The ship is designed for long-distance exploration and cartography of uncharted space. Therefore, nearly 300 crew members and their families live on the Orville,[2] working in Science, Medical, Engineering, and Security sections. The ship hosts a quantum drive and is capable of speeds over 10 light years per hour.[3]
The Orville is not intended for combat, but it is equipped with essential military and defensive armaments. The ship has participated in a number of military conflicts, most notably the Battle of Earth in early 2421.
A deck grid view of the Orville from Second Officer Bortus's bridge screen.
The Orville's only mid-size. You should see the heavy cruisers.🔈ℹ︎— Lieutenant Alara Kitan to Lysella[4]
The Orville is one of 3,000 ships in the Planetary Union. It is classified as exploratory, a spacecraft within the Union's military wing with the purpose of exploring and charting the outer reaches of the Union's home quadrant of the galaxy. The ship has a compliment of 300 crewmembers.
Schematics
Rooms and hallways of the Orville viewed from outside.
As a mid-level ship, the Orville is considerably smaller than a Union heavy cruiser. Like other Union vessels, it is directed by a captain and first officer from the bridge, and complimented by a Sick Bay, Brig, engineering decks, residential quarters, a Shuttle Bay, and a Mess Hall.
The Orville holds at least one communications buoy, which it ejects from a hole at its mid-dorsal section. The buoy is used to physically deposit messages in space when the ship cannot remain, such as leaving a message for an away team when the Orville is needed for an emergency rendezvous with another ship.
Additionally, the vessel houses shuttlecraft within the Shuttle Bay with at least four shuttles: ECV-197-1, six-seat shuttle, and back-ups ECV-197-2 to 4. ECV-197-4 was lost to the Krill in late 2420.[5]
Ships Systems
Propulsion
The craft's propulsion system, the quantum drive, is based on dysonium-powered quantum engines.[6] The drive configuration on the Orville provides the ship with speeds in excess of 10 light years per hour - over 87,660 times the speed of light. Space travel is navigated through spatial manifolds located in Engineering, or by traditional star charts. Though capable of this velocity, it is implied this speed is not sustainable for long periods and slower velocities are used during typical interstellar cruising.
The Orville comes equipped with external and internal scanners. External scanners detect and record information about foreign objects or the outside environment. Internal scanners record security information in the form of video and audio recordings, as well as track the location of persons.
The Orville uses its tractor beam to capture the Calavon buoy.
External Systems
The ship also features a tractor beam, an attenuated beam of gravity that can attract objects to the ship or can be reversed to repel objects away from the ship;[n 1] as well as a beam capable of slicing a multi-kilometer long asteroid in a matter of seconds, which is colloquially called a "cutting beam."[7]
Internal/Environmental systems
The walls of the ship are made of a synthetic fiber that is an artificial sort of plant system, taking in carbon dioxide breathed out by the crew and expelling oxygen. In addition to this, the ship also has a water recycling system that is completely self-sustaining; with this regenerative environmental system the Orville can sustain its crew for extended periods of time without having to offload typical metabolic waste.(citation needed)
Most of the crew quarters are on Decks C and G, save for Ed's, which is a two-floor unit on Decks A and B. The cabin consists of a bedroom, living room with kitchen space, and a bathroom.
Armament
Orville's plasma cannons, plus cannons when firing
The Orville is tasked with the exploration of space and cartography of systems in its jurisdiction, the Orville is not built for combat or warfare, nevertheless in the interest of Union defense policy and the execution of any crucial military details, the Orville does have respectable armaments to deal with unexpected dangers.
Deflector Screens: The Orville boasts a high-capacity shield grid to protect itself from various threats, such as impacts from bolides and debris, various space-related and energetic phenomena and hostile weaponry. The ship is able to withstand a considerable beating from larger vessels, albeit not for very long before severe damage can ensue. These shields can be optimized to deal with specific threats such as plasma storms, radiation, etc.
Plasma Cannons: The Orville's primary weaponry; plasma cannons fire pulses of high energy plasma particles. More precise than the torpedoes, able to make precision strikes against strategic points on an enemy ship, but not powerful enough to immediately penetrate the deflectors of a capital ship. The Orville possesses dual plasma cannons located on the nacelles of its lower quantum drive, the ventral tensor coils, a substantial blindside since the cannons cannot be fired at targets directly above the ship.
Orville's forward torpedo tubes
Plasma Torpedoes: The Orville has a total of six torpedo tubes, two are located aft parallel with its shuttle bay and four on its main hull. Capable of rapid fire, the Orville can also launch its entire torpedo inventory in a single volley if necessary from tubes in any direction which suggests the ship shares a common magazine. Torpedoes are more powerful than the energy pulse cannons, more effective against more powerful deflectors, but not as precise, however given the Orville‘s size and the fact it's not a dedicated warshihp, the limited number on board puts it at a disadvantage since it can quickly exhaust its stockpile.
History
The senior and junior staff gather for first roll call under their new captain, Ed Mercer, in the episode Old Wounds.
The Orville entered service some time before 2419 under the command of an unknown series of captains. In September, 2419, Ed Mercer is appointed captain by Admiral Halsey. Little is known of the captain previous to Ed aside from the fact that she is a woman and was retiring from the Union. Most of her crew simply remained aboard the Orville aside from the commander, helmsman, and doctor.[8]
To fill the gaps, Ed quickly recruits his friend and colleague Lieutenant Gordon Malloy for its pilot. Planetary Union Central transfers Doctor Claire Finn to the Orville to serve as the ship's physician.[8]
By mid-September, the Orville embarks from the Union Dockyard orbiting Earth and rendezvous with a nearby space station to pick up Kelly Grayson for their new Commander. Kelly's transfer was kept secret from Ed until she made it aboard the Orville. In fact, it was Halsey who quietly transferred Kelly onto the Orville, who did so at Kelly's request. The friction between Ed and Kelly, who were once married, serves as a major source of conflict on the Bridge.[8]
Their first mission under Captain Mercer is to deliver supplies to the Epsilon Science Station on Epsilon 2. Upon arrival, station chief Doctor Aronov reveals that the request for supplies was a ruse to bring a Union vessel in order to protect the scientists from the Krill. Fortunately, the Orville's crew is able to repel a subsequent Krill attack on the laboratory as expected. During the encounter, the Orville defeats a Krill destroyer, but suffers damage to two of the three propulsion rings. It subsequently undergoes repairs.
In October, the Orville rendezvous with the USS Blériot, which just survived a Krill raid. Ed and Kelly take shuttle ECV-197-1 to the ship but, once "aboard," the Blériot and the commanders vanish. The Blériot was in fact a holographic projection from a Calivon buoy.
As acting captain, Alara Kitan directs helm control to rein in the buoy using a tractor beam. However, the buoy was loaded with explosives and the Orville is seriously damaged and several crewmembers hurt. Repairs are made over several weeks.[n 2]
In late November, Captain Mercer and Commander Grayson lead an away team to the Dorahl bioship, which places Second Officer Bortus in the captain's chair. Bortus leads the Orville to defeat a Krill warship attacking the USS Druyan.
Capture by Pria Lavesque
The Orville's quantum engines allow it to travel through space at faster-than-light speeds.
Several weeks later, the Orville picks up a stranded Vega Mining Consortium miner, Pria Lavesque. During a catastrophic encounter with a dark matter storm, Pria directs Science and Engineering Officer Isaac to flood the area with neutralized axion particles through the ship's weapons array, which enables the Orville's sensors to detect dark matter. Lavesque then utilizes a device on her wrist to guide the ship through the storm. The Orville is nearly destroyed but survives, and Pria gains the trust of the crew.
However, that trust was misplaced. Using the same wrist device, Lavesque overrides all control of the ship's computers and forces the Orville through a wormhole to the 29th century. Ed and the crew find themselves powerless on their own ship. The crew manages to wrest control from her by a surprise attack and takes the ship back through the wormhole to the present day.
At the end of the year, the Orville once again was called to battle a heavier Krill destroyer: the Kakov. The destroyer nearly destroys the Orville but Mercer directs Malloy to pilot the ship through a nearby planet's atmosphere at very high speeds. The tremendous friction damages the Orville but also creates a smokescreen that blinds the destroyer's sensors. Mercer's gambit pays off and he is able to attack the destroyer from above.
Surviving an ion storm
As a mid-level exploratory vessel, the Orville is dwarfed by larger Planetary Union ships like this heavy cruiser.
In the 25th century, ion storms are dangerous phenomena for space vessels, capable of severely damaging a ship.[n 3] The Orville has its own brush with an ion storm in March, 2420, when one causes an explosion in Engineering. The Orville receives major structural damage and loses a member of its crew, Lieutenant Harrison Payne. The damage is repaired over the next few weeks.
Only weeks later, the Orville experiences minor structural damage and damage to the quantum drive when it passes through an unmapped spatial anomaly that turns out to be a pocket of space that exists only in two dimensions.
With the quantum drive offline for repairs, LaMarr successfully devises a plan to take the Orville through the aperture of two-dimensional space by creating a quantum bubble around the ship that preserves three dimensions within two-dimensional space. Once back through the anomaly, the crew returns the Orville to a Union station for repairs.
In an alternate timeline, as a result of Kelly Grayson rejecting a second date with Ed Mercer following her return from the future, Mercer never became the Captain of the Orville and as a result, Dr. Claire Finn never joined the crew. Due to this, Isaac never developed a relationship with Claire or her children and fully betrayed the Union to the Kaylon. In the alternate timeline, the Orville participated in the Battle of Earth which the Union lost, resulting in the destruction of the planet. During the battle, the Orville took a heavy hit and went into freefall in the planet's atmosphere. Unable to correct their course, most of the ship's crew fled in the escape pods while Bortus remained behind to ensure everyone got off, the captain and first officer having perished in the battle. The Orville crashed at the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean and though badly damaged, remained intact. Bortus remained stranded on the ship for the next nine months, surviving off of combat rations and minimal life support.
Nine months later, the Orville's command crew from the original timeline, minus Bortus, reunited on a mission to restore the original timeline by sending Claire back in time to correct the failed memory wipe on the Kelly Grayson from seven years before. To complete the mission, the crew required Isaac's calculations on Aronov device which was aboard the Orville. The crew boarded the ship on a Union shuttle and found Bortus who agreed to help them. On Bortus' insistence, Mercer took command of the ship while John LaMarr managed to restore partial main power, allowing them to fly the ship back into space.
Discovering Isaac's calculations to be incomplete, LaMarr downloaded Isaac's consciousness into a disabled Kaylon body, allowing him to complete the calculations at the cost of the Kaylon learning their location. With four Kaylon Spheres bearing down on the Orville, the crew transferred all power control to the quantum drive, including life support, to enable the Aronov device to work. The Orville's quantum drive overloaded, destroying the ship and killing everyone on board. However, the crew succeeded in sending Claire back in time and she completed the memory wipe, restoring the original timeline.
The idea of the Orville was birthed by the show's creator Seth MacFarlane, who oversaw most creative developments of the ship. The name of the ship comes from David McCullough's description of Orville Wright in his biography The Wright Brothers, which MacFarlane was reading at the time he wrote the pilot script.[16] "Early on [in his book] there seemed to be some depiction of Orville as the 'beta' brother. Seemed like a good fit for our midlevel craft."[17]
Supervising producer and science consultant André Bormanis tweaked the details of the ship for scientific plausibility, and to keep the futuristic ship believable for general audiences. A group of artists led by production designer Stephen J. Lineweaver went through over 140 different concept designs of the ship before landing upon the final version.[n 7] "It took us a long time to get there but, boy, did we celebrate when we finally did," Lineweaver said.[18]
"The design of the Orville was a long process," recalled visual effects supervisor Luke McDonald.
It took about six months and at least ten different artists having a go at it. I had a design that had the three rings [spatial tensor coils] and someone else had one that had this front end almost like a yacht, and we eventually circled this and circled that and combined them to get the final look.[19]
Final architectural plans were drafted by set designer Eugene Adamov.[20]
Building the set
The scale model during filming.
Construction coordinator Tony Lattanzio supervised construction of the Orville set. To save money, the construction team built the spaceship reusing the scaffolding and "bones" of a house left on the stage from the show American Horror Story: Roanoke.[21] Construction took 40 days, consuming 25,000 square feet of set space.[22]
All lights of the ship were installed by the director of photography Marvin Rush, and can be controlled remotely to emit any color light in any pattern.[23] Lighting was specifically tailored for the quarters of each character to reflect their personalities.[23] Ship doors open and shut automatically by a pneumatic door opening device and pulleys.[24]
To create an authenticate atmosphere, Fox television financed the construction of a two-story studio set of the Orville. The idea came from Lineweaver, who wanted as immersive a set for the actors as possible.[25] Many in the show's production staff had worked on the 1990s science fiction show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that utilized a two-story set as well, and they found it particularly convenient.[23] "I don't think you get an idea of how much money and how impressive the actual Orville spaceship sets are until you actually walk around on them," Jeff Bond, author of The World of the Orville, later noted in an interview. "Because they literally built the first two . . . decks of the ship; and it's all one structure, and you can walk up that spiral staircase onto the Bridge."[26]
Final approval to build a two-story set was mostly due to space and budget constraints. The Orville was to be shot in Studio 15, where the cancelled series Gang Related was filmed on a two-story build.[23] Plus, Fox could afford to construct additional sets vertically, but the high cost of additional, lateral studio space was prohibitive. "We knew we needed multiple sets, but we didn't have the floor space" executive produce Jason Clark recounted in Bond's book. "So we said, 'What if we had a two-story set? What if we built the second floor on a platform that already exists?' So that made it affordable."[22]
The impressive set turned out to be a highlight of the show. According to Penny Johnson Jerald (Claire Finn), the entire cast fell silent in awe when they stepped onto the set for the first time.[27]
The Orville was designed as a self-contained world: to television audiences, it functions as the ground of most plot developments of the show; and within the universe of The Orville, as the home to a crew of 300 people. Bormanis later reflected:
This is a starship that can travel for months at a time and sustain a crew of 300 people. So we have to have a space for them that is not just necessary for survival, but is comfortable, that has the feeling of a place that you would want to live. So there's a psychological dimension: How do you keep a crew not only physically safe and alive, but how do you keep them psychologically fit?[2]
Later concept art for the ship. By then, the Orville had attained much of its sleek look.
Therefore, the show's creative team designed the ship to be spacious and welcoming. Living quarters were drawn to resemble futuristic apartments. A mess hall was added as a cafeteria and social space.
The science behind living on a ship for long periods of time posed a challenge to the show's producers. Bormanis wanted a self-sustaining ecosystem integrated into the ship in order to account for the vast quantities of water, breathable air, and supplies needed to sustain a crew. Bormanis decided that the walls of the ship would be synthetic fiber, the intent being that in the future, the fibers are an artificial means to recycle air, much like plants.[28]Jeff Bond, who wrote The World of the Orville, said that under close examination, one would be able to see nano-sized machines grooming and growing the fibers.[29]
Early designs of the walls had grass growing but Lineweaver decided simplicity was best, and built the walls of the set with Chilewich matting to create an unusual texture.[28]
Construction and filming
The scale model of the Orville on display at the August 8, 2017 press tour.
MacFarlane and director Jon Favreau (Old Wounds) had long joked about building a physical model of the Orville, but it was visual effects supervisor Luke McDonald who convinced them that constructing and shooting a highly-detailed 5 ft. (1.5 m) scale model was feasible.[30]Glenn Derry labored in collaboration with Favreau, Rob Legato, and The Orville visual effects team to design and build it. Most footage for the entire season was filmed before a blue screen in a single shoot, the same strategy used by Star Trek: The Next Generation.[31]
Space battles and other high-speed action sequences were accomplished by CGI. The physical model was imaged and transitioned to a 3D model by the previs company Halon Entertainment. Over a period of nine months, team of 10 modeled and rendered video of the ship in space battles, around wormholes or explosions.[32]
The model of the Orville between passes.
Halon developed large point-of-view video to be displayed on the set of the bridge so that actors on the bridge of the Orville could get a sense of what their characters see.[32] The technique was highly effective:
[W]hen the effects team played the full rolling pitching video on the giant screen in the Orville bridge set, the crew standing inside immediately fell over - thrown by the optical illusion of the ship rolling when the set was actually static. Basically, one's brain either causes you to lean over, and thus topple over or you suffer massive motion sickness.[31]
Visual effects producer Natasha Francis elaborated that spending money on the screen saved them money in the long run by eliminating high green screen costs.[33]
Visual effects company Crafty Apes designed a number of additional effects for the ship, such as hugging the donkey, a battle tactic used by Lieuteant Gordon Malloy in Old Wounds.[31][34]
Production changes in Season 2
On April 19, 2018, Unit Production Manager Jason Roberts confirmed that the ship would receive an updated look for the second season.[23]
In June, production designer Stephen J. Lineweaver and art director Robert Strohmaier jointly published an article where they revealed that a school classroom, an armory, and increased hallway space were built for the new season.[35] Season 2 architectural blueprints drafted by set designer Eugene Adamov for the ship's set were released as well.[20]
Trivia
Captain Mercer mentions that the ship can go over 10 light years per hour. Since the International Astronomical Union defines the light year as the distance light travels in one Julian year (365.25 days), that translates to 87,660 times light speed.[3]
The items listed on the Fantastic Plastics Models website includes a 15 inch long, 1/1400 scale resin model kit of the Orville. It was released in October 2018.[36]
The iconic winding staircase connecting the Bridge to the ship's lower levels is a redesigned set piece from the show American Horror Story: Roanoke, which was filmed in the same studio.[23]
The name of the ship comes from David McCullough's description of Orville Wright in his biography The Wright Brothers.[16]
According to Howard Berger, the first season makeup department head, just over 40 alien species live on the ship.[18]
While the Orville remains in active service as of the end of Season 2, the ship has been shown to be destroyed on-screen twice. The first was as a simulation in Firestorm, while the second time was genuine, albeit within an alternate timeline, in The Road Not Taken. In addition, Pria Lavesque claims that the Orville was meant to be destroyed earlier in the timeline before she travelled back and saved it.
Notes
↑Both uses of the tractor beam are seen in Episode 5: Pria.
↑Repairs are completed before the episode concludes, which means that the repairs must take less than 21 days (because of Bortus's 21-day incubation period). Episode 2: Command Performance
↑The Dorahl bioship was horribly damaged by an ion storm. Episode 4: If the Stars Should Appear
↑Listed is the year a character is seen. However, recurring characters (those appearing across multiple episodes) are assumed to be static members of the Orville, and are given the year of first observation and listed until the present.
↑Listed is the year a character is seen. However, recurring characters (those appearing across multiple episodes) are assumed to be static members of the Orville, and are given the year of first observation and listed until the present.
↑See Bond, Jeff. The World of the Orville. Titan Books. 2018. Pg. 11. But Lineweaver has also said that the number of drafts exceeded 150. See Miller, Bruce R. "Ready for launch: 'The Orville' gets set to blast off". Sioux City Journal. Aug. 18, 2018.
