The Orville’s ‘Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes’ Meaning: See ‘A Puzzlement’ Video

The name of tonight’s episode of The Orville is “Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes.” Where does the title come from? Read on for details.

“Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes” is a line from the musical The King and I. It’s from a song in the musical called “A Puzzlement.” The lyrics talk about how if people can’t trust each other, nothing will be left on Earth “excepting fishes.”

You can read the full lyrics to the song here. The part of the song with the line from the episode’s title reads: “Is a danger to be trusting one another, One will seldom want to do what other wishes, But unless someday somebody trust somebody, There’ll be nothing left on earth excepting fishes.”

Here is the song  A Puzzlement being performed:

In the video above, Yul Brynner is performing the song. He was born in 1920 and died on October 10, 1985.

The title’s been the talk of Twitter even before the episode aired. Seth MacFarlane tweeted, “There’s a surprise in tonight’s The Orville ep – Make sure to watch live on Fox 9/8c so the online spoilers don’t get to ya first!”

To which the Twitter account Rodgers & Hammerstein responded, “Well it sure would be a puzzlement why anyone would want to miss tonight’s episode of @TheOrville!”

And MacFarlane wrote back, “‘Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes’ indeed.”

The synopsis for tonight’s episode reads: “Ed finds himself behind enemy lines when he crash lands on a mysterious planet; Kelly questions why Gordon wants to take the Command Test.”

We’ll update this story as more information is available about tonight’s episode.