“Mortality Paradox” is a great, mind-bending episode of The Orville: New Horizons

After more than a three-year wait following the finale of season 2 and a network shift from Fox to Hulu, the newest season of The Orville is finally upon us. The Orville: New Horizons is bigger, bolder, and more daring than ever before. While the previous two episodes have been surprisingly heavy in terms of subject matter, “Mortality Paradox” leans on some of The Orville’s biggest strengths to deliver a solid, self-contained adventure.

Beyond this point there will be SPOILERS for the latest episode of The Orville: New Horizons.

The Orville: New Horizons Episode 303 review

I’ll say one thing for this season of The Orville: it’s certainly ambitious. The special effects on this series have progressed to the point where it looks as good as most any other prestige science fiction show on the air, and better than quite a lot of them. The effects have been such a focus as this show has gone on that there have been times where I’ve felt they almost detracted from its two biggest strengths: its thought-provoking storytelling and humor. Fortunately, “Mortality Paradox” doesn’t fall into that trap, delivering both the funniest episode of New Horizons yet while also being the most mind-blowing.

The premise of this episode is relatively simple. During their explorations, the crew of the U.S.S. Orville comes across Narran 1, a planet which all records show to be desolate and unpopulated…except when they scan it, their systems show it is highly populated. So Captain Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane), Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes), Talla (Jessica Szohr), and Bortus (Peter Macon) all board a shuttle and go down to investigate.

From there, things get real weird real fast. Despite the fact that Narran 1 should be a desert, they find a lush wilderness, complete with a…21st Century high school? It quickly becomes clear that not all is what it seems, and the crew is trapped in some kind of illusion. The gradual unraveling of the illusion comprises the bulk of the episode, and it’s one shocking turn after another. The high school and plane sections in particular are reminiscent of classic Star Trek storylines that involve time traveling back to earlier eras of Earth, while other parts of the hallucination show us aspects of The Orville universe that we’ve never seen before, such a Moclan morgue and Talla’s home planet of Xelayah. It’s a nice way to build out some extra facets of the show’s alien cultures.

As has been the case throughout this season, the special effects are pretty breathtaking. To The Orville’s credit, however, there’s also quite a lot of on-location shots (such as Xelayah) and some practical effects to balance out all the CGI. The show looks amazing, with the minor caveat that some of its CGI creatures move a little jauntily. Thankfully, they look so cool that it’s easy to forgive, and it’s never too distracting.

How do you define a lifetime when you’re immortal?

The rest of the crew aboard the Orville try to figure out why the shuttle team has vanished, to no avail. The ultimate reveal of the episode is that Talla isn’t really there; in fact, she never even returned from her vacation, which was how the episode started. Instead, we find out that the person pretending to be Talla is actually a highly advanced being known as Dinal (Elizabeth Gillies), who has one of the coolest character designs on the show to date.

Back in the season 1 episode “Mad Idolatry,” Kelly accidentally upset the balance on a less-advanced planet when she healed someone using the Orville’s advanced tools. As a result, she came to be worshipped as a goddess. That particular episode was all about how the “Church of Kelly” changed over the years, since that planet was stuck in a relativistic orbital cycle that made hundreds of years pass very quickly from the perspective of the Orville crew. Dinal is from that planet, where 50,000 years have gone by.

As a result, Dinal’s species is far more advanced and has achieved immortality. She admits that she was responsible for the hallucinations, which weren’t hallucinations at all but real experiences drawn out of the crew’s memories and cultural databanks. Since her people are immortal, they’ve gotten less motivated to progress. The purpose of the hallucinations was to force each crew member to have a near-death experience so that she could inhabit their mind for a brief moment to experience it alongside them and relay what it felt like back to her people, hopefully giving them the kick in the pants they need to keep progressing.

Though Dinal assures the Orville landing party that they were never in any real danger, the ethics of experimenting on other species is called into question in a fascinating debate. It’s an excellent twist that not only ties back to previous seasons of The Orville, but brought up an ethical dilemma reminiscent of classic Star Trek. Though it didn’t move the Kaylon war story along at all, this felt like the most focused and thought-provoking episode of The Orville: New Horizons to date.

The Orville: Bullet Point Horizons

• It was so nice to have a self-contained story. While I’ve enjoyed the previous two episodes of New Horizons, they were very heavy, dealing with tough subject matter like suicide and having crew members permanently transformed into alien creatures. This episode still had heaviness with Dinal’s reveal, but it was delivered with a light touch and suffused with just the right amount of humor.
• The episodes this season are long. “Mortality Paradox” was the shortest one yet, but it still clocked in at one hour. Combined with the self-contained arc of this episode, this almost felt like a short Orville movie. Really, every episode this season has.
• The nod back to previous seasons was a great touch. The whole “Church of Kelly” plotline was one of the most Trek-ish in the show, and it’s nice to see it had longterm consequences.
• The only hair in the soup, so to speak, is that some of the CGI creature effects still look a little choppy to me. The Orville’s CGI effects team seems to really excel at vistas and space sequences, but when it comes to the movements of alien creatures they haven’t quite been on par with the rest of the gorgeous effects in the show.

Verdict

The latest episode of The Orville: New Horizons leans on the show’s classic formula, with more humor, a self-contained adventure on an alien planet, and a thought-provoking conclusion. It was my favorite episode of New Horizons yet, and the guest performance by Elizabeth Gillies was captivating. If the rest of the season can keep this type of storytelling up, it bodes well.

Episode Grade: A-

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