Warning: This review may contain spoilers for episode 3 of The Orville’s third season, as well as season 1 episode 12, “Mad Idolatry.”

One of the best things about The Orville is that you never know when characters, stories, or concepts from the earlier episodes are going to resurface. A lot of people found that The Orville’s first season leaned a little too heavily on the comedy, but I enjoyed seeing the balance of “serious” sci-fi with Seth McFarlane’s comedic flavor thrown in. This week’s episode “Mortality Paradox” revisits an earlier episode in a new way, producing some interesting sci-fi in the process.

The episode begins with Talla returning from shore leave, just as The Orville discovers a peculiar signal. We get a few small glimpses at Talla’s home life from a conversation she has with Kelly. We know her father is a part of The Union, and that while she loves her parents, they’re a lot to deal with. In fact, it is Talla who discovered the previously mentioned signal on her way back to the ship.

The Kaylon shouldn’t be in the sector near Talla’s homeworld, so the presence of a signal resembling their signature is concerning. They follow the signal to a planet known as Narran-1, and after a funny interlude about Bortus dieting to get his “summer body” for upcoming shore leave, they decide to investigate. Normally, Narran-1 is a barren wasteland, so seeing a signal and signs of life from the planet is strange.

The civilization present on Narran-1 defies all known information about the planet. The locals can answer The Orville’s hailing messages, and yet they don’t respond. Mercer sends a shuttle to the planet to see what is going on, setting in motion a surprising chain of events. Strangely, Mercer, Kelly, Bortus, Talla, and Gordon land expecting to find a sprawling metropolis, yet only find a forested planet.

Everything they discover investigating the planet defies even what they already know from orbiting it. There should be no forests. There should be a city, though before this it was only known as a wasteland. Something strange is going on. The planet changed for The Orville’s scanners as well, so is the planet shapeshifting? Or is something else afoot?

The crew is faced with what looks to be a… high school? In case you couldn’t already tell, “Mortality Paradox” is an episode with a different sort of horror than “Shadow Realms.” It’s a more psychological horror, an ever-shifting series of events that keeps you wondering what is going on. The first sign of something being terribly wrong comes when scanners on The Orville show no signs of this “Oakwood High School” at all.

Upon entering the high school, not only do they discover that they aren’t alone, but they are also cut off from communicating with The Orville and find themselves locked inside. Not even Talla’s enhanced strength can open this proverbial jar of pickles. They quickly discover that the school is inhabited by students, but none of the students give them an idea of what is going on.

LaMarr sends Isaac, Claire, and a security detail down to the planet’s surface. Bortus and Talla try to use classroom windows to escape, but they quickly discover Gordon is missing. Gordon is attacked by bullies, beaten, and almost drowned in the bathroom. Talla and Bortus try to get to him but the door is blocked. Gordon’s quick thinking saves him, but he’s very confused about what is going on.

They decide to try to blend in and interact with the students to see what is going on. The students confirm that the bullies serve “Randall” and that he has extorted money from all of them eventually. Things are most definitely not looking good for Gordon, and now that they know they can be hurt, the rest of the landing party is concerned. The end of the school day comes shockingly quickly, but Gordon’s time is almost up. There’s no sign of the shuttle either. Hilariously, Randall isn’t another human, he’s a giant axe-wielding alien.

They manage to escape Randall, but when they return to the school it becomes an airplane flight. As you can expect we transition from a School-based monster-horror to a plane crash scenario. The crew talks during the “flight” and starts to wonder whether what is happening is also affecting their minds somehow. To add to the strangeness, Isaac, Claire, and the rescue party discover a barren desert instead of a lush forest.

They find the landing shuttle, but as expected it is empty. As expected, the situation on the “plane” quickly devolves into a plane crash scenario. They find that the cockpit is empty, and the plane seems to be flying itself, or preparing to crash at least. Gordon narrowly manages to land the plane, and Mercer has a moment similar to Gordon during the alien fight before they manage to escape unscathed.

Leaving the plane brings the crew directly into a new, fresh Hell. Specifically, they seem to be on a Moclan ship, in a Moclan morgue. The pods that the Moclan corpses are interred in open, and Bortus comes face to face with a dead version of himself. This leads to what essentially amounts to a zombie sequence, with dead Bortus almost killing the living one before they manage to save him.

As with the other situations, this near-death experience creates an exit that leads directly to a new scenario. This time, the crew finds themselves on a long, dark staircase that leads out into a Xelayan lake. Kelly, Talla, and Gordon take a raft across the lake to investigate lights on the other side, but something is in the water.

Kelly is pulled overboard by the creature, but Talla barely is able to rescue her before she is eaten. After they regroup, a staircase and door appear. Instead of taking the bait, the group simply decides to walk. They meet the mastermind of the whole operation, a holographic device that once destroyed reveals the true desolate form of the planet.

Back on The Orville, Claire reveals that the device scanned their brains, and tricked them not only into seeing simulated environments but also being harmed by them as well. They also discover Kaylon elements in the device, which doesn’t look good. If the Kaylon could alter the perception of reality, there’d be no defense against them.

Except it doesn’t seem like we’re out of the simulation yet. The Union ship sent to “collect” the device, seems to be disguised Kaylon ships instead. As we see a battle in space, we discover the real twist. The landing party is still on the planet. Talla was never off from shore leave at all, as she contacts LaMarr to reveal that she is back from her trip. The Talla with the crew is fake.

The real mastermind of the device and its simulations is familiar. The fake Talla reveals that she is Dinal, a member of an immortal race of beings who were once the developing world from the season 1 episode “Mad Idolatry.” After the events of the episode, where Kelly accidentally created (and then resolved) a religion in her name on the planet, the planet’s civilization has advanced 50,000 years.

The race of people on that planet took evolution into their own hands and are now immortal. These simulations were simply a means to study mortality. Technically, everything they experienced was real, curated in micro-universes from the minds of people experiencing them, along with cultural data. They wanted to see death through the eyes of The Orville crew, as they no longer understood what it meant to fear for their own life.

After stating that they will meet again, Dinal disappears, presumably back to their home world or universe. The episode ends as simply as it began, with the crew having a drink in the mess hall. While this episode wasn’t the intense horror of “Shadow Realms”, the psychological nature of it was fascinating.

The Orville continues to capture abstract concepts in a way that is thought-provoking and interesting. The concepts of death, mortality, and what it means to be detached from the cycle of life and death, all of it has been touched upon in sci-fi before. However, “Mortality Paradox” takes this idea in a different direction, and in doing so introduces a new race of people who could be a friend or foe in the future. I’m inclined to think they’ll be friends, as a powerfully advanced race such as Dinal’s people would be nigh on impossible to defeat.

Regardless, with each new bit of worldbuilding and a reference to past episodes, The Orville sets up plenty of stories for the future. Hopefully Disney Plus (and Hulu) will see fit to grace us with season 4, season 5, and beyond.

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The Orville

10

Score

10.0/10

Pros

• Fantastic psychological horror episode
• Interesting twist on the concept of Sci-Fi immortality
• Lots of room to explore Dinal's character in the future
• Great visual effects

Cons

• No real explanation about Moclan death customs