In Review: The Orville – Into The Fold

Synopsis: The crew set out to save Dr. Finn, her two sons, and Isaac after their shuttle gets thrown into uncharted space.

Review: When Doctor Finn and her two children set off on a trip to a leisure planet they wind up having an accident along the way, which forces a crash landing on an uncharted world. When Dr. Finn is separated from her kids. It is down to Isaac to take of them.

This was a pretty solid episode for helping the audience get to know Isaac a little better. To date, he has been the butt of quite a lot of the show’s humor, but this episode kind of changed that a little as he was forced to display a bit of character growth while looking after Dr. Finn’s two kids. The planet that they wind up stranded on is a ravaged world where a war has taken its toll on the inhabitants and the poisoned water supply has turned a fair few into mindless savages.

Dr. Finn winds up being taken prisoner by one of the saner survivors who seems to want to keep her from contacting her kids. Quite what his motives are for this were never really touched upon. We pretty much know that he is lonely, which seems to be his only motivation. Beyond that little else really.

Eventually, the crew of the Orville gets a call from the leisure planet informing them that Dr. Finn and her party never arrived. Which prompts the crew into action, but they must use primitive means such as star charts in order to find their way through the system that Dr. Finn’s shuttle crashed on. Unfortunately, the Doctor chose a bad time to go on leave given that the Orville crew were doing some sort of upgrades to their engines and navigation computers.

As far as the story goes. This wasn’t a bad episode. It could pretty much be a homage to any number of ‘Star Trek’ original series and ‘Star Trek: Next Generation’ episodes, which saw various crew members getting stranded on inhospitable worlds. Given that it was written by Brannon Braga, it makes sense that it felt so close to being a ‘Star Trek’ episode.

The show seems to be starting to get a better balance between the dramatic and comedic elements. There was a fun moment where Alara quotes a damage report to the Captain, which included a little too much information. And Isaac’s commenting on how poor Dr. Finn’s parental skills were quite fun as well.

Overall. A fun episode with a strong performance from Mark Jackson as Isaac, but not really earth-shattering.