Alexx Aplin
Alexx AplinWarning: The following review contains spoilers for Episode 8 of The Orville. You have been warned.
With only four episodes left (after this one) I’m reaching the home stretch of The Orville’s first season. What surprises me greatly is that I haven’t hit the point that most seasons have, where things feel “safe” or follow a status quo. Every episode of The Orville thus far has felt unique, distinctive, and frankly has hit all the right notes for me, at least in most cases.
To recap the last episode, the crew found themselves searching for missing researchers on an Earth-like planet that’s ruled entirely by upvotes and downvotes. John found himself on the wrong side of the law, in an episode that was a cautionary tale about social media and cancel culture. It was well done and I can’t wait to see what this episode has in store. Let’s get into it!
Episode Spoilers Begin Here!
Episode 8, titled “Into the Fold,” begins with Claire being woken up by one of her sons. He is excited for their impending vacation to a “play planet” which her older son isn’t all that enthused about. Claire insists that family time is important for them and encourages him to get up, get packed, and get ready. They get onto the shuttle and Claire reasserts to Kelly that they are in good hands.
Kelly tells them to be careful since it is the rainy season on Arborias Prime but Claire points out that their hotel is above the clouds. Kelly also tells her they will be in a dockyard, so there is nothing to worry about while Claire and the boys are enjoying their vacation time. Claire is less pleased by the discovery that John is not going to be driving the shuttle and accompanying them on the vacation. Instead, Kelly has assigned Isaac to join them.
Seeing Claire with her sons is interesting. We’ve seen how compassionate she is throughout the first season so far, but this is something different. She’s a loving mom but she doesn’t let her kids walk all over her. I do worry about Isaac’s influence on the kids though. The next scene has Isaac asking Claire about her kids’ behavior.
Like any pair of siblings in an enclosed space, they are fighting, pinching, and generally being “combative” toward one another (in Isaac’s words), bickering and whatnot. During their conversation, Claire explains that she chose to be a single mother. She had always wanted kids but never found a man she wanted to have children with.
The ship comes upon a gravitational anomaly and before Isaac can correct their course, one of the children accidentally causes the ship to be caught in the gravitational field. The spatial fold throws them 1000 lightyears away from their previous destination in uncharted space. What is worse, is that their hull is fractured.
They manage to get into the atmosphere of a moon that has an atmosphere breathable by humans. However, over the course of their crash landing, the shuttle splits in half and Claire is separated from Isaac and the children. Also in the process of the landing, Marcus (the older son) dislocated his knee, which Isaac repairs by forcefully putting it back into place.
Obviously, as a synthetic life form, Isaac has no experience with kids, nor does he have the compassion and empathy required to be patient with them or empathize with them. Next, we see Claire being drug off by an unknown person. She is unconscious, injured, and who knows where they are taking her.
Marcus tries to encourage Ty that their mom is alive and okay but Isaac tells him that it is a baseless assumption, not realizing that it wasn’t meant to be factual. Isaac then leaves Ty and Marcus alone, saying that he will move faster on his own because as human children, they are small and feeble. He does have the sense to give Marcus a means to defend them, though I don’t exactly think giving a teenager a gun is a good idea.
Isaac finds the other half of the shuttle but does not find Claire. Close to nightfall, Ty is almost taken by a creature from the planet but Isaac arrives just in time to run the thing off and save him. Back on the Orville, Kelly alerts Ed that the Arborias Prime dockmaster alerted her that Claire’s shuttle never arrived on the planet.
They decide to set a course for the shuttle’s last known coordinates. However, since the ship was in the middle of upgrades, they have to do so with Star Charts rather than standard navigational systems. Back on the planet, Isaac realizes that their scanners are missing a mineral deposit necessary to be able to function properly. Marcus mentions that he learned in class that this particular mineral is found in lots of star systems, on a lot of planets, and suggests they try to find out if this planet has any.
Isaac then does a scan of the hull, finding traces of the mineral from a piece of rock they had hit during their landing. Essentially, with Marcus’ suggestion, they are now able to start looking for the mineral deposit they need to get the scanner going so they can find Claire and hail the Orville.
Claire awakens in a locked room, and after demanding to know where she is and where her children are, a menacing man brings her food. It is clear that he will not be letting her leave and all he will tell her is that she is in a “safe place”. The man leaves her alone and shortly afterward she finds a loose panel on the wall. She starts to try to remove it carefully, as it is currently the only lead she has on getting out.
Isaac, Marcus, and Ty continue their search for the mineral deposit they need and are accosted partway through by more of the mysterious denizens of the planet. They try to take the children but Isaac easily defeats them. I mean come on, they have sticks and he has a gun, you can do the math. It is interesting to see Isaac learning about Marcus and Ty, and by extension parenting, as he is stuck in this situation with two children who are concerned for their mother and terrified by their new circumstances.
Claire’s captor returns, encouraging her to eat since food is scarce. He tells her that his name is Drogen and that she is lucky he found her. He tells her that no one survives out in the wilderness for long. There was a war and a biological weapon was put into the water supply. Because of that, the surviving people are desperate and have resorted to cannibalism.
Drogen is a survivalist and saw what was coming far enough ahead to store food and clean water. He is essentially a doomsday prepper and now he is one of the few that isn’t sick or resorting to cannibalism. He also reveals that he has weapons, so he can defend himself and his supplies. Claire tries to get him to let her go and he refuses, stating that he is her only hope for survival. Claire is more determined than ever to get out of there and understandably so.
Meanwhile, Isaac and the boys are continuing their trek. It is interesting to see the small ways the boys are leaning on each other and the ways that Isaac himself is warming to them. On the Orville, the crew finds the spatial fold and decide to follow the trajectory of the shuttle through it. Kelly is worried about where they’ll end up, but Ed points out that space is mostly empty, so odds are good that they’ll come out unscathed.
On the other side, they decide to search all of the moons. It is the only way to track them down after all. Without navigation systems, they can only search one moon at the time. It Is going to take a while but it is the only option they have. At nightfall, Isaac, Marcus, and Ty sit by a fire, having made camp until morning. Marcus is struggling with the idea that one of the last things he said to Claire, was that she sucked.
It was typical teenage angst but in this context, he’s worried he might not get the chance to make it right. Isaac reassures him by telling him that there is a high likelihood that Claire is alive, due to there being no blood or severed remains in the shuttle crash site. He then tells them that they should rest and Ty asks him to tell them a bedtime story.
After a poor first attempt, he begins to tell them the story of Peter Rabbit, using Claire’s voice at Ty’s request. While he is reading the story, we get an interesting shot of Claire removing the panel in her cell. However, she is very high up, in what seems to be the compartment of a vessel or building of some kind.
When they wake up the next morning, they discover that Ty has the same disease as the other inhabitants, blistering marks on his face. At the same time, Claire cuts her own arm and tells Drogen that she needs her medical supplies from her shuttle. Without antibiotics she could die if the wound got infected. It is genius on her part really and while Drogen goes to get her supplies, she takes her chance to escape.
She starts searching Drogen’s hideaway and finds her communicator. She reaches Isaac, who tells her that Ty is ill. They make plans to meet back at the crash site and Marcus takes the time to apologize for the things he said to Claire at the start of the episode. Seeing Claire talking her boys through everything and being a good parent was emotional and very well done.
She takes a knife from Drogen’s things and then waits. When Drogen returns, he finds her gone, or so he thinks. Hell hath no fury like a mother scorned. She stabs him, and when he throws her aside and advances on her with the knife, she draws a gun and shoots him. She takes the medical kit he gathered and makes her way back to the shuttle crash site.
On the way, she shoots a cannibal and steals a blood sample from them, so that she can find a cure for the bio-weapon in the water supply. More cannibals are on her trail though and she only has so many bullets. She makes it back to the crash site, reuniting with Isaac, Ty, and Marcus. Ty is in a bad state and while Claire looks him over, Isaac begins to activate the distress beacon.
The mineral he collected was only enough for a brief signal though, so they can only hope that The Orville caught it. Isaac tells her that it may take weeks for the Orville to find them though and Ty doesn’t have that kind of time. Seeing Claire get emotional at the prospect of losing her son is absolutely heartbreaking.
Isaac takes a moment to comfort her and in that moment we see serious growth from him. At first he didn’t understand things like emotional attachment, but now? Now he is growing. Luckily, the Orville does catch the small-signal and they are immediately off to follow it.
They find Claire, Isaac, Ty, and Marcus but scanners reveal 12 of the cannibalistic life forms coming for them. It is now a race against time to rescue them before it is too late. Isaac begins to hold them off but he cannot do it alone. Marcus volunteers and Claire gives him a pep talk before sending him out to help Isaac.
Before Isaac and Marcus can be overrun, the shuttle from the Orville arrives and runs off the other cannibals. They arrived just in time too, as Ty’s breathing was getting worse by the minute. Back on the Orville, Claire tells Ed and Kelly that it will take a few days for the toxin to leave Ty’s system and that he might have nightmares, but he’ll be okay.
Kelly comments that she wants to try and give the people of that planet a cure and help them to rebuild their society. Ed asks Claire about her end of the report since Isaac only told him his side of things, but Claire has something to do first. She goes to find Isaac in engineering and tells him that Ty has been asking about him, that he misses Isaac, and that Ty will make a full recovery.
She also thanks him for taking good care of her kids while she was unable to. He tells her that he is quite fond of her kids and that he was glad for the opportunity to learn from them. In return, Claire welcomes him to the family. It makes me wonder if there will be some sort of romance between Claire and Isaac. This was a more high-stakes episode, though it was also a more personal one.
I like these more personal stories, seeing characters like Claire and Isaac get a chance to develop and bond a bit was interesting. I also found Claire’s children to be great additions to the story and I hope we see more of them moving forward. Claire has been a character I have liked from the beginning and it seems like that won’t be changing anytime soon.
So, this was another win for The Orville. So far there haven’t been any episodes I disliked really, though there have been one or two I wish had been a bit better in some respects. I hope that this keeps up because I haven’t been disappointed yet.
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🔥340The Orville
Pros
- Intense Episode
- Great Character Development and growth
- Seeing Isaac Get to Know Claire's Kids Was Great
- More Personal, Character-Focused Episode
Cons
- Drogen Was a One-Note Villain
