The Orville Just Outdid Captain Kirk's Slingshot Effect
Warning: SPOILERS for The Orville season 3, episode 6, «Twice in a Lifetime.»
The Orville's titular starship has just outdone the slingshot effect perfected by Kirk's Enterprise. In Star Trek: The Original Series, the Enterprise deployed this maneuver to travel backward and forward in time in the episodes «Tomorrow is Yesterday» and «Assignment: Earth» and in the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In essence, the Enterprise accelerates around a nearby star, using its gravity to increase its speed even further and break the time barrier. Aided by the precise calculations of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy,) the crew could navigate to the correct point in time. Kirk's Enterprise maneuver was recently deployed inStar Trek: Picard season 2 and was even retconned as the Pike maneuver in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
The Orville season 3, episode 6, «Twice in a Lifetime» requires the crew of the Orville to travel back to 2015 to rescue the stranded Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes). However, they miscalculate slightly and arrive ten years too late to rescue him. After eventually solving the problem and traveling to the right decade, the Orville's temporal device is ruined, requiring them to come up with an alternative to the Enterprise's slingshot effect, to avoid being stranded in the past.
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Faced with the prospect of being stranded in 2015 by the broken Aramov Device, Captain Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) and Chief Engineer John LaMarr (J. Lee) discuss the possibility of spending 6 months repairing it. After all, Ed notes they "can't just fly into the future without it" which gives LaMarr a flash of inspiration. Rather than slingshot around a nearby sun,
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