get to know Charlie more as a significant first step. She's not stubborn to uphold her duties and work with him in some situations. There's some organic humor with Isaac, despite observing humans throughout all three seasons of The Orville, still lacks the subtlety to blend in. I'm actually curious if Star Trek: Next Generation and Picard star Brent Spiner would ever entertain an appearance on the show to play off of Jackson's character.
With Jackson and Winters' lighter scenes, we come to find out what Gordon's been doing for the past 10 years and it involves Leighton Meester's Laura Higgins whose smartphone the Orville's helmsman discovered in the series' future. Aside from the temporal stalker narrative, MacFarlane found a pretty novel way to deal with the time travel narrative by asking, "What if the subject in question established himself a new long life?" The Butterfly Effect in time and space scratches the surface when it comes to the ripple effects a person can have on the past that affects the immediate future. Yes, previous franchises including Star Trek have dealt with time travel on several occasions including the TNG film First Contact where the Enterprise-E has to deal with the nefarious actions of the Borg already altering the past to affect Star Trek's future. Arguably The Original Series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" famously asked, "What would you do for love even if it costs you the future" as the series saw it fit to kill Joan Collins' Edith Keeler to keep her isolationist ways away from the Nazis coming to power.
While The Orville wasn't dramatic about how Laura and Gordon's altered pasts affect the timeline, we're still left wondering what could have been. There was much to tell that MacFarlane could expand upon in a future episode, but there are obvious time constraints and he's hardly one to be blamed for an already well-executed episode. Grimes put his most soulful performance yet and certainly more than newfound respect for his talents as a dramatic actor. Equally gut-wrenching is the guilt that is carried from MacFarlane's Ed in his ultimate climatic decision with one of his best friends. What we got is the modern version of that TOS moment William Shatner's Kirk holding back DeForest Kelley's Bones to save the future keeping him from saving Edith from a tragic car accident.
The Orville: New Horizons Season 3 Episode 6 Review: "Twice in a Lifetime"
10/10
Scott Grimes puts in his best dramatic performance yet in Hulu's The Orville: New Horizons S03E06 "Twice in a Lifetime," a unique time travel episode that finds the crew attempting to pick up the emotional pieces of 10 years in a new environment. MacFarlane puts out another grand slam of an episode as Ed attempts to maintain an already fractured timeline. Serious honorable mentions also go to Mark Jackson and Anne Winters for their performances, chipping away at their characters' tension. A true modern sci-fi masterpiece and a new time travel classic.
Credits
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Jon Cassar
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