The next day, in the science lab, Lamaar (J. Lee) and Isaac (Mark Jackson) inform Captain Mercer (MacFarlane) about how they’ve seemingly perfected the “Aaronov Device,” a cone shaped mechanism that can create a temporal field. Lamaar shows everyone how they can now send something through time, demonstrating on Malloy’s egg salad sandwich and sending it 10 seconds into the past.
What was interesting about the chronological theory of this episode is how it really set up the fact there are no rules about time traveling. MacFarlane wrote the episode (which has been happening quite often this season) and it was a clever, albeit devious way of letting the audience know any paradoxes that might come up as a result of time travel are inconsequential. The egg salad sandwich was a perfect homage to the convenient Bill and Ted school of time travel, where Lamaar merely says, “I’m going to send this sandwich back 10 second from now” and it instantly appears.
While the episode was often shrunken down in scope, the opening act played like a blockbuster. The massive scope and stunning visual effects were on full display as The Orville was given a convoy of Union ships to escort them to a space station, where the Aaronov device would be safe. When they arrive, the station is destroyed, and a fleet of Kaylons begin attacking the convoy in order to take the device.
In the chaos, Malloy volunteers to run down to the lab to destroy it, to ensure a powerful tool like that is never in the hands of their enemies. As he does, The Orville unleashes a massive blast from their quantum drive to try and shake free from a Kaylon tractor beam, and Malloy is sent flying in a flurry of multi-dimensional time distortions.
After the escape, they realize that Malloy is missing, and as they begin to unravel what might have happened to him, they receive a message that has been traveling to their coordinates for nearly 400 years. It is Malloy. He has been sent back to 2015, is now trapped in time, and seeks rescue. In a tragic turn (yet foreseeable, considering MacFarlane’s warning that time travel is not an exact science) The Orville travels back only to miss their mark by about a decade. When they arrive in 2025 and find Malloy, he is already acclimated, and more importantly, has found the real Laura. The two of them are married, have a young son named Edward (Jackson Hill), and another child on the way.
The story is not about the massive, universal, political subtext that many of the previous episodes this season have dealt with, it is merely about Malloy’s family. It’s easily one of the most devastatingly emotional episodes the show has produced. Much like previous episodes, someone has to make a hard decision to do the right thing. Does Malloy give up his family and come back with his crew to the future? Does he take his family with him? Can Mercer allow any of that to happen? Those questions expertly drive the conflict between Mercer and Malloy, but ultimately don’t matter. That isn’t necessarily a criticism either. The thinly veiled morality of these questions are so foreign and outlandish to anyone watching that it becomes clear the science-fictional components aren’t meant to be relatable. It’s the dynamic between friends, and what these characters must do in an impossible situation, that are at the heart of this story.
