That was a remarkable improvement on the last episode and lot of damn fun. Plenty of great jokes ("Ensign Parker, go away now"), character development, and world building. I'm still a little worried what episode 3 will bring based on the reviews, but the show is already showing the kind of growth that I'd hope for.
I'm glad the show quickly delved into the inevitable set-up of Alara being placed in a position over her head, and while the arc was largely predictable, it was a lot of fun and much of that goes to Halston Sage's performance. She brought the right balance of vulnerability, nervousness, and intelligence to make the story believable. I also greatly approve of her solution to rescue Ed and Kelly from the zoo, as well as her sarcastic "Woof!"
As soon as we saw Ed and Kelly in Ed's quarters on Earth, not only did I figure it was a holodeck and not time travel, I immediately thought of Futurama's "Fry and Leela's Big Fling," where they were also lured into a zoo without their knowledge. I'm sure Futurama didn't come up with the idea (in fact, it sounds like the kind of thing The Twilight Zone would do), but it's still a great set-up. This is probably just me, but the zookeeper reminded me of Jeff on People of Earth, which added humor to the whole scenario.
Bortus laying and roosting an egg wasn't just a conceit to place Alara in command but was also a nice bit of character development. And I'm glad it won't be treated as a throwaway with the surprise development that he and his husband produced the first female in the race's history. I look forward to seeing more of that story.
And how can I forget Holland Taylor and Jeffrey Tambor as Ed's parents? What a crack pair they are! I hope we see plenty more of them because the chemistry was palpable between each other and with MacFarlane and Palicki.
And the references to the area being forbidden and Mercer throwing himself against the force field make it clear that MacFarlane knew what he was doing.
