The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

But those tended to be the exception to the rule. Or, at least the perception with Trek fans.

I know I'm a few weeks late, but there's been precious little of MacFarlane's work that's made me want to watch this, but John Allen told me he was enjoying this more than New New Trek, so I gave it a show.

And my God, this is already a better, more thoughtful Trek series than Enterprise ever was. The first few episodes of that had ensigns feeding slugs and what was essentially condom rape being played with all the tired pregnancy cliches that Full House would be embarrassed to write into their worst episode.

This? It had me, a fairly progressive liberal, rethinking my stance on trans people disclosing their birth identities.

I'm glad the show got moved to a better time slot. Not that I think Fox would try to Firefly the show since genre TV is en vogue, but still.

Still withholding judgement on Star Trek Discovery at the moment, but I took a few episodes of The Orville to decide not to miss any episodes too.

When I think about it, I actually looked at promos for the Orville with some derision. I planned on not liking it.... It's not what I expected from Seth McFarlane,

Is John still around somewhere? I miss him.

On Facebook mostly.

TO goes for totally classic Trek. The episodes so far could have been on TNG or even VOY.

STD (...) goes for the modern style of showmaking. They obviously try for GoT/TWD/LOST in space with vibes of BSG and FIREFLY mixed an.

I was certain that when he injected her it would have SOME other effect rather than pain and fuck up his plan.

It kinda bugged me that we're just going to assume the physiology is so similar that the effect would be just the same (not that Trek didn't often do such stuff, but it seemed one of those fine points where we might have learned some storytelling skills from previous use of the trope)

I liked the most recent episode. Of course I always loved Charlize Theron. First Liam Neeson, now Charlize Theron. McFarland does seem to have connections.

The "practical joke war" between the helmsman and mechanical guy was hilarious to me and for once something you would've never seen in Star Trek.

It's amazing how McFarlane channels both Kirk and Picard at the same time.

I'm really liking this show. Each episode is getting better. It has some good twists on classic sci-fi tropes, tells an interesting story, has good dialogue, and has some humorous moments. Not laugh out loud humor, but enough humor. I'm really glad this didn't turn out to just be Family Guy in space because that would have gotten stale really fast.

Also, echoing the sentiments that I'm enjoying Orville better than Star Trek Discovery. Still watching both, but this show keeps me more entertained for 45 minutes.

This latest episode "Krill" really knocks it out of the park. Most of the juvenile humor is gone and the episode ends on a surprisingly downbeat note. Not to mention near perfect effects and overall production values. They do a great job of not just making the Krill "Seth MacFarlane's Klingons". And the allegory with radical Muslims is very nicely done.

I haven't seen it yet, but lemme guess--space battles?

Yes.

Beats Star Trek: Discovery and their monumentally stupid "spore drive".

the allegory is to radical "superiority" religion - no more or less the Muslim sort than the Christian sort.

Just watched it last night. It had some space battles, and a really compelling story. Like it went into DS9 shades of grey territory, goddamn.

The continuing Avis jokes were hilarious. I loved the look Ed Mercer gave Malloy when he said "The humans have a god they call Hertz."

They were funny. I would've really died if Gordon had made some crack about the "other gods", Alamo and Enterprise.

Yeah, the missed joke for Enterprise would have been great.

Gordon grinds on me badly. I think the how would be dramatically better without him.

Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll go all Gary Mitchell on us shortly.

Binged the first six episodes. Not bad. Entertaining so far.

As everyone else has already said, this is very much classic Trek. With Galaxy Quest and Futurama thrown in. Every plot so far is something we've seen already. But so far it's been well done. They need to tread a bit carefully though. There is a fine line between homage and blatant ripoff.

The mix of comedy and drama is a bit jarring too. Sometimes a joke undercuts what should be a serious moment. I think they need to work on the balance more.

I was expecting Charlize Theron's character to become a recurring character, someone of ambiguous allegiance who alternates between helping the crew and antagonizing the crew (like Q I guess). But it doesn't be look like she'll be back.

It's good they are not afraid to jump right into some tricky moral dilemmas. Specifically thinking of the 3rd episode and the 6th episode.

Is it going to be a running joke that Mercer tries to open a door before giving up and allowing Alara to do it? I feel like that has happened in almost every episode so far.

The conflict with the Krill is interesting and timely. How do you make peace and reason with an enemy who's actions are motivated by blind faith?

Like most of the main crew so far. Would like to see an expanding cast of recurring characters like DS9.

^ Charlize Theron I'd like to see more often too. But then her getting up in the morning is probably more expensive than two whole TO episodes. Once is a favor... but recurring is unaffordable.

I don't really see much 'comedy' any more. The few attempts are rather weak. Standard MacFarlane fare. I do enjoy the 'serious' side a lot more. The comedy is the kind of light humor ST severely lacks.

It seems more like his own less inspiring version of "engage," or "make it so."

"Hang on. I'm gonna find a bag of nails."



The Orville has really grown on me. An excellent balance of silly humour and sci-fi adventure.

Beats the living shit out of that other new Trek series.

This last episode put the final nail in the coffin for the argument that you can't have old school TV because now things are serialized now. I.E. Kirk sees Edith Keeler die and never mentions it again. The crew just solves one problem each episode. This episode, like the previous episodes, gave us a classic Star Trek plot, the difference is Gordon mentions his leg from the practical joke episode. Yes, it's not exactly a story arc, but we saw DS9 have story arcs while still maintaining the story of the week. This just shows the lack of imagination Kurtzman has and despite his flaws Braga knows Trek better. I never would have thought Brandon Braga could redeem himself, but he's doing it. I just hope they can keep it up.

I never liked Braga for various reasons mainly being is open disdain for long time Star Trek fans.

But.

I thought Braga (and Berman) received an excessive amount of criticisms for the failures of modern Star Trek. To this day I believe the late Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor played just as big a role in this.

Also, I believe that Braga allowed the so called "restrictions" by the studio regarding the Star Trek franchise to stifle his writing and creativity.

I like The Orville too, but I think I finally see what ST: Discovery is trying to do. I think I like it a little more than TO. Bottom line, I'm up to 2 whole hours of TV a week.

That still doesn't match that brief time when the third (and only decent) season of SeaQuest was on.

For a brief moment I (had a friend of mine record them) was watching new episodes of Babylon Five, Space: Above & Beyond, The X-Files, SeaQuest 2032, and Star Trek: Voyager.

I have to check "The Orville" out! I can't believe I haven't seen it yet!

It's like TNG, but with fart jokes.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to eat my hat on this one, too. Standalone can still work.

I'm also more willing to buy that Braga really was burned out and had the studio down his neck didn't help. And after seeing what passes for fandom at Tumblr and the shit thrown at the Voltron writers, I realize in hindsight my behavior wasnt much better. He's also not stretched so thin with being producer and writer and has had 12 years off to fine tune any ideas, and it shows. Hopefully, he stays away from the writing table.