"By all rights Ed shouldn't be Captain of the Orville". True , but that is not the sort of detail TO bothers with. What about the fact that entire "time snatching accident" was initiated by thought? Time travel itself is a sketchy phenomenon but it has been done ALL over fiction. However, it usually involves an agent of some kind: a door, an artifact, a machine,a wormhole, a being with special powers...something and it almost NEVER involves the ability to get someone else from their time to yours against their will. Here is what TO wants us to accept. Kelly a regular human is by thought alone, able to summon her previous self from her timeline, just because she was close to an experiment. She exhibits god-like qualities! I MIGHT have been able to stomach some of this if they had made ANY serious credible effort to EXPLAIN any of this. No it is just "Isaac is working on an experiment...he does not understand yet". That is not enough. What real science theory is this 'time travel control by thought' based on?

This is my biggest gripe with TO. They do things half ass ALL the time. It seems the TO writers have NO CLUE what is good Sci-Fi or comedy or drama for that matter. They want to examine a situation ( the Ed/Kelly relationship), something they have done repeatedly btw, and they USE Sci-Fi as a tool to get themselves there. Nothing is organic. The same is true of the 'Time Capsule' episode; the Romance with Issac episode; the Man vs Machine episodes. Ed should not be able to "text" his computer generated girlfriend if the program she is on is paused! If Isaac is a machine, he CAN NOT fall in love ( ask Data), If he cannot fall in love he can not act on compassion also...unless he is programmed to do so. There go the foundations of 3 recent TO episodes.

I could go on and on but it is clear to me that the writers behind TO give little thought to credulity. They are like the guys who thinks being a dj is easy because they see others doing it effortlessly. When they try to dj they make such a mess it is obvious they have NO IDEA what the job of dj entails! By trying to be the first successful Sci-Fi comedy/drama The Orville is proving it is thoughtless Sci-Fi, comedy and drama!

Arguably, Ed would be captain - but perhaps of a different ship, maybe a larger ship - because of not marrying Kelly and not being betrayed by her, which is what led him to the slump before being assigned to Orville with Kelly's "help." Remember, her main complaint was that he was working all the time. If that had continued, without her messing him up, arguably he would have been captain even earlier, as Admiral Halsey even said in Episode One.

@Knixon said:

Arguably, Ed would be captain - but perhaps of a different ship, maybe a larger ship - because of not marrying Kelly and not being betrayed by her, which is what led him to the slump before being assigned to Orville with Kelly's "help." Remember, her main complaint was that he was working all the time. If that had continued, without her messing him up, arguably he would have been captain even earlier, as Admiral Halsey even said in Episode One.

He might also have met someone else after Kelly, gotten married, and be betrayed by her. The difference would be that this woman wouldn't have Kelly's connections and Ed would've stayed down.

Being a workaholic and not prepared to work at a marriage means that any relationship would be doomed in the end. And if he can't get over each new breakup, he'll keep sinking deeper.

Perhaps Malloy and the Holodeck will save him then?

Almost anything is possible, including that Ed might have wound up with the blue-skin guy somehow, etc, etc. Whatever. But it seems like Ed and Kelly met early on, either before going to the Academy or maybe early in that. If Ed hadn't met Kelly, it seems like he might have been too wrapped up with work already, to meet someone else, or for that someone to be willing to get serious with him.