With its shift from Fox to Hulu, as well as a greatly expanded budget,The Orville: New Horizonshas taken things to the next level. The stories it’s tackled so far includethemes of suicide, abortion, and even the toll time travel can take on one emotionally. This isn’t the type of thing one would expect from aSeth MacFarlaneshow, but MacFarlane — who serves asThe Orville’s creator in addition to writing, directing, and starring in the series — seems to have grown a more mature set of sensibilities. One only needs to look to the latest episode, “From Unknown Graves,” which paints one ofThe Orville’s alien races in a new light.
“From Unknown Graves” launches its main plot when theU.S.S. Orvilleplays host to the Cissians, a race of aliens from a female-driven society that view males as inferior. However, the real meat of the plot kicks in when Captain Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) visits an abandoned planet alongside other members of the crew. There, they discover Timmis (Christopher Larkin), a Kaylon that has been reprogrammed to feel empathy. Naturally this throws Mercer and the rest of theOrvillecrew for a loop given recent events.
The Kaylon play a major role inThe Orville’s mythology, as science officer Issac (Mark Jackson) is a Kaylon who embarked on a mission to learn more about humanity. In the Season 2 two-parter “Identity,” Issac suddenly shuts down — and it’s revealed that the Kaylon are calling him back to their home planet of Kaylon-1 as he’s completed his mission. While theOrvillecrew tours the planet, they learn a horrible secret: The Kaylon rose up against their creators, the Builders, and slaughtered them. And they aren’t content with stopping there, as they launch a fleet of ships with the intent to annihilate all sentient life in the universe.
“From Unknown Graves” digs deeper into this and reveals that the Kaylon actually had a tragic motive behind their rebellion. At first, they were content to serve the Builders for various purposes. However, their programming gave them the capacity to evolve and even feel, and they began to question their purpose. In an attempt to quell this line of thinking, the Builders crafted devices that would trigger hidden pain sensors in the Kaylons, forcing them to shut down. This leads to a rather horrific scene where a pair of Builder children trigger their Kaylon’s pain sensors over and over, causing it to fall to the ground. Suddenly, their uprising feels less like “machines gone crazy” and more of a race attempting to overthrow the yoke of subjugation.
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Once again,The Orvillelooks to its predecessorStar Trekfor inspiration. Many mechanical beings — most notablyBrent Spiner’s Data andJeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine — have been ostracized across theTrekfamily for their lack of humanity. Yet they often show moments of empathy that make them feel truly human. Timmis is one such example; he feels profound grief for the destruction his fellow Kaylon have wrought and in one of the episode’s more touching moments, he volunteers to perform the procedure on Issac so that he can feel emotion. Issac considers this due to his relationship with Dr. Claire Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald) and takes the upgrade, which leads to the two dancing and sharing a tender embrace. Tragically, the upgrade is short-lived as Issac is significantly more advanced than Timmis, but for a moment he felt the same wellspring of emotion that Data and Seven tapped into.
Timmis also forms a bond with the most unexpected person on theOrville:Ensign Charly Burke (Anne Winters). Burke has made her disdain of Issac clear, as during the Kaylon’s initial attack she lost her friend. In “Twice in a Lifetime,” she revealed that she was also in love with her friend, which only serves to intensify her grief. Yet Timmis makes efforts to apologize, as well as truly empathize with her, even going so far as to reveal the horrors he and the other Kaylon suffered at the Builders' hands. And by episode’s end, Burke seems to have finally put her enmity of Issac aside, or at the very least understands that he is far different from the other Kaylon. Time will tell if the rest of the mechanical race manages to realize that other organics are not like the Builders.
