The Orville. Anyone loving it?

I guess that would be one way to save time in makeup. Though I wouldn't be surprised to find out she does have an appliance on the covered ear.

 

I'm amazed they spent more time playing up "Avis" than the crustacean staple of a whale diet or what kids chuck into their acrylic container and call "sea monkeys"... And heck, with the name "krill" and its value in the food chain, they could have done homage to Star Trek IV in the process. Well, there's always season three...

I like that idea, the crew looking back and telling it to someone. Like oral history handed down from generation to generation by humans who lacked paper and quill as those hadn't existed then... maybe compare it to Isaac's records as he's still impartial.

^^this. A 3-parter might have been stretching it too far but there would have had more time to breathe, to keep suspense going. As opposed to what we got, which was paint-by-numbers, in a story whose conclusion ceased being great and felt ultimately only okay. By the time the shuttle reaches its destination and *ding* they're picked up right on cue... that alone was way too easy, in an episode with too many easy moments. Seeing the one crewmember sent out the airlock was sufficiently gruesome as well as being scientifically accurate (very chilling!! /badpun), but there's no reason any of them needed to be kept alive in the first place if the goal was to exterminate all, complete with big and impossibly huge armada. Unless the goal was to show the imperfection of AI, but to make that work we'd need stupid scenes put back from the cutting room floor like the one where Isaac boasts about golf but then screws up the shot with LaMarr repeating the same old "boom, *****!" joke that only worked the first time around...

 

Which is more proof nerds don't run the industry, contrary to pop tabloid articles claiming otherwise. Mainstream audiences are first and foremost. Nerds waste all that time in more complex universe building than just pew pew boom boom stuff.

The Moclan Show got to me as well. At least the Moclan arc felt more satisfyingly complete than others (e.g. the Isaac/Claire arc that was later rushed then pretty much dropped. The Krill alliance built up was so much connect-the-dot contrivances in order to sell it within the span of one mere episode (that was already overloaded with arc points) that it was too hard to swallow. At least they got that "remarkable" smartphone episode made, sigh...) Meanwhile, Yaphit is oozing in hiding and LaMarr and Gordon almost vanished as well.

The show surprised the heck out of me; I was thinking not dissimilarly, but having sat through (way too much) Family Guy and its spinoffs was thinking it would be a gratuitous gross-out mess. some of Seth's templates can be noticed but it's a lot cleaner than I'd ever begun to expect and the show's had enough to hold its own despite being homage and borrowing from TNG. I think he's paid homage to Douglas Adams as well, especially in the season 1/episode 1 premiere while making something his own at the same time...

It keeps costume costs down and as such it affords them another 1.147 seconds of CGI effects on screen.

 

Forget hiding the historical documents that contain the name Avis, I want more Avis jokes.

 

Seth MacFarlane moves to NBC.

Judging by the comment of that Disney Television Studios Chairman about continuing the partnership on Family Guy, American Dad and The Orville, his involvement on those shows appears to be ensured (though maybe not unaffected).

 

"But keeping MacFarlane happy is Fox's priority."

Well, I guess it really isn't now.

 

I absolutely adore The Orville. It's my new favorite show right now.

 

In my head canon "Orville" is the 10th Trek series (counting 'Picard' and 'Lower Decks' into the mix). Let's suppose the Federation collapsed sometime after 2399. After a period of chaos, its former members decided to build another federation, but then decided to give it a new name. Planetary Union it is .

And I suppose the new federation decides to implement a more laid back rule for its officers and missions (no prime directive, no transporters, etc), then decided to admit new members like the Xelayans and Moclans while encountering new enemies like the Krill and Kaylons. See where am I going with this ??

 

Agreed. By the end of Season 2 I couldn't care less on whether Bortus and Klyden will get hooked smoking weeds or involved with some other shenanigans. In an apparent effort to parody the Klingons, they featured way too many Moclan-centric episodes that it started to irritate some fans

Instead, I want to see the other races - Xelayans (Talla's personality, outlook, and background is very different from Alara even though they're from the same race), Calivons, Krill homeworld, Dann and Yaphit's homeworlds, etc. Hopefully Seth & Co will listen to this and this is what we're gonna see in S3 .

 

I assume the leader of this planet is none other than Sir Patrick himself ?? And he has two deputies played respectively by Ian McKellen and Michael Gambon

 

that is a very cool way to look at it.
My thoughts are simpler.. it's just a slightly different take.. through new creative eyes. Same premise.. different take. It's been done with batman a lot.. Nolan's take was different than Burton's take.. and there are many other versions.. but they all have the same elements.
I totally respect that way of creating the mythology. But it's not necessary to push it into canon to enjoy it.. after all, the last three years Trek canon is a jumble

 

James R. Kirk waves hello.

 

omg really. The show's first pilot, cheap budget and you are going to think about holding the critical eye that audiences of today have to THAT? Stop .. just stop

 

It was demonstrating the Trek canon has always been a jumble. Fans have had to apply many band-aids over the decades to make it seem like it is more well thought out than it is.

 

When I say jumble.. I dopn't mean getting a letter wrong.. or even forgetting a particular event.. whatever. whole episodes.. idgaf
I mean the last tenyears (with a few exceptions) is mired in hackneyed storytelling and the fact that the writers have no idea how to even write Trek, that they are forgetting that humans got their shit together before going out to the cosmos.. and the various races they meet with their problems could be used to be an allegory for our world today. Instead.. the stories are convoluted and driven by angst..

 

Yes. The acronym "YATI" (Yet Another Trek Inconsistency) is around for a reason.

Star Trek has done a variety of things right, and missed the mark and been inconsistent many more times. The current furor over DSC is indicative of that fact.

But, Star Trek is not perfect and never will be. And the nostalgia fuel that drives this notion doesn't do it any favors.

 

Talk about hackneyed storytelling. Oh, look, there's a planet of hats where there's a race that's less developed than future-humanity is in a particular way that viewers can feel superior to. This results in stories always filled to the brim with condescension and smugness if you feel the need to go there and only there... Not to mention this kind of storytelling was developed for an age of censorship, when such aspects of our culture couldn't be discussed openly and needed to be disguised the way you suggest.

Besides, in Star Trek, humanity doesn't 'get their shit together before going out into the cosmos'. Sure they don't get into wars with themselves, but they do get into a lot of wars with other species. They send out colonies with insufficient resources resulting in mass executions in one case when they run out of food, and eventually some get so scared about the loss of life that results from space exploration that they invent a computer that turns into a deliberate killing machine or try to evict people from their planet because it has special properties to extend life, because to some people post-scarcity society just isn't enough.

 

No .. humanity ain't perfect. But they managed to progress above the petty shit, and the last few years of Trek is more interested in convoluted stories..
We can debate the details all day.. but the underlying point is the same.

even after going out to the cosmos.. we are still human... yes
and we still fall the pratfalls of our own nature.. yes..

but the original series was like a testament to what humanity CAN achieve.. not the cynical "how can humanity fail" attitude that writers of today put forward

 

The current series reminds us of what we were told by Star Trek from the beginning. We can get better, and we will get better, but it's often not going to be easy to do so, and yes, there is always a risk of failure, not a promise of permanent and everlasting success that has been set in place as a given. As for convoluted, I agree that today's series aren't as simplistic as the old one story, tied up in a bow every 45 minutes. But convoluted implies a level of complexity that can't be easily followed. IMO, Discovery hasn't been hard to follow for anyone watching, and neither will any of the other series to come.

The Orville does follow the 45 minute formula for the most part, but it is often very cynical in its storytelling, even if many devotees are happy to ignore such cynicism. it has a Captain who puts his ship in jeopardy because he thinks his first officer is cockblocking him, It features the drugging of diplomats to ensure favorable results for the Union as the right choice, crew members feeding a part of one crew member to another, the purposeful roasting alive of a whole alien crew by said Captain, workplace harassment and sexual harassment all of which are brushed aside with a shrug.

A won't argue that The Orville, by comparison, can be entertaining. But despite the veneer of TNG, it's not that utopian scifi TNG nostalgists dream about, it just looks like one.

 

there is a disitinct differentce between being complex and being convoluted. Often many films and episodes of many franchises seem to think that they are the same. it's unfortuante