(explosive music)
- [Shane] Waiting for new episodes of the Orville leaves
most of us in a state of longing
that begins to border on agony.
(yelling in union)
What has our favorite crew been up
to while we've been waiting?
Did Ed and Kelly have an afternoon delight
in their on and off against status?
- Oh, no.
- [Shane] Did Yaphit make another pass at Dr.Claire?
- Oh my god!
- [Shane] Did Bortus decide to grow his mustache back
or perhaps he went full neckbeard.
- Bortus, wished that you would remove that thing.
- [Shane] Did John and Gordon open a store for jackets with
an extra zipper?
- Nah, nah, I always go with one more zipper
than you're comfortable with.
- Oh.
- You know what it says?
- What?
- Boom.
- [Shane] it's been a long time
and we have a lot of questions.
While watching the final two episodes
of season two recently, it was fun watching the crew travel
through time and correct the dystopian future
they had found themselves in.
And this ending got us thinking about episode five of
the first season of the Orville during
the show called Pria,
- You can call me Pria. - Pria.
- [Shane] Time travel stories can be so fun.
But when you try to break it down logically,
it just hurts your brain.
Season two ended with everything making sense.
But the Pria episode in season one did
not wrap things up neatly.
It actually created a complicated situation
that will have you scratching your head.
- Well, you wanted something to do.
- [Shane] So if you love the Orville,
get ready for some brain teasing fun
while we break down the Orville paradox.
You won't wanna miss this episode.
And if you haven't already subscribed to our channel,
please do so now and give us a thumbs up if you want
more amazing revelations about your favorite shows.
Also click the notification bell to never miss
an episode because YouTube is a fickle mistress.
- It's a fickle thing.
- [Shane] And make sure you stay tuned until the end to see
how to get this awesome Orville inspired graphic design from
the amazing artists at mixedteas.com.
Let's be honest, time travel in movies
and TV is usually messy.
There is always some paradox that becomes obvious
and you have to suspend your disbelief
and just hang on for the ride.
And when it's over instead of really trying to break
it down, you just shake your head
and move on with your life.
But every once in a while, a time travel story gets stuck
in your head and you just can't move on.
And this is what happened to us after Pria.
Guest starring the amazing Charlie Theron,
Ed and the crew must switch from a rescue mission to saving
the very existence of the Orville in time.
The episode is fantastic.
When it was over, we did the typical head shaking
and we wrote most of it off as Sc-Fi mumbo-jumbo,
involving quantum mechanics and time travel,
obviously out of our league.
But it was one of those nagging episodes.
It just kept coming back to us
and coming up in conversation.
But we couldn't quite put our finger on what it was.
As we mentioned before
after the season two finale wrapped up neatly,
the light bulb went off
and Pria suddenly needed to be revisited.
There was something that happened in that episode
that continued to impact the rest of the show.
But let's get back to that in a moment.
During the episode, the Orville changes course to save
a minor who crashed lands her ship on a comet,
that's heading into a blazing sun.
- Set course and engage quantum drive.
- [Shane] The Orville manages to save captain Pria
and everyone lived happily ever after, right?
Well, not so much.
- Your voice just got really high pitched just then.
- No, it didn't. - Yeah, it did.
You were like, yeah! - No, it's all good.
Well, what was the high pitch?It'sfine. I got this.
- [Shane] Find out Pria is actually a time-traveling thief
who trick the Orville into changing course so she could
save the ship from being destroyed in the dark matter storm.
Her plan is to kidnap the crew, steal the Orville and sell
the ship to the highest bidder 400 years in the future.
- Say a ship like yours was destroyed.
I prevent the destruction then I take the ship into
the future and I sell it to the highest bidder.
- [Shane] But before she can complete the deal,
her plan is discovered.
Her explanation to Ed, Kelly and Alara
is they would have died anyway.
And if she let them go, she'd be changing the future.
- Ed, you're all going to die anyway.
- Is Pria lying here?
We don't know for sure but as we watch she seems
to have sincere feelings for Ed.
And based on her body language and her words,
it appears she believes what she is saying.
All in all her plan is ultimately foiled thanks
to Isaac downloading himself into the computer
and Kelly beating the crap out of Pria.
- As I am incapable of stuttering,
I must conclude that you hear me.
- [Shane] At the very end captain Ed tells Pria
by destroying the time wormhole, he stopping her
and others from time traveling past, present and future.
- As long as the wormhole exists,
the quantum potentiality is open.
But if we destroy it, we choose a path.
- [Shane] Which is true because once he destroys
the wormhole, it won't be there for a future Pria to use.
- Which means that Pria Lavesque will have no reason
to come back into our past.
- She makes a final plea calling Ed a-
- A messed up guy who can't get over his ex wife.
- [Shane] But add blows the wormhole into oblivion
and Pria fades away "Back To The Future" style.
But old Biff "Back to the Future" style,
not Marty on stage "Back to the Future" style.
(triumphant music)
(gentle music)
The thing you really need to understand here is that both Ed
and Pria fail to realize something.
Ed feels safe that the Orville wasn't destroyed
but they've both overlooked the fact that Pria was the one
who saved them in the dark matter storm.
And if she doesn't come back from the future to do it again,
Ed and his ship could have disappeared
right there with Pria.
So why didn't that happen?
Luckily, Pria coming from the future and causing
the Orville to make a course correction to rescue her
is the reason the Orville was destroyed in the first place.
- We're receiving a priority one distress signal
from the Gatria star system.
- It's right in our neighborhood.
- Set course and engage quantum drive.
- [Shane] So no Pria, no destruction
and the Orville continues along its merry way.
But wait Pria came back because the Orville was destroyed
and we showed earlier why we think she's not lying about it.
Besides only crazy evil people would pull thousands
of people out of history not knowing how it would affect
her present timeline and Pria isn't evil nor crazy.
- Wow. - Yeah.
- [Shane] In fact Pria was almost a universal hero here
but we'll explain that in a moment.
Okay, hold on to your brain here
because this is about to get bumpy.
But we promise it will all make sense or at the very least
you'll understand it better than you do now.
It's this final explanation by Ed about what will happen
after he destroys the wormhole that things get confusing.
- You wanna elaborate on that?
- [Shane] Why did she fade away?
Why do they remember her?
If they are following the back to the future rules
of time travel, then it's a single timeline.
And if destroying the wormhole prevented
her from coming back in the first place,
then she couldn't save the crew, which means they would die
and wouldn't be able to destroy the wormhole.
So then she could come back and save them,
which would allow Ed to destroy the wormhole,
which would again, prevent her from coming back
in the first place.
Then of course she couldn't save the crew.
They would die and they wouldn't be able to destroy
the wormhole and Pria couldn't come back and save them so
they could destroy the wormhole,
which would prevent her from coming back in the first place.
Okay.Waitissilent.
- [Shane] What we can understand from this is Ed's action
is creating a time paradox.
Destroying the wormhole creates a whole bunch of problems.
And thanks to time travel movies and TV shows,
people have had to come up with ways to classify
these paradoxes based on different levels of confusion.
- Hot tub time machine.
- [Shane] In this instance, we all just accepted
what happened because sometimes you don't
have enough information and you just have to accept it.
But then the season two finale confirmed something for us.
When Claire gave past Kelly the shot
and then promptly disappeared, we have confirmation that
the Orville universe is a back
to the future style single timeline.
If you remember in "Back to the Future 2",
old Biff goes back to the past
and gives young Biff the sports Almanac.
When old Biff returns to the future with a DeLorean,
he disappears because the results of
what he did erased him from the timeline.
Which we find out changes everything
in Marty's version of 1985.
- Just wanna say one thing,
God Bless America.
- [Shane] A similar thing occurs when Claire goes back into
the past to make Kelly forget
and go on that second date with Ed.
Effectively that version of Claire is erased
and we assume our normal Orville timeline continues on.
This means we can apply the same principle to what happened
in the Pria episode, which we thought was the case.
But couldn't be certain since
we didn't see Pria in her future.
The events we've laid out thus far make
the Pria time travel a predestination paradox.
This basically means when a person travels back in time,
they become part of the past events and may have even caused
the initial event that caused them to travel back
in time in the first place.
Yeah, it's clear as mud but the moment Pria took
the Orville off course she created the event
that made her come back in time in the first place.
And yes, it's confusing.
And that's why we call it a paradox because how could she
cause the event to happen before actually
going back and causing it?
But wait, hold the phone.
This version of Pria was actually created
as a result of her time travel.
So that wouldn't make it a predestination paradox.
Now we are talking about a bootstrap paradox.
Yes, a bootstrap paradox occurs when an object or piece
of information sent back in time becomes trapped within
an infinite cause effect loop.
In which the item or person no longer
has a discernible point of origin.
Who comes up with this stuff?
- And so one has to ask the question,
what if was one of the extra terrestrials?
- [Shane] Bootstrap example would be the Terminator.
John Connor is created because he sent Kyle Reese back
in time to protect him and make it with his mom.
This has to keep happening over and over for John to exist.
So basically he is creating himself.
Pria in the same way is created when she travels back
in time and causes the destruction of the Orville,
which then becomes the reason she goes back in time.
But wait, Pria disappeared at the end, which ended the loop,
which means it can't fully be a bootstrap paradox either.
And since it doesn't fit into either paradox comfortably,
we'll just make up our own and call it
a reverse predestination bootstrap paradox.
Yeah, I got that figured out.
(ceiling shatters) (eerie music)
- Nevermind about that.
- [Shane] Besides understanding what sort
of mind-bending time paradoxes we are dealing with on
the Orville, after watching a second season of the show,
Pria has unveiled new things to us
that really make you think.
First, let's go with the obvious.
Now that Pria is gone, Amelia Earhart and many other ships
she stole from history will now be crashes
or disasters instead of mysterious vanishings.
Assuming she wasn't also the cause of why those other ships
were destroyed in the first place.
And if that is so that means that instead of all
those people living 400 years into the future, lost to time.
Now they're just dead, not a happy ending there.
Maybe what Pria was doing wasn't so bad.
If those ships were truly doomed,
then she was actually saving people.
And remember when we said there was something that happened
in this episode that continued
to impact the rest of the show?
Pria failing her mission actually
has bigger implications on the universe.
It doesn't appear that Pria comes from a future where
the Kaylon overtake everything,
which means taking the Orville into the future could
have stopped the Kaylon attack from happening
and potentially saving countless lives.
The Pria episode was also when the prank war
between Isaac and Gordon happened.
Isaac's humiliation during the Mr.Potato Head practical joke
was part of the Kaylon judgment
on humanity and a catalyst for their attack.
- Isaac was repeated demeaned and degraded.
In one case his cranial shell was disfigured
by prosthetic appendages, Mr.Potato Head.
- [Shane] If Pria completes her mission, it will change
what happens between the Kaylon and the union.
Isaac does not complete his mission
and send the humiliating reports to his leadership.
If Isaac never returns,
the Kaylon don't make a judgment on humanity.
And perhaps the synthetic beings never attack the union
or at the very least the attack is delayed.
And if that is the case,
the Orville will not be there to save the day,
which would be devastating to the union.
- Deactivation complete.
- [Shane] So it's possible more people lost their lives as
a result of the Orville breaking the time loop.
But hey, that's a small price to pay for
this amazing addition to science fiction history.
Now, hopefully we've scratched your Orville itch.
- I am very pleased.
I do not want this to end.
- [Shane] And everyone has a better understanding
of how time travel works this fun new universe.
- This is insane.
- [Shane] Now that the wormhole is gone,
the Orville is in charge of its own destiny.
Let's hope future episodes of the Orville give us
the same type of fantastic episodes that not only entertain
our brains but twist them up a bit as well.
What do you think of the Orville paradox?
- Sweetness.
- [Shane] Would you like to see more stories like
this from Ed and the crew?
Let's talk about it in the comments below.
Also check out this cool Orville graphic design
at mixedteas.com and get 20% off your purchase
by using coupon code The Podcast,
the link is in the description below.
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Until next time.
- Singles.
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- We must have more.
- [Shane] Don't want the show to end become a podcast member
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(thrilling music)