History Recap / TheOrvilleS2E5AllTheWorldIsABirthdayCake

** It wouldn't take advanced technology to discover the new "star" was a fake. The solar sail is deployed in close proximity to the planet, so the planet's orbit alone would cause it to appear in different positions in the night sky over the year, and even during the same night different telescopes would show it in different positions compared to the background stars, and thus far, far closer than the ruse is meant to suggest. (It really only ''needed'' to work long enough to confuse the Regorians into releasing Kelly and Bortus, but the protagonists think it will work a lot longer.)[[note]]Justified...dialogue indicates that the solar sail has integrated thrusters which allow it to continually reorient itself, as well as jammers that prevent the native technology from detecting it.[[/note]]

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: The new chief of security, Talla, is also a Xelayan, meaning she has the same strength that Alara did. She even has a similar hairstyle. Enforced in that Ed specifically requested a Xelayan for the position, so apparently he ''wanted'' another one just like the last one.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: The new chief of security, Talla, is also a Xelayan, meaning she has the same strength that Alara did. She even has a similar hairstyle. Justified in that Ed specifically requested a Xelayan for the position.

* WrongfulAccusationInsurance: After the crew pulls off their con, Kelly and Bortus are released from the camps as their original "crime" is no longer such... despite the fact that they had just attempted to escape and killed or injured dozens of guards in the process.

* BrokenPedestal: The Regorians are ecstatic to meet with the Orville at first. However, their opinion of the Orville (and the Union as a whole) quickly declines once they learn that the Union does not subscribe to the same astrology-based belief system that the Regorians do, and that they allow people that the Regorians deem to be dangerous criminals and major threats to society to simply walk around without any safety precautions.

* FantasticRacism: Something of a variation. The Regorians are RubberForeheadAliens who discriminate against people born under a specific stellar sign, thus cutting across class, ethnic, gender and family lines. We see a couple who are considered inferior and locked in a concenteation camp, but their daughter is considered superior and treated almost worshipfully, solely because of her birth date.

* OrderIsNotGood: It's heavily implied that the Regorians came to this Astroligy-based belief system due to a desire to find somekind of order in the natural chaos of ther universe.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: The prejudice against an specific astrological sign was the result of a star in that constellation being swallowed by a black hole, around 3,000 years prior, and the Regorians witnessing the event. This doesn't take into consideration the interstellar distances and the time it would take for the light of the star to travel to Regor II. It would take hundreds if not thousands of years for the Regorians to notice the star had gone dark, and the dates of the star's destruction and the Regorians cultural change would not match.[[note]]Possibly justified as the dialogue is vague enough to interpret as "the light from the star's collapse into a black hole would have first arrived at this planet 3000 years ago".[[/note]]

* ShoutOut: When taking the landing party into custody, Chief Advisor Makkal refers to Talla as "the one with the ears," how many uninformed referred to Spock from ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''.
** The music that plays while the Orville warps into the solar system sounds very much like ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan''.
* ShutUpGunshot: The concentration camp commander makes short order of Bortus's and Kelly's fight with the guards by firing his sidearm in the air, pointedly telling them that if they attempt that again, the next bullet will be in their brain.

** It wouldn't take advanced technology to discover the new "star" was a fake. The solar sail is deployed in close proximity to the planet, so the planet's orbit alone would cause it to appear in different positions in the night sky over the year, and even during the same night different telescopes would show it in different positions compared to the background stars, and thus far, far closer than the ruse is meant to suggest. (It really only ''needed'' to work long enough to confuse the Regorians into releasing Kelly and Bortus, but the protagonists think it will work a lot longer.)

* FantasticRacism: Something of a variation. The Regorians are RubberForeheadAliens who discriminate against people born under a specific stellar sign known as "Giliacs", thus cutting across class, ethnic, and gender lines.

* Shout-out: When taking the landing party into custody, Chief Advisor Makkal refers to Talla as "the one with the ears," how many uninformed referred to Spock from ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''.