I was thinking the same thing! The moment Malloy told the kid the location of Earth I was thinking it's gonna come back and bite them in the ass.
It would have been funny at the end if somehow one of the Krill (like the woman) told them they should have just gotten a copy off the ship's computer. It would have reinforced their incredibly bumbling Get Smart / Pink Panther nature.
OK, I gave that 5/5 despite the catastrophically ill-placed humour. I'm surprised how interesting the Krill have turned out to be. When I saw them in the trailer I thought they were a bad joke version of Krall from Star Trek Beyond. I even confused the two, and thought Orville would end to be a shallow parody with the token one-dimensional foe as horrible as the guys from Voyager with the greenhouses on their heads, but slightly better rubber suits. Within a single episode they were better developed than any guest species from Star Trek, and given the inconsistency and gaps in the portrayal of Romulans and Klingons, I'd rather learn more about the Krill now than I did about those two. After not even wanting to see them, I'm now excited about where the relationship would develop. It's also fascinating that they are the third xenophobic supremacist culture in the series within 6 episodes, if we include the Kaylons. And all three are totally unlike each other, with a Kaylon serving aboard the Orville and providing aid against the other two on both occasions. (We haven't freed any Krill from that zoo yet.) And there was something awfully familiar about that religious ceremony. I can't quite put it.
The best science fiction show since Enterprise? I agree it's more or less comparable with Enterprise, which puts it well below Doctor Who, The Expanse, Black Mirror, Discovery, etc etc. But what really strikes me about Star Trek fans who prefer The Orville to Discovery because the latter is too dark: they weren't paying attention during this episode. THIS is dark. Frying the adult Krill to a crisp instead of incapacitating them. Thinking they've done the kids a favour by keeping them alive, when they've guaranteed those kids will hate the Union forever, and also possibly guaranteed that the Krill kids will live their while lives on Alpha Guantanamo IV. Not to mention how much Mercer will second guess himself the next time he confronts the Krill in a battle situation: how many kids will he kill? It may be that the show will just move along and ignore all that, but if it does so, that completely undercuts this story.
Since you mention Doctor Who, I always particularly enjoyed Tom Baker's Doctor, because he was the most irreverent, making quips at all kinds of moments, and sometimes even saying his intro lines with a wink (4th Wall). So there's some of that spirit in The Orville. But what keeps the show from feeling too dark is the fact that all interspersed jokes help to lighten it up. Army of Darkness didn't really feel like a horror movie because there was so many gags going on. What if a regular Trek episode from TNG, DS9, etc had featured a priest stabbing a severed head repeatedly? They would have felt far darker than this Krill episode of The Orville felt. Even though the episode didn't have an idealized happy ending, we know that the next episode can still start off bright and humorous, without a pall in the air.
I liked this episode (and that they finally did something not 99% based on some previous Star Trek episode; but I find it interesting Ed Mercer draws the line at children - but killing a child's parents and making them an orphan is okay - and somehow 'more noble. And yes, it's an assumption, but there's no reason to believe those were all Children of crewmembers; much like the Orville also allows families on board.<--- If that's the case and Ed Mecer also killed civilians, is that a war crime here (even though, yes, the Krill were going to attack a Union outpost, does that make the act any less of a war crime?) And, given the Krill's religious beliefs; I'm also amazed they didn't immediately declare a holy war as think about it: A soulless unworthy creature killed an ENTIRE CREW of a main line Krill fleet vessel.
One thing that I took away from the Krill crew was that they already were on a holy mission with the neutron bomb.
Well, yeah. If that episode was any indication, the holy war had already been declared for their previous skirmishes alone. Why would they notify a soulless creature that they've declared a holy war on it? I don't warn my computer before I start hitting it with a hammer when it angers me.
But at that time, the Union had no real first hand info on Krill society or the compliment of said vessels. Once Mercer is aware - does Geneva rules apply?
I've also realized that it's a lot like the comic strip Brewster Rocket, where it seems to be the far future and the present simultaneously.
I'm not a lawyer or expert in international law, but I'm fairly certain that military bases, ships, etc, are considered valid targets no matter WHO is on them, except for hospitals, hospital ships, and medical personnel - and even that's debatable since it can be argued whether those are legitimately those things or just cover. The attack on the ship at the beginning was legitimate. The light attack was legitimate, and Ed and Gordon went above and beyond trying to protect kids that, for all we know, were actually already military personnel - not every culture has the same rules, and I'd assume that's doubly true when dealing with other *species*. Which is another reason I don't think The Union sent anyone home. Gordon gave that kid information about Earth, and giving back ANY of the kids would involve revealing that they captured a large Krill vessel and killed its crew.
Dunno. He does seem to have a humane concern about not killing kids. I don't think shuttling a redwood seed over to a Krill ship violates the same body of law as booby-trapping a dead soldier's body.
(Off-topic, but I just want to point out again that booby-trapping the body of a being whose own species says that their bodies are just empty shells to be disposed of might not be the same thing as *desecration* in intergalactic law. Which isn't to say I'm certain that the same decision wouldn't have been made, regardless.)