"The Orville". A Seth McFarlane Space Adventure on Fox

Compared to the utter crap that the first and most of season 2 of STNG, this was a good kickoff. It has more realism about it than Trek on minor levels like drinking soda or going to the bathroom, or GASP Seatbelts. I find that refreshing. I've always joked about Arbor Day so that was a good moment for me. My only gripe, what about Derek? Did she kill him or did they just let a traitor and murderer go? I think as they get more comfortable in their roles this can be a real pleasure to watch.
 
Having seen the first episode, it wasn't as funny as I'd hoped it would be. The "Arbor Day" joke was the only laugh I had that was genuine and completely unforced. And the main set (bridge) wasn't detailed enough, and or the camera angle was too wide and made it seem awfully empty. But what I really liked, and what I will watch the next episode for, is the character makeups and the vessel and space station designs. What I was surprised by was that there wasn't an overtly sexual, scantily or tightly clad female character. Everyone was wearing the same frumpy outfit. I'm not sure whether I should commend that fact, or be disinterested in the series by it. ;) If you're going to spoof Star Trek, shouldn't you have an over the top 7of9, or a fig leafed wearing green gal? Or go the other way and make it a barely dressed dude? Or are the frumpy outfits the spoof and I'm missing the joke? One way or the other, it's a time killer for the hour before Fear The Walking Dead.
 
The Orville was ok, immature humor as would be expected from McFarlane. His acting seems a bit flat and emotionless. A few LOL moments, the ogre's voice even had my wife laughing. I'll stick with it for now. I don't particularly like the ship. The front is cool but the triple engines in the back looks bad. SFX looked cartoonish at times but not bad.
 
I liked it which means it will probably get axed soon. I liked the coming attractions and I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.
 
I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I figured there would be more toilet humor. There was some, but not as bad. I like that they built a physical model. I saw a short interview with Seth where he basically demanded that there be a physical model of the ship be built for the show as he doesn't like the look of CGI ships. The organic look of the ship is definitely not what we are used to unless you count the last couple Trek movies with their squid looking bad guy ships.

Would love to see some good screen grabs of all the hand held props. The phaser/laser gun/rifles all looked pretty good so far.

I'll definitely watch next week.
 
Overall I'm actually still kind of on the fence. As I said, I'll watch next week.

But, just to break it down a little, now that I've had time to think about it:

I like the look. Yes the CGI was cartoony in places, but for TV it was actually pretty good. Overall I think this show looks more like Star Trek than Star Trek does, at least from what we've seen so far. I also like the ship a lot.


It was less funny than I expected, although I did have a couple of genuine laugh moments. But, now that I've seen it, I almost want it to be even less funny than it was. Surprisingly, I liked the strait-up parts more than the comedy and I hope they don't miss out on real potential there. Right now it's lost in between comedy and serious and seems to have some trouble deciding what it is.
 
All the un-Trek-like banter aside, I'm predicting that this will be a lot more respectful to Trek than Discovery will be.

Discovery will still be funnier.. Not intentionally, but still...

Discovery will be crap, we already know that. Still, I'll give it at least a couple of episodes to hang itself. I did like Orville a lot, the effects were genuinely good, they didn't hit you over the head with the Star Trek elements and hopefully it will stand more on its own feet than try to stand on Star Trek's shoulders. And I never felt like it needed a laugh track, which is great because I detest sitcoms with a passion. Let the audience decide what's funny and what's not and don't force the humor. If the audience gets the joke, they'll laugh. Don't make the whole show about the jokes, just make a genuinely good show.

So I'm on board.
 
Compared to the utter crap that the first and most of season 2 of STNG, this was a good kickoff. It has more realism about it than Trek on minor levels like drinking soda or going to the bathroom, or GASP Seatbelts. I find that refreshing. I've always joked about Arbor Day so that was a good moment for me. My only gripe, what about Derek? Did she kill him or did they just let a traitor and murderer go? I think as they get more comfortable in their roles this can be a real pleasure to watch.
The first season of TNG was so cringy that it put me off of following the show completely - even after folks were telling me it got better it was hard to build any enthusiasm about it.
 
I enjoyed it, turned out to be exactly what I was expecting. There's a review out there that really rakes Seth McFarlane over the coals for his transgender allegory in an upcoming episode so I'm curious to see that play out.
 
Had high hopes... but, I found it to be painfully bad.

Agreed, I like Seth, love Family Guy and some of his other stuff, but this was bad. Just dull and dry, humor was terribly forced and just not funny. Sadly, not sure this is going to last.
 
Well, we all seem to be split on this show. That kinda surprises me with all the like minded people here.
 
I think maybe I was looking for edgier, funnier-Seth-like humor. And I'm not talking about his films. Family Guy pushes the limits for broadcast TV, but there's also lots of "safe" humor that makes me laugh, not just the borderline stuff. I think I'm probably projecting expectations from that show onto this one, which I know is not fair because the humor, content, and tone are different. I don't watch American Dad so Family Guy is all I have to really gauge his work on TV. But despite this show being so different from Family Guy, I expect to laugh at his stuff, and I almost always do, just not with this one. I'll keep with it for a little while longer and hope maybe it finds it groove.
 
I liked it, though I agree it could be funnier. I think it'll get there.

I do think though that it's worth pointing out how genius it is in the way it so perfectly follows the structure of TNG. I'll be the first to admit I live the new era of television, and that the realistic space opera action of BSG kind of killed Trek-- but this throwback in style and form to the Trek of my youth is surprisingly fun and welcome.

This could have just been a parody, but it isn't-- which is good. It's been clear for decades now how much love MacFarlane has for Trek, TNG especially, so the fact that this isn't a slapstick parody as much as it is a comedic version of Trek is great. It's also hilarious that as the comedy version the FX are better than most Trek shows of the past... their production design could be a little dirtier, but I'll live.

So for the nerds... uniform color:

Purple= high command
blue = command
red = security
orange = engineering and astrogation
green = life sciences

That seem right?
 
The trailer was great, the episode very stiff and forced. McFarlane belongs behind the camera, not in front of it. I was impressed by the overall production values, though -- effects, sets, costumes, music. It's a great ripoff of Next Generation. I expected more camp riffs on the genre... so many missed opportunities for visual jokes, but it just wasn't actually any funnier than a typical Picard episode. I'll keep watching until it's canceled or I can't stand looking at McFarlane any more.
 

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