Star Trek: Voyager Star Helped Bring The Orville To Life
The Orville is an obvious homage to Star Trek: The Next Generation crafted with love by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, and right out of the gate, it had the support of a star from a different Star Trek series. Robert Duncan McNeill, famous for playing the hotshot himbo Tom Paris on Voyager, hopped into the director’s seat for the show’s second episode, “Command Performance,” which helped the sci-fi homage get off on the right foot. Part old-school adventure episode, and part parody, McNeill pulled off an amazing balancing act in getting the episode to air.
Command Performance Updated The Menagerie
“Command Performance” starts off normally enough for The Orville, with Captain Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) and First Officer Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) helping a ship attacked by the alien Krill, when it shifts into a homage to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, “The Menagerie.” Mercer and Grayson find themselves captives in an intergalactic zoo for the Calivons, who bear a striking resemblance to the Talosians, the villains of the original TOS classic, while Alara (Halston Sage), the Chief Security Officer, is left in charge of the ship. Mirroring Spock’s decision to defy the Federation, Alara makes the choice to pursue their missing Captain to the Calivon home world, risking a court martial in the process.
The Orville’s “Command Performance” may be a nearly beat-for-beat homage to “The Menagerie,” but the other half of the episode, revolving around Bortus (Peter Macon) and his mate hatching an egg, pulls from Star Trek: Voyager’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” The Season 5 Voyager episode features Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) learning about human courtship, but more importantly, it was also directed by Robert Duncan McNeill, and he wanted to capture the feel of Seven’s interactions with the crew with Bortus. Moclan society, which is male-dominated, is explored in greater depth later in the series, but the seeds for the following drama and character growth were planted under McNeill’s watch.
The climax of “Command Performance” involving The Real Housewives is a fun nod from The Orville’s writers to Star Trek’s obsession with contemporary pop culture and a joke that the show would eventually get away from by pushing the absurdity of Trek to the extreme. As the show went on, it ended up becoming more of an homage than a parody, turning into a love letter towards classic Trek when it seemed like sci-fi shows were getting away from exploring where no man had ever gone before.
Not The Only Star Trek Veteran To Direct
After Robert Duncan McNeill’s episode aired, another Star Trek legend got in The Orville’s director chair when Jonathan Frakes directed “Pria,” the fifth episode of Season 1, which also featured Charlize Theron as the strange blonde woman. McNeill’s time in the chair for “Command Performance” proved the show could hit the beats of old-school Trek, but Frakes helped take it further, providing a turning point where it was able to start standing on its own.
Command Performance” is not the best episode of The Orville, and it was the only one directed by Robert Duncan McNeill, but it’s important for laying the groundwork for future storylines that helped take the show away from parodying Star Trek. That, and it still has some fun moments, from seeing Ed and Kelly’s relationship play out to Bortus explaining that, yes, he laid an egg.
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