The Orville - 2.05: All the World Is Birthday Cake

[REBerg]

Spoiler: 2.05 All the World is Birthday Cake

The concept of a relatively advanced civilization being ruled by astrological signs seemed like a weak one. Even so, the Regorians are sufficiently advanced to realize that the positions of their stars are irrelevant for two aliens born in other solar systems.
I didn't immediately warm to the Orville's brash new security officer. Maybe too much personality too soon?
For me, the high points of this episode were Ted Danson appearing as a Union admiral and Bortus asking if a pregnant female will give birth to an egg.

 

[scarpelius]

@REBerg To me is perfectly credible.

Spoiler: bla

Look around you, even in the most advanced technological nations if you say you are atheist you get a social anathema. What baffles me is that they had 1 month at disposal and they could scan the planet and find the arrested crew members and beam them up.

 

[Jeffbert]

I think that the entire reason for the belief would have been long forgotten. Add to that, the Orville's (& for that matter, the Enterprise's in A Taste of Armageddon) ability to get the data from the planet's computers would have given them the advance notice of the culture's eccentricities. Maybe they would have waited a few years or centuries to make 1st contact.

Yet, I did find this episode good, except for the obvious continuity problem:

Spoiler

Where the 2 are facing a firing squad in one scene, then celebrating their birthdays in the next. Seems to me, that between them, they must have killed about a dozen guards. Not easily forgiven.

 

[REBerg]

@REBerg To me is perfectly credible.

Spoiler: bla

Look around you, even in the most advanced technological nations if you say you are atheist you get a social anathema. What baffles me is that they had 1 month at disposal and they could scan the planet and find the arrested crew members and beam them up.

I don't recall any beaming in this series.

 

[scarpelius]

@REBerg oops.
All this time I lived with the impression is a Star Trek parody, set in the Star Trek universe.

 

[REBerg]

@REBerg oops.
All this time I lived with the impression is a Star Trek parody, set in the Star Trek universe.

Thinking about it, I can't remember transporter beaming technology, even by another name, showing up anywhere outside the Star Trek Universe. Has it?

 

[ctg]

I don't recall any beaming in this series.

No teleports. Just look my previous answers and you'll find the article of their producer saying the Orville has no transport technology.

Spoiler: All the World is Birthday Cake

Wonderful first contact episode. Ed surely wasn't pleased that Kelly and Bortus was kidnapped by 'insane people.' In his shoes I would have used arms to free my people sooner than he did. Expect it was the aliens, who were armed and hostile.

I too loved Bortus: "Will there be an egg?" quip on Kelly's baby deliver orders. They surely have toned down a lot of their jokes and made the SF more classical, while rest of the drama has remained serious.

I don't get how a civilisation can be scared of a celestial event like the death of a star? Surely a super-nova must be more terrifying sight or getting bombarded by a comet. But, hey, a belief system is a belief system.

The solar-sail was very well done.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Thinking about it, I can't remember transporter beaming technology, even by another name, showing up anywhere outside the Star Trek Universe. Has it?

Blake's Seven?

 

[REBerg]

Blake's Seven?

You are correct. I watched a few episodes of that series way back when, but my memory is less than stellar.

Liberator's speed and weaponry are superior to Federation craft, and it also has a teleportation system that enables transport to the surface of planets.

-- Blake's 7 - Wikipedia​

​

Thanks. I was beginning to wonder if Paramount had secured some sort of intellectual property rights to the concept.

 

[Dave]

Yet, I did find this episode good, except for the obvious continuity problem:

Spoiler

Where the 2 are facing a firing squad in one scene, then celebrating their birthdays in the next. Seems to me, that between them, they must have killed about a dozen guards. Not easily forgiven.

Spoiler

I also thought that. It doesn't really matter about the reason that were put into the camp. Once they killed the dozen guards, surely they broke a dozen other Laws.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

Thinking about it, I can't remember transporter beaming technology, even by another name, showing up anywhere outside the Star Trek Universe. Has it?

Blake's Seven?

Galaxy Quest had transporter-like technology as well. It just liked to glitch a lot.

 

[Dave]

Plenty of other TV shows have used matter transporters, even Dr Who, but it is a device (like the sonic screwdriver) that tends to allow characters to get out of difficult situations too easily, and it is good that the Orville doesn't make use of it.

However, I thought this week was full of plot holes (not just the guard killing already mentioned.) How would the position of that sail look the same from all over the planet? How do they stop any premature births from happening during Giliac? And too much like the TNG episode “Justice”

I was also disappointed with the addition of Talla Keyali. I was looking forward to more of oesophagus man. Keyalli is just a straight replacement for Alara Kitan.

 

[scarpelius]

Unless she punches the captain in the nose, then is going to be fun

 

[REBerg]

Galaxy Quest had transporter-like technology as well. It just liked to glitch a lot.

Like this attempt.

 

[Quisizyx]

Actually, I think the lack of a transporter is a fail in logic. The food dispensers and holodeck were offshoots in ST of transporter tech. The Orville seems to have a holodeck equivalent and the food dispensers also look the same. So why don't they have transporters?

The light at the end of the tunnel is a bright spot light shinning on a table on which is a small finger top and a mostly collapsed tunnel beyond.
Ref. hint; alphabet shifted by 7: Movie Otikvzout

 

[Dave]

Actually, I think the lack of a transporter is a fail in logic. The food dispensers and holodeck were offshoots in ST of transporter tech. The Orville seems to have a holodeck equivalent and the food dispensers also look the same. So why don't they have transporters?

The Transporter disassembles things sub-atomically, sends the pattern to another place, and re-assembles them again. That is fine for inanimate objects. So yes, it is similar to a replicator, and we already have 3D printers today, so not so far-fetched. However, transporting a living thing is much harder. The person will, in effect, be killed and then re-animated. How are you going to re-animate a corpse? Even if you did, are they going to keep their memories? What if there is a Fly on Captain Kirk's head? The actual action of observing the state of the sub-atomic particles changes them - the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - which is why the Star Trek Transporter has Heisenberg Compensators (but no explanation of how they work.) Even for food dispensers, will the chemically identical food taste the same? Taste, just like living things, is much more than an identical chemical compostion. So, Transporters, and time travel, are things that are not very likely to be possible.

You have me with the Holodeck. The Holodeck uses a whole range of different methods to create the illusion, but it clearly replicates people and objects. From what I said already, the replication of objects is okay, but the replication of people runs into the same problems, and they do seem very real. In Episode 2.11 Lasting Impressions

Spoiler: Mild

the reality of the Holodeck is discussed and it is clear that they are not "real" and yet they must be real.

So yes, that particular problem with the Transporter doesn't appear to be a problem in The Orville universe.

 

[Quisizyx]

The Transporter disassembles things sub-atomically, sends the pattern to another place, and re-assembles them again. That is fine for inanimate objects. ... transporting a living thing is much harder. The person will, in effect, be killed and then re-animated. How are you going to re-animate a corpse? Even if you did, are they going to keep their memories? What if there is a Fly on Captain Kirk's head? The actual action of observing the state of the sub-atomic particles changes them - the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - which is why the Star Trek Transporter has Heisenberg Compensators (but no explanation of how they work.) Even for food dispensers, will the chemically identical food taste the same?

You have me with the Holodeck. The Holodeck uses a whole range of different methods to create the illusion, but it clearly replicates people and objects. In Episode 2.11 Lasting Impressions

Spoiler: Mild

the reality of the Holodeck is discussed and it is clear that they are not "real" and yet they must be real.

So yes, that particular problem with the Transporter doesn't appear to be a problem in The Orville universe.

Actually, reanimating a "dead body" I don't see as an issue. In replicating the body you're also replicating the energy states, electrical and chemical, throughout the body. I would think that any processes in progress during transport would continue on "reassembly". Foreign objects or life are recognized and not included in the reassembly. I recall an ST:TOS ep where, on returning, a filter was mentioned that removed viruses and bacteria that may have been acquired. The fly on the head shouldn't be an issue. Hmm... actually could have been an ST:NG ep.

Ref. Holodeck. The people are not real. They are computer simulations. When the female was recreated by ship's computer from data on the "antique" cell phone, it was a simulacra or material dummy that the computer remotely animated. Not alive altho solid and, in that respect, real. I agree with your premise or theory on the replicators as creating or transporting inanimate material would need to be accomplished before the more complex live matter could be attempted. I bow to your logic. This does imply that transporters in the Orville universe may not be too distant in the future. It would be a logical next step.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a brightly lighted sign reading "Crack of Doom" next to a huge crack 50 feet across passing through the tunnel. An old man stands near the end of the bridge crossing it. Another brightly lit sign near the bridge reads "Bridge of Death". As you approach, the old man says, "Stop! I the keeper of the Bridge of Death be. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer these questions three, 'ere the other side he see".
Ref. hint; alphabet shifted by 7:
Movie Sutze Veznut gtj znk Nurre Mxgor

 

[Dave Vicks]

Holodeck technology is feasible. Replicators
Are hi tech.FTL speed and being beamed around are super high tech. I wonder what someone from the 1940s would thing about smart phones and Cray Computers?

 

[Malo Hautus]

When on a different planet, the length of a year will be different. So the concept of birthday doesn't make sense.