There was also a tng episode where an alien impersonates a starfleet officer to try to direct the enterprise to attack their enemies base. I forget the title though.
I just hope it’s not an ability that is used once and never again. It still pisses me off that on the old Adventures of Superman show Superman had a couple of incredibly useful powers used once and once only. He developed the ability to phase through walls in one episode and in another he was able to split into two Supermen (Supermans?); each of whom could operate independently although they were weaker than the combined Superman.
As long as the Krill retain the cellular transformation ability and use it when it makes plot sense I’m OK with it. I’m OK with the handwave that it’s agonizingly painful and requires a great commitment and a willing volunteer to make it happen, it shouldn’t be too easy, or you’d never be able to assume anyone was who they claimed to be.
Yeah, that was my impression, too.
Regarding the most recent episode, I thought Ed should learn to duck or at least crouch when he’s in a shootout with blaster-wielding trolls.
(Somewhere else on the web, someone asked why Teleya needed to turn the gun over to Ed - I figure that a trained officer is probably better at shooting than a school teacher who has had a few months of training at spying).
P.S. Another classic Trek episode with a similar theme is “I, Mudd” which starts with the infiltration of an android into the crew of Enterprise.
I think she was incapacitated by the sunlight.
That too.
But he didn’t give up the codes. It was revealed later in the episode that they were fake.
But then he gave up the fact that the codes were fake, and that’s less explainable because it wasn’t even coerced. Now the Krill will know to be suspicious of any codes they get, and to torture any captured captains with the intent to driving them to give them the real codes.
I remember thinking as soon as he let it slip that they were fake codes, he could never give her back to her people. But they just forgot that I guess.
Just got caught up last night on the last two episodes.
Sorry to see Alara go. When Ed was talking to Alara and saying that a Security Officer needs to be more than some one who can bust heads (or something to that effect) then rattled off a couple of other qualifications, I said to my wife “…Opening a jar of pickles…” So it was nice to see that she gifted him with one as a going-away present.
I’m hoping they don’t keep the new Security Officer very long. I like Patrick Warburton but holy crap that character is annoying.
I wondered why it didn’t occur to him to surrender to them. He’s obviously not a Krill (though this episode somewhat clumsily establishes that Krill can disguise themselves) so the trolls shouldn’t be after him, and this could be a valuable opportunity to make contact with a new space-faring and clearly advanced species who is a potential ally against the Krill. At it is, by engaging in a firefight with them and escaping in a recognizable Union shuttle, he may have just made the Union another enemy.
It’s also somewhat annoying that the trolls (whose species name I clearly can’t recall) take such a plot-convenient amount of time to find Mercer and whats-her-face. This race has interstellar tech, but then engage in inefficient foot-patrols though the jungle at night? No aerial surveillance, no infra-red, no sci-fi “bioscanners” or whatever? They seem strangely determined to hunt down every survivor of her ship, but little ability to cross the finish line.
The valley they were in had some kind of thing that prevented the thing from doing the thing - which is why Mercer had to climb the hill and do the stuff.
Why did Mercer leave whatshername with the gun when he woke up before her?
Even infra-red? That’s some dark valley, I tells ya!
Besides, if the Orville is nearby and presumably the troll’s ship is also nearby… why not establish contact? The ending of this was really really rushed and Mercer was so determined to protect and establish a rapport with the woman (who had had very clearly betrayed him, don’t forget) that he completely forgot his overall duty to the Union.
Someone with a Krill, having escaped in a Krill shuttle from a Krill starship is probably going to be assumed to be Krill-affiliated. Also, I think Ed suspected that even if he survived surrendering Telaya would not, and he is still working towards her being a bridge to some sort of accommodation with the Krill
She fell asleep with her finger on the trigger, and when she woke up she was still firmly gripping the gun. One might reasonably assume that Mercer decided it was too risky to try wresting the weapon from her.
Yeah. And it’s not a particularly trust-building move to get caught trying to swipe the gun.
We don’t know what the reaction of the troll species would be. I gather we are supposed to assume their reaction would be hostile based on their ugly appearance. As for the woman, frankly, fuck her. There are reasonable limits to how accommodating Mercer can be and should be.
Maybe he did give the real codes, and the very existence of decoy codes was itself a decoy, so that the Krill will be skeptical of any data they obtain from stolen or coerced codes in the future.
My favorite part of the episode was that after they made a big deal about how Telaya will die if she goes out in the sun, they managed to get around this by putting a jacket over her head. So the Krill have never figured out that a piece of cloth will protect them from this mortal danger?
I’d wonder what they eat if I thought of surrendering to them. Mercer knows he will be rescued. Perhaps stun a couple of them to take back to the Union.
True. I’m explaining Ed’s likely reasons for what he did, not what he could or should have done. He could have
run away from Teleya as soon as she was asleep and gone to find the other aliens, in hope that they would treat him well. Whether or not that’s what he should have done depends on a lot of factors, including being able to survive on the planet alone until he could surrender.