In Review: The Orville – Home

Synopsis: Ed, Gordon, and Alara visit Alara’s home planet of Xelayah.

Review: This episode serves a couple of purposes. First, it gives us a look at Alara’s home planet of Xelayah and also acts as a touching farewell for Alara, who I for one am sorry to see leave the show.

The Story

When Alara finds that she is losing some of her strength. Doctor Finn diagnoses her with a condition, which has affected other members of Alara’s race within the Fleet and recommends that she goes home for a while. Alara reluctantly agrees and is dropped off and welcomed back by her parents and sister.

Meanwhile, The Orville is landed with a slob of a security officer who takes his meals on the bridge.

On Xelayah Alara is settling in and struggling to re-adapt to her homes crushing gravity as well as her overbearing father who never liked her joining the military and was always a bit down on her because she had what her culture would regard as a learning problem.

When a couple takes her family hostage and threatens to cut off her older sisters little finger. Alara is showing signs of recovery and is starting to get a handle on her planets gravity and is able to protect her family thanks to her security training.

The Acting

Halston Sage puts in a really good performance and is given a lot to do as we learn a lot about Alara, which we hadn’t gotten in the shows the first season. Her character will be missed, but we can hope that she will get to return off and on should the series get a third season.

The episode gives us two former Star Trek regulars in the form of Robert Picardo who does a wonderful job of being the disapproving father and John Billingsley who plays Cambis Borrin, one of the two people that hold Alara and her family hostage.

Overall

This was a strong episode, which gave us a look at Alara’s homeworld and acted as a nice little send-off for the character. The musical score played at the close of the episode when Alara is saying goodbye to her crewmates was really lovely and rather emotional.

I also loved the level of detail that went into the view of Alara’s planet as the shuttle was flying through the various cityscapes as well as the brief glimpse of some of the planet’s wildlife.

Overall. A really strong episode.