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News Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville

tharpdevenport said:
Yeah, there are actually legally standards that must be met, you just can't sue because of this or that because so-and-so thinks it's a rip off and can be sued.
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Actually, people often sue when there's very little legal basis because they know they can scare people into compliance with threats and potential legal fees. Anti-SLAPP laws are often insufficient to prevent such lawsuits, and DMCA takedowns are often abused with impunity.

That said, FOX has lawyers and money, and I don't think The Orville is similar enough to infringe, so CBS stands little chance of actually prevailing in a legal battle. My point was that if The Orville could be successfully sued, Seaquest wouldn't be safe either.
137th Gebirg said:
That one was basically a Trolls rip-off, but I don't think the franchise can be relegated to ancient history quite yet.
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I think the Smurfs actually predate them by a year, but it's close.
 
Marc said:
As the show is generally been seen as referencing Star Trek I'm going to say that the later was never great for giving much in the way of of introduction or detailing to the characters are the beginning.
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I don't agree. While some characters don't get a lot of introduction, I still feel like I know more about most of them after just the pilot than anyone on The Orville outside of Mercer, the XO, and maybe Malloy. But maybe my view is colored by knowing what the characters are like later or by having rewatched DS9's pilot recently - I think every main character gets one or two scenes that flesh them out at least on a basic level.

tharpdevenport said:
* The action scenes (mostly).
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I think the action scenes were among the low points of the episode.

BillJ said:
Bland was a Voyager thing. And a DS9 thing. And a TNG thing. Enterprise tried to escape, with mixed results.
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Wow, I have seen DS9 called a lot of things, but "bland" has never been one of them before.

dodge said:
The Cage borrowed stuff, liberally, from The Forbidden Planet.
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Other than an advanced race that died or mostly died off, that only has ruins remaining below the surface what else do you think was borrowed? The Bellerophon was a military vessel, but more so than the Enterprise. There was an CO, XO, and doctor as the main three, but the storylines and much else was very different. I guess the blue/grey color scheme was similar. Hmm...
 
Serveaux said:
Individual critics may or may not have "professional standards" or any real critical acumen. The best gauge of this sort of thing is still to follow a few folks who you've found both observant and whose tastes you share.
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Yup, this is pretty much how I handle critics these days. I ignored all of the reviews for The Orville until Vox and A.V. Club came out with their pieces. Conversely, I completely ignore A.V. Club's film reviews because I long since learned I almost always disagree with them, which is weird considering how much I agree with their television reviews.

I, too, mourn the loss of Roger Ebert, as well as Gene Siskel. I don't always agree with them but damn they always presented good arguments for why they liked or didn't like a film.
 
Matthew Raymond said:
Actually, people often sue when there's very little legal basis because they know they can scare people into compliance with threats and potential legal fees. Anti-SLAPP laws are often insufficient to prevent such lawsuits, and DMCA takedowns are often abused with impunity.
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Well, yes, technically you can file lawsuits until the cows comes home, but there is a pre-trail where the judge can toss out frivolous cases and ones with no legal merit/damages.

Others may attempt a threatening cease and desist letter from a law firm and hope the party isn't smart enough to know if they need to or not need to comply or tell them to simply go pound sand.
 
We still reference ancient mythology from thousands of years ago in our everyday speech. Finding examples isn't a herculean effort, if you know what I mean. That Smurfs would still be known conversationally in 400 years isn't unbelievable.
 
CardassianAssassin said:
Your comment would make sense if one of the characters had interrupted the Professor on the view screen and yelled "SET A COURSE OUT OF THIS SYSTEM, THERES A DOG LICKING ITS BALLS!" But it was nothing of the kind.

Instead it was just a quip from one co-worker to the other, which is exactly what you could expect from somebody who just saw ball-licking on a screen the size of a living room wall.

That one, and the 'bitch' comment was a way of humanizing the characters for me.

Seemed like a much more genuine dialogue than the stilted speech we're used to from a sci-if show, and I kinda liked it.

Heck, I'm pretty sure that in 400 years when we fly around in space on a daily basis, a cheating exwife might still be called 'a bitch' by her husbands best friend.
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Incongruous to how I've been conditioned to feel a sci-fi show feels like. Both Trek and SW are mostly stilted and serious; humor is not dick-drawing, balls-licking, generally. There's a tone. This show wants to imitate a genre with a tone to it, but violate it, but only sometimes. I found that incongruous. If ya like it, like it.

JD said:
I keep seeing people calling it a parody, but it's not it's a comedy done in a Star Trek style.



I'm sorry, but if you don't like the kind of humor in The Orville, then why the hell were you watching a Seth McFarlane show? I know they were talking about how it wasn't as much of a straight comedy as most of McFarlane's stuff, but it's still pretty damn clear from the commercials what kind of humor is in the show.
Seth McFarlane and his style of humor is also pretty well known at this point, so I would anybody who pays even the slightest amount of attention to the media would know who he is and what he does.
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I was giving it a try, same as everybody.
 
Captain of the USS Averof said:
Perhaps @Matthew Raymond was talking about the original creations? Smurfs first appeared in 1958, Troll dolls were created in 1959.
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Ah - fair enough. That makes sense, yes. I was referring to the most recent incarnations. The Trolls movie was a fairly big hit last year and the Smurf property owners clearly wanted to play catch-up by making a similar over-saturated and trippy CG song-fest with happy little creatures. :)
 
‘The Orville’ Premiere Rating Adjusted Up To 2.8

In the zone-adjusted finals for Sunday, the debut of Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi dramedy The Orville on Fox rose from a 2.3 and 7.3 million viewers to a 2.8 adults 18-49 rating and 8.6 million viewers.

In the demo, The Orville matched the debuts of NBC’s drama This Is Us and Fox’s comedy The Mick, the highest-rated launches last season (excluding 24: Legacy, which followed the Super Bowl).

Like The Orville, midseason entry The Mick too had an NFL lead-in. The Orville outpaced the comparable football-boosted fall premiere of Fox’s comedy Son Of Zorn last year (2.4).

In men 18-34, the core constituency for creator and star MacFarlane’s animated series, The Orville posted the highest rated broadcast hourlong series debut since Fox’s Gotham on 9/22/14 (excluding post Super Bowl lead-outs).
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Ometiklan said:
Wow, I have seen DS9 called a lot of things, but "bland" has never been one of them before.
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It was if you watched much on TV at the time other than Star Trek.


Other than an advanced race that died or mostly died off, that only has ruins remaining below the surface what else...was borrowed?
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Everything except the guy with the pointed ears and the name of the ship.
 
Watched the show last night. No outstanding compared to previous Trek - but such a relief from all present day shows that a rough and edgy (e.g. characters not liking each other instead of wearing uniform and being a team).

I love it.
 
So I watched the pilot, and overall, I did like it and will continue to watch. It kind of feels like Star Trek. Obviously.

I actually found the humor to be the weakest part of the show, not because I don't want humor in sci-fi (loved Galaxy Quest), but because I didn't find the jokes funny. The timing wasn't right.

The adventure part of the show was fun. I honestly think they could have something here, if they go more toward the sci-fi and less toward the goofy humor. Either that, or go all in, and just do goofy humor.

If this show learns its identity, it could be Star Trek lite, but without the canon. I'll give it another go.
 
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