Seth MacFarlane is a huge Star Trek nerd and got someone to pay him to do his own version, good for him, he's living the dream but that doesn't make it a great show, it's a fan film with a budget and like most fan films it's a bit too much in love with what came before. It's a new show but it feels dated because it copies so much from TNGs aesthetics and style, I watched the occasional episode and it's ok but it never feels like it's going somewhere TNG didn't go 30 years ago. A lot of that is by design but it doesn't appeal to me, if I wamt to watch TNG I'll just rewatch TNG.
50/50 from me. They did bring in a lot of producers/writers from TNG, and one or two new writers that definitely adhered to the style (especially season 2, season 1 feels like what would happen if
Star Trek TOS made love with
Sliders and
Orville is the result), right down to a couple plotlines taken directly from TOS (e.g. the hollow planet-sized ship one, which was
good (but nowhere near my favorite) but it's easily the one episode that actually feels like having too much homage... The one with Alara confronting her horrors is a classic and is distinctly "Orville". The "Kelly is a god" episode is a new take on the theme VOY used with "Blink of an Eye" (that Futurama and Simpsons also used). The practical joke episode, the 2D episode, and most of the other episodes did things no Trek before it could - due to lack of time or resources or even thinking of trying those concepts. Heck, for those saying Isaac is a ripoff of Battlestar Galactica, BSG is a ripoff of Moses and his people's journey and "The Lost Tribes" in the Bible. And Star Wars ripped off quite a bit as well. How well these shows innovate seems to be as important.)
After being used to arcs in television, Orville did feel different for its lack of it in season one, and for season two it was rushing way too many arcs all while finding the time to plunk in a couple of pointless filler episodes (the smartphone episode being both the laziest and the most unnecessary one of the bunch) - making me wonder if they thought the show would be canceled.
I'll admit, rewatching TNG season 1, Orville feels like it's innovated from that as well.
The cool thing is, old shows updated for a modern day audience rarely work. Orville seems to have managed it better than others, even with my nitpicks there's still more to it than the sum of its parts. FOX had a sketch show last decade using the style of 1960s "Laugh-In" and it didn't catch on and people calling it stupid, all while missing the point of the show. FOX also had a sitcom where only 7 people survived nuclear annihilation called "Woops!", framed it on Gilligan's Island (a show still massively popular at that time), and people panned it as being dumb. (It's not as dumb as GI, and I adore that one almost as much as I do "Woops!", they're all delightful escapist silliness) Which might be why it became more popular to dig up dead shows and revive them, so the audience recognizes the name and feels all cozy instead.
May Avis be on our side! Anything else just Hertz.
