The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

which part?

not that it matters. you're wrong.

She could use an assumed name. You'd obviously have to be this society's Thomas Paine, but remain anonymous.

I understand that you're Tererun's dual.

Are you his female persona or his male one?

If enough people refuse to participate, the problem does indeed go away. And the change always starts with one.

so... gonna deflect the question because I'm right?

and I'm way to pretty to be Tererun's dual

This is turning into a political discussion, but briefly: passive refusal won't change anything, as everyone who doesn't vote at all votes with the majority; and one person with radically different experiences than literally everyone else on the planet doesn't indicate a trend.

Nah. She's clearly savvy enough to know how to get the message across without offending people. It doesn't have to be huge truths, either. More like

Not in this particular case, as there was a set number of votes required for the mindwiping to be done, not a percentage. If the total number of people willing to downvote drops below 10 million, the punishment would never be inflicted on anyone again.

Yeah, but - 1 won't get you there.

Question: Would Kirk have defied orders and extracted the team anyway? That was my initial thought. Maybe he would suggest it and Spock would quote regulations and Bones would counterpoint?

the person who dedicates half of the characters he types on this site to routinely calling folks idiots and worse and never ever admits error calls out someone else for being arrogant and condescending?

Okay?

I can't see Sulu getting up on a statue and grinding it and so require rescue.

Grinding a statue would totally be against Starfleet regs.

Chekov, OTHO.....

Weren't they just escaping dangerous situations on Earth-like planets all the time? They didn't care that one of them was indicted on the planet. Of course, indicted there usually meant something like "the Roman emperor / chief barbarian / gangster boss wants us dead", but the principle is the same.

Just finished "Majority Rules," and I have to say ... although it may not have been the most subtle thing in the world, it was a hell of a lot more subtle than some of TOS and TNG's over-the-top moralizing.

Not "all the time". Its quite a bit of a stereotype regarding the original series episodes. Just as Captain Kirk didn't go around blowing up computers or having sex with the female guest star of the week "all the time".

Its kind of like when people shop at a Walmart and after finding an item in the same place in the store twice in a row they expect it to be there in the same place thereafter.

The Orville gets an early season 2 renewal

After what Archer's dog did to that sacred tree...

I wonder how much longer The Orville will be able to milk the "overlook our absurd moments 'cause we're a comedy" thing.

For instance, it's getting a little weird that all of the Human crewmembers have so much casual familiarity with 20th- and 21st-century pop culture. It would be like if we all went around making wisecracks about Louis XIV, John Donne, and Arcangelo Corelli. Are they all in the Society for Creative Anachronisms or something?

Nice straight-up adventure this week, with only one little gag thrown in.
Nice to see Brian Thompson's jawline again.

And very little in the way of comedy this time. It almost looks like the show is leaning more serious as it goes, as if maybe that was McFarlane's plan all along.

You have to wonder at which point parody fails to protect this show against the accusation of copyright violations, if it keeps refusing to be parodistic.

Porn parodies skate by without many/any jokes.

Yes, but they differ from the original by being porn. How much separates this show from something like Axanar?

They don't use Trek terminology, mostly. They don't use Trek character or place names. They don't use Trek designs. Altho we can easily tell that the show is deeply inspired by Trek (especially TOS), it doesn't blatantly rip off Trek the way Axanar does. The Orville is a re-imagining, not a clone. If Roddenberry had been bonked on the head the night he was writing his Trek pitch, he might have come up with The Orville. But he didn't.

There are no copyright violations.

You can't copyright a theme.

Space exploration/adventure is not the sole domain of Star Trek.

See, it seems to me that Axanar was, or would have been, much more different from existing Trek shows than Orville is -- or in other words, Axanar would need a lot more independent creativity to make than Orville. You are right, of course, that what counts in American copyright are specific named entities rather than the whole manner of the show, but the fact that that is so makes no sense to me.

I agree that the humor has plummeted and I'm absolutely sure that was deliberate. And the humor in "Into the Fold" was very understated and humorous. The line in the damage report about someone reported spilling soy sauce on their uniform and Mercer's exasperated "We've got to get better people".

And Isaac grabbing the handheld game and blowing it apart. "We'll not speak of the game again!".

I was very surprised to see the doctor knifing the guy holding her captive though. Sure he was keeping her there but he was written pretty sympathetically and was taking care of her as best he could.

It's going to be a long wait until next fall when this first season wraps up.

I think they've been pretty good at avoiding stealing anything directly from Trek. Sure, there's a lot of similar themes, but I think Paramount would have a hard time showing anything that was directly ripped off from Star Trek and only Star Trek. Firefly, Star Wars, Space: Above and Beyond, Stargate, and Battlestar Galactica all depicted government run spaceships running around getting into wacky adventures, and most of them involved friendly and unfriendly alien or robots. Orville has even made efforts to distinguish itself from Trek by showing there's no Prime Directive, no transporters for Union ships, artificial life forms being relatively commonplace and respected in the galaxy above humans...

Axanar, on the other hand, basically claimed "this is absolutely Star Trek, here's where we fit into the Star Trek timeline, here's a list of all the established Star Trek characters, locations, props and settings we're including in our story which was referenced on Star Trek, here are all the returning Star Trek actors we've roped into signing up, this is the real Star Trek now, give us your Star Trek money instead of supporting Abrams Trek."