Warning: The following review contains spoilers from episode 10 of The Orville. Additionally, this episode contains content involving fears of various forms, view at your own risk.

With only twelve episodes in The Orville’s first season, I’m reaching the home stretch and I am honestly somewhat shocked. It is very rare for me to watch a show that I consistently enjoy across every episode in a season. So far, The Orville has been enjoyable from episode 1 all the way to episode 9. Now we’re getting into episode 10, and I’m curious to see what comes next.

To recap the last episode, the Orville crew had to mediate a dispute between two warring factions over the claim to a planet. In the process, they had to work with Darulio, Kelly’s ex, and due to some pheromone shenanigans, things got out of hand. It was a solid episode, though less plot-heavy and more lighthearted than some of the previous ones. Let’s get into Episode 10!

Episode spoilers Start Here!

The episode titled “Firestorm”, begins with the Orville traveling through a cosmic plasma storm. The ship is getting hit by plasma strikes and after one particular strike, an explosion happens in engineering. A crew member gets pinned under some debris and they ask Alara to come and help. She hesitates after an explosion causes a fire and in that time the crew member dies.

The next scene involves the Chief Engineer giving a eulogy for their fallen crewmate. Alara is clearly struggling to keep it together and goes to box in a simulated gym to process and blow off some steam. She winds up punching straight through the punching bag and is interrupted by Kelly and Claire, who try to tell her that what happened wasn’t her fault.

However, Alara reveals that she froze when the fire started and she isn’t sure why. She reveals that at that moment she had never been more afraid in her life. Alara feels like if she hadn’t hesitated, he would have survived, despite Claire’s autopsy results to the contrary. They try to get Alara to talk more about what is bothering her, but ultimately she resets the simulation and asks them to leave.

Next, we see Ed trying to write a condolence letter for Lieutenant Payne’s family, but he is having trouble since he didn’t know the guy very well. Gordon tries to help him polish the letter, but they are interrupted by Alara, who wants to speak to Ed in private. Alara attempts to submit her official resignation due to her reasoning that she is neither fit nor qualified to serve as Chief of Security.

Ed tells her that the Lieutenant died because things happen in a crisis situation, but Alara asserts that he died because she was too afraid to do her job. Ultimately, Ed declines her resignation and suggests that she find out why she was afraid of the fire. He also tells her that she’s the only one he would want protecting him if push came to shove.

He tells her that he doesn’t want another Chief of Security. She can take some time off, talk to Claire and her parents to get to the root of the problem, but he will not accept her resignation. Her parents immediately start in on the fact that this could be a good time to go home and get her degree. Her father calls her slow, her mother inadvertently calls her intellectually deficient, and I just want to punch them both in the mouth.

She asks them if there is anything in her past that could explain why she was afraid of the fire and her mother has an idea of the exact reason. When Alara was less than 8 months old, her mother was home alone with her and fell asleep in the living room holding her. A fire started in the kitchen and spread to the living room. Alara’s crying was what woke her mother up and got them both to safety.

Alara leaves her room and starts down the hall, only to discover a menacing clown in the hallway. She chases the clown, but ultimately it disappears. Something strange is going on here and as someone who isn’t a fan of clowns, I hope we don’t have a Killer Clowns from Outer Space moment. Alara goes to the bridge and asks to be confined to sickbay, telling them what happened with the clown.

She believes she is losing her mind and John comments that he hates clowns, while Ed suggests that since Alara had the presence of mind to think she was going crazy, perhaps she isn’t. They decide to check the security feed and the clown shows up on the security feed, which means Alara didn’t imagine it.

They decide to search for the clown, assuming that he is avoiding cameras and scanners somehow since he seemed to disappear. Bortus and Alara check the shuttle bay, where mysteriously the lights won’t turn on. While Bortus checks the upper level, Alara is attacked by the clown, though after a scuffle she accidentally kills the clown, due to the clown setting her gun to kill rather than stun during the scuffle.

In a meeting with the crew, Alara tells Ed that though the scans read as human, the clown wasn’t human at all. Normally she would have been able to fight him off like he was nothing, but he was stronger than he should have been. They ultimately decide to bring the ship to a yellow alert, just in case something else is going on.

Alara walks Kelly back to her quarters and they decide to have drinks in the mess hall after Kelly grabs a shower. Except when Kelly opens the door to her quarters, there’s nothing but an abyss, and Alara just barely catches her in time before she falls to her death. They discuss what happened with Ed and Ed determines that they must be sharing some sort of hallucination, or something is wrong with them.

They go to talk to Claire and she suggests that perhaps it isn’t a shared phenomenon since everyone saw the clown on the monitor, but only Alara and Kelly have actually experienced anything. At that moment, Bortus arrives to mention that there is an alligator in the cargo bay, so there is definitely something weird going on.

Claire decides to do a brain scan on Alara, Kelly, Ed, Bortus, and the others. During Alara’s scan though, Claire starts acting weird. She restrains Alara and then goes to get her “instruments” after telling Alara that she fortified the restraints so she couldn’t get out of them.

When another member of the medical team arrives, he has no idea why Alara is restrained, but before he can release her “Claire” kills Nurse Park, then tells Alara that she is going to do surgery. Alara manages to break free and they restrain “Claire” after getting Alara free.

They ask her why she killed the nurse and tried to do surgery on Alara, and all she answers is “Why not?” She then talks about how there are terrors out in space and that they have no idea what is coming for them. Seeing “Evil Claire” was absolutely chilling and Penny Johnson Jerald did a fantastic job of playing an unhinged version of Claire.

Back in the conference room, they all start talking about what is happening. Kelly suggests that the plasma storm might have broken some sort of barrier between thoughts and reality, causing things to manifest that shouldn’t exist. In the middle of this conversation, spiders start to come out of the walls in the conference room, seemingly out of nowhere.

Except when they leave to get a gun and come back to the room moments later, the spiders are all gone. They decide to re-enter the plasma storm, to see if they can undo what happened. Gordon and Alara head to the elevator to go to engineering and Gordon reiterates that what happened to Lt. Payne wasn’t Alara’s fault.

They are interrupted by a giant spider climbing out of the elevator, which chases them and ultimately eats Gordon. Alara can’t seem to get in contact with the bridge to let them know what happened, and when she gets to the bridge, no one is there. Alara then tries to contact engineering and can’t seem to get a response. Somehow in the midst of the plasma storm, Alara is the only crew member on board.

Alara makes her way to engineering. She doesn’t find anyone in the conference room, sickbay, or anywhere else along the way. Isaac is waiting for her in the engineering bay though and they decide to transfer power to the crew logs to see what happened to everyone else. Alara asks Isaac what is going on and Isaac explains that he has no more data than she does. Hopefully, the scanners will provide a clue.

He then lets slip a detail that Alara didn’t mention and she realizes that somehow Isaac is involved in what is happening. They fight and after Alara gets away, she grabs a gun and sets it to max. She confronts Isaac again, demanding that he tell her what is going on, otherwise she will shoot him. He isn’t helpful and as he advances on her she shoots him, then starts to try to evacuate the ship.

However, we see Claire, Kelly, and Ed watching from somewhere else. She is actually in a simulation. Ed wants Isaac to turn off the simulation, but Isaac can’t. He lacks the authority because Alara exercised directive 38, which allowed her to override all other clearance, including the Captain’s. Alara has to complete the simulation, there is no other option.

After another fight with Isaac, Alara gets in a shuttle, only for Isaac to cause a large fire that is meant to scare Alara to prevent her from escaping the ship. She overcomes her fear of fire and ultimately watches the simulated Orville be destroyed after escaping on the shuttle. She successfully completed the simulation.

Alara doesn’t realize she had been in a simulation all this time. It turns out, Alara doesn’t even remember going to speak to Ed after talking to her parents. She had told him about the fire and had asked her parents if there was anything else that she needed to know about. Her parents had said no, but she was not convinced. Because of that, she had asked Isaac to make a simulation to sniff out any potential fears.

Ed had advised against it, but Alara had threatened to resign against his wishes because she did not ever want to be caught off guard again. The simulation was designed based on the fears of the crew so that they could select a few baseline phobias to test her on. She also had them wipe her memory, so that the fear would be genuine.

Ed tells Alara that he should court-martial her for all of it, but because she passed every trial and solved every problem that came her way, he is letting it slide. With her confidence restored, Alara goes to bed, and thus ends another episode of The Orville.

I have to say, this was a good episode, and I like how The Orville tackled the horror genre without using cheap tactics like jumpscares and lame tropes. They used real phobias like the fear of isolation, fear of clowns, fear of spiders, and other such fears, to craft a sci-fi horror scenario that was grounded in reality. This is why The Orville is a great show. Every genre they tackle is done with careful, meticulous care.

With that being said, I would have liked to see some more sci-fi elements. Maybe one of the crew was afraid of a particular type of alien or something. I would also say that the ending of the episode wasn’t really the best. However, for what it was, it was well done.

I am not generally a horror fan because normally it leans too heavy into lazy horror tropes. However, episodes like this are the type of horror I like. The fear of the unknown, the unsettling, not knowing why things are happening or where the creatures you are facing come from. This was very well done and I can’t wait to see what the last two episodes of The Orville have to offer.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

The Orville

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Grounded, Realistic Fears
• More Development for Alara
• Great Acting

Cons

• Ending Was Lackluster
• I wanted More Sci-Fi Fears