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The Orville
2017 · TV series · 3 seasons
Created by Seth MacFarlane
DramaComedyScience FictionFantasy
Follow the crew of the not-so-functional exploratory ship in the Earth's interstellar fleet, 400 years in the future.
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101 comments on Hacker News
The Orville is excellent. I am a fan. Here is another show/episode that is very similar and relevant here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)
this reminds me of an episode of the TV show. the Orville that I recently watched where they stumbled upon a planet that had the social credit scoring system and everybody had little badges with literal upvote and down vote buttons on them. and when your grandma buys you ice cream and you're a little kid you say thank you and you hit the upvote button and she likes you even more because you hit the upvote button then because you said thank you.
and so it was obviously portrayed as kind of you know for the story and it worked and I like the episode and everything but it got me thinking in terms of a society like that of people could probably construct something that used that kind of a system but in a more regulated way and a more humane way and I think that's turns into the question of do we want to try and make this new thing or do we want to try and fix the old thing?
regardless, it got me thinking about some kind of a potential implementation of a formal social reputation system that essentially mirrors what goes on informally now, but makes it visible and makes the actions of affecting somebody's reputation visible.
My basic intuition here and for most things that deal with society or whatever is that Satan lives in the details and infinite potential dystopias and the potential for extreme inhumanity lurks in every crevice and corner. unknown unknowns and shit.
When you say you want to reach Orville, are you referring to the episode where everyone wears an upvote counter badge? Because I can see that one coming true.
I also enjoyed Strange New Worlds (including the musical episode) and was hoping that was the direction that they were taking. Starfleet Academy seemed to be heading away from the original focus on science fiction ideas and instead tried to be Starfleet 90210, though bizarrely, I did enjoy watching Holly Hunter's performance and thought that is was more fun than annoying. Tig Notaro's character is also very watchable - they should make whole series based around her. Kerrice Brooks was also excellent as SAM and her performance won me over after initially thinking her character was just designed for comic relief.
However, the best modern Star Trek has to be The Orville.
I think you might be over-fixated on a very prediction-market-esque framing of this plot device... if you broaden it slightly, the idea of someone in a fictional world manipulating the news reporting of an act or set of acts, rather than caring so much about the root act itself, is as stated before, quite common.
For example, this from House of Cards: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/arts/television/house-of-cards-season-4-episode-6-recap.html?unlocked_article_code=1.T1A.50wr.Pr_LeKa7xeiz&smid=url-share
> Pollyhop is a fictional, Google-esque search engine that according to Leann’s polling expert is being exploited by the Republican candidate Will Conway in ways that suggest Underwood can’t possibly beat him in the general election. The explanation of how Pollyhop works is convoluted at best, but the gist is that Conway and his people are manipulating search engine results so that only positive coverage of their side appears.
Or more recent examples of what essentially boils down to the plot device of "media manipulation" aka manipulating the "news reporting of the act":
- See the most recent season of Industry, which included several plot points about manipulating news coverage as a short-seller and the company being targeted fought back and forth (including specific focus on the individual journalists involved)
- See Andor, everything about how the Empire twists perception of what's happening on Ghorman, leading up the Ghorman massacre itself, and then culminating in Mon Mothma's speech in the Senate denouncing "the death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil"
- See The Orville, a particular episode: https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule which includes the plot point of hacking that society's "master feed" to plant false manipulative stories to curry public favor and save a character from being punished
- See The Boys, how Vought manipulates the media to twist coverage of their "heroes" even when they commit atrocities
- See other House of Cards plotlines involving Zoe Barnes and being a direct mouthpiece for Frank Underwood
I think the only real difference if any, is that in the most common form of portrayal, maybe less attention is paid to the journalist as the point of leverage, and how they deal with threats or bribes or whatever. The fact that such manipulation occurs, is commonly accepted as a trope, without requiring too much of a deep dive. Whether a story choose to focus on the "reporter's perspective" is perhaps less common, but not uncommon IMO.
He can't, because he's emotionally invested 100% in pride of his writing. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be proud, but it's pride that keeps him from farming out the writing while keeping absolute-dictator control of the approved product.
Seth McFarlane won't make another season of The Orville for the same reason: he has to write each episode.
The Conchords TV series ended because it was too much work to write new songs for each episode.
Each is reasonable, yet unreasonable.
I think that while each show was different, all the Star Trek shows from TOS to VOY had a certain feel to them that made them feel consistent. Yes TOS was more swashbuckling and DS9 was more interested in continuity and shades of grey, but they all were similar in that they were thoughtful shows where teams of competent professionals solved problems in the context of a generally positive vision for humanity, all while trying to offer moral dilemmas for the viewer to wrestle with.
But modern Star Trek is by and large nothing like that. The Abrams movies I'm ok with, because to be honest the old Trek movies had plenty of "it's just a fun action movie" too. But DIS and PIC both seem to positively revel in a pessimistic vision of the future where everyone sucks. Where we once got stories where the writers were smart enough to let viewers draw their own conclusions and apply them to real life (mostly, there were preachy episodes too), the modern shows are a blatant soapbox for the writers to preach to us about their views on the world. Where we once had teams of competent professionals using their skills to solve problems, now we have characters who act like children and only know how to apply "hit it real hard" as a solution.
It is a very damning statement that the best (and for a while, only) modern show to live up to Star Trek is The Orville, which isn't even a Star Trek show! But say what you will about him, Seth MacFarlane gets Star Trek and he loves it (unlike Alex Kurtzman, may he never get another TV series). So he made something which (comedy tone aside) could easily be a successor to the Star Trek shows of old.
The only exception to the dismal trend is SNW, at least the first season. I haven't gotten around to watching more yet, but that show was what CBS should've been making all along instead of the garbage that was DIS and PIC. Suddenly we are explorers in the positive future, we are competent professionals again... it's actually a worthy Star Trek for once. I would say I think that some of the casting choices aren't always great (their Kirk is... not suited to the role), and I would enjoy if they could move further away from the action show tropes and have more thoughtful writing (though not preachy please, I'll take dumb action over the writers preaching to me). That is why I said Star Trek has largely sucked, because SNW is an exception. But in general I have felt like the current creative staff doesn't understand Star Trek at all and can't make a good show to save their lives.
Yeah TNG is my go-to for optimistic sci-fi. Voyager a close second; Deep Space 9 is a bit more muddled.
Modern Trek is a let-down, although Lower Decks has been awesome with lots of member berries sprinkled throughout for the TNG-era enjoyers.
I should add that Star Trek: Prodigy (albeit a kids show) has been very optimistic and enjoyable too, feels very much like TNG-era. Janeway and Chakotay are in as well.
P.S.
On a tangent The Orville (a Star Trek TNG clone by Seth MacFarlane) is pretty good; some Star Trek actors even show up in it.
Season 4 is apparently in production.
The Orville had an episode about that.
I don't feel my social circle is like that. I mean, you're right that there are plenty of people as you describe, but I like to think that I surround myself with people for which that does not match (not always successfully when I was younger, but you learn as you grow older).
As such, bawolff's point resonates with me. And even if that wasn't the case, they still have a good point. If you pick terrible protagonists to begin with, it undermines the morale of the episode a little. Showing how "reasonable" people are affected is stronger, and I indeed feel that both Community and Orville did that really well.
> The fact that nobody would make a Doctor Zhivago or even a Back to the Future today is not something I can fix with all my searching.
What do you mean by that?
I'm not familiar with Doctor Zhivago so I had to look it up, the 1965 film is based on a 1957 novel, which seems to match just fine with the pattern of The Martian, The Three Body Problem, Game of Thrones, Fifty Shades of Grey, etc.
Back to the Future is a fun trilogy, but the first film was mostly set in 1955 (so if it had been done today the past would have been 1994, compare to Captain Marvel being mostly set in 1995), the second film was 1985's idea of 2015 (and we still get plenty of what-if fiction in the near-ish future, e.g. Blade Runner 2049, Cyberpunk 2077), the third was yet another wild-west Cowboys-and-Indians gunslinger (1885) — but if you mean to focus on the more playful and fun aspects of how it was put together, or the positive vibes of good people working to solve problems and where it's clear who the goodies and baddies are, BttF reminds me more of The Orville or Lower Decks. (And The Martian if you want to consider the environment/time travel itself, rather than Biff, to be the problem).
One can but hope :)
--
I wonder what a Galaxy Quest sequel would look like today…
Given the "dark is cool, killing off fan favourites is cool" vibes of Picard and Discovery, I'd guess something like Tim Allen playing a senile Jason Nesmith, who has not only forgotten the events of the original film, but repeatedly mistakes all the things going on around him as if he was filming the (in-universe) 1980s Galaxy Quest TV series, and frequently asking where Alexander Dane was and why he wasn't on set with the rest of the cast.
(I hope we get less of that vibe and more in the vein of Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, or indeed The Orville).
In the TV show "The Orville" a character has their matter replicator create "500 cigarettes", but it only created 463 after someone counted them all. This is a meme that's been making the rounds for a few weeks in some circles now.
Agreed. TOS, Voyager, and DS9 were great (at their best; obviously some awful episodes/seasons mixed in there). The films after Khan were missable. Never got on with the whiny characters in TNG. Discovery is endless noise. Picard looked promising, but ultimately disappointed as (and here we disagree) I wish Q had never been created; can't stand him.
Nothing comparable to the older stuff until SNW - and Anson Mount in particular is very good. Oh, and The Orville is better ST than much recent ST ever was.
Along similar lines, Season 1 Episode 7 of The Orville, "Majority Rule", had a similar theme. Summarized here by ChatGPT who helped me remember which show this was:
"In this episode, the crew visits a society where social media influence and approval ratings dictate every aspect of people's lives. Citizens can upvote or downvote each other, and if someone's approval rating falls too low, they face severe consequences. The episode explores themes of social media, public opinion, and the potential dangers of a society driven by constant judgment."
Miss Chatty, as I affectionately call her, also mentioned Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 1, "Nosedive":
"People in a society rate each other on a social media platform, and these ratings have significant consequences on their social status and privileges. The protagonist's life unravels as her ratings start to plummet."
And Community Season 3 Episode 1 (a common theme here?), "Biology 101":
"The characters participate in a social experiment called the 'MeowMeowBeenz' system. In this system, people can rate each other from 1 to 5 'MeowMeowBeenz,' affecting their social standing and privileges within the community."
https://chat.openai.com/share/d2ac7651-4ab3-4504-9369-7ea4dbdbad0d
His entire life and career was centered on getting Fox to pay to make his Star Trek fanfic into a TV show. Orville is a lot better than I would have expected.
I bailed partway into the first or second episode I think. I've heard it's good trek though.
Is it like the Orville where it tones down the comedy a bit later on? Orville felt like a parody of trek for the first few episodes, then just became trek for the rest of its runtime.
This story reminds me of that episode on the TV show, The Orville. Season 1 Episode 9. Both the Navarians and Bruidians lay claim as the planet's original settlers. An ancient artifact containing residual DNA is discovered. They agree to a neutral third party to analyze the DNA to determine the planet's original settlers. Spoiler alert: Toward the end of the episode, the analyzed DNA determines both groups shared a common ancestor
There's a very good episode of The Orville essentially based on this premise in disguise and it goes as horribly wrong as you think it would.
Humans would totally do this. If anything, I'm pleased by the fact that we don't do it quite as much as we could...
> I told her her beliefs were akin to racism
!!SPOILERS!!
There's an episode of The Orville where they encounter a relatively advanced planet with a government that classifies people based on astrological signs. People born under certain signs are better than others, and one astrological sign is considered to be so violent and dangerous that they lock them in concentration camps. Women intentionally induce labor early in order to prevent their kids from being born under the wrong sign, leading to a high infant mortality rate.
That’s an interesting analysis. I did see that Orville episode and it was really good (in fact, before Strange New Worlds was released, I’d have ranked The Orville as the best “new Trek” since the TNG / DS9 / Voyager era.
Going back to the meat analogy, I’ve already seen people argue against meat substitute because it “preemptively kills cows by not birthing them for meat to begin with”. It’s amazing the mental gymnastics people will take to justify the status quo.
If you enjoyed this, Seth MacFarlane (yes that one) weighed in on whether the replicator enabled the federations utopian society, or whether the federations utopian society enabled the replicator in an episode of Orville (I haven't watched it yet).
It seems obvious that the replicator enables utopias, but the point that was made was very thought provoking.
Here is the original source I first read an analysis of this idea from (sorry for linking to reddit): https://i.redd.it/9pmyd8xz3j2b1.png
Original sources from the screen shot: https://twitter.com/StorySlug/status/1587086761150349312
Interestingly, the Season 3 finale of "The Orville" took direct aim at the idea that Star Trek's utopian future is only possible because of the replicator, and the typically-conservative Trek fans who make the argument.
A woman from an underdeveloped planet keeps begging for replicator technology on the grounds that it would bring her planet into the same socialist utopia that the crew of the Orville enjoys, and the first officer says "You've basically got that backwards." She explains that it was their socialist utopia that brought about the cooperation necessary to invent the replicator, and that had it been invented during Earth's 20th or 21st centuries it wouldn't have worked, because the rich and powerful would have hoarded the technology. As @BoomerNiner often says, we have enough resources on the planet right now, without a replicator, to give everybody food and housing — if we wanted to. The invention of a replicator wouldn't change that. Zefram Cochrane, famously, tried to invent the warp drive with a profit motive - he thought he was going to get rich off the technology, and it was only the realization that we weren't alone in the galaxy (and perhaps a few lectures from people from the future) that changed him. But mankind wasn't ready for all the various technologies that sprang from this revolution, which is why the Vulcans tried to keep a close eye on humanity's entrance into the galaxy. A few years after First Contact, Earth's government launched a probe, called "Friendship-1" that tried to give other planets the means to contact Earth. Instead, the people the probe found reverse-engineered the antimatter technology and accidentally destroyed their planet. The same thing happened in The Orville - early explorers, acting like missionaries, tried to bring their advanced technology to other worlds in the hope of helping people - but the technology just created conflict and ruined entire planets. People don't suddenly become moved to share because of abundance - Elon Musk had 44 billion dollars and he didn't decide to share it with the world, he decided to buy Twitter with it. He has always, and will continue to, hoard his wealth for himself no matter how much he has. If Tesla invented a replicator they wouldn't give that away to everyone for free. They'd patent it, and sell it to world governments with DRM software they could deactivate remotely if those governments didn't pay a subscription fee. If governments had replicators, they wouldn't suddenly start handing out free, delicious, nutritious food to everyone - "that will collapse the economy," they'd say. "Free food for the needy would be unfair to people who've been paying money for food all this time." "How will people be motivated to work," the Republicans would say, "if they don't have the threat of starvation hanging over them? If everyone has enough food, how will we motivate people to join the Army?" Even though the replicator was producing molecularly-identical food to the real thing, conservatives would insist it wasn't "real" enough for them. "Real" beef, they'd say, demands the slaughter of an animal. Replicated beef is basically *vegan.* The beef industry would quickly draw battle lines with their donation money, congressmen from places like Texas would move to outlaw replicated meat from being served on the grounds that it hurts entire industries. Conspiracy theorists would insist that replicated beef is full of additives the government is trying to sneak into them to feminize men and make you sick, even though *real* beef is full of antibiotics and hormones. Campaign ads would show Republicans personally slaughtering cattle and gutting deer to show their commitment to only eating meat that was really alive. We're already seeing this type of thing when, like, Cracker Barrel tries to introduce plant-based sausage that's entirely optional to order. People FREAK OUT that you might take their meat away. In short, inventing a replicator wouldn't save us - right now, it'd *ruin* us even faster, as the amount of bounty the wealth plays keep-away with would just grow even larger and more ludicrous. Capitalism would never allow a replicator to exist to its true potential, too many people would go broke. Replicators didn't create the Star Trek future, the Star Trek future comes first, then replicators.
And not every science fiction show has to be a sermon on later-day ethics and values in every single episode.
Looking at you, The Orville.
And not every science fiction show has to evolve into a horror/zombie series.
Looking at you, Firefly.
The exact opposite is true actually. None of us will ever experience that. This is nicely captured in an episode of Orville if you're interested https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Mortality_Paradox#:~:text=Mortality%20Paradox%20is%20the%20third,to%20bend%20space%20and%20time.
You could probably make this case for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise as well. TNG and Voyager probably fall closer into the "highly-episodic" category, while DS9 and Enterprise tend to be structured around larger ongoing plot lines. I think they all have the same kind of merit as Voyager with regards to discussions about issues and moral decisions.
Depending on the 11-year-old, you might be able to make a case for Seth Macfarlane's The Orville, which can be a bit more hit-and-miss, but does have some truly excellent episodes, particularly in Season 3.
The newer Star Trek series coming out are probably too gritty if the parent is worried about age-appropriateness (I believe Picard has a TV-MA rating?) and unless you really like The Original Series, it's pretty noticeably a product of its age and I personally had trouble staying engaged by it when I was that age.
Can't they just hire Seth McFarlane for the inevitable Picard season 4, assuming they can get him to drop the silly jokes? I love Orville for its surprisingly solid sci-fi universe but I cringe at many of the attempts at humour. Every actor behind a major Star Trek character have already played in Orville anyway (except for the bridge crews of TOS and TNG, I suppose).
Discovery and Picard have their moments, it's not all bad. The underlying story line is "government bad, humans suck" but there are some good characters hidden away deep inside.
A new TNG would flop. Monster-of-the-week (or in the case of trek, political-philosophical-pondering-of-the-week) doesn't keep people entertained anymore. TOS is boring and unwatchable for most, TNG is often doable but many some stupid episodes, especially in the earlier seasons (why on earth did they have to include "rape gangs"? and a "say no to drugs" episode? that episode where Crusher has space sex with the holo ghost of her ancestor?). Even more modern, more ST franchises like Voyager and DS9 would flop.
I'll be controversial and say that I'd like modern trek to be more like ST Enterprise. I think Enterprise struck a nice balance between classic trek and more modern TV, even if it's two decades old at this point. There was an overarching story line to keep people watching, but there was also plenty of time for going down to a random planet and ponder about space AIDS/mind meld disease and the associated prejudices. I love the Star Trek universe, but the older shows simply don't warrant all of the nostalgia; I recognize that they were an important part of TV and science fiction history, but the media landscape doesn't allow for philosophical pondering and space western TV anymore.
The dislike button is worse than the like button.
You may as well say get lost.
The Orville episode “Majority Rules” allegorises the concept wonderfully
There’s something about all of this I just find a bit gross. I enjoy Star Trek and The Orville which have androids and humans interacting but in those programs the androids are identifiable as such. There’s Blade Runner which I enjoy as well and obviously feel empathy and compassion for the androids who want to be free to live their lives. So what is the problem here?
It feels to me like the problem must be one of deception. I don’t want to feel like I’m being had. Whatever content I consume, I want to know if humans made it or if AI did. I want to know if I’m talking to something or someone. And if it’s getting to the point where it’s impossible to tell the difference then I feel like I’m going to start using the internet solely for tasks where I don’t mind it being generated by an AI which basically means narrow information retrieval for specific problems at hand. Which just feels kind of sad.
Maybe there’ll be some mind blowing AI song or novel that everyone starts raving about and I get curious and check it out and change my mind. But I’m not sure. I feel like art needs to be tied to people and stories and mythology. There’s tons of great music being created on a daily basis but music itself doesn’t excite me like it did because music used to be part of your social identity: the clothes you wore, the people you hung out with. Same with TV and Film; what we gained in on-demand convenience we lost in shared experience which came about from being forced to sit down and watch it at the same time as everyone else and then excitedly discussing it the next day.
There is something about AI and its convenience and devaluation of art that just fills me with bad vibes. I can’t help but feel this is going to push us even further away from each other and towards individualistic but ultimately dissatisfying la-la lands. I hope I’m wrong.
How is the last example different from an incumbents paradise? To me it looks like a road to autocracy.
As for the demarchists, The Orville had an episode about this. There are many reasons it does not work in practice at a medium or large scale.
I think a clear example of this would be The Orville.
Example space battle scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKepuFEzFAI
It's obviously inspired from Star Trek TNG and they want you to know it, but it has different characters and details. It's not Star Trek, but it's also true to the original than any recent Star Trek TV shows or movies.
So yeah, I would say, just change character names and make changes to your designs. Make it be its own thing and have fun with it.
With the exception of The Orville, none of these were ever network shows, and only The Expanse aired on basic cable, which does often have ~13 episodes.
IT Crowd USA was supposed to be a primetime NBC sitcom.
That seems to be changing, though, for many popular (expensive?) shows. Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, all the recently-new Star Trek series, The Expanse, The Mandalorian, The Orville... They all have seasons in the ballpark of 10 episodes.
In Sweden this has long been portrayed as a foolish, nationalistic enterprise by someone who should have known better, sacrificing lives for no reason. (Combined with a bit of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante)
I wonder if it wouldn't have been (previously) portrayed as primarily courageous in the US, had it all taken place with people from there?
... related, while there is a lot of new excitement about human spaceflight in the US now, almost every single piece of ~current mainstream TV/film drama (with the notable exception The Orville) focusing on space/scifi is dystopic and/or really negatively focusing on the human/family costs of the main characters (example: For All Mankind), to the point where it's getting a bit silly.
Right.
> Also, we as society have already chosen how to deal with sentient beings, and it's mostly ignorance.
The Orville Season 3 Episode 7 is about that theme. Highly recommend it.
> Regardless what the reason may be, I would like to see a return to shows like Startrek Next Generation or Stargate SG-1 and a depart from their current versions
Seth MacFarlane's The Orville fills that void, even if it's scifi comedy. Clearly modeled after Star Trek TNG, it's refreshing to see adults behaving professionally, in control of their emotions. New Trek plots depend on their characters being immature, irrational, depressive and unstable psychological wrecks. Their seasons would be shortened to a few episodes if competent adults were in charge.
The cartoon show, Lower Decks, was made to compete with the Orville in the comedy department, and according to the fans, is unexpectedly good. I've lost count of how many simultaneous New Trek shows are going on now, if they were made by better people this would be a new Trek golden age.
So far Orville S3 has been lackluster compared to previous seasons. The episodes so far have felt more like a knock off.
The part I keep trying to figure out is how did they kill the formula.
Strong captain dealing with ethical and moral quandaries in space. Work it around a military hierarchy and go.
The latest outing had them go back in time during season 2! And spent a significant time there. Is there any star trekking to this?
This is why the Orville took over for a lot of people.
SNW really brings Trek back to its roots. Absolutely worth watching, particularly if you're a fan of The Orville (which I am as well).
I'm sort of surprised there is less effort in poaching series with an existing fan base. This would seemingly be an antidote to the complaint of too-"algorithm says it will work" programming, because it bypasses that entire flow with an established "we see the audience, they exist in fandom forums and such."
I've never used Hulu, but there's a good chance I'll sub in the next few months for the new season of The Orville. I'd expect anime series would be a great similar target- there are plenty of manga/novel adaptations that did one 13-episode series that covered the first fewbooks, and now the source material is finished with 25 more volumes they can adapt.
I honestly prefer a longer running story. HBO clearly has proven long story arcs and not self-contained stories is better. Orville is still great but discovery's failure is not because of format.
Pre-Discovery. I've watched all of star trek more than once. TAS, TOS, DS9, TNG, VOY, ENT, movies. Everything more than once. I love Trek.
Discovery though... you can tell something was wrong.
You have this ultra top secret mushroom drive that can go faster than warp... but the characters are LGBT? Chief medical and Chief engineer are gay. Reno their replacement is gay. Tal is non-binary/trans. Like I love the idea of Trill being non-binary, it makes a ton of sense.
A top secret ship will have the best of the best crew. Yet they are all LGBT? What are they trying to say?
I don’t agree DS9 did that (aside from the aforementioned episode). DS9 was the darkest and most heavily story arc dependent entry of all the 90s (and earlier) Star Trek series. Though Enterprise and onwards do take Star Trek in another direction (as you said too). I think DS9 would be Star Treks best example of a story arc emphasis and gritty character development (Sisko is very much an anti-hero at times. In fact every leading character has a spot light shined on their flaws. And as for the villains; they’re fleshed out and really disturbing at times (like the episode where Gul Dukat and Sisko are stranded on a planet and Dukat tries to convince Sisko that he’s actions during the occupation were justified - that has some really chilling moments). SG1, on the overhand, kept the “evilness” of the bad guys on a much lighter scale.
The Orville is a stronger example of a Star Trek-style show that balances all the same elements as SG1. The The Orville is written more as an out and out comedy, perhaps even a parody, with some drama elements rather than a drama with some comedy elements (like SG1 was).
I’d mentioned elsewhere about the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) hitting the same comedic tones too.
"I wonder how someone 40 years in the future would look back at 2021 iPhone pictures of themselves? "
I make so many pics and videos that I really hope it will be something like this: "Hey locally run AI that guards my data and privacy, please show me about 100 pictures and videos of holidays when the kids were in the age of 5-10, project them on the wall.", "Yes, that one in the mountains is nice, where is that? Can you show me some more of that holiday?", "How about some videos taken around that era in and around the house?" "Did we have a dog back then?" "Ah yes, there is Bello, what a nice dog that was, when did he die?" [Star Trek computer voice: "last picture of Bello was may 5 2014".]
No way I'm ever going to sort this mess manually. TBH, a simple import in Shotwell already works wonders, and I absolutely love the "For You" section in "Photos" on my iPhone, I can get lost in there for a long time, but that's just a bit too much tied to Apple for my taste though, I'll be archiving all those files at some point (to 2 local hdds and then rsync them off-site (aka "my parent's house")).
Edit: Maybe, at some point, you can construct an interactive narrative about your life like done in The Orville in "Lasting Impressions" [0]. Why are you all so negative about the future people, you need more Star Trek (or The Orville) in your life ;) Nobody is going to get overwhelmed, we're creating a rich source of information about ourselves and the time we live in, which we will probably never really consume as a series of Photographs, that sounds pretty boring indeed, we can do better, show some creativity!
[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7826096/
The Orville is coming back on March 10 with season 3 - after a gap of ~2 years since the last ep of season 2.
There's a whole episode of The Orville about that sort of thing.
Yeah, I'd argue he was overdoing humor in The Orville on purpose - I think he wanted the show to be classified as a parody of Trek-style shows, and not a Trek derivative, in order to avoid intellectual property issues. You can see that as the show established itself, the jokes were toned down a lot - season 2 of The Orville is much more serious than the first one (I'd describe it as TNG, but with the drama/humor proportion of StarGate SG-1), and manages to cover some deep political and ethical topics.
Spoiler of the topic that impressed me (rot13, spoils a topic from S2):
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As far as I remember, Star Trek never ventured that far. United Federation of Planets did not make such compromises.
Honestly the only Star Trek I've enjoyed since Voyager is Lower Decks, which is the first one that actually captures some of the fun again. The Orville feels more like Star Trek than any of the recent films or Discovery.
Maybe it's just because I grew up with TNG/DS9/Voyager, but I really don't care about rehashes of TOS timelines, prequels, or any of that rubbish. Or, honestly, pretty much any Star Trek movie. I'm all about the episodic setup that worked so well in the 90s and gave us so many amazing ideas (albeit offset by far too many holodeck malfunction episodes).
I'd love to see some wide-eyed wonder again, and see a true sequel to those 90s shows set in that timeline. Even if it means more holodeck episodes.
It's not blasphemy for me :). I'm having real troubles considering Discovery and Picard (and JJ movies) as canon - they're just too different from all the earlier installments up to ENT (including). Instead of optimistic and cerebral experience, we're now getting generic violent action movies with nonsense plots.
In my head, the only true successors to Star Trek as it was up to 2005 are 1) The Orville, and 2) Star Trek: Lower Decks. Apparently it turns out you have to market something as satire to get a shot at exploring more thoughtful topics.
As others said, I think you're being selective. The article focuses on mainstream action movies.
The boys has had great success but still has orders of mangnitude less cultural impact than the MCU for instance. It's actually making, to some extent, the same point the article is making: super hero movies are bland and childish.
I didn't even know what Orville is, sounds interesting.
I'd say the _slice of current cinematic culture_ selected by the article is broad and impactful, and represents fairly well an important part of the whole. It's not the whole story, and you're right in pointing that out, but I don't agree that that invalidates the article.
Seriously? Selective sampling and click bait.
Two recent programs come to mind and I'm sure this list is not exhaustive. "The boys" and "Orville". Both chock full of "heroes" who in-between being heroes are preoccupied with banging each other, getting drunk, eating or failing themselves. The last episode of "The Boys" ends with Homelander jerking off while perched on a ledge over the city and raging at the unfairness of life. It's certainly a comment on the blandness of the Marvel universe and Orville is a superior and cutting rip off of Star Trek which has become bland and inoffensive in it's latest incarnations. Orville cuts pretty close to the limit for whatever rating it has. The two "gay" aliens and the holodeck porn episode come to mind. It was done fairly well. Stressed out officer on a star ship gets a holodeck porn addiction and is no longer able to relate to or face his life partners demands for attention. It's not heroic and not glorious but relatively human. Orville's officers like to fuck. They order booze from the matter synthesizers and they get depressed and do stupid things. Of course it is still "star trek" and there are always happy endings and everybody learns a lesson at the end. It doesn't drift too far from the genre.
However the article takes a selective slice of current cinematic culture and tries to pretend there are no other options out there whilst at the same time looking back at 80's and 90's cinema as if it was the age of body positive cinema.
Trekkie here (more or less). I like The Orville better than Discovery. Discovery is down-right disappointing and stupid. Picard is better than Discovery, but still didn't live up to my expectations.
You're probably right about Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse being the best hard sci-fi.
It's hard to beat the episodes/stories in the earlier Star Trek shows. The Twilight Zone was able to pull off a faithful modern reboot, why can't Star Trek?
(Someone else mentioned Planetes further down in the comments. That is also good hard sci-fi.)
>I wasn't excited to watch it, because I don't find McFarlane funny (as a writer/showrunner and especially not as an actor), and because I think I've only ever enjoyed maybe one sci-fi parody ever. (2 if you count MST3K as "sci-fi"..?)
Yeah, his comedy's a bit much for me most of the time. He's got some funny stuff, but it's usually in between a whole lot of meh stuff.
I was honestly expecting family guy in space or something. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised and happy to be wrong.
>I would fully support McFarlane (or whomever is responsible for that "essence" in Orville) doing a dramatic space opera, hands down, no question. That would be one hell of a show.
I ended up looking up more about the show and to be fair, the show does actually have some long time star trek people involved. Johnathan Frakes(Riker), Robert Duncan Macneil(Tom Paris) and Brannon Braga(worked on Voyager and enterprise) directed a bunch of episodes. There were also a ton of cameos by star trek actors throughout the show. So there was definitely a bunch of people working on the show who had been involved in star trek.
Oddly enough, back to the video game world there's also a few examples of tribute games playing off nostalgia made by members of the original staff that don't hold up to the originals they're emulating, which also shows just having original staff members isn't all it takes to capture that old greatness.
I have to agree with both your general point and your specific regarding The Orville.
I wasn't excited to watch it, because I don't find McFarlane funny (as a writer/showrunner and especially not as an actor), and because I think I've only ever enjoyed maybe one sci-fi parody ever. (2 if you count MST3K as "sci-fi"..?)
But my wife wanted to give it a shot because she's such a sci-fi nerd (even more than me), and you're right: they captured the utter essence of Star Trek so completely that I'm not entirely sure why he's not on a short list to do a serious Star Trek show/movie.
The qualities that make Star Trek so compelling (especially Next Generation and to a lesser extent DS9 and Voyager) are ever present in The Orville in spades. That it somehow manages to combine a very serious look at life in space with some pretty raunchy potty humor is nothing short of incredible.
I would fully support McFarlane (or whomever is responsible for that "essence" in Orville) doing a dramatic space opera, hands down, no question. That would be one hell of a show.
Not sure the market would bear it, unfortunately, though.
While the failure mode is different. The Orville did a great episode(if the stars should appear s01e04) on what could happen in such an event.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6483046/
Totally agree! And I am convinced that now that I will give the Orville a shot. I am kind os disapointed with season 7 of DS9, the focus on the spiritual aspect was a little bit too much on the nose for me.
I like your theoretical story arcs, it would make for great stories around the federation and the moral superiority, assumed, percieved or actually true, compared to other entities. I guess after having a narowwly avoided a coup by star fleet and having fought an intergalactic war, that alone should have had a deep impact. maybe even a change with regards to the rpime directive. Why would you leave all these new worlds and civilisations upt for grabs for an adversary, right?
It is quite striking, so, how the way tv series told stories changed from the episodic approach from TNG to a more arc driven approach in DS9 and VOY. Both of which sit somewhere between the episodic style of e.g. TNG and things like Breaking Bad and the first seasons of prison break.
> And I do like, somehow, the naive optimism of TNG. Kind of a blast from the past, if you ask me
If you like that, you should give The Orville a try. A lot of people dismissed it thinking it was going to be full of crude humor, essentially "Family Guy in Space", because it was from Seth MacFarlane.
But that is not the case at all. What MacFarlane was going for exactly was that naive optimism, although from TOS not TNG. Later science fiction, he has said, has been a lot less optimistic.
Yes, The Orville has some comedy--sometimes quite funny, but it almost all fits in with the serious elements. The crew, at least for a long time, is not full of highly competent natural heroes like TOS or TNG, because The Orville is not the flagship of the fleet that everyone wants to be on and only the very best qualify. It is the opposite of that. It's a minor ship where you put average or below people who you don't expect much from, captained by a man who had problems in his personal life that tanked his career, given The Orville because some friends called in favors to get one more try to turn him around before kicking him out of the service.
The first season was a bit hit or miss for the first few episodes, as they figured out the right balance of comedy and drama, but it did not take long to get good. The second season continued on from that. That's all there was been so far, with a third season coming.
I agree on DS9. My one complaint is that I think they should have went another direction with the ending. It could have ended in a way that served as a launching point for the biggest Star Trek arc yet.
Much of the series involved the conflict between the Federation and the Founders from the gamma quadrant, with the Federation being the good guys. The Founders were perhaps not necessarily evil, but they had a strong distrust of others and a belief that the non-shapeshifters would wipe them out if they got a chance.
The thing about the Founders is that with their shapeshifting abilities they were pretty much the best spies and infiltrators in the galaxy. We know they infiltrated to the highest levels of Klingon government.
I don't remember if it was ever confirmed that they made it to high levels in the Federation, too, but you have to assume they did. But then they should be able to figure out that Federation really are the good guys. The Federation really wants peace between every intelligent species. They really should join the Federation rather than fear it.
So why didn't they?
Perhaps it is because they aren't the only ones who have infiltrated and placed people high in the Federation government? From TOS and TNG we know that others have tried or succeeded at that before.
So maybe the reason the Founders absolutely distrust the Federation is because they know that the people who appear to be in charge and are pushing the peace and unity message are actually not the ones running things. The peace and unity people are just clueless puppets of the real masters.
End DS9 with Sisko discovering the truth, the Federation's masters discovering that Sisko is on to them, and Sisko going on the run.
That sets up at least two more series.
The first one could cover Sisko on the run, working in the shadows to build up secret opposition to the Federation's evil masters, slowly spreading the word to others he can trust, like Picard on the Enterprise, and convincing Federation enemies like the Cardassians that they are better off with a Federation that really is what is claims to be rather than a Federation secretly run by evil aliens and so should help save the Federation.
The second series, "Star Trek: Civil War", could cover when matters get to a head, and open hostilities break out withing The Federation.
You could still have Voyager in there...have the civil war start while Voyager is lost. They can come back into the middle of it.
There's probably even plenty for a third series after Civil War.
... that being said, an authoritarian state with decentralized power structure is also an interesting concept. The episodes about social scoring from Black Mirror [1] and The Orville [2] might go into that direction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)
[2] https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule
I watched Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), The Expanse, Orville, Continuum, Altered Carbon S1, Farscape, Firefly, Travelers, Dark, and even Stargate Universe.
What do you recommend watching next?
Exactly! This is why The Orville is a better Star Trek than the official reboot. Sci-Fi was always about exploring ethical dilemmas in current society. Just portraying them as either a different species (representing a some subgroup in our society) or potential outcomes of policies if they were to be abused. I mean, if you think Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and Altered Carbon) is just a gritty Sci-Fi Film Noir, then you missed half of the movie which was about socio-economic status and struggles (specifically Blade Runner is critical of Reganomics).
I tend to like movies/shows on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics like the movie less than the other users, e.g. The Orville https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville
P.S.: And audience score should roughly be above 70.
> In my opinion, this is a decision that allows for a far wider range of character development.
This may be the core disagreement, I (and I'm guessing GP) don't like this decision. Star Trek was an unique word in sci-fi (at least on-screen sci-fi) because of that bright idealism, that utopia. "An imperfect Starfleet can employ a monstrous starship captain that murders to keep its secrets"[0], and done regularly, this makes the show just another run-of-the-mill sci-fi.
(I do like how Klingons were fleshed out as a species in DIS, though; it's my favorite aspect of the show.)
There's plenty of sci-fi shows and movies. Star Trek, in its TNG to ENT era, was unique in terms of positivity and optimism. I miss that, because (with the possible exception of the Orville) there's nothing like that anymore.
--
[0] - To the extent that Sisko once facilitated murder to keep a secret hidden, this infamous DS9 episode works precisely because it's a one-off situation that's in a stark contrast with the overall behavior of the character and setting of the show.
I saw a few clips of ST:Discovery and nearly had an apoplexy. When the ship spins (rolls) on its longitudinal axis and disappears (using the "spore drive"...) I pretty much lost my mind for a moment.
Then it reappears with a flash that illuminates the nebula in the background. There are no clouds in space. Nebulas are big, really big. It would be light-years away. But the ship's photo-backwash lights it up like a flash bulb! I know Star Trek isn't hard sci-fi, but that's pathetic.
And the "spore drive"!? Who thought that up? (I know about mycorrhiza and all that, I'm not ignorant) The universe is pervaded by invisible intangible cosmic fungus? That somehow enables FTL teleportation? And keeps people alive in limbo after they die? That might be Lovecraft but it's not Roddenberry.
And they named the "astromycologist" character after the real guy!? (Paul Stamets) Did they ask him? That's just so weird.
To me it feels like it's made to mock Star Trek fans. Watching it (just for about ~4 minutes) made me feel like the network and producers are just mocking me. (And not in a good way. I love Galaxy Quest, because it's obviously made with love and, yes, respect for the show(s) it mocks. When Sigourney Weaver loses it and starts ranting about how it's a dumb episode, nobody would design a space ship with giant crushers and fire spouts... Yeah, it's awesome!)
Discovery is more cartoonish than the actual cartoon. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series )
I gotta agree that The Orville carries the torch forward far far better than these new Star Trek shows & movies.
> And then it turns out similar to "Ethics"
Perhaps, but that's Star Trek. It wasn't always obvious how the episode would end.
> Pretty wild to count Enterprise as "real Trek", but not Discovery.
Why? TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT, together with movies from TMP to NEM, form a certain coherent whole - both artistically, with themes, styles, pacing, and story-wise with a shared universe. Both Discovery and Picard, as well as JJ's movies, depart from that significantly. The style is different, the pacing is different, the stories and ethics are different (arguably much more shallow).
The Orville, though it was meant as a TNG-era Star Trek parody, seems much closer in pacing, style and ethics to that core TNG-era trek than Discovery.
> TNG was seminal and I loved it growing up too, but let's be real, it's showing its age quite badly these days
How so? Remastered version holds up pretty well today, I'd say.
"Captain's log, stardate 73740.9. The Enterprise has taken on board a distinguished Federation virologist, dr. Daniel Tillett, to help him with his search for a less harmful strain of the virus that's currently ravaging several planets in Federation space. The doctor is confident that such an attenuated strain could be used to swiftly end the ongoing pandemic."
I would watch that episode. Hell, I'd watch any new episode; unfortunately, the only proper Star Trek we've had since Enterprise stopped airing is The Orville.
Sounds a lot like The Orville episode "Majority Rule".
The Orville is the spiritual successor to TNG in my opinion.
If you can get past the somewhat juvenile humor in the early episodes it's surprisingly good.
"The Orville" had an episode where an alien culture used a procedure that sampled teeth to determine the exact birthdate of a person.
There's not much in the tooth apatite that would be useful for radiometric dating on the time scale of a single human lifespan, though. I don't think you could do it with radiometrics, no matter what you sampled. Anything precise enough to indicate one year within a range of 100 would probably kill the animal with its radiation, even if it were naturally common enough to be taken up by living organisms.
It may be that a tooth is an easy source of original DNA, and approximate age may be extrapolated from accumulation of copy-error mutations in different types of cells in the body, which would be affected by the frequency of division. So by comparing DNA found in the tooth mineral against that found in the tooth nerve cells, and in the tooth blood supply, it might be possible to narrow the range of possible whole-organism ages by referencing mean mutation rates, and then further narrow it by checking telomere lengths. Seems like that might vary somewhat by individual, and their history of radiation exposure.
The Orville (especially season 2, but really from ~Ep 4 onward) is actually a really solid series. I'm a big fan; after the second season it's really more like "TNG with minor Seth McFarlane moments" than "Family Guy does Star Trek".
See the "Lasting Impressions" episode from "The Orville" which involves exactly that plot. Pretty good episode, actually.
I stopped watching early in the season. The episode with the severed babies head... where it became clear that we're gonna get a spin-off about StarFleet spies... No thanks, as a lifelong Trekkie it felt strange to switch off. But I started watching the Orville and am loving it.
Something like a recent episode of The Orville perhaps? Where they find someones phone from the 21st, download all the messages, calls, etc and uses the holodeck to recreate what it might be like.
The EU Parliament, who we vote for every 5 years (and have elections coming up), vote for a law. You don't like said law, therefore it's undemocratic?
The way the parliament is elected is quite fair - it gives a little more power to people in smaller countries, but that's not unusual (UK westminster constituencies vary from 22k to 120k. U.S. congress areas are more even, ranging from 500k to 1 million). There's an argument that it should be more even than the current 11:1 ratio, but we call the U.S. senate democratic and that's a 69:1 ratio.
The actual choice of MEP comes down to a proportionate election, meaning that if you get 15% of the votes, you get 15% of the MEPs. This beats fptp systems where MPs in the house of commons are elected with as few as 30% of the votes cast.
Voting for a representative is the very essence of representative democracy. Perhaps we should have direct democracy. As it happens I watched an episode of The Orville[0] last night which covered this scenario.
Personally I'm a fan of representative democracy. It's the worst system except for all the others. I expect my representitive to work full time in understanding proposals and voting on my behalf, but they are a representitive, not a delegate. This is where direct PR falls down (who gets the seats is down to the party, not to the voter. I can't vote for Candidate B rather than candidate A if they are part of the same party. STV works better in this case, although 90% of voters don't really care and in the UK 80% don't even know who their MP is!
[0] https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule
Maybe I'm desensitised from political agendas in films now, but from Captain Marvel I really didn't get a overwhelming feminist agenda that I felt impeded it from being a genuinely entertaining movie.
I'm disappointed about Brie's comment about Wrinkle in Time, however. It really wasn't a great film. The single feminist angle of 'girl saves boy' doesn't make it a great film. All I got was an "evil is a alternate entity you can defeat and bad actions aren't your own fault" lesson. This I thought was quite dangerous for children.
It's unfair to discard people's opinion just because they're white and 40. Just as much it's unfair to review bomb a movie because the actor said something in an interview.
I fully get this article for defending this movie and I'm also upset by the disproportionate ratings we're seeing from critics and audiences (see Orville vs Star Trek: Discovery). But something else stinks about this article.
I have a feeling that China is in the process of creating a huge unintended consequence...
China has a middle class of roughly 450 million people. [0] My guess is that most of those blocked are people from the middle class. (Why bother blocking access to someone who can't afford it anyway?)
If that assumption is anywhere near correct (and it could be wrong), then roughly 5% of the middle class were blocked from significant economic activity.
If this continues, and grows (I'm thinking of that episode of The Orville, where people had social credit scores on their name-tag [1]), then they could easily be blocking 10% or more of their middle class.
This has to have negative economic consequences that impact the GDP of the country at some point. An ironic outcome is that it could cause people to become overly concerned about debt, and stop consuming. If that happened at a large scale, China would face innumerable problems.
[0] - https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/01/chinas-middle-class-is-pulling-up-the-ladder-behind-itself/ [1] - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/
They could believe that the meaning of the different signs changes as the corresponding constellations change.
For an entertaining science fiction look at that possibility, see season 2 episode 5 of "The Orville". Briefly, they encounter a civilization that believes strongly in astrology, to the point of using it as the basis of a very rigid caste system that pretty much determines at birth what jobs are open to you and what your place will be in society.
I don't want to give any spoilers, but I will say that the question of what happens when a constellation changes is an important one in this episode.
I can't help but think of the episode Majority Rule from The Orville, but more sinister and less campy...
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/
There was also an episode ("Majority Rules") of "The Orville" with a similar theme.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville/s01/e07
Lol, the Orville had an episode called 'Majority Rule' that is a funny take at a total democracy.
"The Orville" has season 2 coming out.
I gotta hand it to MacFarlane, he's carrying the torch forward better than anybody else, IMHO.
Orville is clearly made by someone who loves star trek. It's a comedy but it has good stories that could have been TNG episodes.
"Orville", a semi-serious version of Star Trek by Seth MacFarlane has one amusing "Black Mirror"-ultra-lite episode about this: "Majority Rule". In this world, law has been replaced by a simple upvote/downvote system and pictures of people doing stupid things can go viral on a "global feed".
Are you talking about tht one lousy Voyager episode? I hardly think that invalidates the ethos of the whole franchise?
Maybe you prefer "The Orville"?
> I do miss the optimistic view of the original Star Trek series.
If you haven't yet, check out The Orville. It's the spiritual successor to Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek.
It got badly marketed as a comedy in space akin to Galaxy Quest, but that was mostly bad marketing. The first episode or two were high on the comedy (and I've heard a theory that they did it to trick Fox into picking up the series), but it rapidly toned down, to where it's more like Star Trek with realistic people instead of a utopian version of humanity without any vices.
For a one-episode introduction, if the initial comedy turns you off, I suggest episode 3, About a Girl.
The Orville is like watching more episodes of TNG in all the best ways. I can’t recommend it enough.
"The Orville" is on my to-watch list. "Discovery", well... it would stand on its own as a general sci-fi show, but it just isn't Star Trek. The same applies to the JJ Abrams reboot movies. IMO they butchered all the good things about Star Trek, while retaining all the bad ones. So for me, Star Trek franchise still ends at Nemesis (movie) / Enterprise (series).
I'd personally recommend:
* The Next Generation (starting point, but be prepared to sit through the slower first seasons). * DS9 * Voyager (however optionally skip anything from the Kess seasons that you feel like)
I only liked about 1/3rd of Star Trek Enterprise episodes, the entire series is kind of filler. Has that same wasted potential feeling that I got from Stargate Universe; it COULD have been more interesting if the pacing had been better and if they had focused on fitting the stories in to an overall plotline (much more like Babylon 5; which, BTW, you should TOTALLY watch if you haven't).
Star Trek Discovery was good, but is more an edgier more action packed thriller kind of series than the earlier series. I do like where they're going with rebooting the overall universe though and I feel that this brings the modern FX capacity in to the series in a way that makes sense for today.
For something you can show to your parents or if you generally don't get Star Trek, the Orville is a GREAT comedy focused take on the ideas that Star Trek (everything) classically presented, but covering modern social issues.
It's the "Majority Rule" episode of The Orville:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orville#Episodes
It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show.
I had a similar experience last year trying to watch "The Orville" using the Fox Now app. First they place restrictions so that you can only watch the 4 most recent episodes.
And then the Android app itself was horribly slow and crashy. The interactive ads were annoying, but I could have lived with it if everything else had worked smoothly.
I'm so lazy these days that if it isn't already available on Netflix, I won't bother watching it. There's enough stuff on there that I can just watch something else. I'm also cycling through some Stanford physics lectures by Leonard Susskind, which satisfies my desires for intellectual simulation right now.
I get where you're coming from and I see that Orville is deliberately trying to be different, often in a good way but even taking later episodes into account, I think this one really stands out in a bad way.
> They SHOULD have lost the trial, and they DID, unlike TNG where everyone can quickly become an expert legal representative within 48 hours.
This isn't about becoming lawyers, this is about the otherwise shown as brilliant and logical crew throwing all their judgement out the window and making arguments like "all these other species lack the issue you're describing, that means yours does too" and making emotional appeals without looking for _any_ kind of evidence.
Look at their approaches to other problems. They're generally pretty rational and apply logic and reason.
> They argued like regular people argue, not lawyers.
But they're not regular people, they're highly trained explorers, often charged with diplomatic missions and making contact with other cultures. Plus they have a ton of science staff and a superintelligent walking computer.
They don't need to be lawyers but they _do_ need to act like they can do their jobs, at least somewhat.
> I agree with your assessment, but suspect that the aloofness was intentional
I agree with you too that it was intentional but I really don't think it made sense. Am I really supposed to expect that the crew I saw in episode 3 is the same crew I saw in the other episodes?
I could believe it if they showed that the admiralty was so disappointed in their performance that they made them undergo additional training between episodes 3 and 4 but that wasn't the case.
> Totally cool if you don't, but if you keep watching you might enjoy it more if you associate the cringeworthy moments with the writers telling you to think about the scene more. At least it worked for me.
I've kept watching it and I've mostly liked it but that episode just really stood out to me as bad.
(Not the guy you responded to, but adding anyways.)
The cleverness of that episode is, in part, how it contrasts TNG. I agree with your assessment of the situation, and judging by the way The Orville pulls from TNG, it was intentional. They SHOULD have lost the trial, and they DID, unlike TNG where everyone can quickly become an expert legal representative within 48 hours. It's analogous to why they have awkward quote scenes - in TNG everyone had a quote at the ready for any situation, but in reality, who does that? They argued like regular people argue, not lawyers. And true to Trek nature, even though they lost, they still won a little by bringing out the female author.
So, you're right that they argued with emotion instead of logic, but you have to always be drawing from similar TNG situations with The Orville. It's why you see awkward elevator scenes and people spit out disgusting alien food. Those 'bad' jokes are fun references to TNG. How many times does Picard boldly proclaim to a Klingon that he looks forward to partaking in some zany, macho, ceremonial meal? How many times do we see him with said food in his mouth?
I think The Orville is the best example of "you get what you put into it." Some people want to sit back and take it at face value, so the jokes are terrible and juvenile. Some people engage in every scene like a thought experiment and think about all the threads connecting the characters, the comedy, and the source material, and they probably love the show. And most people are somewhere in between.
I'm far more on the loving it side and part of that is because the more I think about the scenes I don't like, the more I realize that this show is actually really complex. Most of the scenes I disliked on first viewing have become my favorites on second viewing because even when I think I know what it's going for, they slide a whole sub-commentary right under my nose. My first reaction is usually that I'm overthinking it, that it can't be X, but suddenly X is everywhere. For example, 'About a Girl' only seriously addresses gender issues in the reveal of the female author. The vast majority of that episode and its most important points have nothing to do with gender.
And, finally, my favorite aspect of The Orville is that they take a very middle of the road approach, pointing out the faults of conservatives and liberals pretty damn equally. The show isn't trying to say which way is right and just wants to start a conversation. With how divided the US has become, I didn't think there was any way to talk about these issues on TV without alienating one side or the other, but the writers have done a remarkable job of walking that very narrow line.
Anyhow, sorry for blabbing and going off topic a bit. I just wanted to say I agree with your assessment, but suspect that the aloofness was intentional. There was no underdog coming from behind to save the day, no deus ex machina, no pardon from the governor 5 seconds before the execution. It was a way for the writers to say, "This shit matters. Approach it like an amateur and there will be real consequences." Usually it takes shows a season to do the same by killing off a character. They did it in episode 3 and centered around a character that had 4-ish (?) lines in the entire series. And it was still a gut-punch. Okay, I'm rambling again. Anyhoo... so I kinda like the show. Totally cool if you don't, but if you keep watching you might enjoy it more if you associate the cringeworthy moments with the writers telling you to think about the scene more. At least it worked for me.
Oh yes, so much yes. I hate ST:D. To me, ST:D entirely misses the point of Star Trek. How could they write a Star Trek series without a crew? Seriously, there hasn't been a single scene where the doctor cared for patients, the engineer engineered, or any other person actually did their job. They are all just actors clowning around on a sound stage, without any world building or, you know, science fiction. And don't get me started on the characters or the sad excuse of a plot (seriously, the spend SO MUCH foreshadowing on "Klingons attack, Federation wins"???) Ugh, I hate it.
But luckily, there is the Orville. After every episode of ST:D, I would watch an episode of the Orville. Honestly, I would have given up on modern science fiction if it were not for the Orville.
(I don't like modern TV series. I don't like the "bingeable" cliffhangers. I don't like the negativity. I don't like that "epic" CG effects have become more important than likeable characters or a coherent world. I don't like the blatant stupidity of most if the writing. I really haven't watched TV for about a decade. Maybe the Orville is just a throwback to older times. But I like it. )
(spoiler alert!) The premise IS an emotional one. The entire construct of the episode is to find a place where logic doesn't rule the day(gender issues are, today, far from solved). Indeed, The Orville crew LOST the fight in the end, so... Your point is solidly made, and the episode agreed with you. In what way is that not freek'n awesome?
Yes.
It is very rare that initial episodes of any new series are good. TNG was atrocious.
In the case of The Orville, there was way too much humor, specially in the first episode. Now it's trending more to a sporadic, comedic relief at times, instead of a full blown comedy.
IMHO, they seem to be much closer to finding the sweet spot now. The latest one was a great sci fi episode (even if the premise was nothing new), but still managed to deliver a few good jokes.
Well, that assumes you are ok with shows that don't take themselves seriously all the friggin time. The Orville is supposed to be crewed by a B team, they are not the flagship.
It's almost like they can't decide whether or not they want to be a more "real" Star Trek or a "goofy Star trek with bad jokes".
I get the feeling Seth wants to push it towards the latter, probably because he writes 90% of the goofy bad jokes himself. But if he truly wants to make the series a success, he needs to do 2 things:
1) Do more Rodenberry-esque episodes like that episode 4 you mentioned, which I still think was the best so far.
2) Hire a great full-time comedy writer, if they really want to keep the "goofy" aspect of the show, which I don't think is bad per se - it's the terrible jokes that kill it, not the fact that it tries to be funny.
If they do that for season 2, they may actually get most of the Star Trek fans to watch it, and maybe quit watching STD if they haven't already. Most of the people that I saw were disappointed with Orville were disappointed because it did too little of 1) and too much of 2) (mainly the bad jokes, though).
I think Orville has the potential to be a 7-10 season iconic show if they shape it towards what the people actually want it to be rather than Seth's original vision. If nothing changes, it will remain a mediocre show, and maybe get killed after 3-4 seasons when people get bored with the same tired old jokes.
Odd, that was the episode that just about made me drop the series.
The crew of the Orville was driven by emotion, barely took any time to consider the aliens' point of view, didn't seek any evidence for either side's position and argued their point primarily with logical fallacies ("look, these problems don't exist in other species, so clearly they can't exist in yours").
I don't think this episode could have worked in TNG because the episode would boil down to:
"Picard: What evidence do you have to support your beliefs?"
"Aliens: Uhh, why do we need evidence, clearly it is this way?"
"Picard: Let's find some evidence"
It had its upsides for sure but it's definitely not comparable to TNG.
This is something I'm quite pleased about - I'm really enjoying Discovery, because it's not the same as Enterprise and Voyager were. (Can't stand Voyager, I stopped watching when I saw the pattern in how it was going to play out in every episode.)
To me, The Orville is more like the better "light" TNG episodes, and happily it doesn't put much work into looking at the ethics of a situation unlike some TNG episodes. My prime example is the doctor's actions against her captor in episode 8 - I thought they were going to court martial her and remove what I feel to be the most 2D character from the show.
I love the 'new trend' of 10 episode story archs... And I find The Orville's return to single-episode stories to be extremely refreshing.
The thing that I like about Discovery (even though I'm preferring "The Orville, at the moment) is that it feels like a lead-in to the Trek that I know and love. Obviously, something had to happen to take people from where we are now to where TNG was. We didn't just instantly switch as a species from being war-hungry and emotional to being hand-in-hand with all these other species. It's refreshing to me to think that we discovered extra-terrestrial life (and maybe they discovered us) first and then became a unified species and I'm enjoying seeing this first hand.
That being said, I do not trust Scott Buck, the show runner, at all. He's taken these great concepts that had really strong beginnings and muddled them up and ruined them too many times for me to be happy with what we have. Case in point, the latest episode. It was absolutely great to me and felt Trek-y and funny and smart while feeling modern and real. They gave a good nod to a TOS character again while respecting him and making me prefer this iteration of him. There was some thoughtfulness to the writing, the acting was pretty great, and I could tell that they were trying to lead people to look at things from a different perspective which is very Trek to me. But then it all went sideways at the very end when the bad guy's comeuppance turns into nothing more than an annoyance and, for some reason, the Federation allows a criminal to (SPOILER ALERT) leave without any kind of repercussion or punishment for trying to hijack the Federation's premiere starship and, although the situation washes it away, kill several of its chief officers and crew members. It's backwards.
I'm still going to keep watching and enjoying but the inconsistency is really hard for me to get over. I don't mind if they're slightly inconsistent from series to series but we're only 7 episodes in and they're already being inconsistent with not only the universe they're playing in but also their own universe that they've set up.
It seems that I am unable to navigate the offerings.
I don't navigate them at all. I hear about shows from coworkers, or occasionally trip across something right here on HN. As a recent example, I present The Orville. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15333242) I mean, I'd heard of it, but it didn't sound like it was for me. As the thread shows, I was wrong. Now my wife and I are hooked. Or sometimes a show will just get mentioned in passing here, I'll look it up, watch an episode to find out if we'll like it. Once in a great while Netflix or iTunes will come up with something "you might like, mikestew!" that's worth watching. Not very often, though.
That's it, we just watch what I've tripped across serendipitously. And we can't keep up (just now getting to the third season of 12 Monkeys). Granted, our viewing habits might not match most (if there's nothing on, then we do something else). But if we want to sit down and watch something, we rarely lack for something of quality.
Contrast that with the "25 years ago" you use as a comparison. My memory of TV in the 90s was using the TV set to watch movies and ST:NG. I don't think we watched much, if any, actual TV shows because I recall that there was nothing worth watching except ST:NG.
Games are the same for me, whatever my circle mentions, and whatever Bethesda has put out recently. That might or might not work for others, especially if you don't like RPGs like Bethesda puts out. I've tried paying attention to IGN and the like, but, yeah...
That's not to argue that it isn't a crapfest out there. It's partially why I quit paying attention. Let's take Modern Family as an example. Seems to get rave reviews, it's been on for a while. Hmm, might be decent. I didn't even know that shows still did laugh tracks. And the jokes were recycled versions of what was on TV 40 years ago in the 70s. Drop an episode in a time machine to 1978, and the only difference viewers would notice are those strange glass hand-held devices the characters keep staring at, and wow, their microwave sure is small.
The phrase was used in the last episode of The Orville, I think we should accept that into cannon and ignore everything JJ Abrams has done.
Aside from that, Star Trek has Latinum bars and Credits as the plot dictates.
It's advertised as a comedy show and with Seth MacFarlane (of Family Guy) headlining it I also assumed it was some cheap Galaxy Quest-esque jab at Star Trek. There's some of that, in particular taking some jabs at Star Trek tropes (e.g. one situation being neatly resolved by the crew using seatbelts)[1].
But it's not just some cheap comedy. Yes there's campy humor that's basically the equivalent of TOS not taking itself quite seriously, but it's in every other way a proper modern day sequel to TNG, and the humor doesn't get in the way of that.
I'm not going to spoil the 3rd episode of it that just came out, but it's a "moral conundrum" episode of the likes TNG was famous for, except it's IMNSHO executed better than any such TNG episode. Those tended to get resolved with some Deus Ex Machina or something resembling a stereotypically happy American ending, but The Orville took the hard way out. I was very impressed.
1. For those unfamiliar with Star Trek: Approximately half of on-screen fatalities could be prevented by some combination of seatbelt usage, and the computer consoles not being powered by 100,000 volts of electricity with no fuses or circuit breakers[2].
2. The other half being prevented by not bringing no-name red shirts along on the away mission.
If you're a fan of classic Trek check out The Orville. There's just 3 episodes out but so far it's shaping up to be a true spiritual sequel to 90s Trek in ways the JJ Abrahams-esque Discovery show won't be, judging from the first two episodes.