Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes

The Orville tried to keep you guessing in its most recent episode, with a story that kept reconfiguring into something new with almost every act.

Captain Mercer is ready to "go public" with his growing relationship with Janel Tyler. The two decide to do it in a big way, with a vacation together off ship. But when their shuttle is captured by the Krill, Tyler becomes a pressure point for them to extract secrets from Mercer. An opportunity to escape comes when the Krill ship is attacked, but by this point, the situation between Mercer and Tyler has become very different. Meanwhile, aboard the Orville, Malloy expresses interest in pursuing the command track.

It's fun how many turns the plot takes in this episode. What starts out as an apparently light-hearted relationship story abruptly turns into a "captured by the enemy" story. It then becomes an even more direct sequel to the first season episode that introduced the Krill, when we discover (SPOILER!) that Janel Tyler is actually the alien Teleya, returning to seek vengeance on Mercer. And then the episode just as suddenly shifts into a sort of "Enemy Mine" mode, as the two are trapped on a planet together and forced to trust each other.

I do wish the episode could have delved a little deeper into the romantic angle here. It seems significant to me that as early as this season's premiere, Mercer was still trying to get back together with his ex-wife. Tyler was his first relationship after that, and it was no small thing for him to move on. So the truth about Tyler really ought to pack an emotional sucker punch -- an idea I feel only got a bit of lip service without really being explored. I'm not looking for Ed to declare vengeance back on Teleya (the Star Trek homage, of course, is the "show mercy to an enemy" route), but I feel like a greater acknowledgement of what Ed risked and lost was in order.

I thought the Malloy story line, light though it was, did the better job of getting at something deeper and true. The subplot started off as comic relief, with a character who has been used almost exclusively for comic relief in the past. It seemed like this was another joke, a scheme to (as Grayson put it) "pick up chicks." And it exactly the point that it seemed this way. Malloy is tired of being a joke, and was making a play to be taken seriously. The story line was hardly profound, but it was honest -- sometimes people don't want to be "typecast"; sometimes the "clown" gets tired of performing.

The episode was playfully fun in how it kept the audience guessing. I give it a B. It was a nice installment in The Orville's growing continuity, and I hope it's picked up on again down the road.