"You've made my future a disappointment."
REVIEW: The Orville's version of TNG's "Second Chances" starts with a spurious time travel conceit - its roots are in the pilot, Old Wounds, where the Aronov device was used to make things age more quickly - but it is well grounded in the Ed-Kelly relationship that was so central in the early episodes of the show. Essentially, the Kelly of 7 years ago - which for the purposes of this review I will call Kelly-7 (minus 7) - is taken out the morning after her first date with Ed, a crossroads if there ever was one, and brought about the Orville. On the SF side of things, this is the first time the Orville has dealt with time travel per se (temporal distortions are another matter), so there's a lot of talk about the nature of time and whether or not this is, or could cause, a paradox. Star Trek overused this trope and consequently never really chose a lane. Temporal physics are therefore all over the place in that franchise. The Orvilleverse is uncharted territory, however, so it's proper for the characters to wonder and and debate the issue. Can we take the existence of two Kellys as proof of split timelines? Or rather, can we take it on faith that Kelly-7 will return memory-less to her time since our Kelly's history is unaffected? When the episode flip-flops on this (several times), it's in the service of a good twist, not because the writers are confused.
Your basic paradoxes aside - and a brief Kaylon threat to keep them alive in our minds - the real dilemmas are personal. When we talk about meeting our younger selves, we usually put ourselves in a mentor position, and yes, Kelly does that (she's basically the wise mentor character on the show). But the episode reverses it too by making Kelly-7 at first disappointed with how her life turned out and being rather vocal about it. So, what are YOU afraid your younger self would say to you? And then of course, there's the whole Ed thing. This could be a second chance for the couple, though Ed quickly finds out he can no longer keep up with the party girl Kelly used to be. As someone who's dated or just hung out with younger women a lot, I can definitely relate to the club scene where you just want to sit down and watch the dance floor rather than join in. (Fun to see Yaphit and the Moclans in that environment too.) For Kelly, this is all a betrayal. Kelly-7 is telling stories she'd rather not have the crew know, going out with her ex-husband, and telling her she failed as a person. And just as they start to get along, the solution Isaac and LaMarr said was unlikely is found.
The denouement is the weakest part of the episode. I find Kelly-7's character turn a little slim, for one thing. She runs up to the bridge with a solution to help the Orville hide from the Kaylons, and that makes her see just how much responsibility Kelly has..? I would think that her coming up with a clever solution would work the opposite way. If the crux of the problem was that Kelly thought Kelly-7 was a foolish newb, then her proving herself would mean a sea change in the relationship. But it's not that. Rather, Kelly-7 I guess realizes getting to captain is a little more out of her reach then she thought... And suddenly, she's proud of who she'll be. And just as that is resolved, the fix is in and we can send her back to her time with a memory wipe, and of course it has to work because it obviously already has (if this is really a predestined universe). Ho-hum, let's just do the heartfelt farewells and get on with it. And that's how the script originally went. What happened was they realized they could stretch this into a second part, and so make Kelly-7's memory wipe fail, which you realize when, armed with foreknowledge of the divorce, she refuses Ed-7's offer to go on a second date. Gasp and uh-oh...
WHERE SOMEONE HAS GONE BEFORE: Though TNG's "Second Chances" is not a time travel episode per se, it nevertheless features a second Riker who hasn't lived the past few years, still holds on to old ambitions including reigniting an old flame, and is commissioned as a Lieutenant once it appears the duplication will be permanent.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium-High - Its weaknesses lie in the fact that it was originally not going to affect the status quo, but it's a great use of time travel not as a techno-babble gimmick, but as an opportunity for characterization.
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