Indeed, without the Ed and Kelly relationship, there is no point to Orville at all.
Which is better, The Orville or Lower Decks?
- Thread starter The Overlord
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Now if you think Mercer and Kelly should just move on and liked their other love interests more (Pria, the other guy) then understand how badly this might affect your opinion of the show.
A fun breezy comedy set in a weird ship in space? I mean, if your sole point is a guy stalking his ex-wife and the mixed signals she's maybe giving about getting back together, that seems to be undermining the Orville's other qualities.
To use a wrestling reference, "If you have a gimmick that doesn't work, doubling and tripling down on it doesn't make it work."
I think this speaks to just how much trouble The Orville has had in deciding what kind of show it wanted to be. A Star Trek parody? A heartfelt TNG pastiche? A breezy outer space workplace comedy? Its own space opera? It's been all of those things at one point or another.
I think it's not so much that it doesn't know what it wants to be so much as the people behind it have very different conflicting wants.
Fox wanted a comedy and a parody.
A parody legally protects it from being sued by Paramount.
But Seth obviously wishes they'd tapped him to do Star Trek.
Lower Decks by a mile. The Orville is the list of shows that I have zero interest in watching again. I quit somewhere early in season 2.
Well, Kermit is one of his leadership role models...
The Orville has radically changed from its initial season. It's not really got any jokes or one liners anymore. It's just an homage to TNG - and I am fine with that. At the moment, I find it to be more 'Star Trek' than official Star Trek.
I watch The Orville because I like the stories and the feel of it, it's comfort viewing for me (optimistic TNG future).
I watch Lower Decks for a laugh.
I watch DSC because I am so invested in the franchise - but honestly, I'm going to have to come back to Season 4 later - it's truly terrible.
I watch Prodigy with my kid and he likes it, I guess it's good for a kids show.
I watch Picard with gritted teeth and a raised blood pressure (aside from Nepenthe, which was a joy). I think the show is a massive betrayal of Gene Roddenberry, but there you go. Yes, I hate watched Season 1, but as a life long Trekkie, I was too invested not to.
I watch The expanse and revel in it's glory. Superior acting, superior storytelling, consistent, funny, clever. In short, a joy. I think its the best Science Fiction show of the last 20 years.
I watch The Orville because I like the stories and the feel of it, it's comfort viewing for me (optimistic TNG future).
I watch Lower Decks for a laugh.
I watch DSC because I am so invested in the franchise - but honestly, I'm going to have to come back to Season 4 later - it's truly terrible.
I watch Prodigy with my kid and he likes it, I guess it's good for a kids show.
I watch Picard with gritted teeth and a raised blood pressure (aside from Nepenthe, which was a joy). I think the show is a massive betrayal of Gene Roddenberry, but there you go. Yes, I hate watched Season 1, but as a life long Trekkie, I was too invested not to.
I watch The expanse and revel in it's glory. Superior acting, superior storytelling, consistent, funny, clever. In short, a joy. I think its the best Science Fiction show of the last 20 years.
I don't. It's still a bit sexist and still treats straight white guys as the universe's default POV. I find those two elements to be in conflict with the spirit of Star Trek.
Depicting Picard as a flawed person who made a terrible mistake and then redeemed himself is no more a betrayal of Gene Roddenberry than, say, Gene's similar depiction of Matt Decker in "The Doomsday Machine."
I guess as a 'straight white man', I don't notice the sexist stuff so much and its not possible to argue that DSC isn't progressive in this regard. I thought Chief Katan was a pretty cool role model, same with Commander Grayson. I mean, now I really think about it, she should really be the Captain - she's smarter and more professional after all. So perhaps one could argue that its sexist because it perpetrates our reality where men are often promoted over their more qualified and accomplished female colleagues.
As to Picard, for me, the problem can be addressed by quoting ST:FC:
“A lot has changed in the past 300 years, People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We’ve grown out of our infancy.”
But in Picard, this simply isn't true.The Federation has turned isolationist (mirroring the US). The future is dark and gritty, with eyeballs ripped out and then we have an admiral telling Picard to STFU. There's smoking, poverty, helplessness and suffering.
Michael Chabon, responding to this criticism on Instagram, defended Picard by saying that “shadow defines light”, that “if nothing can rock the Federation’s perfection, then it’s just a magical land”. Kurtzman, the showrunner of Discovery justifies that shows violent, profane and dark sensibility by maintaining that modern Star Trek is simply a reflection of its time.
Somehow, the spirit of old Star Trek is now considered naive or wrong. The hope, optimism and sincerity of the original 60s series is gone. And the 60's were a time filled with fear and terror of nuclear weapons.
For me, modern Trek lacks a spirit of curiosity about different worlds and cultures, and the chemistry of a warm and interesting crew. Instead, we get generic “badasses” and cold and unlikeable characters.
I mean, that's part of it. Another part of it is just the narrative's general attitude towards women. I mean, Ed literally stalks Kelly when she's dating Cassius, and the show depicts this like it's a perfectly understandable thing. The episode literally has Cassius declare that Ed's behavior is understandable and it's Kelly who's being unreasonable by getting angry at Ed's behavior.
The show definitely objectifies Kelly, too (e.g., her outfit in the S2 finale).
Another problem is the way the show codes queer and trans people as aliens in the form of the Moclans, instead of just having queer and trans human characters.
I mean, I think ultimately there's always a tension in Star Trek between wanting to use the Federation as a mechanism to depict aspirational values, and wanting to use the Federation to comment on real-life events. I think both are valid creative impulses and you've got to find a balance.
It is true that in PIC, the Federation has regressed in some ways: It has embraced some level of xenophobia in the Synth ban and in withdrawing its efforts to evacuate the Romulan systems.
But it is also true that in PIC, Jean-Luc Picard has led the Federation to realize the profound error it made in doing so. By the end of S1, we know the Synth ban has been repealed, and the Federation has placed the android colony at Coppelius under its protection. We also know that relations with the Romulans do broadly seem better than they were under the Star Empire, and we know from DIS that the Romulans later reunite with the Vulcans as Federation Members.
I don't agree with that at all. I think the entire point of PIC S1 was rebuilding that spirit by depicting the Federation, in the person of Jean-Luc Picard, as going on a journey of redemption.
Strongly disagree here. Modern ST is doing deeper explorations of alien cultures than any ST show has since DS9, and they're literally launching a new show entitled Strange New Worlds!
I don't know how you could look at the final scene of PIC S1, or how the crew interact on DIS post-S1, or anything at all from LD or PRO, and not find them warm and interesting. These are all characters who love each other and sacrifice for each other.
Yes, I feel it lost what made it good.
But I suppose it depends on what you want from it.
I think you missed that 99% of the show takes place in the Neutral Zone and Former Romulan Republic with Freecloud and other locations.
And really, Picard needed to be told to STFU.
This has always been a part of Trek, though. It wasn't related to the Federation, besides their knee-jerk reactionism to the attack, which they have done before.
Looks like my days of taking you seriously have reached a middle.
Gene Roddenberry has been betrayed by the Wrath of Khan, The Undiscovered Country, Deep Space Nine, Discovery, and Picard.
He wasn't perfect and sometimes that was pretty good science fiction.
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I *love* The Orville. I love it. It's a fantastic show, and it scratches many of my TNG era Star Trek itches.
That said, I think Lower Decks is better. It has the quintessential feel of Star Trek, like The Orville does with TNG era trek, but also exists in the Star Trek universe. So I get the best of both worlds, er, as it were.
That said, I think Lower Decks is better. It has the quintessential feel of Star Trek, like The Orville does with TNG era trek, but also exists in the Star Trek universe. So I get the best of both worlds, er, as it were.
Does that mean The Wrath of Khan is not Star Trek?
I retract my comment that "I think the show is a massive betrayal of Gene Roddenberry,"
Because I love ST:TWOK and TUC, both of which the man took issue with.
What I meant was that Picard didn't feel like Star Trek to me. Just feels like generic sci-fi dystopia. But as with all things, that's just my subjective opinion. I'll watch season 2, but my hopes are not high.
Back in 2012, I remember trying to answer the question, why do I even like Star Trek?
https://ryesofthegeek.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/why-do-i-like-star-trek/
I mean it's objectively not a dystopia. The Federation is still a constitutional democracy with strong protections for freedom of speech, political/social/economic equality, etc. It's one that has taken a profoundly bad path, but it hasn't turned into a totalitarian nightmare.
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