The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

Discussion in 'Media Central' started by Tuckerfan, Aug 6, 2017.

  1. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Could swear we had a thread about this, but I haven't been able to find it. Anyways, it's Seth MacFarlane's spoof of Trek. The show debuts next month and there's some new trailers for it.

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  2. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    I hear the difference between this and "Galaxy Quest", is this parodies TNG more, where GQ was clearly TOS.
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  3. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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  4. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    George Takei and Walter Koenig tried to get a Trek spoof going in the 90's.
    And the Reno 9/11 cast tried to get one going in the late 00's.

    It finally took someone with "we'll let you literally do anything", power to burn like McFarlaine to get that to happen.
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  5. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Also, the guys from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" had a pilot called "Boldly Going Nowhere."

    But this show seems funny enough, so long as it's mot full of the cutaway gags I hate from Family Guy and that ruined Ted for me.
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  6. oldfella1962

    oldfella1962 the only real finish line

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    Seth looks like Peter Brady quite a bit. What say you WordForge?
  7. Steal Your Face

    Steal Your Face Anti-Federalist

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  8. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    Don't forget Homeboys in Outer Space, which featured James Doohan! :async:
    Too many cutaways in a live action show would be catastrophic for their budget, unless they're Arrested Development-style "earlier that day" flashbacks where the same sets and actors could be reused.
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  9. Zombie

    Zombie dead and loving it

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    I'll give it a chance. I hope it doesn't evolve into nothing but stupid jokes though. Like Family Guy.

    I do like the design of the ship and uniforms.

    I also like the set designs and the way the future looks.

    Also it brings up one good point that I think Star Trek never took into account. That is the number of ships. Three thousand ships to staff.

    The Federation in Star Trek always seemed critically low numbered. Just Earth alone in the Federation should have been able to support thousands of ships. The whole of the Federation should have been able to support tens of thousands of ships.
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  10. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    Yeah, I never got why the fleet shipyards were centered near either Earth or Mars, and were all human designed.
    Why didn't any of the hundreds of alien races have to cough up some ships?
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  11. Zombie

    Zombie dead and loving it

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    And you take into account that they have everything they need in the various asteroid belts and they have replication technology building ships should be easy. The only thing holding them back would be dilithium crystals.

    But even than you can still build the ship and just use the impulse engines to move the ship around a solar system until you get dilithium for it. Crews can still train on the ships.
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  12. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    I wonder if there are races in the Federation whose environmental requirements are radically different from humans' ... there could be hundreds of ships with, I don't know, methane atmospheres, or filled with water, or what-have-you, and we've just never seen them...
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  13. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    IIRC, one of the Star Trek novels suggested that many alien races agreed to join the Federation on the (unstated) condition that Earth would "foot the bill".

    And Earth liked being the capital of the Federation.

    Kind of like the United States and the UN.
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  14. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Well, you might be in luck. It appears that most of the gags in the pilot are in the trailers for the show. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/fien-print/take-me-pilots-orville-1032717
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  15. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Because no aliens worked on Star Trek :P

    In all seriousness, our Navy has had many locations for shipbuilding. There was Avondale which employed four generations of people in the NOLA area, the one in Mississippi, and the Huntington-Ingalls one in Maine where as it turns out, Tanar's mom worked on constructing my first ship I served on. In fact, I was super stoked when I got pre-comm orders since I figured I'd get a free chance to meet up with you and/or her, but my second ship was in shithole Avondale :sigh:

    But yeah, I can imagine there are ships built in other parts of space besides Jupiter Station.
  16. Zombie

    Zombie dead and loving it

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    There are shipyards spread out through the Federation. Though only one is really considered canon because it's been seen on TV.

    The USS Defiant was launched from the Antares Shipyard which is located in the Bajor sector. This is canon since the plaque on the ship says it and it was seen during DS9.

    The USS Valiant (Defiant class) was launched from the Antares Shipyard. This ship was seen in the episode where Nog and Jake get rescued by a bunch of Starfleet cadets.

    Shipyards is really something that's never come up in the shows but it's a given that they have to have shipyards throughout the Federation. The bulk of the manufacturing might be done around the Sol system but you still need shipyards for repairs and refits.
  17. CoyoteUgly

    CoyoteUgly Fire Walk With Me

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    I dunno, we'll see...

    https://tvline.com/2017/09/05/the-orville-review-fox-seth-macfarlane-sci-fi-outer-space/

  18. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    Meh. If critics knew what they were talking about they'd be getting rich producing actual content, not telling us how poorly everyone else is doing it.
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  19. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    I've read a couple of reviewers comments on "The Orville". One said that the show can't be sure if its wants to be a parody of Star Trek (primarily but other science fiction shows as well) or homage to them.

    What was agreed was that the production values especially the huge standing sets were first rate and impressive. Apparently MacFarlane spared no expense.

    Given what I've read about Seth MacFarlane and his deep affection for this series, he said basically that he considers "The Orville" to be the tv series that he was born to make I would bet that he considers it homage to famous science fiction of the past but he sold it as a parody.
  20. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    That's no bad thing, Red Dwarf is kind of a parody, but it's its own SF universe in its own right, and has dark and heavy moments along with the laughs.
    I don't need it to be "Hey! Look at us! We're goofy! :discuss:", like Big Bang Theory. :shrug:
  21. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    m

    I like The Big Bang Theory a great deal. But I understand why some people don't. That said what I've been amazed about TBBT is its internal consistency and continuity which is amazing for a half hour comedy.

    Unlike a number of famous long running great comedies like MASH (where Hawkeye early in the series has a mother and sister who are both alive and well yet later in the series has only a father, mother is long dead and he never had a sister, or Potters grandchild changes from a granddaughter to a grandson, or Radar loses his virginity half a dozen times), TBBT had great continuity from the beginning such as Leonards hook up with the North Korean spy Joyce Kim. Mentioned in the series premier and mentioned or portrayed several times over the years with near perfect consistency.
  22. ed629

    ed629 Morally Inept Banned

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    It was... meh.

    It can't figure out if it wants to be funny or serious or a parody.
  23. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    I liked it. :techman:
    You can tell Seth just always wanted to be a Trek captain, but he's obligated to inject humor, cuz he's Seth MacFarlane.
    I like the balance myself.
    It's not a full spoof, like "Spaceballs", but that's not a bad thing, and I wasn't expecting it to be.
    Teensy bit cringe-y in spots, but real Trek pilots have been way cringe-ier.
    It's a pilot, they'll iron it out as they go.
    I can see the potential.
    Hell, they kept "The Cleveland Show", on for 4 years, and that was garbage, they ought to give this at LEAST two seasons to find itself.
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  24. oldfella1962

    oldfella1962 the only real finish line

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    The Cleveland Show lasted four seasons? No fucking way! It was awful!
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  25. ed629

    ed629 Morally Inept Banned

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    And this was the first time I've watched a "live" broadcast of a show in about 2-3 years.
  26. Nova

    Nova livin on the edge of the ledge Writer

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    such a shame McFarlane is so committed to middle school humor. There's a great, fun, old school show with lot's of opportunity for organic humor like you'd find in Star Trek and it's being buried under Family Guy-style schlock. Such a waste. I mean, it's not AWFUL it's just so much less than what it could be.

    So many things I like that showed love for Trek, great music, great cast but...just no on the juvenile jokes. Have fun, be funny, but not like that
  27. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    The sets sure looked great. Had a typically stupid science fiction McGuffin that isn't remotely realistic but that's par for the course in most science fiction anyway.

    By that I mean the suggestion that the time acceleration device could make a seed grow into a 100 year old, hundreds of feet high Redwood in mere moments.

    Even accepting the temporal acceleration device as workable, a tree of that age and size would require thousands upon thousands of gallons of water and nutrients during its 100 year lifetime.

    Twice in the background I noticed ships moving around that had a distinctly "Star Trek look" about them.

    The Orville itself reminded me a lot of Galaxy Quest.
  28. Nova

    Nova livin on the edge of the ledge Writer

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    Some more specific points:
    Captain - I worry that the gags make Mercer look too much like a doof. When he's relatively serious, or even when he's tossing of some organic humor (like using a divorce discussion to buy time with the Krill captain) there's something there that looks like a Trek Captain. But there needs to be some character building to move away from the frat-boy shit.

    XO- absolutely perfect. The biggest waste if his show gets canceled will be Paliki(sp?) in this role

    Crew - not sold on the "street talkin'" navigator but that's likely more the writing than the actor, otherwise I was pretty impressed. Each character being defined by a single weird trait is kinda cheesy but you can only define a character so much in the pilot. I liked the big guy, the doctor, even the super-strong chick. The supposed artificial intelligence dude isn't a bad concept (i.e. being insufferably convinced of his superiority to organics - although they didn't base any subsequent exchanges on that idea) but the look of him is the one cheap-looking thing about the episode. Literally looks like a Doctor Who costume.

    Ship/sets/ etc - the look of the show was top notch, you can really feel the love for Trek (mainly TNG-VOY era Trek) in the conception and execution here. It's a good foundation to build a good show on.

    Music - as above, really impressive. There was a little bit of "do the TMP flyby music but...just a little different" feel at pints. But that's okay since it's still the piece of music that gets me in the feels more than any other.

    writing - only occasionally okay, often grating. Even when you're not forgetting this isn't Family Guy it was sometimes very hacknyed. The scene where Mercer asks Kelly to stay was well written, as was the one where she dropped in on the Admiral but it's difficult to recall any other moments that impressed me. But I'll make allowance here under the rubric "most pilots are flawed" and see if it gets better.

    But the gags, oh my lord the lame-ass middle school humor. That HAS to go.
  29. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    Eh, I didn't see anything much more juvenile than Futurama.
    :shrug:
  30. Nova

    Nova livin on the edge of the ledge Writer

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    yes but Futurama is a comedy by design. If you want to be a comedy be a comeedy but he doesn't describe it as such. I'm not against funy, some of the best Trek ever made was funny- but the laughs grew organically out of what we knew of the characters ("nuclear wessels") they were not gags about the Captain's balls.