On Thursday, July 21 The Orville: New Horizons debuts its eighth episode, titled “Midnight Blue,” which brings back the Moclan female Haveena. We have a sneak peek plus an inside look at last week’s episode and an reminder of the new e-novella set after this week’s episode.
“Midnight Blue”
Synopsis:
The Orville crew visits Heveena’s sanctuary world and embarks on a journey that may leave the entire Union more vulnerable.
Preview video:
Inside The Orville
They also released an inside look at last week’s episode with commentary from cast and creatives.
“Sympathy for the Devil” novella out today
The third season of The Orville was planned with 11 episodes, but COVID production issues reduced to 10, so the one set between episodes 8 and 9 was turned into a novella. It’s titled “Sympathy of the Devil” and was written by Seth MacFarlane. Here is the synopsis:
When Captain Ed Mercer and the crew of the U.S.S. Orville come face-to-face with one of humanity’s most vile ideologies, they must solve the moral conundrum of who to hold accountable for evil deeds real… and imagined. Occurring just after New Horizons Episode 8, this is The Orville like you’ve never seen it before.
You can pick it up as an ebook and audiobook now at Amazon for $3.07.
Sympathy for the Devil cover
Keep up with all The Orville news and analysis on TrekMovie.
Just a tip: if you’re new to the show, watch episode 12 of season 2 before asking why this preview would use a spoken-word version of a Dolly Parton song…
What is funny to me is, before I even watched the preview, I wondered if 9 to 5 would come into play.
Wow, I didn’t think they’d do another Moclan episode this soon after the next one. It will be cool to see Topa meet Haveena in person though. I wonder if we’ll find out why Klyden is up to now.
We do 😁
Probably the Moclans again threaten to leave the PU? (“may leave the whole Union more vulnerable”)
I’m wondering how that novella would have been structured if it was a TV episode. Without giving too much away, the first half of the story doesn’t feature the Orville crew or any obvious sci-fi elements. They obviously wouldn’t have done that on the show, so I wonder if they would have condensed that part to fit in the teaser, or had it as flashbacks throughout the episode, or something else.
That might be a good thing since a lot of people were suggesting, they turned it into a novella because they knew there would likely be no fourth season. If it actually doesn’t fit the medium, that gives me a little hope
“The third season of The Orville was planned with 11 episodes, but COVID production issues reduced to 10,”
I know it’s not the same thing, but each episode is much, much longer than a typical one. The latest is almost double!
This was a charming and beautiful episode, again very TNG-like in tone and pacing, but I was in no-way bored by it like I was in the previous episode. There is a surprising guest star cameo in the episode…but I could swear there was some digital augmentation going on with the face and voice and I couldn’t quite figure out. It had me questioning if this was real or synthetic. Anyway, great stuff.
I don’t think that guest star had any digital augmentation. Non-digital? Yes, famously.
She mentioned in her tweet “I might be as old as yesterday, but with all this new technology they make me look as new as tomorrow!”
So I’m guessing there was some digital enhancements in additional to the traditional non-digital enhancements she’s had. ;)
Loved the episode, btw. Especially her appearance.
We did some very special bleeding edge stuff to her. If you’re not seeing it then we did our job well!
Fancy!
Longest episode so far this season, 86 minutes. That’s darn near the length of a modern 2-hoyr TV movie with commercials.
Funny. The Orville ships, from certain angles, look like Stewie’s head.