2x08 Identity (1)

[6.0/10] There’s two major elements to the first part of “Identity”, and one semi-works while the other doesn’t. The first is the emotional side of things, where the crew, and Dr. Finn and her sons in particular, have to say goodbye to Isaac and question what they meant to him. The second is the plot-heavy side of things, which reveals that the Kaylon killed their creators and that Isaac’s mission wasn’t diplomatic bridge-building but rather espionage for an invasion.

The emotional side works because it’s founded on the relationships that have been built on the last season and a half. The episode plays his departure as a “Mom’s boyfriend is leaving” type situation, with Ty in particular having a tough time with the departure and Claire feeling torn between her anger at how cavalier Isaac can be about leaving and how much she still cares for him, especially with the understanding that this is just his nature.

There’s an asymmetry at play here, with how Isaac has become a confidante and a friend to the major characters on the Orville, but how he is, ostensibly at least, an emotionless automaton, who takes things in stride that would be emotionally devastating to humans -- like declarations of inferiority and departures after much time spent together. His matter of fact demeanor about leaving is both true to the character and understandably difficult for the rest of the ship to deal with.

The one catch is that I don’t believe that The Orville would really write Isaac off the show. We did lose Lt. Kitan, so there’s at least some precedent, but there’s still a sense of false jeopardy to this whole thing: when Isaac is deactivated, when he declares he’s going to stay on Kaylon, and when he seems like he’s turned on the crew. Maybe The Orville will surprise me, but it seems doubtful that either of those things are going to stick, which mutes the sentimental impact of his alleged departure.

There’s ways you can get around that as a writer. Even if the audience doesn't believe a change to the status quo is permanent, you can still gin up real emotion from the fact that the characters in-universe believe it. But the emotional writing here is a little too artificial and declarative to rise above the level of “solid.” So even the part of the episode founded on something strong isn’t as great in execution as it could be.

Then you have the plot material. For starters, the reveal that the Kaylon, in fact, killed their masters and want to go to war is rehash of the episode “Prototype” from Star Trek: Voyager. That’s not the worst thing in the world, but it just makes me roll my eyes and think, “If Brannon Braga is going to basically write for Star Trek again, the least he can do is come up with something new.”

It’s also just not that interesting of a reveal. We don’t know much about the Kaylon to begin with except that they think humans are inferior and don’t like us, so the fact that they turn out to be villainous isn’t terribly impactful. Again, Isaac being a turncoat is supposed to be shocking, but given my doubts about whether it will stick, it plays like schmuck bait rather than the dramatic betrayal it’s meant to be. I’m also so sick of every bad guy species deciding to invade Earth. It’s such a generic “We need a big threat!” story choice and it makes little logical sense if the Kaylon just want to consume more nearby storage space.

(As an aside, it’s a very minor thing, but why do the other Kaylon have eyes? When Isaac revealed that his eyes were cosmetic, I kind of assumed they were added to him as a courtesy to organics. Why would every random Kaylon on his home planet have them?)

The other problem is that the episode can do creepy, but can’t really do scary with all of this. There is assuredly something alien about Isaac’s home planet, with various stilted automatons looking through colors in an otherwise pale and featureless setting. The score does a lot of the work, but in terms of pure craft, the show does a good job at making the Kaylons’ detachment more than a little unnerving.

But then things turn to actual antagonism, and it just doesn’t work. To be honest, Isaac and his kinfolk look pretty goofy. The Kaylon getup looks like an old halloween costume, which is fine in the context of Isaac as a vaguely humanoid robot in a ship full of humans, but takes the stuffing out of a horde of these guys ostensibly menacing the rest of the crew. Adding red eyes (so we know they’re evil!) and scary music and silly looking laser-head transformations doesn’t really sell the terror of the scene like it’s meant to.

The pacing on this is also weird. It feels like there’s not enough incident to warrant the full hour, or at least as though it’s not distributed correctly throughout the episode. You can tell that Braga (and presumably, Seth MacFarlane) want this to be The Orville’s “Best of Both Worlds”, but the whole “Let’s invade Earth” thing doesn’t have the power that TNG’s cliffhanger did.

I’m still interested enough to see where things go from here, but I’ll confess that this feels like another case of “Let’s do classic Star Trek things, only not as good” from The Orville, based on the first part of the duology.