The ship rescues Pria Levesque, captain of a mining vessel, from a comet about to crash into a sun. Ed and Pria hit it off straight away but Kelly suspects something is wrong…

Charlize Theron joins the show in the highest profile cameo to date as Pria and that, along with the strong script and direction, lifts this to be the strongest episode so far. The way the two plots – rescuing Pria and Kelly’s growing suspicions – dovetail is fantastic. We get to see a look at how she and Ed have grown apart and the good that’s done them, we get to see the crew dynamics build and we also get one hell of a third act.

The twist here is twofold and brilliant. The Orville, historically, was destroyed in a dark matter storm. Pria is a time travelling merchant who finds ships like this, saves them and sells them to the highest bidder in her own time. The crews live out their lives in relative luxury and everyone goes home happy.

It’s a great premise, and one that puts Pria in the sort of grey area this show has, to date, had no idea how to write. She’s an antagonist but not a villain, a woman with her own agenda which is opposed to the crew’s but also beneficial to it. She is, in short, The Orville’s Q. Just with way less colossally annoying Napoleonic cosplay and no law of diminishing returns quite yet.

Better still, this is the first episode where drama and comedy actually work together. The prank war subplot with Gordon and Isaac is bad, sure, but they’re almost non-existent characters the show has no idea what to do with yet. It’s the main plot where the comedy works and that’s entirely down to Adrianne Palicki. She’s given a ton of great lines this week and Kelly starts to get the focus Ed has enjoyed so far. She’s a driven, dedicated officer who has made some mistakes and doesn’t want them repeated. Her actions to achieve that goal, unlike everything Gordon does in the dumpster fire of an episode that follows it, are both funny and make sense. Plus the growing friendship between Kelly and Alara is one of the show’s best elements and gets lots of time on screen here.

Verdict: Rounded out by excellent special effects, great performances and a killer ending this is the best episode of The Orville so far. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Do yourself a favour and skip episode 6. We didn’t. And trust us, we watched it so you don’t have to.