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A girl who blew me off seven years ago just hijacked my shuttle in a stolen freighter, so consider me warmed up.— Ed Mercer[1]
The Road Not Taken is the fourteenth episode and season finale of the second season of The Orville. The crew of USS Orville must contend with the disastrous fallout from Kelly Grayson's decision.
The title likely refers to Robert Frost's poem of the same name, which explores personal choice and consequences through a metaphorical narrative of a traveler who took "the road less traveled by, and that made all the difference."[2]
The Road Not Taken was written by David A. Goodman. As early as Season 1, writers tinkered with time-travel plot lines that would be enjoyable yet original, and some staff, such as science adviser André Bormanis, concluded the task "was pretty much impossible at this point."[3]
Goodman and the writing staff mulled over the surprise ending of the preceding episode, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, for inspiration.[4] What emerged was a marked departure from previous episodes: While the show normally tells allegorical stories in the vein of Star Trek, The Road Not Taken presented a 'What If?' space opera and an homage to Star Wars. And, like Season 1's Pria, the episode explores choice, determinism, and the Butterfly effect all in an alternate timeline.
The Road Not Taken was very well received upon airing, and currently holds a rating of 8.6 on IMDB.[6] The episode is considered the final chapter in the show's very strong second half, where every episode after Deflectors earned a rating of eight or higher. Two weeks after airing, 20th Century Fox renewed The Orville for a third season.[7]
Two figures walk through the forests and snow of Sarin 4, masked and thickly jacketed against the cold, until they find an old Planetary UnionListening Post. The two scour the abandoned building and find a Food Synthesizer, but are interrupted by a KaylonInterceptor-classSphere. The sphere disgorges three Kaylon, whose heads detach and pursue the two figures.
The two men flee, dodging laser blasts, until they reach their shuttle, ECV-342-1. The two men remove their masks, revealing themselves to be Ed Mercer and Gordon Malloy. Gordon says he thought the planet was safe but Ed replies that there is nowhere safe anymore.
Their shuttle flies through space, followed by another sphere hiding in a nearby asteroid field.
Act 2[]
Ed and Gordon are unable to jump into "quantum" because their engines are interrupted by Kaylon fire. To buy time to reset the quantum drive, the two enter the hollow of an ice moon. In a cavern, Gordon turns the shuttle around and fires at the cavern's roof. Sheets of ice and rock fall, crushing the sphere.
Now in quantum, they set a course for Calivon. Though the Calivon species is extremely dangerous, they are at war with the Kaylon and Ed reasons they can hide on the fringe of Calivon space in safety. With their new Food Synthesizer, Gordon orders a Twinkie. Suddenly, the shuttle's computer goes offline and the ship drops out of quantum. An enormous scavenger ship reels them in by tractor beam.
The two men draw PM-44s and prepare for a last stand. However, the shuttle door opens to reveal Kelly Grayson, Claire Finn, John LaMarr, and Talla Keyali. Ed remembers Kelly as a woman who went on a single date with him seven years ago. Kelly says that failed date is why she is here now.
In the ship's conference room, Kelly, Claire, John, and Talla tell Gordon and Ed about another timeline where they are all part of Ed's crew on the USS Orville - a ship now infamous as the vessel the Kaylon used to infiltrate the Planetary Union and spearhead the Battle of Earth. Kelly explains that in the year 2414, she was accidentally sent forward in time to what would have been six months ago; when the Orville sent her back to 2414, a memory wipe failed to work due to a deficiency in Kelly of a protein called beta-secretase. As a result when she returned, she turned Ed down for a date and altered the timeline.
In the original timeline, the Kaylon emissary Isaac had a relationship with Claire which convinced him to betray his people and save the Union from the Kaylon. Now that never happened and the Union lost the battle. Claire states that the only way to restore the timeline is to send Claire to the year 2414 and successfully wipe younger Kelly's memory.
All Union Sick Bays are long lost, but the Resistance maintains military cells which might be able to manufacture beta-secretase. One such cell is remote, far from any Kaylon. In private, Kelly apologizes to Ed but says it is good to see him again.
Act 3[]
The scavenger ship flies through an asteroid field, a former planet torn apart nearby black hole, and Kelly sights the planet with a Resistance base. Kelly, Ed, John, and Claire venture to the base, leaving Talla and Gordon to look after her sons Ty and Marcus Finn.
A quick trek through a forest leads to a camouflaged building. Yaphit answers and recognizes John from the Orville. He leads the four to LieutenantAlara Kitan.
Act 4[]
Alara is pleased that her friend John survived the Kaylon. Alara produces a vial of beta-secretase. They are interrupted by the ground quaking, and an officer warns that the Kaylon have found them.
Alara and the Resistance fight a futile battle against the Kaylon but buy Ed and his companions enough time to escape through the south entrance and return to their shuttle. Meanwhile, the scavenger vessel is attacked by Kaylon spheres.
The four return to their shuttle but are met by a Kaylon ordering them to surrender. Ed and Kelly shoot him, then fly the shuttle through space to the ship.
Unfortunately, the ship is unable to jump into quantum with the drive offline. The crew flees through the asteroid field with the Kaylon spheres on their tail. Unable to outrun them, they decide to enter the gravity well of the black hole.
Act 5[]
Time dilation means time moves more slowly for the crew in the black hole than for the Kaylon outside. After two days, the Kaylon leave and the crew sets course for Earth. To restore the timeline, they need to access Isaac's files on the Aronov device, which was aboard the Orville; the Orville lies on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
John examines part of the fallen Kaylon's memory core. Meanwhile, Ed has a second date with Kelly over spaghetti bolognese. He tells her that he was the commanding officer of the Epsilon Eridani outpost for the past seven years but never attained captaincy. Kelly explains that she altered the timeline to spare themselves a painful, failed relationship. John finds the Kaylon's files are protected with quantum encryption codes, and all Kaylon are connected to each other by a central computer system. Gordon calls out that they are approaching Earth.
On the bridge, the crew and passengers find a fallow, barren Earth and a Moon fragmented into several asteroids. The team takes a shuttle to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, where the Orville awaits. Despite intense oceanic pressure, the shuttle makes it aboard the crashed ship.
Inside the ship, the team follow a reading of "one life sign" to the bridge. Second OfficerBortus was hiding and strikes Mercer.
Act 6[]
Bortus remained aboard the Orville as it crashed to ensure every officer escaped. Though his mate Klyden and their son Topa fled to Moclus, the Kaylon destroyed the planet. Bortus joins the team to "make things right." On the crew's insistence, Ed takes command of the ship which is partially repaired by John.
The Orville ascends through the ocean and then the stratosphere.
In the Science Lab, LaMarr fruitlessly studies the Quantum Accelerator, but without Isaac, it would take years to understand the mathematics. Unfortunately, Isaac had been disassembled by the Kaylon.
Ed and Kelly scout out a drink from the Orville's bar in the Mess Hall. Kelly admits "a weird sense of comfort" being with Ed in this timeline, despite all the sadness and terror, and they kiss.
Act 7[]
LaMarr announces he can connect to the Kaylon neural network and download Isaac's stored files, but doing so will announce the Orville's location. Worse, using the quantum accelerator will drain the Orville's quantum drive of its energy.
Just as John predicted, he downloads the files, which betrays their ship's location to the Kaylon. Isaac is briefly resurrected, vowing they will soon be destroyed before John deactivates him again. Claire gives a tearful goodbye to her sons and waits under the accelerator.
In Engineering, John feeds all available energy to the accelerator, pushing the quantum drive to its absolute limits. The enormous output of energy from the engines begins to tear the ship apart. "If this doesn't work," Ed asks Kelly. "Will you marry me?" In their last moments, Kelly replies, "Yes." The quantum accelerator begins to glow; the quantum drive overloads and destroys the Orville.
A young Kelly Grayson wakes to an alarm and grabs a coffee. In a span of seconds, she disappears seven years into the future, dropping the coffee mug, and then returns lying on the floor. She walks about her kitchen until Claire (from the future) appears. With a Multijector of Beta-secretase, Claire successfully wipes Kelly's memory and then disappears as the original timeline is restored.
Kelly wakes to a call from young Ed: "I was wondering if I could take you out again." She smiles.
"I'd love it."
Production[]
Writing[]
The Road Not Taken was written by executive producer David A. Goodman, who conceived of its plot while working on Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Goodman explicitly wanted the script to avoid similarities with the episode Second Chances from Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the character William Riker discovers a duplicate of himself, created by a transporter accident years ago.[8]
Originally, writers intended Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow to host a self-contained story that would "reset" when young Kelly returned until Goodman overheard someone in the writing staff suggest that she turns young Ed down when she returns.
I started thinking that would mean Ed wouldn’t get the Orville, and that means Claire wouldn’t be on the Orville and that means that Marcus and Ty wouldn’t become friends with Isaac and that means the Kaylon would have won. So what I just pitched happened in around five minutes and [creator Seth MacFarlane] realized right then, there is your season finale, this big adventure story taking place in this alternative timeline.[9]
As he pitched his idea to the writer's room, Goodman watched with relish as MacFarlane nodded and his eyes widened in excitement. The other writers compared Goodman's idea to Yesterday's Enterprise from The Next Generation, where the spaceship USS Enterprise changes the course of history to find itself pitched in a losing war against the Klingons, then immediately invented a mock dialogue between Ed and Kelly, which later became the scene where Ed tells Kelly how he became the head of the Epsilon Eridani Station but never realized his dream of becoming captain. From there, the writers outlined the major plot points of The Road Not Taken. After the meeting, Goodman wrote a script that tied all of it together. He also researched the timeline of the show to avoid contradictions.[8]
The episode was originally written for earlier in Season 2 until the writing staff wanted it as the finale.[9]
While writing, Goodman remembered that actress Halston Sage (Alara Kitan) had told him that she would want to return to the show back when filming of Home had wrapped up. He then wrote Sage's surprise return into the script, and someone, likely showrunner Seth MacFarlane, reached out to Sage and confirmed her interest.[8]
Goodman also wanted to bring Cassius back, but relegated the character's return to Digressions.[8]
Goodman has stated in a May 14, 2022 interview that he wrote ending of this episode very carefully because of "something small," but important, that happens in Season 3.[8]
Filming[]
Dates of filming this episode are not known, although it is known that second-unit filming continued well into 2019 under the direction of Jon Cassar. The final day of shooting was February 26, 2019.[10] Parts of the episode, particularly the Kaylon attack on the Resistance base, were probably filmed in late June 2018.[n 1]
Post-production[]
Many of the visual effects and physical simulations were created by Pixomondo, an effects vendor contracted by the show in Season 2, in coordination with visual effects supervisor Luke McDonald. Typically, Pixomondo assigned a team consisting of a supervisor and three artists to each episode, but the intense underwater sequences in the Marianas Trench on Earth required a team of 30.[11] Pixomondo's visual effects producer Daniel Carbo recollected that
we had our environment team, our lighting team putting everything together and lighting all the shots. There were also people involved with flying the shuttle as it meanders its way to the bottom of the trench and populating that and the background into shots. It’s quite an effort and you have a certain time to turn it around from previz through final for that kind of sequence.[11]
The finale was locked on March 2, 2019.[13] One week before airing, actor Scott Grimes (Gordon) said that MacFarlane was still "putting the finishing touches" on the episode.[14]
Preparing to air[]
Much of the episode was leaked through an unnamed visitor to the set in September 23, 2018.[15]
In December, actor Scott Grimes (Gordon) said this episode would be "reminiscent of time-travel that will blow your mind ... where maybe everyone hasn't met everyone yet."[16] He later specified that, after reading the script, the cast reacted by asking, "How are we gonna pull this off, and how are we gonna afford it?"[17] And the crew has to find a way to make the vision work.[17]
General audiences gave The Road Not Taken a warm reception, and it currently holds a rating of 8.6 on IMDB.[6] The episode is considered the final part of Season 2's strong second half, where every episode after Deflectors received a rating of eight or higher.
Roughly 2.97 million television viewers watched the episode live, the most since Identity, Pt. 2but below the season average of 3.162 million.[19] The episode would be the final chapter of The Orville to have public television ratings. On July 20, 2019, 20th Century Fox transferred Season 3 of The Orville to Hulu, an online streaming service.[20]
Critical response[]
Critics responded very positively to The Road Not Taken. Nick Wanserski of the AV Club gave the episode a grade of A-, calling it a "thrilling" conclusion to the season and possibly to the show (Fox had not yet renewed The Orville at this point):
It’s always impressive to see a finale provide some drama, some spectacle, an emotionally resonant ending that encapsulates the key themes of the show while at the same time (ensuring the favor of the renewal gods) keep things sufficiently open-ended to leave room for further adventures and hijinks.[21]
Jamahl Epsicokahn of Jammer's Reviews gave the episode three stars of four.[22] Alejandro Rojas of Den of Geek gave the episode 4.5 stars of five, who wrote that while Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow "got a little deep," The Road Not Taken "was all swashbuckling to the core. The primary purpose of this episode seems to be fun. And fun it is."[23]
Trivia[]
The Orville Season 2 Gag Reel
A composite video with outtakes from this, and other, Season 2 episodes.
Outtakes and bloopers from this episode were compiled by the show's editors for the Season 2 wrap party and were published by the Planetary Union Network.[24]
The episode opens with Ed and Gordon scouring the planet Sarin 4 for a Food Synthesizer. The real Sarin is a binary star system in the Hercules constellation and can be seen with the naked eye.
Sarin's distance from Earth is roughly 75 light years, which means the USS Orville can travel between star systems in 7.5 hours.
Executive producer David A. Goodman, writer of the episode, has clarified that - contra fan speculation that Claire Finn's second and final memory wipe still did not work - Claire's memory wipe worked and the universe of The Orville is reset.[9]
An old copyright registration with the United States Copyright Office lists this episode's name as Road Not Taken. This may be an old working title or simply a clerical error.[27]
The Kaylon eradicate "half the known galaxy" of biological life." They destroy Moclus.
Death of Klyden and Topa.
Surviving Union officers reform as the Resistance, though the Kaylon destroy most of it.
Ed and Gordon scavenge for supplies.
Kelly, John, Talla, Claire and her boys steal a Freighter and repurpose it as a scavenger ship.
Sometime between July and November, Kelly and her team recruit Ed and Gordon.
Sometime between September and December,
Yaphit loses a piece of his body containing his memory in a fight against the Kaylon.
The Kaylon destroy Alara's Resistance base.
Death or capture of Alara, Yaphit, and many Resistance fighters.
In December, Kelly and her team recover the Orville and rescue Bortus.
References[]
Assistant art director Kit Stølen makes a surprise appearance as a rebel soldier.
The title likely refers to Robert Frost's poem by the same name, which explores personal choice and consequences through a metaphorical narrative of a traveler who took "the road less traveled by, and that made all the difference."[2]
During the descent into Earth's ocean, Claire comments that the Kaylon killed off all the fish: a nod to the prior Season 2 episode, Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes. In this case, there is nothing left on Earth including "fishes."
The show is known for its references to Star Trek, but this episode is clearly an homage to the science-fiction franchise Star Wars.
The scene where LieutenantYaphit's mouth protrudes from the door of the rebel's base parallels a scene from the movie Star Wars: Return of the Jedi where the eye of a gatekeeper droid at Jabba's palace cranes out from a door to inspect C-3PO and R2D2.[28]
The destruction of the Orville marks the second time the ship has been shown to be destroyed and the first time it has occured genuinely, following the destruction of the simulated Orville in Firestorm.
Originally, the accelerator could only accelerate the pace of time going forward.[n 2]However, after Isaac's research (parts of which can be seen in A Happy Refrainand Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow), the device was engineered to reverse the passage of time as well.
Episode titles[]
Title
Language
Translation
La route que je n’ai pas prise
French
"the road I didn't take"
Der andere Weg
German
"the other way"
A járatlan út
Hungarian
"the road untrodden"
La strada mai intrapresa
Italian
"the road never taken"
正しい選択 (Tadashī Sentaku)
Japanese
"the right choice"
Неизбранная дорога
Russian
"unselected choice"
El camino no elegido
Spanish
"the road not chosen"
Mistakes[]
The crew calls the quantum accelerator "the Aronov device" when, in fact, the creator of the accelerator was a team of physicists led by the late Doctor Janice Lee. Doctor Aronov merely ran the facility Janice worked in.[29]
