In which Isaac, against all logic and reason, was trusted around children.
Isaac, Dr. Finn, and her children are trapped on an unknown world after their shuttle passes through a spacial fold.Tropes:
- Action Mom: Claire Finn really earns her stripes here. She goes through hell escaping her prison, and tops it off by taking down her significantly larger captor in a vicious brawl.
- After the End: The unknown world went through a war, during which the water was poisoned. In the present, most of the population are feral cannibals.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Alara gives the damage report.Alara: Multiple hull fractures, nine overloaded power conduits, and Ensign Davis spilled soy sauce on his pants.
Mercer: He put that in a damage report?
Alara: [embarrassed] Yes.
Mercer: My God, we gotta get better people. - Bratty Half-Pint: Both of Claire's sons count, and their default dealings with their mother and each other are either pushy or antagonistic. They are both somewhat cowed by Isaac's no-nonsense attitude towards them.
- Brutal Honesty: Isaac, as always. He tells Claire that his superiority is an objective fact and credits some of her failed parenting techniques for helping him control the boys while she was captured.
- Call-Back: In order to escape her captor Dr. Finn has to face her fear of heights, first mentioned in "If The Stars Should Appear".
- The Cavalry: Just when Marcus and Isaac are about to be overrun by the cannibal aliens, the Orville's other shuttle comes down with all guns blazing, taking out half of them and scaring off the rest.
- Conveniently Close Planet: The Negative Space Wedgie drops them within range of an inhabitable moon.
- Crazy Survivalist: Drogen was prepared for the war, and isn't as crazed and feral as the rest of the population. That said, the trauma and isolation have clearly impacted him, and he imprisons Claire against her will, apparently simply because he couldn't stand being alone anymore.
- Cutting the Knot: Marcus and Ty are arguing over the game the former brought along. Isaac solves the problem by grabbing the game and shooting it with his sidearm.
- Damsel out of Distress: Doctor Finn is captured by a native person after her half of the shuttle breaks off during the crash and separates her from the others, but is able to break out of her cell, arm herself, murder him, and escape on her own.
- Darker and Edgier: Despite a joke here and there, the episode is much more serious fare than usual.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Isaac and Dr. Finn.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Drogen was keeping Claire more or less prisoner, but he was feeding her and willingly went to get her medical supplies when he thought she was injured. In order to escape and get back to her kids, she stabs and shoots him, killing him.
- However, Claire is clearly under the impression that the only reason Drogen was keeping her prisoner was that he intended to use her as a sex slave. The way that she gets him to fetch medical supplies is to point out to him that if she falls ill and dies, he won't have any "company", and she touches his arm suggestively. She seems to have been right, because that's what makes him leave the apartment to get the supplies. Even if these aren't his intentions, he is keeping her locked in a cell, so he's not exactly "keeping her more or less prisoner": she is a prisoner. When he comes back and finds she's escaped, he immediately attacks her.
- Dramatic Irony: Right after the alien describes how the water was poisoned, Isaac and the kids have to cross a stream, into which Ty falls and contaminates himself.
- Expospeak Gag: Isaac telling the children "Please adjust your bodies to a horizontal bearing." *beat* "Lie down."
- Ghost City: Something of a wham scene when Claire manages to get the sheet of metal off the window in her cell and sees that she is in an apartment building in the middle of one of these. It provides a sense of scale for just how completely this civilization has been wiped out.
- Gunship Rescue: A second shuttle from the Orville shows up to save Isaac, Claire, and the kids. As it turns out, Union shuttles are armed.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The aliens on the unknown world have resorted to cannibalism in light of the food scarcity and toxins in the water.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The spacial fold the shuttle passes through, which flings them 1,000 light years from their previous position and critically damages the shuttle in the process. The Orville makes it through with far less damage, being bigger and tougher.
- Not So Stoic: Isaac expresses exasperation with the bickering of Dr. Finn's sons who he is charged with in his unique way. He tells the two to be quiet at one point in a completely casual manner unchanged from his normal vocal cadence, despite the wording typically being that from a yelling exasperated parent. He eventually destroys the portable game device when it becomes a point of contention by grabbing the device, throwing it into the air, and skeet-shooting it to smithereens with his sidearm, all in one smooth nonchalant manner free of any irritated body language.
- Oh, Crap!: Claire literally says "Crap!" when she learns that Isaac will be coming with her, since she thinks he'll be no good with the kids.
- Parting-Words Regret: The last thing that Marcus says to Claire before the crash is that she sucks. He's clearly remorseful over it.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: For the main characters, it's a generally happy ending: despite the experience being highly traumatic for everyone, they all survive and escape safely. For the inhabitants of the moon, they're still living in a post-apocalyptic nightmare, but Kelly mentions that the Union will dispatch scientists there to attempt to deal with the toxins. This leaves at least the possibility that their society might survive and rebuild.
- The Reveal: When Claire manages to pry a panel loose from the wall in the bunker she's been kept in, she (and the viewers) realize that she's actually being held in a skyscraper apartment, in a derelict cityscape.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Averted. Kelly mentions that the fold could take them into a star or a planet, but Ed responds that space is mostly empty so their chances are actually pretty good.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: A rather subtle and effective one. The sound of Isaac reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit is played over the visuals of Claire escaping from her cell. The Tale of Peter Rabbit is about a rabbit that has to continually escape from a Mr McGregor, who ate Peter's father.
- Synthetic Plague: The disease that has laid waste to this society was a biological weapon rather than something natural.
- Technically-Living Zombie: It's not entirely clear whether the natives are brain-damaged by the toxins, feral from trauma and desperation, or both. In any case, (other than Drogen), all of them seem motivated solely by the desire to kill and eat anyone they see, have little to no sense of self-preservation, and few of them even attempt to communicate.
- Took a Level in Badass: With Isaac's help, Marcus puts an energy pistol to good use fighting off the natives.
- Voice Changeling: Isaac can imitate any voice he's heard. He uses this to imitate Marcus and Claire at various points, though only to repeat previous statements or on request as opposed to deception.
- Water Source Tampering: The unknown world has toxic water from a previous war, one side having deliberately contaminated it with a devastating biological weapon.
