The Orville season 2, episode 4 recap: Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes

THE ORVILLE: L-R: Peter Macon and Scott Grimes in the ÒNothing Left on Earth Excepting FishesÓ episode of THE ORVILLE airing Thursday, Jan. 17 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2018 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Ray Mickshaw/FOX

Last week’s episode of The Orville saw Alara decide to stay home and spend time with her family. This week, Ed crashes on a strange planet and Gordon suddenly wants to take the command test.

This episode of The Orville opens with Alara’s replacement coming on the bridge super sweaty in his gym clothes. Kelly asks him to go change, but Ed says he can stay. This surprises Kelly because Ed seems way more relaxed than normal.

The crew’s next assignment is to make a supply run, which Gordon finds frustrating because they’re supposed to be an exploratory ship.

The new cartographer, Lt. Janelle Tyler, comes on the bridge to talk to Ed. Kelly immediately senses something up between them. Ed asks to leave work early and Kelly agrees.

More from FOX

• 5 best new shows premiering in September 2023 on AMC, Peacock & more
• Batman TV shows that don’t feature the Dark Knight
• TV shows that went into the Multiverse
• Will there be a The Big Leap season 2? When will it premiere?
• The Big Leap season 1 episode 11 recap: Who ends up together?

This cuts to him having a movie night date with Janelle in his room. She says it’s getting hard to keep their relationship a secret, and Ed agrees. Janelle then suggests they take a vacation together—she is a cartographer, after all, so she knows all the best spots. Then she asks if they should officially go public with their relationship. Ed asks to sleep on it before making a decision.

In the mess hall, Ed tells Gordon that he’s dating Janelle. Even though Gordon used to have a crush on her (he went through simulations just to get the courage to talk to her), Gordon says he’s ok with it. Ed also confides in Gordon that he’s thinking about telling Kelly. Since Kelly already has a boyfriend, Gordon thinks Ed should go ahead and tell her.

Ed goes by Kelly’s room and tells her about Janelle. Kelly says she already knows because she knows all of his smiles and could tell by the way he looked at her.

Ed then admits that he’s bringing this up so he can take a break and go on vacation with Janelle. Kelly readily agrees and says she can take care of their supply run herself.

As Janelle and Ed take a shuttle out to their vacation spot, they run into three Krill ships and have to try to cloak their ship and avoid them. The Krill ships fly close by but miss them. But before Ed has a chance to tell Union Central, the Krill ships turn around and surround their shuttle with smoke. This allows them to easily spot the cloaked shuttle.

The Krill take out the shuttle’s engines and a large Krill ship uses a tractor beam to pull the shuttle on board.

Back on the Orville, Kelly tells Bortus that they’ve finally been assigned a new security chief. This is a relief to Bortus (and everyone on the ship) because they all hate the temporary guy.

Just then, Gordon comes in and says he wants to take the command test. He claims it’s because he’s ready to move up in his life and not be tied down to just the one thing he’s really good at. Kelly warns him about the difficult training, but Gordon says he’s ready.

Kelly tells him he needs medical evaluations first and sends him to see Claire.

On the Krill ship, Ed and Janelle have been put in separate cells. The Krill want Ed to give them his command codes. Ed explains that he’s not ranked highly enough for his codes to be worth it, he won’t have access to any high level secrets.

The Krill show him a feed of them torturing Janelle, making it worse every the longer he takes to give them his codes. Eventually Ed caves. The Krill threaten to kill Janelle if he gave them fake codes.

Gordon is meeting with Claire for a psych evaluation and is incredibly nervous. She gives him a holographic ink blot test. With each image, Gordon sees something disgusting, so disgusting that he can’t even say what he sees.

Claire eventually decides to give up and move on to the simulator test.

Ed is approached by Teleya, the same Krill woman who he saved (along with a classroom of children) last season. She reveals that Janelle never existed, it was really her pretending to be human in order to lure him off the ship.

Teleya says now he can feel the betrayal she felt when he was kind to her while simultaneously planning to kill everyone on her ship. She says Janelle was crafted to be the perfect officer to manipulate him.

She then confesses that after she was tortured by the Union, she left her post as a teacher. On board her new ship, she heard about their plan to capture a Union captain and suggested they go after Ed.