Justin Hartline
Summary
This week’s episode was essentially a “what if?” episode that picks up 7 years after the last episode left off. In episode 13, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, after seeing the future and a failed memory wipe, the past version of Kelly decides that she would be better off if she never dated Ed Mercer and changes the timeline by turning down a second date. In this timeline, Ed is no longer the captain of the Orville, and instead he and Gordon are just trying to survive in a galaxy that has mostly been conquered by the Kaylon. Early in the episode, they get abducted by Kelly, who is now the leader of a renegade faction. Kelly has been gathering a group of those that she remembers from her trip to the future.
It turns out that the reason that the Kaylon won all goes back to Ed not being captain of the Orville. Claire had originally transferred to the Orville because she had heard that Ed was a new captain and wanted to help him. Since in this timeline Ed never became captain, she never transferred, and her family never befriended Isaac. This resulted in Isaac not helping the Orville by turning on his race. Kelly’s plan is to rebuild the quantum accelerator, which enabled her journey through time in the first place, and use it to send Claire back in time to ensure that the memory wipe goes through. The crew travels to a rebel base to obtain an injection needed for the memory wipe.
The base is run by none other than the former security chief Alara. While there, the base is attacked by Kaylons and the crew flees, taking out a kaylon that got aboard their shuttle along the way. To finish the quantum accelerator, they need data from the Orville itself. They find the ship on the now-destroyed Earth at the bottom of the ocean. They dive down in a shuttle and power up the long-disabled ship, but John LaMarr doesn’t have the data he needs to complete the device. To get it he has to hack into the Kaylon network using the body of the kaylon they disabled earlier, but this reveals their location. John barely gets the device working before the ship explodes. Claire travels back in time and delivers the memory wipe and disappears, signifying the repair of the timeline. When Kelly wakes up, she agrees to a second date with Ed.
Analysis
This episode obviously had a bigger budget than most. All of the space fights and ground battles were fantastic. The kaylon having the ability to detach their heads and fly them around like drones was especially cool. As brief as it was, it was also neat to see Alara do a cameo. In general, I like what if episodes, and this one was no exception. I think the reasoning behind what happened was well thought out, if a little bit complicated. My biggest problem is that it doesn’t seem like a good finale episode. This show has always been big on continuity and by the end of the episode the entire thing gets wiped away. I must admit that last season’s finale, Episode 12, Mad Idolatry was kind of similar to this one in some ways.
That episode also felt more like a typical episode than a finale. It also didn’t have a cliffhanger, which to be clear I am not complaining about. I don’t need a story that’s just going to sit around half finished for six months. Mad Idolatry actually happened though. Events in the story had lasting consequences. It was events in this episode that made Kelly decide that she couldn’t date Ed without compromising him as a captain. In a lot of ways that episode determined the entire direction that Ed and Kelly’s characters winded up going in and ultimately served as a set-up for this finale.
There is no part of this episode that happened at all and I think that was a mistake. I don’t think I would have had a problem with it if it was in the middle of the season. Actually, I would have liked it much better if they left a few minutes at the end for the restored timeline. Not only would this reassure viewers that everything is back to normal, but it might also give some clues as to what next season (hopefully, if the show gets renewed) might be like.
That said, there are some things in this episode that might come back later. I think the new Kaylon weapons and abilities shown here will probably come back next season. One thing that I think might prove especially important was something which only received a passing mention in this episode. Early in the episode Ed mentions that the Kaylon stopped their advance before reaching Calivon space and speculates that they might be afraid of the Calivon’s advanced technology.
The Calivon first appeared in the second episode of the first season “Command Performance”. In this episode, the Calivon abducted Ed and Kelly for one of their zoos. In the past, the Union has avoided the Calivon because they treat races at lower technology levels than themselves as animals. To be in fact, the kaylon were shown to be one of the few races that the Calivon actually respected. Due to their avoidance, the Union knows very little about Calivon technology and it’s possible that they are more advanced than the Kaylons. Now that the Union has turned their one time enemy the Krill into allies, I wonder if an alliance with the Calivon might be in the future.
Taken as a whole, this season was much better than the first, which I still very much enjoyed. But this one took on a much more serious tone. Continuity was also much better this season. The first season felt more like each episode was a standalone story, whereas this season felt more like one continuous tale. I felt like the storylines and the writing were all a step up from last season and made this easily into my favorite show this year. I hope that this show gets renewed, because I want to see what they would do with it next season.
