The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

They kind of skipped around that. Tardigrade DNA to "cheat" that. It was able to pull what it needed to grow from the ship.

Meh, first season of Family Guy blew chunks until they really figured the characters out.
And no one can contest that as random opinion, Seth agrees, because he did that time travel episode that made fun of how clunky season 1 was.
Hopefully, the learning curve will be faster.
I certainly had way more fun with this than early Family Guy, or any Cleveland Show.

oh yeah, on the whole I enjoyed it - but I had to do so while looking past that one big flaw.

My problem is not in execution - the bad writing (IMO) is something that you think and expect will get better, NO PROBLEM in terms of seeing promise in the show. For the most part it was quite well executed.

My worry is about the INTENT. In a straight up comedy it doesn't matter if you characters are a joke - they are supposed to be. No one gives a damn whether any single one of the animated characters he created ever look like a complete fool, that's where the entertainment is. But if you are doing something you want people to take seriously, to depict a crew that people can basically respect and grow found of as actual people, it's dangerous to your premise to fill their mouth with Adam Sandler style juvenile shit. That's who I said the divorce argument (during the climax) worked, it had humor to it but humor that grew out of the situation. The helmsmen wanting to know where the strip clubs on the next planet were, on the bridge no less, was just a clunker. The captain talking about how often he has to piss or the doctor mocking his potential lack of nuts.....when you get 7 or 8 episodes in and these people are (hopefully) growing into "heroic" figures, do we really want to remember that this is the same guy who was having his nuts mocked in the first episode?

Maybe I'm just so enamored with the "this looks like Star Trek" to let it go, but I'm trying to imagine any of those gags transposed onto even Voyager and what they would do to my opinion of the character I gave them to and the image is not pretty.

The Futurama crew are all complete fools, but they're still capable of appearing heroic and whatnot.

While I didn't expect the juvenile humor to go down well with me, surprisingly it made the story seem more realistic and relatable. I thought the whole holodeck parody by Scott Grimes character of Worf's personal combat programs was pretty well done and funny.

Eh, it was okay. If it were Trek proper, I'd love it. Seth definitely should be a Trek captain. I feel like it was a mix of Scrubs, Galaxy Quest and Futurama.

Compared to some of the Star Trek series premier episodes I think it comes off pretty well.

Thoroughly enjoyed it. It's obviously a love letter to Star Trek. Very polished, visually quite impressive, and the crew smart-assing at each other actually sounds like the way military folks talk amongst themselves.

I like that it's not an outright comedy. Gives them flexibility going forward. The downside is that the show is probably very expensive to produce, so if it doesn't pull in great ratings it's probably sunk after 13 episodes.

"The Orville" looks promising

I wouldn't be surprised if Fox dictated that it have lots of humor in it because that's what people expect of Seth. We got a hybrid show as a result, and, perhaps, as the reviews come in, the suits at Fox will let Seth take it in a different direction.

This wasn't bad for a pilot. It had some rough spots, but I'm interested to see the next few episodes. Plus it had great production value with sets, costumes, makeup, SFX, and ship designs.

Also, it was much more watchable than TOS.

The scientist chic had a pretty horrible death. When she was caught in the stasis field and aged 100 years, she experienced that amount of time in one place. She couldn't move, so she spent 100 years starting up at the field emitter for that whole time.

Note, I agreed with the first two sentences. Not the third. To this day IMO, TOS is one of the two or three best series ever on television.

I would happily trade all of Star Trek post TWOK for one more season of TOS at Season 3 level quality.

Well naturally. 24 episodes during Season Three IIRC. About six of them were crap. Another six mediocre. Which leaves 12 episodes or about ten hours of high quality Star Trek. Equivalent to more than five movies right there.

The Enterprise Incident
The Tholian Web
The Paradise Syndrome
Day of the Dove
All Our Yesterdays
Elaan of Troyius

Just off the top of my head.

I like every episode of Season Three.

And Season Two.

And Season One.

Watched it.

Overall...I like it. I don't really care for the "splittail" aesthetic with the ship engines, but I guess that's how they do warp fields or whatever they're called in this universe. Makes them look...soft...to me. The JJprise looks positively martial in comparison.

I'd say 2/3rds of the jokes were okay and fit the flow of the story. The other third took me right out of it, though, and I hope they fix that.

Speaking of fractions, I liked how Isaac used them to refer to shield strength instead of stating the percentage like Trek would.

Anybody else notice the Wright Flyer on Mercer's desk in the last scene in his office? I dig subtle shit like that.

Maybe they're supposed to be soft and vulnerable. After all two of the three engines get big holes blown in them during a relatively brief firefight.

Okay, you know the dramatic moment which was supposed to remind folks of TMP and TWoK, when the Enterprise is leaving spacedock and the music swells? This was the reaction one of my cats had to that.



Not a horrible show, and there are elements about it which could work in a long term series, but I'm not sure if they'll be able to fully tap into them before it gets canceled. One thing that drove me batty during the episode was that despite how well designed the sets were, they still felt like sets. They needed something to make them seem more substantial.

The other really big annoyance I had with the episode was that when Ed and Kelly were arguing, it sounded like Brian from Family Guy arguing with one of his girlfriends.

It was ... reasonably fun. Sort of jarring to imagine 25th-century people talking just like 21st-century ones, but hey, it's a comedy.

The sets looked like drawings to me. Are they CG or is it actually something about how they were built? I noticed it especially in the ship corridors, but all of them had kind of a fake look. I can't say exactly why.

When Kitan breaks down that door, for someone with super strength, wouldn't it make more sense for her to manhandle the knob or whatever, as opposed to just barreling into it? That would make more sense for someone with a lot of mass, as opposed to strength.

Also, I had no idea until I looked up the cast on Wikipedia (due to being unable to remember any of the characters' names) that the doctor was Kasidy Yates...

Also, the device generating the field wasn't all that big. The redwood should have stopped growing at super speed as soon as it got bigger than the area of the time dilation effect...

Wasn't part of her body inside the field and part of it outside? That should have wreaked holy havoc on her circulatory system and probably killed her instantly (although then we shouldn't have seen her age, just decay)...

In an earlier thread about the show I mentioned that in the trailer I saw Kassidy Yates and Richard Bashir.

I suspect that the parts of the corridors where the characters are standing are real, but that the other parts are CGI.

I liked it for a first episode.

Needs some more polish.

I have to say I really like the design of the ship except for that giant ass window on top of the bridge. I hope that thing has a cover for it. Who would design a ship like that? I mean it's bad enough that the bridge is on top of the ship but to have a sunroof?

I also like that it's weak. This isn't a top of the line ship so when facing a bigger enemy with bigger guns it should be outclassed.

I also like the design of the Krill and their ship.

Like how the Orville was maneuvering mainly to stay alive as it was obvious it couldn't scratch the Krill ship.

Like the interior of the Orville. Nice little touch was in the Captain's office you see electrical plugs.

The jokes were okay. I was under the impression this was to be a comedy but it seems more like a dramedy. (comedy + drama) That's okay but the jokes need some work.

I hate Brian. Really hate that character. And all I heard in this episode was Brian. Especially when he was arguing with Kelly.

I kept expecting Peter Griffin to jump in with, "Hey remember when....."

It's going to take a while for me to get past the voice.

Plus you can't just grow the tree in the field without nutrients, sunlight, and water.

That is the huge flaw in this device. You're not growing anything like crops instantly without providing those things. Unless this quantum device somehow overrides the need for something like that.

This would be great for prisons. Instead of prison we just age you by the number of years you were sentenced. You're 30 and you got a 30 year sentence? Step into the device and pop out as a 60 year old man. Eventually you're going to get too old really fast.

This show will be cancelled with one season because Fox people are idiots. I think the sold the show wrong.

I would like to see it get a couple seasons to see if it can get polished up and running great.

The Enterprise-D had a sunroof, they just mostly never shot from the right angle to show it.
John Doe went through it in "Transfigurations".

Not...good...

First of all Peter David SHOULD sue. They stole Calhoun, Shelby, Zak Kebron AND McHenry from New Frontier.

This was worse than that snl skit last year with Chris Pine and that fat guy yelling THAT'S A STAR TREK!

The plastic sets. The power ranger bad guys. You know it's only a matter of time before Patrick Stewart cameos and flushes the rest of his dignity along with the poop emoji.

Not good indeed.

And what galls me are the idiots who will hate Discovery and like this awful dad humor piece of parody shit.

It's Big Bang Theory for even dumber people. And Big Bang Theory is Need Blackface

What's wrong with The Big Bang Theory? Seriously?

And

I thought the Krill looked just like the Jemhadar..

As for the woman dying in the time acceleration field. She would not have aged noticeably anyway. Because she would be dead from dehydration within a few days. Starvation in a couple of months afterwards if someone she was getting water.

Peter David does not own the characters of Calhoun, Kebron, Shelby, and McHenry.

And even if he did he ought to be happy someone did something with the archetypes after he mangled them so badly in later books.

Yeah, if she experienced 100 years in that field, that one scream lasted 100 years straight, non-stop! GREAT lungs!!

I think people have gotten way too used to the darker "gritty" "realistic" sets on other science fiction productions (including Star Trek: Enterprise). Because slamming the Orville sets is kind of ridiculous as they look thematically much like a cross between the original series and Next Generation.

I personally like a "clean look" for the sets. While it is no doubt idealized I have no desire or need to see dust, grease, and equipment sticking out everywhere.