Ed goes on holiday with new girlfriend, stellar cartography officer Janel Tyler. It does not go well. Gordon takes the command test. It goes well in a very odd way.

The Orville, like Star Trek: Discovery, is taking a chance in its second year to play with format and tone. In Discovery’s case, so far, this has been the fascinating and massively welcome change of tone embodied by Captain Chris Pike. In The Orville’s case, it’s an ongoing attempt to resolve the show’s central, fundamentally difficult equation; how much should be comedy and how much drama.

This episode sees the equation solved in a very similar way to ‘Home’, last week. There are jokes here, sure, but they’re in service to drama rather than acting as a respite from it. This is also the first direct sequel to a previous episode we’ve had and it’s a look that suits the show very well. ‘Krill’, ironically, was the first season’s least successful comedy/drama combination for me but it did give us Teleya, the Krill school teacher Ed inspires to terrorism via actions he had no choice but to take and who returns here as a Krill spy. Michaela McManus is just as impressive as she was last time but the difference here is that this script rises to meet her and Ed alike.

The Orville is at its weakest when Ed is an idiot manchild, as we saw at the top of this season. It’s at its strongest when Ed is tested and not found wanting and that’s absolutely what happens here. He never once tries to deny his past actions and never once gives up on Teleya, even when her true identity is revealed. When the pair are forced to go on the run together, it’s Ed who goes out of his way to protect her. It’s also Ed who risks his career to get her home safe and sound and, refreshingly, doesn’t mope about it. He’s far from happy as the episode ends but it’s far more ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’ than it is the sub-Ross from Friends moping we’ve been subjected to in the past. Ed Mercer is a defiantly blue collar, deeply old fashioned Captain. But he’s Captain Ed Mercer now, and as this episode proves, he’s starting to grow into it. Plus MacFarlane and McManus have great chemistry and their combination of dogged determination and paranoia drive the episode and the show’s nascent plot arc along brilliantly. By the end, Ed is officially carving his own space out as a Captain and there is, perhaps, the beginning of some kind of accord with the Krill. Even if Teleya is wrong about The King and I, I’d be happy to see her again and strongly suspect we will.

Elsewhere the episode impresses too. Gordon has traditionally got the short end of the stick in the past, a character defined by comedy and often at his own expense. Here, that changes as he quietly admits he feels a little left behind and signs up for Command training. It goes badly, of course and it’s funny, of course, but it comes from a solid emotional core and Scott Grimes clearly relishes being given this kind of stuff to play with. While the ending is a little close to the old ‘You gotta do what you gotta do’ posters from Futurama, it does give Gordon some welcome closure and new-found pride in his work and both are really fun to see.

Verdict: This is another really strong episode of a show visibly growing into itself and growing past people’s assumptions. Great work, folks. Keep doing it. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart