In Review: The Orville – The Road Not Taken

Synopsis: The crew must contend with the disastrous fallout from Kelly’s decision.

Review: This episode follows up on last week’s events by showing us a darker and bleaker future.

The Story

Following up on events from last week. We are given a look at a future that comes about due to the fact that Kelly and Ed never have that second date and get married. Which basically means he is not in command of the Orville during the mission where the Kaylon’s attempt to invade earth.

The episode sees Ed and Gordon scavenging for whatever they can find on Union Outposts in order to just survive. The opening sees them running away from some Kaylons while stealing a food replicator from an abandoned Union Base. But they are soon rescued by Kelly and the remains of the Orville crew who have commandeered a scavenger vessel.

From that point on. The story focuses on the ragtag crew trying to find a way to fix the timeline so everything can be put back as it was.

The Acting

Once again Adrianne Palicki puts in another great performance as we see a more mature version of the younger Kelly that we saw last week. She’s been getting a fair bit to do of late in terms of playing with different variations of the same character.

We get a special guest appearance from former series regular Halston Sage who reprises her role of Alara, who is now the resistance leader of one of the cells that is resisting the Kayon’s plans for conquest and the eradication of all biological life forms. It is only a brief guest spot, but its a nice tip of the hat to what is a much-loved character from the shows recent past.

Overall

This was a fun episode with a lot of action. The effects shots involving the various situations where the crew is trying to escape the Kaylon’s or outwit them were really well done. Obviously, the time travel element has been done many times before where it has involved the road not taken by an individual. So it doesn’t really win points for originality on that note, but the execution of the story is really done well. After all, we have come to care for these characters. Which is very much key.

In a way. It is almost a shame the Kaylon’s didn’t succeed to a point in that two-parter a few months back because the future we are shown has a lot of interesting stuff happening and brought the best out in the various characters.