The Orville crew are delighted to be chosen to be the first ship allowed through Krill space to a sector their former (and still sort of) enemies won’t go. Matters are complicated by the presence of Admiral Paul Christie, the diplomat who negotiated the treaty, and Claire’s ex-husband. They’re complicated further when the ship picks up a distress signal…

I’ll be blunt, the first half of this isn’t good. James Read as Admiral Christie is solid and it’s always nice to see Penny Johnson Jerald get more to do but the pace and snap of the previous episode, even though it dealt with heavy subjects, is gone. Instead we get a cover version of the worst parts of Prometheus, up to the deeply stupid moment of about half the Orville’s senior command staff and a flag officer wandering around a biomechanical ship they all think is spooky without their helmets on.

The thing you know is going to happen happens. Worse, it happens on something which is extremely clearly a soundstage. I hate doing this, I really do, but the alien ship sets this episode look cheap and small and it hurts an already badly plotted episode badly. By the time the crew return, this time in spacesuits, you’ve got no sympathy for them and precious little patience for the episode.

Then, somehow, it starts to turn around. The central reveal, that the station is a trap, is nicely handled. The creature effects on the infected crew are really nicely handled even if the budget isn’t up to much beyond one pretty solid fight scene and a lot of dark rooms. You get flashes of stuff that really works, including a chase where John only saves himself by locking himself in the brig, the two aliens pounding on the forcefield to get at him. Talla gets a neatly cathartic fight scene with them too and it’s nice to see this weirdly chronically under-used character get some much needed screen time.

But for the second time this season, it’s Johnson Jerald that brings it home. The final act is genuinely creepy and really good. The station has altered the DNA of multiple crewmembers, including Admiral Christie to turn them into more aliens. It’s clear that’s all this race does: make more of itself. Claire works out a genuinely good medical weakness they have and uses her connection with Paul to get the aliens aboard to leave. If they stay, the Orville crew have just enough window to wipe them out before the alien reinforcements arrive. They see that, and the alien that used to be Admiral Christie says they’ll leave. As everyone relaxes, he barkscreams ’NOT… FOREVER’ and John Debney’s brilliant score soars and you realize that the Orville may have just met its Borg and they are terrifying.

Verdict: Much like Claire saves the crew at the last minute, the last act of this episode just barely saves what came before it. It’s, frequently, a badly executed and actively dull episode. But when it lands, especially in the final scene where Isaac comforts Claire with unusual empathy, it exemplifies everything this show does well. Hopefully next week, there will be more of that and less of the bad stuff. 6/10

Alasdair Stuart