Interesting. I wonder if Larry Joe Campbell (Newton) wanted out, or this is a shaking up of the cast and minor retooling of things that can happen anyway with a new show.
Was that one guy, the alien who was kinda trying to join Malloy and LaMarr's bro team, also the elevator music guy from a few episodes back? If so, nice bit of continuity. Even if not, just seeing more non-humans around is kinda cool. I liked how Polovius (sp) was mentioned, the "lizard-looking guy" or whatever they called him, and then we actually saw him (another non-human!) and Mercer still couldn't think of his name.
Anyway, bold move, to simultaneously take someone previously established to be a screw-up and promote him, and break up the bro team on the bridge. That seems to indicate shake-up and retool to me. But ultimately it could help the show. I noticed that when LaMarr went down to Engineering, some nameless crewman (crewwoman?) took over the station, as we've seen them do countless times on Star Trek and other shows.
Story itself was pretty cool. Derivative of concepts from other works (which almost all sci-fi is, one way or another) but mixed differently and with a new twist here and there. Just revisiting anything with The Orville's weird twist of being "serious but not 100% serious" sci-fi adds a new twist and keeps things interesting for me.
Still don't care about Ed and Kelly, though. I mean, I care about them individually, but their relationship and the shit they have to go through to get it back into something resembling normal doesn't interest me at all. But since they're on that track now, they have to see it through, and it could be worse than what they're doing now.