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Short summary

Admiral Tucker orders the Orville to investigate the disappearance of two Union anthropologists undercover on a planet akin to 21the century earth. The captain must stand by observing Kelly's small away party, including suitably empathetic doc, Alara -who headdress proves inefficient- and lieutenant John LaMarr, whose childish dance on a statue is considered an utter outrage. The society has no actual authorities, juts a system of voting by the general public o everyone's behavior, and John's is deemed bad enough for tele-voting which may result in 'social correction', a primitive electric brainwashing.

This episode shares many similarities with the Black Mirror season 3 episode "Nosedive", in which your social rating determines your societal value. In both, certain establishments will refuse service if you have a low enough rating

The exterior shots took place on the grounds of Los Angeles Center Studios.

This episode aired on Seth MacFarlane's 44th birthday.

John LaMarr comments to the group that "maybe there's a Bustin' Jeeber walkin' around somewhere" - obviously referring to Justin Bieber

John did not actually get down voted 9,999,996 times. Earlier in the episode it can be seen that his badge already had 116,941 downvotes when he bought it.

User reviews


  • comment
    • Author: Vetibert
    What started as a parody of Star Trek is finding its own style episode after episode. In this 7th installment, we're treated to a new setting very much reminiscent of the good old Sliders episodes. A group of close friends trying to blend in a familiar yet alien environment. A dystopia mimicking some of Earth's shortcomings. What's surprising is that it works so well. The mix of familiar urban landscape and alien society feels completely natural and unforced. The point is driven with such ease that it doesn't matter that it's obvious or trivial. And the final solution, the last 5 minutes, is hilarious.

    I'm hooked now.
  • comment
    • Author: greatest
    The episode begins with two Union anthropologists who went missing. So, The Orville sends down an away team to find out what happened.

    ** SPOILERS BELOW **

    The episode is well written and shows the folly of using direct democracy, where people vote on everything (including the validity of medical treatments and scientific studies), and where public outrage over a single video, ripped out of context, has the legal weight to force someone to be lobotomized (they call it "corrected").

    The episode also shows the folly of "cultural appropriation" and, in the climax, the way The Orville crew member barely escapes a lobotomy is because The Orville crew (Issac in particular) floods The Feed (i.e. their planet's Facebook) with fake news, including fake videos, to sway public opinion.

    It is a good, dramatic episode that touches on so many current social issues. But, the episode never feels preachy, or slow.
  • comment
    • Author: Ann
    Very relevant to today's social media trends from the like button to the stupid acts people post on YouTube. This is what Discovery should be but never will be. The Orville takes today's society and it's trends head on just like the very best episodes from all the Star Trek episodes did. In Majority Rules Orville holds a harsh bright spotlight on how social media has taken over how people think and vote based on how they are liked or un-liked instead of what they have actually done and how easy people are manipulated. If you have only judged Orville on the humor you are missing a gem. Ignore the humor pay attention to the story. Go back and watch episode three "about a girl" then say the writing is bad. It is very much on topic with real issues.
  • comment
    • Author: Zahisan
    I've always thought Seth MacFarlane was a clever writer but this episode (an allegory of present-time social media) was fantastic. A "true" democracy and why it cannot work in the real world. I loved it!

    This series continues to impress: the writing, the production values, the special effects -- all just terrific.

    I hope it continues for many years.

    Go go, Seth!
  • comment
    • Author: Garne
    This wasn't so much a sci-fi or Star Trek episode, but rather a repackage of a Black Mirror episode, commenting on social media and its influence, but it was still a really strong episode. The right amount of comedy and the right amount of moral questioning.

    It honestly is possible for something like this to be real and not fiction somewhere down the line. I do not know if that is scary or what, but at least we can mock the idea on TV in 2017.

    Good episode and I hope people can look past the pilot and see that The Orville has been solid viewing so far.
  • comment
    • Author: Arabella V.
    Awesome episode of a very promising show.

    Dear the rest of TV, We just want to use our brains every now and then! That's all. Please.

    PS - It's cheap!

    The special effects were minimal and fine. They got the obviously-this- is-Earth out of the way immediately, and the experience did not suffer. I mean there was a damn 2016 Prius sitting there, because why not.

    Very interesting take on a society driven by instant, shallow judgment. An extremely difficult story to tell well, but I think they nailed it, and had (gasp) fun along the way.
  • comment
    • Author: Vudojar
    SPOILER ALERT Don't read if you don't want it spoiled for you.

    This episode was amazing, I love how they take social issues and parody them and put them in the show. They go to this new planet to study the people and one of the major things they did, was the thumbs up and thumbs down that social media is based around these days. They took it and put it into everyday life, away from social media. I hope that makes sense.

    It's actually so scary and funny at how much this could become a real thing in the future. kinda like the idiocracy movie.
  • comment
    • Author: Cozius
    "Majority Rule" was so good my wife and I kept hitting PAUSE to discuss how timely, scary and well done everything about this episode was. We think Seth Mcfarland is pure genius for being able to calmly take the current political climate of the USA and the madness of everyone choosing to LIKE or not LIKE everything on our many social media platforms and combine them into a science-fiction script set in the future. Amazing to watch. We will watch it again. My thoughts to everyone calling this a ripoff of some old TV show(s) are these: Every cop, medical, and lawyer show being written and produced right now has already been done before in some form or fashion. We think "The Orville" is the best show on TV right now. We will never miss an episode and look forward to buying the DVDs. Thank you Seth! Please keep up the good work..!!
  • comment
    • Author: Pedora
    ******SPOILER ALERT******

    Star Trek references - Steven Culp, who played Publicity Officer Willks, played Major Hayes, the commander of the MACOs, in Enterprise. Ron Canada, who played Fleet Admiral Tucker again, played 3 different characters in The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager.

    Special Seth MacFarlane reference - on October 26, when this episode was televised, MacFarlane turned 44.

    In this episode, MacFarlane put a mirror in front of our society and showed us how absurd it has become, especially in its addiction to social media.

    Sargas IV is a planet very similar to 21st-Century Earth, but that's all the Union knew about that world. The Union sent 2 anthropologists, Lewis and Tom (Lewis & Clark would have been too clever), to observe the planet. However, all contact with the duo was lost a month ago, so Union Command sent the Orville to investigate. The mission became personal for Claire because Lewis is her friend.

    Nostalgia note - Tom was played by Barry Livingston, who played Ernie in 'My Three Sons'.

    Ed assigned Kelly, Alara, John, and Claire as the landing team to find Lewis and Tom. The landing team needed to wear Sargasian clothes, and John's blue jeans were very tight. Alara wore a Kelvik hat to hide her Seleyan forehead. They flew a shuttle with a cloaking device (Star Trek fans will get that reference) to the surface.

    Question - Why doesn't the Orville have a cloaking device? Possible answer - it would consume too much of the ship's power.

    The landing team learned that Sargasians are obsessed with the Master Feed, their version of the Internet. Everyone wears a badge that counts 'upvotes' (positive comments) and 'downvotes' (negative comments) about that person (Like/Dislike, Left-Swipe/Right-Swipe). The landing team learned that Lewis and Tom were arrested for having too many downvotes, only because they did not give up a seat on a public-transport vehicle to a pregnant woman. (The picture of the incident went viral.) Lewis was 'corrected' but Tom was killed trying to escape.

    Alara and John had a casual conversation about dancing, and John gyrated with a statue. He didn't know that it was a statue of a Sargasian hero. Not surprisingly, some Sargasians posted the video on the Master Feed and it went viral, provoking over 1,000,000 downvotes for John, so he was arrested. Fleet Admiral Tucker didn't allow Ed to launch a rescue mission because the knowledge that aliens exist could disrupt Sargasian society. (a Prime Directive?)

    The landing team learned from all of this that Sargas IV is a total democracy - no elements of a republic (like in the U.S.A. and many other Earth societies), just a direct vote by the people on everything, including whether or not a fact is a fact (Fake News!). If John receives 10,000,000 downvotes, he will be 'corrected' (a high-tech lobotomy). Willks was assigned as John's Publicity Officer; he guided John on an 'apology tour' to avoid 'correction'.

    John's first stop was "The Chat" (an obvious parody of "The View"). He tried to apologize, but the hosts and the audience didn't believe him. Then he appeared on an interview show, but his downvotes kept rising.

    In an apparent swipe at political correctness, a Kelvik man was offended by Alara wearing a Kelvik hat and threatened to post her photo on the Master Feed. In the restroom of a cafe, Claire tried to replace the hat with an improvised bandanna, but Lysella, a barista, saw Alara's forehead. Then Claire and Alara told Lysella the truth. Fortunately, she didn't freak out, but was intrigued by her encounter with aliens.

    Lysella helped Claire and Alara find Lewis, but Claire couldn't do anything about his lobotomy. (He reminded me of the disciples of Landru in "The Return of the Archons" in the original Star Trek.) Ed had Lysella brought to the Orville, where she guided Isaac in hacking the Master Feed. As John's downvotes passed 9,000,000, Isaac planted phony posts (Fake News) about John to provoke sympathy from the Sargasians. The effective post showed John as a war veteran with a dog named Chuckles. (Why not a Cocker Spaniel named Checkers? - look it up.) The downvotes stopped at 9,999,996 - John was freed.

    At the end, when Lysella saw the latest accusation on the Master Feed, she did not vote.

    My conclusion - This is why we need to remain both a democracy and a republic (and need the Electoral Vote as much as we need the Popular Vote). And could we stop spending every waking hour staring at smartphones (and posting our lunches on the Internet)?
  • comment
    • Author: Iaran
    The brilliance of this episode for me is precisely in how it uses familiar and ridiculous tropes (i.e. the type of planet and its culture, something familiar from Star Trek, just like the series so far has clearly created its world around many of the concepts that create the framework for the Star Trek universe), and obvious near-stealing of an idea from elsewhere (one specific Black Mirror episode in particular - no-one gets points for noticing that; it's utterly blatant and shameless to the point that surely the writers expected it to be obvious).

    To add to this apparent coarseness is the dubious ignorance and lack of forethought of the main characters, the clumsy arrival of problems to solve, obvious turns of events and reasonably trite solutions to them, and a heavy-handed allegory of our own contemporary society and our specifically very recent problem of how information is exchanged and opinion formed around the world and the consequences of that.

    We see here a kind of cartoon idea of the power that massive attention to the mass feed of information gives to uninformed or ill-considered opinion and of the unstoppable weight of the negative consequences of that, with its actual utter shallow, childish arbitrariness shown up as laughable at the end.

    It shows consequences for individuals and also consequences for the quality of the wider culture, only stopping short of having an allegory for some of the world-shaking dumb decisions that have been made in our world as a result in recent years, but is clearly highly topical, referring clearly to how we are forming our large-scale culture and political structure, as well as limiting the smaller space of each individual within it, with the 'big data' of 'everyone's opinion' becoming the main arbitrator, regardless of knowledge, thinking skills, conscientiousness or any other quality by which you might arguably need to earn respect for that opinion.

    The way it's conceived and executed is so contrived, derivative and predictable, using tropes that we've seen again and again, and making the allegory so blatant, towards the end at least, that you almost expect the actors to start winking at the camera, that you could easily fall on the side of heavy negative criticism, if it wasn't so clear that the intent was exactly that, and that making that point in that almost clichéd way was the whole central thread of the episode and the main carrier of its intent, message, entertainment, food for thought, fun, comedy, or whatever else you might get from it.

    I was worrying a little at first at all of this, but as the culmination approached I turned towards admiration at the creators for this shameless and deliberate surface clumsiness, making a point many of us don't need explaining to us, but that somehow benefits very well from being made in this way. Maybe the main thing isn't any conscious admiration though, but more that I couldn't help but laugh loudly at the whole picture of it as it came together.

    Kind of a 'punk rock' attitude that brings everything down to a simple and obvious core that results in a brilliantly effective delivery; no need to be 'clever', 'original', 'technical' or 'brilliant', just making a sharp and shamelessly coarsely-made point, and adding to the enjoyment and humour all the more for that shameless 'cheapness', with maybe a good serving of 'self-deprecation' implied in there to add some more sauce.

    It has the potential to become a classic episode on the basis of the very quality of not trying to be anything clever at all, but just to shamelessly make a point humorously and to laugh at itself for how it's making it. A direct and effective simplicity, not scared to be 'D-U-M- B', just like your favourite Ramones song.
  • comment
    • Author: Early Waffle
    Both my praise and criticism revolve around how close our modern society is getting towards this extreme dystopian reality show style form of justice. The idea of being judged in the public forum before you ever reach a court room. In reality the mere accusation is enough to destroy peoples lives these days.
  • comment
    • Author: Brazil
    So Orville has some potential being a zanier version of Star Trek, some episodes were pretty good but this one was a bit different. I felt like writing a review because it made me ANGRY after watching this episode, which had a lot of potential.

    So the crew found a planet similar to earth in the 21 century, except the society works on a voting system where the majority of people decide what is right and wrong. Now, I love this premise which criticizes utilitarianism and democracy, but how this premise related to the crew was awful. You have Lt. LaMarr (a horrible diversity insert since episode 1 of the show) performing a lewd act to a statue on a foreign planet, on an undercover mission which cause the whole mission to go astray... So the rest of the episode was about trying to rescue him from impending doom. Not only that but he was completely unrepentant and the moral of the story? It's fine to act like a total asshole and suffer no consequences for your actions.

    It could have been a great episode but the structure ruined it.
  • comment
    • Author: Stonewing
    This is first ever 10/10 I gave to anything on IMDb - I normally review things I like, and my average is about 7/5.

    I don't think "Majority Rule" is somehow flawless; my score reflects the feeling after watching that episode. This could be descent TNG episode, easily!

    It is, perhaps blunt, but on point commentary on our modern social- media controlled world. World in which hashtag activism became a valid form of social participation.

    This episode doesn't focus on Mr. MacFarlane or relationship of his character with Cmdr Grayson, instead giving front seat to Lt. LeMarr with support of Grayson, Alara and Dr. Finn - giving the show proper feeling of being an ensemble endeavour - which is what Star Trek always was (with notable exception of STD).

    This episode isn't extremely clever and it's not a deep philosophical debate that let us look upon ourselves through lenses of sci-fi storytelling, but it is the best a show like Orville could do, while appealing to a modern audience.

    For that, it deserves, in my opinion, the highest praise and rating.
  • comment
    • Author: OwerSpeed
    If you were wondering if The Orville and the Planetary Union had something like a prime directive about non-interference, trying to minimize the footprint of meeting lesser developed civilizations – yes, they have, sort of, but it's lose in the holster.

    This is not a "Black Mirror" rip-off done badly. This is taking a similar aspect of projecting what could happen if technology like social media and public, uninformed "voting", quote/unquote, as in voting for pop idol type media events, could result in, if this would be taken into every aspect of daily life, especially into the justice system. Plus, manipulating the public mind through social media – well done, Mr. Seth MacFarlane, this is Gene Roddenberry's vision done right on the spot.
  • comment
    • Author: Gaudiker
    Please, to everyone going on about the BLACK MIRROR episode, go watch the COMMUNITY episode called APP DEVELOPMENT AND CONDIMENTS. Someone else mentioned it but it's worth pointing out that it aired more than two years before NOSEDIVE. Others have also mentioned episodes of THE SIMPSONS & DOCTOR WHO. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there's an episode of SOUTH PARK out there somewhere that covers the same territory. I admit there's a thin line between inspiration & ripoff sometimes, but the simple fact is is that none of these were the first to tread this ground. And there is of course the irony that we are all on this site passing judgement on other peoples work. And at the bottom of each review are two buttons where people can pass judgement on our reviews. Just a thought.
  • comment
    • Author: Tygolar
    Community did it first, you hack frauds. My only complain is the way John gets away. They could have just hacked the "Feed" voting system (RL, anyone?), and be done with it. But no!, they have to make it exciting... Bleh. Overall, great episode.

    So, next time you accuse of something, try to get your facts right.
  • comment
    • Author: Xlisiahal
    Let me start of by saying I love what this show has done so far. It has a lot of Trek going on in a good way, and it is obvious the creators really love ST and all it stands for.

    That said I thought this episode was a let down. The intro was very interesting: what if there's a society that does not have laws but lets the member of society decide what's right and not? Granted, this has been done a year ago in Black Mirror already, but that's alright.

    Where this episode goes the wrong way for me is the implementation. I get that this show tries to mix humour and drama, and I think it works well enough in previous episodes. However in this one it just makes the message of the episode hard to buy. The lieutenant is seem humping a statue in one of the first scenes when he is undercover in another nation: is this really in line with a crew on a rescue mission? And if that's not enough, he keeps doing similar stuff that is totally out of line. After getting in trouble, he does not try to understand what he did wrong and seems to take no efforts to have any respect for the society. In the last scene, he tells everyone on the planet that they are crazy and that he's glad to be gone from them.

    Like I said, I get that this show tries to mix humour and drama, however I feel in this episode it made the episode totally moot. The whole point of Star Trek is to take a look at what could happen, how society could be different, but first and foremost always respect the things that are different (because there's always a good reason why things are what they are in space, even if you don't agree with it!). If that isn't what the Orville as a show is trying to do then that is fine of course, but it also makes episode like these where they're going halfway in giving some social commentary hard to buy. How can we take seriously a crew whole knowingly (mockingly!) violates another cultures values repeatedly while also at the same time tries to push home a moral message about how society could be or should act? It makes it hard to understand what the episode is exactly about.
  • comment
    • Author: Budar
    Let's be honest - it's a great series: coming back to true Star Trek and not afraid to tackle all serious problems we face in today world.

    But this episode, with John facing social-media democracy isn't just 10-point one. It's the best so far.

    And I was terrified by the fact that during the entire episode I wanted to press red-down triangle on him as well. Really incredible good writing and directing.
  • comment
    • Author: Bu
    Or else I will get it.

    SPOILERS John, Finn and Kelly go on a mission to an alien planet similar to Earth in the 20th/21st century, to find two scientists who went undercover to study the race.

    When they get there they soon find out everybody wears a badge with and "Up" and "Down" vote, much like something you find on message board comments (sometimes a thumbs up or down). Everything can get you a vote; you accidentally say something wrong, you can get down-voted; do something nice, get up-voted.

    John ends up doing something inappropriate and it's caught on video and uploaded and soon his down-vote numbers are tumbling and he's arrested.

    Faced with the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy to leave him more happy and peaceable, John must try and avoid getting ten million votes -- the number where you get "re-educated", so to speak. Unfortunately, the society is a mob-ocracy, where everybody gets a vote and much like today's online behavior, they don't look into anything and vote on not facts by emotion.

    The episode is a little weak and has it's faults, but it's easy to look passed them and find what is a rather nice (though not excellent) example of why the United States has an electoral college and why America is a Constitutional Republic and not a democracy. What happens here is an example of what you get when you have a democracy.

    Examples of weak spots include: the alien world is basically just Earth with badges slapped on everybody and a little lingo being different; there's no real effort. Some of the modern scoring with synth sounds here and there (thankfully not the majority of the episode score by John Debney) is annoying and distracting, cheapening the on-screen events. It feels like most the actors are going through the motions and not putting real effort into their work; Seth looks tired and un-invested, for example.
  • comment
    • Author: Kajikus
    For me this was a cringe festival. The "dance" scene was just stupid. It was neither funny nor clever. Any so called trained professional going into an unknown culture and doing random stuff like this would be fired. And it's not just that he did his dance in an alien culture, he ignored his superior officer that told him to stop it.

    Then the apology part was cringe worthy as well. Why not go with stupidity approach anyway? "I am so sorry about what I have done. I didn't know who she was or what she meant to so many people and I should have thought before I acted." If he still would have gotten down votes after that I could have opposed this society more easily and I would have liked John actually. The way he acted during the apology even made me want to "correct" him.

    And the ending made it even worse. He barely escapes lobotomy and what does he do? He's being rude to the officers of the facility. Did he not realize that he dodged the bullet by a mere 4 votes? There where several correctional officers there. Getting the last 4 down votes was not that hard. Acting like captain smarty pants is not a good idea in that situation and it just shows that he hasn't learned anything from this.

    Unfortunately the character of John overshadowed this episode that otherwise could have been easily great. Showing how bad a total democracy can be is not a bad thing. Most people when given power have no idea how to utilize it. Even in our own democratic societies most have no idea what they are voting for when they vote. Bordus said it right - "Voices must earned not given".

    They could have done more with "cultural appropriation" scene. I thought this would turn into another scandal and show how stupid these professional victims are.

    So overall I am down voting this episode. It's not enough to send it to the correctional center though.
  • comment
    • Author: Morad
    Or if you've seen "Nosedive", then watch The Orville: Majority Rule.

    Both attack the same subject. Both have their good points and method of presentation.

    Nosedive is better. The execution of the special effects are superb. There was definitely more that went into them, all build especially for that story.

    But the best point of Nosedive was Bryce Dallas Howard; she keeps up a steady character development throughout the piece. She is the singular center of the drama and does her father proud.
  • comment
    • Author: The Sinners from Mitar
    I think I'll vote 100% NEGATIVE on this episode. No, wait. I think I'll vote 100% POSITIVE on this episode. Oh, nuts. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle.

    What I find most interesting about "Majority Rule" isn't the situation of the NEGATIVE/POSITIVE voting. It's that this Far-Flung planetary civilization has somehow managed to develop an exact copy of a 21st Century Earth, Toyota Prius. How sad for them!

    Copying, however, seems par for the course with this episode. So the many other reviews here would have me believe. "Majority Rule" is a "rip-off" of the Black Mirror episode, "Nosedive"? Not only have I not seen that particular episode of Black Mirror, I haven't even ever heard of Black Mirror.

    I could one-up everyone on that matter. I could write that "Majority Rule" is a "rip-off" of the Doctor Who episode, "Vengeance on Varos", aired wayyyyy back in 1985. In that one, not only do (TV) viewers get to decide via voting, the fate of criminals, they also get to decide whether Governors and other politicians are doing a satisfactory job or not. (If not, ZAP!) Imagine that concept put into play in OUR world today!

    Of course, though the main concept and other elements are similar, "Vengeance on Varos" and "Majority Rule" are quite different. Perhaps that holds true when considering the Black Mirror, "Nosedive" episode as well?

    Besides all that though, it seemed to me that all the crew of the Orville actually needed to do, was hack into the NEGATIVE/POSITIVE poll and give it a happy twist. Surely the Orville's 25th Century computer system could have handled that? Of the seven Orville episodes which have aired so far, I found "Majority Rule" to be the least of them. Not so bad, but I've already learned that the show is capable of better.
  • comment
    • Author: Vojar
    At first every Trek-savvy viewer will like "Majority Rule". They see the dangers of a society that has been perverted by social media, where the anonymous mob reigns and everyone if forced to please. And yes, at first I thought "What a great message!" and was amazed.

    However, after giving it some thought, I changed my mind.

    To make a long story short: "Majority Rule" tries to make you believe there could be a society in which a shitstorm caused by a frivolity will make the police transform you into a featherbrained zombie. It's like a Family Guy episode, but this time Seth MacFarlane sells it to us as serious, important and prudent social criticism - and too many are buying it.

    But let's begin at the beginning: Starship visits unknown planet. -> Planet is inhabited by aliens of the week. -> Aliens of the week look like humans due to Hodgkin's law of parallel planetary development (a homage to Star Trek TOS S02E25 "Bread an Circuses", and a nice way to veil budget constraints in both 1967 and 2017). -> Aliens of the week have a strange politically system where everything is based on a per-person voting system.

    The show calls this political system an "absolute democracy". And while I agree that an absolute democracy is based on the tyranny of the majority, an absolute democracy still means voting about *issues*, not about *people*.

    But in this episode every individual wears a physical two-button like/dislike badge on his chest that everyone else can operate by simply pressing either the up (like) or down (dislike) button. Moreover, even non-physical (and likely anonymous) online-voting is possible, as soon as you know someone's badge ID.

    So people are voting on other people, not on issues. It's a rating system. And everyone with too many downvotes will face something even worse than death: a neural castration that turns you into a some sort of zombie (it's like the "psychotectic treatment" from Star Trek TNG S05E17 "The Outrcast", just worse).

    The problem is: A society as the one shown in this episode would never work. More than 1 million downvotes will make you a criminal and what you did a "crime against the state". To give an example from the episode: It declares two people who didn't give their bus seats to a pregnant woman criminals facing a worse-than-death punishment, just because the online mob saw an video of the scene that has been uploaded on the so-called "master feed" TV station. This is ridiculous! Even for a comedy show! It puts rude people on one level with murders. This is neither funny nor can it be taken seriously. And no, there is no dictatorship in earth's history that ever did something comparable to this nonsense.

    To make things worse, this system is totally illogical. Just think of a situation like that: A person gets 999,999 downvotes from a serious crime A, than gets an additional single downvote for not smiling at someone - and bang! Not smiling has become a "crime against the state"! And the worst of all: All this downsides could have been avoided! They should have made this episode about a social credit system as it is currently envisioned in China. A system where people with a low score will have problems finding a partner or getting a job. Where a low score will speak against you in a trial or will make it impossible for you to get a permit to travel abroad. And where everyone does "like-whoring", where everyone is a conformist an where everyone is exercising preemptive obedience. A social surveillance terror regime, but nonetheless a place were codified law exists and flame wars don't end up with real causalities. That would have worked. But not that pile of garbage.

    Another annoying fact is that this episode makes it clear "The Orville" not only took things like the holodeck or the warp drive from "Star Trek", but that annoying prime directive, too. I loathe it! It's the thing that turns civilized starship captains into cold-blooded monsters willed to rather sacrifice whole cultures on the altar of non-interference than helping them (as seen on Star Trek TNG S07E13 "Homeward").

    I'm also afraid "Majority Rule" could damage the reputation of direct democracy, a system known to work well in Switzerland. Don't get me wrong: Everyone with an IQ above the room temperature will be able to differentiate direct and absolute democracy. But the proponents of pure representative democracy might still use this plot as a ploy.

    On the upside this episode still is a great parody of social media activity. The scene were Isaac is used as social bot was especially enjoyable. And it still is The Orville, what means decent acting, nice CGI, good music and working humor.
  • comment
    • Author: Gardataur
    I thought The Orville series had a pretty good start, but now after 7 episodes I've also seen a couple of episodes with a bit of a boring content. The series has so much more potential but the writer chooses often for an easy option.

    I find it really very unlikely that there will be a planet anywhere in the system which looks so familiar to 21st century earth like the planet which was pictured in this episode (they even wore jeans? common...). If this was meant in a humorous way, the writer clearly failed to be clear about it.

    Jack of all trades Mc Farlane is the writer. Does anyone ever acts as a mirror to this American guy? In my opinion he could definitely use a writers group to help him brainstorm about better ideas. I like to compare it to the series Breaking Bad, in which the main writer Vince Gilligan had a whole group of writers helping him to see the full potential of the series and make the series better as a whole. At this point I find the full potential of the series The Orville is by far not being approached. Mc Farlane surely is a gifted writer, but it will be better to have some other writers reflect on (his) ideas. I personally doubt this has happened thus far.

    Hopefully in a second series of The Orville (if it ever happens), a writers group will help him to create the series.

    About the series as a whole thus far, I haven't seen a really bad episode yet. One was pretty good (ep4), some fine, but some where rather mainstream and boring. At the beginning of the series I gave it a 9, but since my rating of the series has dropped to a 7. I hope next episodes will be better.
  • comment
    • Author: Rrd
    Not a second of this episode is something you don't see coming. Just think of the dumbest thing to do in the situation from ground party selection on and you too could have written this dribble. I so want to like this show, PLEASE get some decent writing going. More Galaxy Quest or Wraith of Khan instead of this unfunny dirivitive jumble.
  • Episode cast overview, first billed only:
    Seth MacFarlane Seth MacFarlane - Capt. Ed Mercer
    Adrianne Palicki Adrianne Palicki - Cmdr. Kelly Grayson
    Penny Johnson Jerald Penny Johnson Jerald - Dr. Claire Finn
    Scott Grimes Scott Grimes - Lt. Gordon Malloy
    Peter Macon Peter Macon - Lt. Cmdr. Bortus
    Halston Sage Halston Sage - Lt. Alara Kitan
    J. Lee J. Lee - Lt. John LaMarr (as J Lee)
    Mark Jackson Mark Jackson - Isaac
    Giorgia Whigham Giorgia Whigham - Lysella
    Steven Culp Steven Culp - Willks
    Ron Canada Ron Canada - Admiral Tucker
    Catherine Shu Catherine Shu - Hoshel
    John Viener John Viener - Man Spilling Coffee
    Roy Abramsohn Roy Abramsohn - Morning Host
    Loren Lester Loren Lester - Lewis
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