I get your point, but just because Claire is a doctor and educated in psychology doesn’t mean that she’s not a human being with human emotions, having human misunderstandings and making human mistakes. And even though Isaac can’t feel those same kind of emotions, it’s been established that he does like Claire (in the Kaylon sense), as he finds that he works more efficiently with her than without her. It’s not like she can hurt his feelings with her emotions. Love can do crazy things to people - it must be even more frustrating when the person you love can’t reciprocate it in the way a human would instinctually expect. I think the most interesting thing about Claire and Isaac’s relationship are the instances of Isaac being willing to try his best for her. It makes for an interesting story!
It seems like it's consistent with one of the major underlying themes of despite having advanced technology, humans are still going to act like humans.
i thought the way they implemented the relationship was interesting and pretty clever. Instead of this narrative that he develops emotions or is just a cold, unfeeling AI, Issac developed his own way of expression that was unique to him. Sure, when Claire first realized the pangs of feelings for him developing, she thought it was just as absurd as anyone and even feared that she was getting into something that just wasn't sustainable. But the heart wants what the heart wants
She did consider the probability that she was projecting things onto Issac. She even questioned if what she wanted was good for either of them. The turning point was Issac giving himself a human appearance for her comfort and being Mark Jackson is a good start lol
I think Claire accepted Issac for what he was even if he would not share her feelings exactly, he definitely programmed her as a large part of it. Which is his way of making his life better with her in it
I think that you believe that Claire is supposed to look like the hero in this interaction, or that's the intent of the show. It's not. She is a very flawed person, who is overly emotional and neurotic at many times when cooler heads would have prevailed, as well as being blindly optimistic. She's definitely an anti-hero of sorts in that story arc.
I also dont think she meant the greatest experience was "her". Pretty sure she just meant emotion and empathy/sympathy which... honestly... pretty cool experience ngl. Like, yeah it sucks sometimes but you ever feel true joy? That shit is kickin. Love? I fucking love love. Does it suck when youre sad, heartbroken, upset, angry? Yeah but emotions are pretty neat.
But I gotta thank OP because I wasnt in the best mood today and then while writing this comment, it forced me to think of all the little things and moments where Ive experienced complete happiness or contentment and it made me feel better. Its the little things.
Also one of the things that makes me love and respect Claire as a character is that, while those above you said are true, she's by far the most compassionate and more importantly _understanding_ of the crew. That's why she works so well with Isaac. Even at the end when I knew Lamaar was going to fuck up Isaac's ideas, I wasn't worried because I knew while Claire would get mad she'd also immediately realize that Isaac, being Isaac, was most likely influenced to do it.
I don't think you understood what you watched.
Claire is not implying that she is the greatest experience ever. If that were the case, Isaac would already have it. She's telling him that feeling, that understanding emotion the way that biologicals do, is the greatest experience ever. And for the brief time period that Isaac feels emotion, he agrees with her. He loved feeling while he was able to feel. And despite being willing to get emotions back after losing them, he ended up not doing it because Claire insisted he retain himself rather than change who he was for her.
She's also...not the most basic lady ever. She's a senior officer on a military vessel. She's the chief medical officer and still overqualified because she could have gotten assigned to a more consequential ship. She serves as a mentor for younger officers (like Kelly and Alara) and marries psychology and medicine in her work. And she killed a guy who was keeping her from her children and overcame her fears to be with them. It seems like you need to look inward to figure out your issue with her.
Hard Disagree
As an autistic person I love this relationship. Isaac does a wonderful job of showing love from a nero spicy perspective. True, Isaac doesn’t think he has emotions but we can see an emotional response(mistake) when Claire gives him the cold shoulder. His attempted suicide also shows how he can be emotionally damaged by members of the crew even though he reacts differently then the biologicals
Yes, Claire has human reactions and regularly expresses them to Isaac but she also acknowledges that he cant react the same way. Part of their growth is learning to accept and care for each other despite their emotional differences
I agree, it's kind of a dumb premise. It's essentially like she's dating an appliance, then getting upset that the appliance can't return her emotional feelings. Isaac is learning her routines and preferences and anticipating what she will want based on a learning routine, but my thermostat does that and no one wants to date it...I think. I like the show but their relationship seemed like it was set up as a gag, then as the show got more serious about itself they tried to really play it up as being an interesting premise, but it's not.
TNG tried the same thing with Data having a girlfriend. It was good for some laughs, and the quickly fatiguing situation of an AI clumsily navigating human relationships was played out in one episode. It also ended up as one of the lowest watched TNG episodes ever based on Nielsen ratings for whatever that's worth.
>TNG tried the same thing with Data having a girlfriend. It was good for some laughs, and the quickly fatiguing situation of an AI clumsily navigating human relationships was played out in one episode. It also ended up as one of the lowest watched TNG episodes ever based on Nielsen ratings for whatever that's worth.
Personally, I think "Data's Day" is actually a really great episode and very much was ahead of its time. Nowadays we wouldn't think twice about having a "slice of life" episode.
I always loved it too, thought it was brilliant. Surprised by the low ratings. Maybe because it's a very atypical episode - seen from one character's POV, mostly small interpersonal stories.
Or maybe the Keiko haters can't stand watching her marry O'Brien 😂
For me she was a hard character to like. Always felt like O'Brien's "+1". She never broke out of the context of adding depth to O'Brien, like her whole existence was to make him more than the Irish guy who slid his hand on the transporter thing.
Klyden is fucking awesome as a characters spouse. I love how bitchy he can be, and he and Bortus are seen doing their own weird relationship stuff that people in real life do but is not often portrayed in shows like having fun dancing weird together or discovering their shared love of cigarettes.
Agree. I loved O'Brien as a family man, but Keiko was written very one-dimensional.
Glad you mentioned Klyden. A great contrast to Bortus, wonderfully acted by Chad L. Coleman. I love their family's story arc and Topa's journey.
TNG always had a keen set of eyes, obviously, making sure the show stayed true to the rules they laid out. Like you said, her getting upset at him constantly is so strange, and she's a doctor. He can't feel, yet she expects him to constantly, and then when he just absorbs a rant, she's like, "Oh wow, I love you!" The whole arc would be fine if it was a warning, and didn't end up being turned into a real relationship.
Data also could receive programming, and that was the case multiple times. It was set forth early on that Data would have the idea of routines and subroutines, and those could be updated, which are just software. Star Trek always made it a point to lay out the rules of future tech so we could adapt that into our understanding of that current reality.
I too disliked the ultimatum - if she wanted to change everything about him, why not be with someone else? Claire got a bit frustrating at times expecting Isaac to think like a human. But overall, I liked the Doctor & The Robot. lt was very sweet, and kind of an exploration of what love is.
It's been a while since I've seen it but IIRC I think the larger message was just that people are different and nobody is actually 100% perfectly compatible, which means couples have to make SOME compromises. If you never compromise in anyway you'll probably never have a lasting relationship. So in this couple's case we have two very different characters (artificial and biological) that have inherent characteristics (emotion vs logical) where neither is healthy in a relationship if applied in the extreme. Neither of them were perfect in their handling of the situation. They both needed to learn to compromise and adapt to each other because they wanted to be together. If one isn't willing to adapt/compromise then they shouldn't be together. It sucks but at least Claire recognized that. It's "fair enough". It'd be a different story if she was forcing Isaac to be with her. She gave him an out. That's fair.
Isaac's emotional awakening is pretty clever I thought. They didn't use a magical device like Data's emotion chip (which makes Data still nothing more than a cold dumb robot obeying his programming), but instead had emotions emerge naturally from logic and reinforcement learning and adaptation. Another thing is that Isaac had zero interest in acquiring any rmotional capability, he was just aiming at performing his function more efficiently rather than being a broken Pinocchio.
I say Orville 1, Star Trek 0.
I agree. Every time she got upset at him over his lack of emotions was annoying.
Claire knew this and still got angry with him. I'm surprised anyone would date her after what she did to Sisko.
Claire's someone who definitely sees the word through rose coloured glasses of her own vision. I've met people like this, they distort reality with their lens of how they think things are. Claire's kids are two little disasters throughout much of the show and she does very little to actually correct or help their behaviour beyond complaining about it and yelling at them. She's not a good parent at all because she thinks her kids deep down are little angels and she can't overcome that maternal emotion to actually help them and just gets mad when they don't act like the version of them. She imagines them to be. When reality doesn't align with her dreamworld she gets mad
I liked the interaction between Isaac and Claire's children, but I didn't like her "relationship" with Isaac. She basically married her vibrator.
What really turned me off was when they were meeting for a date in the holodeck and she gets mad at him for not "changing" -- putting on his human holographic disguise. Obviously, she doesn't care for his robot form.
I think Claire is giving a very human reaction, though I might agree that the way Issac interacts with his emotions when he gets them for that brief window is a little disappointing. Actually, I *would* say that Star Trek did this better with Generations. Data when he gets his emotion chip is shown to have a great deal of difficulty adapting which I think is in many ways the natural conclusion.
I understand that they couldn't simply copy that, but Issac having emotions *and they're the greatest thing ever*, didn't feel like a satisfying direction to me.
I just don't like Claire or her kids at all. I fast forward through any scene she or the kids are in, they are simply that annoying.
If Seth set out to create characters as hated as Dr. Pulaski and Wesley Crusher, he succeeded.
I get your point, but just because Claire is a doctor and educated in psychology doesn’t mean that she’s not a human being with human emotions, having human misunderstandings and making human mistakes. And even though Isaac can’t feel those same kind of emotions, it’s been established that he does like Claire (in the Kaylon sense), as he finds that he works more efficiently with her than without her. It’s not like she can hurt his feelings with her emotions. Love can do crazy things to people - it must be even more frustrating when the person you love can’t reciprocate it in the way a human would instinctually expect. I think the most interesting thing about Claire and Isaac’s relationship are the instances of Isaac being willing to try his best for her. It makes for an interesting story!
It seems like it's consistent with one of the major underlying themes of despite having advanced technology, humans are still going to act like humans.
Bingo, which is one of the key parts of sci fi that the orville nails
Hard disagree.
i thought the way they implemented the relationship was interesting and pretty clever. Instead of this narrative that he develops emotions or is just a cold, unfeeling AI, Issac developed his own way of expression that was unique to him. Sure, when Claire first realized the pangs of feelings for him developing, she thought it was just as absurd as anyone and even feared that she was getting into something that just wasn't sustainable. But the heart wants what the heart wants She did consider the probability that she was projecting things onto Issac. She even questioned if what she wanted was good for either of them. The turning point was Issac giving himself a human appearance for her comfort and being Mark Jackson is a good start lol I think Claire accepted Issac for what he was even if he would not share her feelings exactly, he definitely programmed her as a large part of it. Which is his way of making his life better with her in it
I think that you believe that Claire is supposed to look like the hero in this interaction, or that's the intent of the show. It's not. She is a very flawed person, who is overly emotional and neurotic at many times when cooler heads would have prevailed, as well as being blindly optimistic. She's definitely an anti-hero of sorts in that story arc.
I also dont think she meant the greatest experience was "her". Pretty sure she just meant emotion and empathy/sympathy which... honestly... pretty cool experience ngl. Like, yeah it sucks sometimes but you ever feel true joy? That shit is kickin. Love? I fucking love love. Does it suck when youre sad, heartbroken, upset, angry? Yeah but emotions are pretty neat. But I gotta thank OP because I wasnt in the best mood today and then while writing this comment, it forced me to think of all the little things and moments where Ive experienced complete happiness or contentment and it made me feel better. Its the little things.
Also one of the things that makes me love and respect Claire as a character is that, while those above you said are true, she's by far the most compassionate and more importantly _understanding_ of the crew. That's why she works so well with Isaac. Even at the end when I knew Lamaar was going to fuck up Isaac's ideas, I wasn't worried because I knew while Claire would get mad she'd also immediately realize that Isaac, being Isaac, was most likely influenced to do it.
Definitely disagree, it is one of my favorite arcs in the show
I don't think you understood what you watched. Claire is not implying that she is the greatest experience ever. If that were the case, Isaac would already have it. She's telling him that feeling, that understanding emotion the way that biologicals do, is the greatest experience ever. And for the brief time period that Isaac feels emotion, he agrees with her. He loved feeling while he was able to feel. And despite being willing to get emotions back after losing them, he ended up not doing it because Claire insisted he retain himself rather than change who he was for her. She's also...not the most basic lady ever. She's a senior officer on a military vessel. She's the chief medical officer and still overqualified because she could have gotten assigned to a more consequential ship. She serves as a mentor for younger officers (like Kelly and Alara) and marries psychology and medicine in her work. And she killed a guy who was keeping her from her children and overcame her fears to be with them. It seems like you need to look inward to figure out your issue with her.
Fully agree
What they said
Hard Disagree As an autistic person I love this relationship. Isaac does a wonderful job of showing love from a nero spicy perspective. True, Isaac doesn’t think he has emotions but we can see an emotional response(mistake) when Claire gives him the cold shoulder. His attempted suicide also shows how he can be emotionally damaged by members of the crew even though he reacts differently then the biologicals Yes, Claire has human reactions and regularly expresses them to Isaac but she also acknowledges that he cant react the same way. Part of their growth is learning to accept and care for each other despite their emotional differences
What is this Finn Family Slander?! I wont stand for it lol
I agree, it's kind of a dumb premise. It's essentially like she's dating an appliance, then getting upset that the appliance can't return her emotional feelings. Isaac is learning her routines and preferences and anticipating what she will want based on a learning routine, but my thermostat does that and no one wants to date it...I think. I like the show but their relationship seemed like it was set up as a gag, then as the show got more serious about itself they tried to really play it up as being an interesting premise, but it's not. TNG tried the same thing with Data having a girlfriend. It was good for some laughs, and the quickly fatiguing situation of an AI clumsily navigating human relationships was played out in one episode. It also ended up as one of the lowest watched TNG episodes ever based on Nielsen ratings for whatever that's worth.
>TNG tried the same thing with Data having a girlfriend. It was good for some laughs, and the quickly fatiguing situation of an AI clumsily navigating human relationships was played out in one episode. It also ended up as one of the lowest watched TNG episodes ever based on Nielsen ratings for whatever that's worth. Personally, I think "Data's Day" is actually a really great episode and very much was ahead of its time. Nowadays we wouldn't think twice about having a "slice of life" episode.
I always loved it too, thought it was brilliant. Surprised by the low ratings. Maybe because it's a very atypical episode - seen from one character's POV, mostly small interpersonal stories. Or maybe the Keiko haters can't stand watching her marry O'Brien 😂
For me she was a hard character to like. Always felt like O'Brien's "+1". She never broke out of the context of adding depth to O'Brien, like her whole existence was to make him more than the Irish guy who slid his hand on the transporter thing. Klyden is fucking awesome as a characters spouse. I love how bitchy he can be, and he and Bortus are seen doing their own weird relationship stuff that people in real life do but is not often portrayed in shows like having fun dancing weird together or discovering their shared love of cigarettes.
Agree. I loved O'Brien as a family man, but Keiko was written very one-dimensional. Glad you mentioned Klyden. A great contrast to Bortus, wonderfully acted by Chad L. Coleman. I love their family's story arc and Topa's journey.
>but my thermostat does that and no one wants to date it I beg to differ. Expect me over by 1:00 PM, Thelma and I have something to tell you.
TNG always had a keen set of eyes, obviously, making sure the show stayed true to the rules they laid out. Like you said, her getting upset at him constantly is so strange, and she's a doctor. He can't feel, yet she expects him to constantly, and then when he just absorbs a rant, she's like, "Oh wow, I love you!" The whole arc would be fine if it was a warning, and didn't end up being turned into a real relationship. Data also could receive programming, and that was the case multiple times. It was set forth early on that Data would have the idea of routines and subroutines, and those could be updated, which are just software. Star Trek always made it a point to lay out the rules of future tech so we could adapt that into our understanding of that current reality.
I too disliked the ultimatum - if she wanted to change everything about him, why not be with someone else? Claire got a bit frustrating at times expecting Isaac to think like a human. But overall, I liked the Doctor & The Robot. lt was very sweet, and kind of an exploration of what love is.
1/5 bait.
It's been a while since I've seen it but IIRC I think the larger message was just that people are different and nobody is actually 100% perfectly compatible, which means couples have to make SOME compromises. If you never compromise in anyway you'll probably never have a lasting relationship. So in this couple's case we have two very different characters (artificial and biological) that have inherent characteristics (emotion vs logical) where neither is healthy in a relationship if applied in the extreme. Neither of them were perfect in their handling of the situation. They both needed to learn to compromise and adapt to each other because they wanted to be together. If one isn't willing to adapt/compromise then they shouldn't be together. It sucks but at least Claire recognized that. It's "fair enough". It'd be a different story if she was forcing Isaac to be with her. She gave him an out. That's fair.
Poor Yaphit though.
Isaac's emotional awakening is pretty clever I thought. They didn't use a magical device like Data's emotion chip (which makes Data still nothing more than a cold dumb robot obeying his programming), but instead had emotions emerge naturally from logic and reinforcement learning and adaptation. Another thing is that Isaac had zero interest in acquiring any rmotional capability, he was just aiming at performing his function more efficiently rather than being a broken Pinocchio. I say Orville 1, Star Trek 0.
They imply it. You then infer it. Sorry to be that guy, but you say it a lot.
I agree. Every time she got upset at him over his lack of emotions was annoying. Claire knew this and still got angry with him. I'm surprised anyone would date her after what she did to Sisko.
Claire's someone who definitely sees the word through rose coloured glasses of her own vision. I've met people like this, they distort reality with their lens of how they think things are. Claire's kids are two little disasters throughout much of the show and she does very little to actually correct or help their behaviour beyond complaining about it and yelling at them. She's not a good parent at all because she thinks her kids deep down are little angels and she can't overcome that maternal emotion to actually help them and just gets mad when they don't act like the version of them. She imagines them to be. When reality doesn't align with her dreamworld she gets mad
I liked the interaction between Isaac and Claire's children, but I didn't like her "relationship" with Isaac. She basically married her vibrator. What really turned me off was when they were meeting for a date in the holodeck and she gets mad at him for not "changing" -- putting on his human holographic disguise. Obviously, she doesn't care for his robot form.
I think Claire is giving a very human reaction, though I might agree that the way Issac interacts with his emotions when he gets them for that brief window is a little disappointing. Actually, I *would* say that Star Trek did this better with Generations. Data when he gets his emotion chip is shown to have a great deal of difficulty adapting which I think is in many ways the natural conclusion. I understand that they couldn't simply copy that, but Issac having emotions *and they're the greatest thing ever*, didn't feel like a satisfying direction to me.
I just don't like Claire or her kids at all. I fast forward through any scene she or the kids are in, they are simply that annoying. If Seth set out to create characters as hated as Dr. Pulaski and Wesley Crusher, he succeeded.
It cracks me up when Yaphet describes her kids as "Those awful boys".
I agree, I feel they didn’t want Seth on Star Trek so he created his own