Season 1 episode 6

[u/InfernalClockwork3]

The fleet need to train the crew into being better spies/undercover agents. I love Gordon but he wasn’t great at this job.

[u/lexxstrum]

Yeah, you really had to suspend a ton of belief that they'd allow Ed and Gordon to infiltrate an enemy ship. You'd imagine there'd be Union Intelligence agents with years of experience to do that job.

[u/ITGOKS → u/lexxstrum]

They did kinda explain that though. They only had a little time before the Krill would report the pod as missing/destroyed after which showing up would be too suspicious. I think Ed even said it shouldn't be them, and Union Central was like we don't have enough time to send anyone else. So it - at the very least - had to be someone on the ship.

[u/Negative-Squirrel81 → u/lexxstrum]

I had interpreted that element as sort of a jab at TNG’s Chain of Command in which they made Picard and Crusher dress up in black burglar outfits to steal intel from the Cardassians.

[u/CaptainMatticus]

It's a standard Star Trek trope, though. I like to think of the TNG episode, "Chain of Command," as my example of insane crew assignments.

So the Federation has received intelligence that the Cardassians are planning on using metagenic weapons and theta-band subspace emissions were detected, suggesting their production and potential delivery. Now in all of Starfleet, across their countless planets and hundreds of billions, potentially even trillions of subjects, there were exactly 3 people who were familiar enough to be considered authorities on theta-band emissions, and 2 of them were retired, leaving only Jean-Luc Picard as the leading expert on these things. So what does Starfleet do? Do they call on the 2 retired men to act as consultants and prepare lectures detailing this obscure bit of physics? Do they ask Picard to bring the Enterprise back to Earth so he can prepare lectures and teach all he knows about theta-band emissions to a few hundred people? No to both. No, instead they decide that the best course of action is to send the nearly 50-year old man who possesses tons of classified high-level information about Starfleet on a covert mission involving espionage and potentially sabotage deep into the enemy's territory. And who do they send with him? Do they send in a team of highly-trained members of Starfleet's SEAL Team 6? No. They send in the Enterprise's chief of security and chief medical officer.

It makes no sense. It's insanity. If somebody suggested that we send a Colonel in today's army, along with his base's chief doctor and whoever is in charge of security, on a mission to Iran, in order to infiltrate and destroy their nuclear research facilities, with absolutely no backup, then whoever came up with that plan would rightly be dismissed and ridiculed. It wouldn't matter if that Colonel was an expert on Iranian culture AND nuclear engineering, because he can just teach what he knows to a bunch of 25-year olds who belong to whatever elite unit they belong to and then let them go after it. But unfortunately, in shows like the Orville and Star Trek, you've got to give the main cast something to do, or else the viewers won't be invested in the stakes.

Gordon usually ends up in places where his presence makes no sense. Like in Season 3, when he calls out the Moclan Ambassadors for their whininess. What was he doing in that room in the first place? The place was filled with the highest members of the Union, with Ed and Kelly representing the Orville. There was no need for Gordon to be there, but somebody had to chew out those babies, and he fit the bill.

[u/WelcomeBig6506]

They explained it, they had limited time before their window of opportunity would close, by the time they’d get undercover agents to the Orville and brief them that window might have passed, so sending in two men who already knew the situation and were ready to go immediately was their best shot

[u/Special_Future_6330]

I also hated that the only tool they had to quickly capture the religious book was comparable to bringing an iPhone and taking multiple pics of every single page what looked like a 6000 page book. It's also weird there is only one copy in the makeshift church and not every krill has one.

[u/KayD12364 → u/Special_Future_6330]

I would have expected them to just steal it.

But I mean it is a comedy and the fact they have to just take pictures of it. Is funny.

[u/Scrufffff → u/KayD12364]

If they’d stolen the book they would have been discovered. And when you’re covertly stealing intelligence like that you need the photographic documentation. In earlier eras of espionage it’s far safer and more efficient to smuggle film(or more modern, a photographic device like a phone.) than trying to remember and later recreate any document let alone entire books with thousands of pages.

[u/KayD12364 → u/Scrufffff]

True. Touche

[u/Special_Future_6330 → u/Scrufffff]

I'm not saying steal the book in saying with star trek technology there is to be done sorry of device they can use to quickly capture the pages or flip through it and it captures everything etc

[u/starbase63]

“Krill” for those who go by titles…

[u/TheMatt561]

This episode really suffered from the humor.

[u/LeonoraMayMorgenster]

I'm rewatching it right now and man it really reminds me how much better S2 and S3 are than this one. There were a lot of moments where it seemed like they could've lied their way out of it or Gordon could've like, not joked about things and it would've helped them out and made the episode better.

On the bright side his fake-prayer Avis jokes are hysterical