Anyway, I would echo the notion that some others have expressed, The Orville vs. Star Trek: Discovery does not make sense as a comparison on quality, as each sets out to accomplish something entirely different and, as such, this is an apples and oranges comparison. It essentially boils down to the rather academic question of whether it's better to do something sophisticated poorly or something simpler well.
However, I think it's fair to say that The Orville more closely (though far from perfectly) resembles the Star Trek of old than Discovery does. This is where Discovery grates with many people – myself included. There is a certain tone which Star Trek should have, and Discovery, much like the reboot films, just come nowhere close to it.
If they had changed one or two aspects it might've worked out, but once you add everything up, it becomes so much that the viewer essentially gets an unpleasant cognitive dissonance, an "uncanny valley" of sorts, where something is presenting itself as Star Trek but misses the familiarity factor. In the case of the Abrams films, this meant you ended up with films that were perfectly good cinema but just not very good Star Trek – and I feel the same way about Discovery: An alright SciFi show that's just not hitting the "Trek" mark.
Some concrete examples? For one thing there's the music. Yeah, it's a niche topic, but I'm a bit of a music nerd, so stick with me. Russo's score for Discovery feels...slightly ADHD. It doesn't have direction, it lacks any notion of thematic-ness, it's just...bland and generic. Even Giacchino's work on the Abrams films is more memorable, and that's saying something. The Orville, despite its vastly lower production value, has managed to avoid this using a simple but clever decision: Multiple composers.
It sounds counterintuitive, but by having McNeely and Debney work together, they achieved the same thing TNG achieved with McCarthy, Chattaway and Jones. Not only does having a "team" of composers allow for a degree of "peer review", it also creates constraints (because you're mindful of not wanting the viewer's immersion to be broken by noticing that an episode has a different composer from another). The three subsequent series followed this lead, and also had continuity from one to the next. Personally, I think CBS should have hired Brian Tyler who did some fantastic work on ENT (also the successor of Jerry Goldsmith, of movie-era fame, at Universal) as lead composer, and then given him a team of 2 or 3 other composers to work with.
Anyway, the music obviously isn't the only issue (just one I'm very opinionated on). Despite not being set in the Kelvinverse, almost everything about the design on Discovery makes it look that way. Excessive holograms, eye candy that feels annoyingly out of place, distracting camera shots that try (and fail miserably) to convey tension and dynamism, egregiously horrendous lighting in literally every. single. shot. Though, at least, they've reined in the excessive lens flare.
Trek has always been brightly but warmly lit (conveying the utopian nature of Roddenberry's vision of the future) with naturalistic contrast. Dark lighting can occur in individual scenes – hell, it might even dominate for an entire episode – but only if this makes some sort of narrative sense. TNG through ENT all do this exceptionally well. An optimistic future simply doesn't involve people fumbling around dimly lit starships as though locked into some kind of perpetual Earth Hour; it doesn't make any sense. Trek has always used wide establishing shots, narrow reverse-shot dialogue cuts, and minimal camera movement. Panning and shaking outside of establishing or finishing shots only occurs, if at all, when a scene is truly dynamic – combat, for example. It does NOT occur in random conference scenes.
Discovery heeds none of these visual conventions. And sure, it does that in order to appear more "cool", but the problem is, this doesn't add any value, while actively removing value by creating the aforementioned "uncanny valley" effect. It isn't even a necessary measure to avoid making the show look outdated. Trek has always been a drama in a SciFi setting, not an eye candy parade with a bit of drama tacked on, and that was reflected in the way it was shot. Look at Suits, look at The Wire, hell, look at many scenes of Breaking Bad and you'll see the same shooting style. What Discovery (much like Abrams) has run with more resembles Star Wars or The Walking Dead – productions focussing far more on visuals and far less on dialogue.
This is also reflected in deciding to go with a main character setup instead of an ensemble cast, which I think on its own wouldn't have been a dealbreaker, but in combination with everything else just exacerbates the problem of Discovery not feeling like Trek. Though it would have also helped if Michael Burnham had been (a) built on believable and relatable premises, (b) even remotely sympathetic as a "person", and (c) not called "Michael" because seriously, all I and anyone else here in the UK can think of when hearing that name is Princess Michael of Kent.
There's also issues in terms of how Discovery does, or rather fails to do, subtext, but I'm not even gonna open that can of worms.
In some ways, I feel like Discovery and The Orville would both be better off if they switched places. If Discovery were outside the Star Trek franchise, with its own distinct universe and lore, it wouldn't hit that "uncanny valley", and a whole lot of people would probably cut it much more slack. Likewise, if The Orville were within the franchise, it would be able to spend less time on exposition (which makes it feel even more Lucas-esque than Discovery at times), while also being forced to take itself slightly more seriously.
Indeed, there are some things which Discovery does well and which The Orville would do well to adapt. Though inhibited by stale dialogue, poor premises, and, in the case of Georgiou, wooden acting, I think it's fair to say Discovery has slightly more rounded characters. Many of The Orville's characters are rather trope-y. Yaphit for instance is, as CinemaSins would put it, discount Glenn Quagmire. This is a pitfall of transitioning from writing situational comedy, and has shown some signs of improving in Season 2, though the show still has far to go in that regard.
Likewise, Discovery's story arc is, imho, a much better approach than the episodic nature of The Orville. Yes, that episodic nature is directly gleaned from TOS and TNG, but the main thing that made DS9 so much more compelling than its predecessors (and VOY a bit disappointing in comparison) is that it did away with that, for good reason: Arcs are what allow character development to take place.
Just look at Picard and Sisko! Picard is my co-favourite Captain with Janeway, but the Picard of All Good Things is essentially the Picard of Encounter at Farpoint, only with a few more wrinkles and less of a stick up his backside. Sisko on the other hand is completely transformed between Emissary and What You Leave Behind. Sure, Sisko's gone through an entire war and a whole bunch of shenanigans with god-like beings, but Picard has gone through being assimilated by the Borg, being tortured by the Cardassians, and multiple encounters with Q. With arcs having become the norm for pretty much any TV drama, hell, even most TV comedies, an episodic show is downright immersion-breaking, because real life doesn't work that way – actions have consequences! I could go on further, but that really would be a tangent.
So, the TL;DR version is, The Orville feels more like Trek than Discovery because of the production choices that went into establishing its tone, but that doesn't mean Discovery is "bad" or "worse than The Orville", or any of the other things that get thrown at it – it's just frustratingly un-Trek-like and would be better off as a completely unrelated show. At the same time, The Orville isn't perfect, it has its own problems, many of which are problems Discovery doesn't have, and can't meaningfully be called "better" than Discovery – it just has a tone that more closely resembles classic Trek, which makes it more appealing to (many of) us fans of the latter. That's it.
However, I think it's fair to say that The Orville more closely (though far from perfectly) resembles the Star Trek of old than Discovery does. This is where Discovery grates with many people – myself included. There is a certain tone which Star Trek should have, and Discovery, much like the reboot films, just come nowhere close to it.
If they had changed one or two aspects it might've worked out, but once you add everything up, it becomes so much that the viewer essentially gets an unpleasant cognitive dissonance, an "uncanny valley" of sorts, where something is presenting itself as Star Trek but misses the familiarity factor. In the case of the Abrams films, this meant you ended up with films that were perfectly good cinema but just not very good Star Trek – and I feel the same way about Discovery: An alright SciFi show that's just not hitting the "Trek" mark.
Some concrete examples? For one thing there's the music. Yeah, it's a niche topic, but I'm a bit of a music nerd, so stick with me. Russo's score for Discovery feels...slightly ADHD. It doesn't have direction, it lacks any notion of thematic-ness, it's just...bland and generic. Even Giacchino's work on the Abrams films is more memorable, and that's saying something. The Orville, despite its vastly lower production value, has managed to avoid this using a simple but clever decision: Multiple composers.
It sounds counterintuitive, but by having McNeely and Debney work together, they achieved the same thing TNG achieved with McCarthy, Chattaway and Jones. Not only does having a "team" of composers allow for a degree of "peer review", it also creates constraints (because you're mindful of not wanting the viewer's immersion to be broken by noticing that an episode has a different composer from another). The three subsequent series followed this lead, and also had continuity from one to the next. Personally, I think CBS should have hired Brian Tyler who did some fantastic work on ENT (also the successor of Jerry Goldsmith, of movie-era fame, at Universal) as lead composer, and then given him a team of 2 or 3 other composers to work with.
Anyway, the music obviously isn't the only issue (just one I'm very opinionated on). Despite not being set in the Kelvinverse, almost everything about the design on Discovery makes it look that way. Excessive holograms, eye candy that feels annoyingly out of place, distracting camera shots that try (and fail miserably) to convey tension and dynamism, egregiously horrendous lighting in literally every. single. shot. Though, at least, they've reined in the excessive lens flare.
Trek has always been brightly but warmly lit (conveying the utopian nature of Roddenberry's vision of the future) with naturalistic contrast. Dark lighting can occur in individual scenes – hell, it might even dominate for an entire episode – but only if this makes some sort of narrative sense. TNG through ENT all do this exceptionally well. An optimistic future simply doesn't involve people fumbling around dimly lit starships as though locked into some kind of perpetual Earth Hour; it doesn't make any sense. Trek has always used wide establishing shots, narrow reverse-shot dialogue cuts, and minimal camera movement. Panning and shaking outside of establishing or finishing shots only occurs, if at all, when a scene is truly dynamic – combat, for example. It does NOT occur in random conference scenes.
Discovery heeds none of these visual conventions. And sure, it does that in order to appear more "cool", but the problem is, this doesn't add any value, while actively removing value by creating the aforementioned "uncanny valley" effect. It isn't even a necessary measure to avoid making the show look outdated. Trek has always been a drama in a SciFi setting, not an eye candy parade with a bit of drama tacked on, and that was reflected in the way it was shot. Look at Suits, look at The Wire, hell, look at many scenes of Breaking Bad and you'll see the same shooting style. What Discovery (much like Abrams) has run with more resembles Star Wars or The Walking Dead – productions focussing far more on visuals and far less on dialogue.
This is also reflected in deciding to go with a main character setup instead of an ensemble cast, which I think on its own wouldn't have been a dealbreaker, but in combination with everything else just exacerbates the problem of Discovery not feeling like Trek. Though it would have also helped if Michael Burnham had been (a) built on believable and relatable premises, (b) even remotely sympathetic as a "person", and (c) not called "Michael" because seriously, all I and anyone else here in the UK can think of when hearing that name is Princess Michael of Kent.
There's also issues in terms of how Discovery does, or rather fails to do, subtext, but I'm not even gonna open that can of worms.
In some ways, I feel like Discovery and The Orville would both be better off if they switched places. If Discovery were outside the Star Trek franchise, with its own distinct universe and lore, it wouldn't hit that "uncanny valley", and a whole lot of people would probably cut it much more slack. Likewise, if The Orville were within the franchise, it would be able to spend less time on exposition (which makes it feel even more Lucas-esque than Discovery at times), while also being forced to take itself slightly more seriously.
Indeed, there are some things which Discovery does well and which The Orville would do well to adapt. Though inhibited by stale dialogue, poor premises, and, in the case of Georgiou, wooden acting, I think it's fair to say Discovery has slightly more rounded characters. Many of The Orville's characters are rather trope-y. Yaphit for instance is, as CinemaSins would put it, discount Glenn Quagmire. This is a pitfall of transitioning from writing situational comedy, and has shown some signs of improving in Season 2, though the show still has far to go in that regard.
Likewise, Discovery's story arc is, imho, a much better approach than the episodic nature of The Orville. Yes, that episodic nature is directly gleaned from TOS and TNG, but the main thing that made DS9 so much more compelling than its predecessors (and VOY a bit disappointing in comparison) is that it did away with that, for good reason: Arcs are what allow character development to take place.
Just look at Picard and Sisko! Picard is my co-favourite Captain with Janeway, but the Picard of All Good Things is essentially the Picard of Encounter at Farpoint, only with a few more wrinkles and less of a stick up his backside. Sisko on the other hand is completely transformed between Emissary and What You Leave Behind. Sure, Sisko's gone through an entire war and a whole bunch of shenanigans with god-like beings, but Picard has gone through being assimilated by the Borg, being tortured by the Cardassians, and multiple encounters with Q. With arcs having become the norm for pretty much any TV drama, hell, even most TV comedies, an episodic show is downright immersion-breaking, because real life doesn't work that way – actions have consequences! I could go on further, but that really would be a tangent.
So, the TL;DR version is, The Orville feels more like Trek than Discovery because of the production choices that went into establishing its tone, but that doesn't mean Discovery is "bad" or "worse than The Orville", or any of the other things that get thrown at it – it's just frustratingly un-Trek-like and would be better off as a completely unrelated show. At the same time, The Orville isn't perfect, it has its own problems, many of which are problems Discovery doesn't have, and can't meaningfully be called "better" than Discovery – it just has a tone that more closely resembles classic Trek, which makes it more appealing to (many of) us fans of the latter. That's it.
