In Review: The Orville (S3 – EP10) Future Unknown

Synopsis: In Future Unknown, A celebration is underway aboard the ship. Plus the crew gets to enjoy a reunion with an old crewmate.

The Story

This week the Orville looks to lighten things up a bit as Future Unknown gives us a few celebrations. Firstly we see Bortus and Klyden renew their vows, which is a bit of a brutal ceremony in which Bortus must hunt klyden down and copulate. A part of their ceremony requires witnesses.

The episode also serves as a bit of a sequel of sorts to the first season episode titled Majority Rule, which saw a race of humanoids use a Facebook-like algorithm to vote on who should have whatever social status they had. In that episode, Lt Lamar ran into trouble when he did something that the planet disapproved of. And they were helped by Lysella to free Lamar. In this episode, Lysella calls the Crew of the Orville because she wants to leave her home for a more enlightened and less judgemental society. Ed agrees to give Lysella asylum and has Kelly teach her about how The Union operates and show her the ropes. 

Elsewhere, Isaac proposes to Dr. Finn and plans for a wedding get underway with some rather comedic results.

The Acting

Giorgia Whigham makes a welcome return as Lysella and puts in a solid performance as we see her struggle to fit in with the social mores of The Union. Thankfully she has a pretty good guide in Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) who shows her all the advances that Earth made, but also shows her what happens when technologies are introduced to planets that are not ready for it.

We also get great performances from Peter Macon and Scott Grimes as we see Bortus and Gordon get into a bit of a disagreement over who should be Isaac’s best man at the wedding. Bortus’s best man speech is comedy gold as it is a brilliant illustration of what not to say. The wedding part of the episode also allows for Grimes to show off his musical talents. Though it has to be said that the songs he has sung over the series have had a kind of 1970s folk vibe to them. Also, the wedding allows for a guest appearance by Halston Sage who gets to reprise her role of Alara from the show’s first season.

Overall

Future Unknown gave us a lighter and more comedic episode after a season of episodes that have dealt with a few hot-button issues. The wedding of Dr. Finn and Isaac has been coming for the last few years. So it was nice to see it come off. As it provided a fair bit of comedy as well as a bit of a feel-good factor. However, for me it was the B-Story of Lysella trying to get to grips with the crew of the Orville and the technology and all the rules that were of more interest to me.

Overall. A pretty fun episode to end the season one.