Justin Hartline
Summary
I think this will wind up being a shorter review, because frankly the episode this week wasn’t that great. Last week promised that this episode would be about the Planetary Union and the Krill signing a treaty and negotiating peace and an alliance against the Kaylon threat. So, imagine my surprise when the Krill themselves barely appeared in the episode. This episode actually focused on the Orville’s helmsman Gordon Malloy. In previous episodes, Gordon was mostly used as a comic relief character. He’s easily the least serious character aboard the ship and usually his, often immature sense of humor stand in contrast to his competence and skill as a pilot.
The episode starts with Captain Mercer receiving orders to meet with a Krill ship to negotiate a treaty for the Union. When the Orville arrives at the rendezvous, however, they find that the Krill ship that they were supposed to meet is chasing and firing upon a Krill shuttle. The shuttle hails the Orville asking for assistance. The captain allows the ship to dock in the Orville while he attempts to negotiate with the Krill. It turns out that the person aboard the shuttle is a human Union officer named Orrin who has been missing for 20 years. He claims to have just escaped from a Krill prison camp with his daughter, Lana. The Krill, meanwhile, claim that he is a terrorist who using only a stolen Krill shuttle and some unknown weapon has killed over twelve hundred Krill.
The Krill demand that the captain turn over Orrin for interrogation, though they tell the captain that they don’t care what happens to his daughter. The Planetary Union doesn’t want to risk a breakdown in the peace talks, so they order the Captain to determine if Orrin is guilty or innocent and to turn him over if he is guilty. This is where Malloy enters the picture. It turns out that Orrin had actually rescued Malloy from a Krill attack before his disappearance and the two were actually once close friends. Orrin denies attacking the Krill, but tells Malloy that the Krill had killed his wife and scared his daughter to the point that she hasn’t spoken a word since they escaped.
When Captain Mercer asks Malloy about Orrin, he defends him on multiple occasions. He and the Captain argue over the ethics of extraditing Orrin to the Krill and Malloy winds up warning Orrin about what will happen if he is found guilty. At this point, Orrin admits his guilt to Malloy and asks him to help him steal a shuttle so that they can stop the peace talks. Malloy is conflicted and at first goes to security chief Talla for advice. She tells him that he knows what is right and that by coming to her he has ensured that the captain will find out. He says that she is right and that he will tell the captain but instead goes back to Orrin and agrees to help him steal a shuttle.
Talla attempts to stop them, but Malloy shoots her and they escape. In the end, it turns out that he did actually go to the captain who ordered him into pretending to join with Orrin so that they could figure out how he killed all of those Krill without having any weapons. Talla, who was just stunned before, goes to check on Orrin’s daughter Lana. While there, she sees that Lana’s arm is covered in needle marks. Talla calls Dr. Finn to come check up on Lana, but before the doctor gets there, Lana attacks Talla with a knife. Talla manages to fight her off and when the doctor arrives, Lana is bleeding orange blood from her nose. Dr. Finn and Talla evacuate the room right before Lana detonates.
On the shuttle, Orrin admits to Malloy that the Krill had actually killed his daughter and that “Lana” was actually an alien with explosive blood who also hated the Krill. He activates the timer on the bomb that he brought onto the shuttle in an attempt to get Malloy to drop it onto the Krill ship, but Malloy changes course away from the Krill and shoots the controls so that they can’t be changed. He puts on a spacesuit to abandon ship and tries to get Orrin to do the same, but he refuses. Malloy barely escapes the explosion and gets picked up by the Orville. Following Orrin’s death on the shuttle, the Krill agree to sign the peace treaty.
Analysis
There actually wasn’t a whole lot going on in this episode compared to the fast pace of the previous episodes. Continuity wise, there is nothing really different that changed by the end of the episode. Orrin and “Lana”, were both introduced and died in this episode and the peace treaty between the Union and Krill that was signed here was really a more of a forgone conclusion after the temporary alliance in the last episode.
I suppose that it would be unfair to demand major change to the status quo by the end of every episode, but at least in previous “filler” episodes there was a bit more character development. All of the development that Malloy gets revolves around him and another character that is now dead and therefore unlikely to come up again. Really, my biggest issue with this episode is that I can’t see it actually affecting anything going forward.
Another issue I had is with the solution to the mystery. A large point of the plot is trying to figure out how Orrin carried out his attacks without any visible weapons. They spend a lot of time investigating this, scanning the ship and tailing Orrin. In this respect, the fact that the solution, an alien with explosive blood, comes out of nowhere was frustrating to me as a viewer.
I had joked in my last review that they had blown their effects budget producing the space battle in the last episode, and this episode left me worrying that that was actually true. This episode had a minimum of effects (one explosion) and even minimized the appearance of more exotic looking aliens like the Krill who the episode was purportedly about. The main characters were instead either human or heavily human appearing.
The most positive thing about the episode was the portrayal of Talla. She has a confidence that her predecessor, fellow xelayan, Alara, lacked, and her more serious demeanor lends more of a gravitas to her encounters. Both when she stood alone against Malloy and Orrin and when she took down “Lana’s” with ease and brutality, she showed that she is not to be trifled with. I still miss Alara, but I find that her character is growing on me.
All in all, I wouldn’t say it was a bad episode, it just doesn’t stand up to the standard set by the previous ones. The last few episodes were great, this one was just ok.
