"Orientation Part One" is the first episode of the fifth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
Coulson and the team find themselves stranded on a mysterious ship in outer space, and that’s just the beginning of the nightmare to come.
Plot[]
Enoch, an alien, leads a team of commandos to apprehend Coulson and his team after they were framed for the attempted assassination of General Talbot. While Fitz is left behind, the rest are taken to an unknown location where a white monolith - similar to the one that contained a portal to Maveth waits for them. The monolith takes the team to an outpost in an unknown region of space, where a group of scavengers are under attack from aliens they call "roaches." One of the scavengers, Virgil, tries to explain their situation to Coulson, but is quickly knocked out by Mack when he mistakes him for an enemy. Yo-Yo and Simmons find Coulson and Mack, and the team tries to figure out what is going on. The only clue they have is an old postcard Coulson finds in Virgil's jacket. Virgil recognizes each of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents when he regains consciousness. As he begins to explain that he studied their history, he's suddenly killed by one of the roaches. Daisy blasts the alien from behind while the rest of the team tries to get away from it. May, meanwhile, sees Deke, another scavenger moving the bodies of the roaches' victims. Believing he killed them, May attacks Deke, but he overpowers her, ties her up, and implants a device called a "metric" into her wrist.
The team finds May's jacket where the scavenger left it while they look for clues to what's going on. The outpost appears to be man-made, and they find a computer outlining plans to collect water from ice in space. If this is a human colony, then they think they must be close enough to Earth to get back. When they try to use the computer, however, they trigger an alarm that sends a team of Kree Reapers right to them. The Kree take Daisy, Coulson and Simmons to a prison, while Mack and Yo-Yo are tied up and tortured in another part of the outpost. The Kree decide to spare Mack when they think he would be better served as a fighter in "the Crater," only to turn their attention to Yo-Yo. Deke shows up at the prison with May, and convinces the Kree to let them hand over their prisoners to him. Once they're far enough from the Kree, Deke tells them Virgil hired him to swap out the team's metrics so the Kree wouldn't notice them when they got to the outpost. With Virgil dead and the team unable to cover what he's owed, Deke wants to leave the team to handle this themselves, but May grabs one of Deke's gadgets he used against her earlier to pin him to a wall.
The team splits up - May and Simmons follow Deke's directions to a ship that could send a message to Fitz to rescue them, Daisy heads off to find Mack and Yo-Yo, and Coulson stays behind to get information out of Deke. May and Simmons see the size of the Kree's operation on the outpost, leading them to believe the Kree are using the outpost as a staging ground for an impending invasion of Earth. Daisy finds her friends, and frees Mack so the two of them can fight and kill the Kree Reapers torturing Yo-Yo. Gradually, all of them come to realize that the monolith didn't take them into space, but to a future where the Earth is torn in half, and the outpost is all that remains of humanity.
Mack takes another look at the postcard from Virgil's jacket, and reads the message on the back, Working on it - Fitz.
Cast[]
- Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson
- Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May
- Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson/Quake
- Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz
- Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons
- Henry Simmons as Alphonso Mackenzie
- Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez
- Jeff Ward as Deke Shaw
- Deniz Akdeniz as Virgil
- Joel Stoffer as Enoch
- Peter Hulne as Jerry
- Derek Mears as Captain
- Nathin Butler as Jones
- Jordan Preston as Driver
- John Wusah as Young Soldier
- Jordan Preston as Driver
- Mark Casimir Dyniewicz as Exchange Workman
Continuity and References to the Marvel Cinematic Universe[]
- Deke Shaw is introduced.
- Virgil is introduced.
- Enoch is introduced.
- Jerry is introduced.
- Vrellnexians are introduced.
- Nick Fury is mentioned.
- Leo Fitz is mentioned.
- Howard Stark is mentioned.
- Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider is mentioned.
- Hope Mackenzie's Framework counterpart is mentioned.
- Toolbox is mentioned.
- Framework is mentioned.
- Moon is mentioned.
- Maveth is mentioned.
- Rae's Restaurant appears in a flashback.
- Kree appear.
Trivia[]
- When Phil Coulson admits that there was no information about human outposts in space in the Toolbox, Yo-Yo Rodriguez replies to him "S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have a space division called S.P.E.A.R. or something?", which Coulson declined. This is a reference to S.W.O.R.D., a S.H.I.E.L.D. subdivision specialized in extraterrestrial threats in the comics. The TV rights of S.W.O.R.D. are under 20th Century Fox. However, since Disney bought out 20th Century Fox and Fox Television on December 14, 2017, there is a possibility that S.W.O.R.D. might make an appearance in future episodes.
- Yo-Yo makes reference to S.H.I.E.L.D. having people on the Moon. Marvel's Inhumans took place on the Moon.
- Orientation p1. and p2. are the first episodes where actor Iain de Caestecker hasn't appeared. So, actress Elizabeth Henstridge is the only person to appear in every single episode of the show.
- The injury at the start of this episode to Agent May's leg and the resultant limp for the next few episodes was deliberately written in to cover a real life limp that Ming Na Wen still had after knee surgery inbetween seasons.
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