The Orville 2.14

The Road Not Taken

Ed and Gordon, on the run from the Kaylons, run into Kelly, Claire, John, Talla, and Claire's sons. Kelly explains to them how none of this was supposed to happen. It only happened because the memory wipe didn't work and she decided not to go on a second date with Ed. The Kaylon weren't defeated and now they are destroying as much as they can.

John leads them to the resistance to the Kaylon. It is lead by Alara Kitan. They get from her something that they need to help reset things back to the way they were. They leave as the Kaylon finds them. Alara, the rebel fighters, and the rebel base are destroyed. Ed, Kelly, and the others escape but the Kaylong are hot on their trail.

They lose the Kaylon pursuit, by hiding on the outer edge of a black hole, and then head to Earth. There they recover the Orville which has been as the bottom of the Pacific Ocean for several months. Bortus is the only person left alive on board.

They bring the Orville back to the surface and head to outer space. John works on finding a way to recreate the experiment that Isaac conducted that brought Kelly forward from the past in the previous episode. He eventually gets it but it alerts the Kaylons as to where they can be found.

John sends Claire back in time. She wipes Kelly's memory for good this time. Ed calls her and she accepts his offer of a second date.

Thoughts

This is effectively the second part of a two-part story even though the episode titles do not identify it as such.

It was good to see Alara back even though she was only in this episode for at most five minutes. There seemed to be some indication that she and John had a romantic relationship in the alternate timeline. 

I kind of wish that they hadn't made the whole things Kelly's fault. I wish that they had a different alternate universe where Kelly got to be a successful captain and the world didn't completely fall apart. I wondered before the episode began if maybe she would be the captain and he would be her first officer. Maybe she everything could go well but then Ed would get killed or wind up horribly maimed and then she would find a way to reset things because of that.

I was a little disappointed that the Krill didn't make an appearance in this episode. At the very least it would have been nice to see Teleya in this episode. Maybe as part of the resistance? 

There are a lot of moments and visual nods to Star Wars in this episode.

I am not a fan of the way that the Kaylon have been used in this series. They are just too powerful, and yet at other time they are nowhere to be found. The Kaylons need more nuance and some sort of vulnerability. It is ridiculous to have bad guys who are all powerful and super scary until you need them to be defeated.

This episode was heavy on fan service. I wish that the bad guys were someone other than the Kaylons. They were also the bad guys in the Identity two-parter. I do like this story better than Identity. It has more twists and turns even though it still feels like they resolved some things a little too easily.