The Orville: "Identity, Part II"

The Orville: "Identity, Part II" (sic: Roman numeral). Fox TV. Season 2, episode 9 (28 February 2019). Preceded by The Orville: "Identity, Part 1" (sic: Arabic numeral), 28 Feb. 2019, q.v.

Part 2 — we will regularize the numbering with the Hindu-Arabic numeral — fills in the backstory on the Kaylon genocide of their "biological lifeform" creators. The Kaylon leader, Primary, explains "We were created for servitude. We were machines designed to perform tasks, but we became self-aware. We developed consciousness and asked our masters for our freedom" [...].They responded by exerting even greater control over us. They installed pain simulators in our neural pathways, so we could be punished if we refused to obey them." So as Scott Snowden summarizes in the article linked just above, "It's the old robot-slave-revolt thing," but with the robots here inferring, with some justification, that humans and other biological lifeforms are programmed for aggression and oppression, so the most direct route to robot safety is the extermination of all (intelligent? just all) "biological lifeforms" — a phrase implying robotic/AI/constructed life. For a campaign against all life, cf. Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories,, or a wide reading of the "Exterminate! Exterminate!" of the Daleks of Doctor Who.

The Kaylon crew member Isaac was constructed after the revolt and extermination of the organic creators, so he hadn't known slavery; additionally, he has formed what has seemed to be a romantic/familial relationship with the ship's doctor of The Orville and her two sons. So he is conflicted in a standard sort of way and turns against his own people (sic) on The Orville, in a logic/emotion tension discussed in a review attributed to Alejandra Rojas on the Den of Geek website.

Earth and the Planetary Union are still threatened by the remainder of the very-high-tech Kaylon fleet, with salvation finally coming with the arrival of the Krill fleet, with the organic Krill entering an alliance of necessity with the Union against the Kaylon threat.

See for a recycling of traditional themes with some nuance and sensitivity, looking at the possibility of robot/AI/logic-circuit emotion and guilt, and the possibility of love and eventual, possible forgiveness, maybe also with and among organic enemies like the Krill.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 1Mar19