Spoilers

In the wake of the horrific Kaylon attack, the Orville is refitted and the crew heal. But some either can’t or don’t know how…

There’s a scene early on in this episode where Kaylon crewmember Isaac comes to the mess hall and finds people refuse to sit with him. New arrival, helmswoman Charly Burke, thinks better of it and sits back down. She talks to Isaac about the attack, and slowly, and surely, twists the knife as she explains to the Kaylon who she lost, why people are angry and why it would be better for everyone if he were dead.

It’s a complex and untidy scene and a standout for the show’s history as it steers absolutely into the complex wreckage of grief and trauma and leads to an episode exploring how people make their way across that landscape. Burke, played by Anne Winters, is a real standout in her debut and this is very hard material to land at any time let alone as your first major scene. She’s cheery, slightly blue-collar, instinctively brilliant and consumed with rage. Winter shows us, and Isaac, all of this and we see and understand everything. As does Isaac, who, still reeling from Marcus Finn daubing the word MURDERER in his lab, kills himself.

That death and the choices leading up to it are where the episode is at its bravest and most interesting. The nature of the Kaylon themselves comes under the spotlight as do various crewmembers’ responses to Isaac’s choice. Ed, still struggling to justify the decision to keep him aboard, is crushed. Doctor Finn, and Penny Johnson Jerald is absolutely the MVP this episode, works flat out to keep others together to try to escape her own grief. She fails and one of the most poignant moments has her berate her son Ty for using a hologram of Isaac to process his feelings and then recreate the restaurant where she and Isaac dated before breaking down sobbing. Grief and trauma are untidy and these scenes as well as Marcus wrestling with his guilt and rage, are really well handled. BJ Tanner is great throughout and he and Jerald spark off each other very well. The overall effect is very similar to the classic ST: TNG episode ‘Family’ but over an extended period of time and with more emotional nuance.

The B plot here is of course getting the Orville shiny again and it’s fun. We get to see a shakedown cruise of their new individual fighter, the Pteradon. More importantly, we finally get to see LaMarr embrace his role in engineering. J Lee was the castmember most consistently badly served by early scripts but here he finally gets a chance to shine. LaMarr is analytically brilliant, an almost sub-consciously deductive engineer and the beat here where a post-coital chat with a crewmember gives him the idea on how to save Isaac would have been played for broad comedy in the first season. Here it’s a little that way but it’s powered by the emotion. It shouldn’t work, and it does, and that’s maybe the watchword for a lot of the show.

Especially as some of it doesn’t work. The manufactured jeopardy of hiding from a Kaylon cruiser just as John explains how fragile Isaac’s backup is feels rushed and forced. Likewise an early line in the shakedown cruise about how Charly can think four-dimensionally clangs so hard you almost expect the deck to buckle under it. That becomes vital to her being part of the conclusion but it’s also never explained and embodies the worst aspects of the old chestnut about spaceship show dialogue being ‘quickly, put the tech inside the tech’.

These moments don’t land, although in fairness the Orville hiding in a gas giant to dodge the Kaylon may be one of the most beautiful effects sequences the show has ever done. What does land consistently are the characters. Ed’s doubts. A brilliant moment where jovial, likable Gordon admits he feels just like Charly, he just hides it better. Charly’s reasons for helping. Even Isaac’s maddening lack of emotional understanding is played brilliantly by Marc Jackson and all ties back into the central conceit of nothing being okay but things being better, or at least, better enough. That early scene is bookended too, Marcus watching Isaac back in his lab and happily working away. Nothing is the same. Everything is far from okay. But the ship’s flying and that’s the best start anyone could hope for.

Verdict: Untidy, human, ambitious and perceptive, this isn’t the best episode the show has produced but it’s certainly one of the most ambitious and bodes very well for the season ahead. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart