Yeah, Orville's humor is hit or miss at times but even the worst of it (the gravity distortion field being a "glory hole" was arguably the worst by far) pales to most coming from Seth's cartoon shows. But they're few and far between and what actually works is far, far better. I still dislike the concept of "humans have not evolved since the 20th century", as contrary to what some people think, it's not normal people we're watching but abnormal people. Take someone from the 16th century into ours - they're not going to act like us or vice-versa. Both Orville and DSC run around issues by making their crews "accessible" glorified transplants of 21st century people into the distant future where there's no jacksplat way people of the future would be even remotely like what we are today. Maybe that's in part why some people see both Orville and DSC as being parody of Star Trek... The pilot episode I too rewatched and it really was more than the bunch of Family Guy jokes set in space that people were conditioned into believing. Even the redwood joke at the end had my howling due to successful comic timing. The horror and sci-fi elements didn't make me think of any Trek episode - though, yes, some Orville episodes do clearly have Trek-like seeds but the Orville episodes smartly makes them their own instead of playing "storytelling by numbers', which is insulting to the audience. For the most part, I am still vocal about the Orville episodes that are so sub-par in part because that's all they really did. And the worst episodes are all from season 2. The "character-driven" one, but season 2 also had the best episodes. Despite season 1 feeling a lot more creative with the sense of adventure and ideas. Orville's first season, after the first three or four episodes, is quick to find its own direction (eps 2-4 definitely come close to templating Trek and the one with the big asteroid with people inside, had just enough of interest going on for me to roll with what was obviously "For the world is hollow and i touched the sky" on steroids. That's big because it was grating that the show wasn't doing that much more with the concept, it was the use of characters that kept me interested enough but I could tell it wasn't the strongest episode and it came after the second Bortus episode (#3, episodes 1 and 2 were fairly solid). But later episodes quickly showed they would do much more and make things their own instead of having the viewer count the number of sci-fi references, they worked to keep the audience in their show. There's no way "Majority Rule" and "Into the Fold" had any Trek references, even the former felt more like a "Sliders" one (as had the asteroid one - it's an interesting meld of two shows' styles, innovated on and trying to make its own thing. Which is easier to do with plots than characters.) But a couple of "This would make a neat Sliders episode!" thought, the episodes still felt more like Orville than anything remotely like a connect-the-dots rehash. And, yes,, "Majority Rule" did yank out the "parallel development" plot point that TOS had to justify raiding the wardrobe closets and sets from other shows made at the same time to cut down costs. But the content beyond the plot vehicle was so strong that it was The Orville I was watching, not a rehash of Sliders. Real innovation takes work to get above and beyond what's being innovated on. It's not easy to do and even DSC deserves sympathy, if they really were trying to build up something in a way that wasn't meant to be "co-opting" or "retconning" but stumbled. The Church of Kelly episode I adore, despite not remembering the title, though it's plainly obvious they took inspiration from both Futurama and Star Trek Voyager (which took inspiration from TOS and if we looked back far enough there's bound to be something involving a bunch of people stuck in a craft they can't steer, it's simply not a new trope regardless of what the vehicle not being steered is) but they took it in yet another direction while making the scenes of the latest historical development interesting and compelling. A real carbon copy cutout wouldn't be interesting or engaging. The innovative difference was on full display in that episode. "New Dimensions" is an outright classic. 2D is not a new concept but HOW Orville played with it absolutely made it new and refreshing, exciting, and compelling. If TNG did this, all we'd see for an hour is Picard pine over all the 2D critters they're killing due to a situation beyond their control and then he'd drop the shields and it'd be a really stupid series finale for TNG... Assuming there's life approaching anything sentient, and so on. Or, in fewer words, "Hear Hear!"
I'll agree that comparisons aren't entirely fair given Orville has former Star Trek writers who are able to look at their own work with the benefit of hindsight and know what did and didn't work then and apply it appropriately now. Disco meanwhile has a writing staff who are new to writing Trek and are still finding their way, a situation which isn't helped by the show's constant turnover in showrunners. Indeed, one can even say that Orville benefits from having a single unified vision of what the show is and is about, while Disco is hampered with each successive showrunner having different visions and ideas about how to do the show and where to take it. Nothing exemplifies that better than the start of Disco season 1 practically reinventing Star Trek's wheel to the end of season 2 which was tripping over itself at being as faithful to TOS as possible.
Indeed. I think that DSC, and Star Trek will improve as the showrunner situation stabilizes, and them assigning someone to manage the whole property. Regardless, Orville and DSC are two different pieces of entertainment and the comparison is not beneficial to either party. Orville has a bit more latitude, in my opinion, and it's something that I'm willing to give a shot down the road. But, DSC has engaged me from the word go. And that will vary from person to person. Orville has impressed with and made holodeck episodes (for lack of a better term) more appealing to me than Trek ever did.
I think they did go through one more Showrunner change going into Season 3, and they put Alex Kurtzman in charge of the whole franchise early in Season 2. I think at this point he's pretty much the Kevin Feige of Star Trek. Io9 has posted an interview with The Orville's Post Producer, Andre Danylevich, and their VFX Producer, Brooke Noska. It gives some nice insight into just how complex a production it really is.
I haven't seen anything on episodic television nearly so dynamic and extravagant as that battle in Identity II.
Seth is a guest on this week's Bill Maher show on HBO. They talk mainly politics but the renewal of Orville got mentioned.
In a way, The Orville offers former Trek writers the opportunity to explore topics that otherwise wouldn't have been available during TNG's run. The cell-phone and social media episodes are a great example of this.
IIRC, Braga said the dilemma in the Krill episode about fighting an alien ship that has children aboard was one that was pitched on Star Trek but Berman wouldn't allow it, feeling it to be "too dark."
More than none, no worries. A small handful of full episodes, a few clips. But the show was ultimately so against the grain (IMHO, YMMV) that apathy set in and as mainstream media (meaning: not those youtube channels) covered enough of the same topipcs, interest fizzled. Never mind the revamped opening credits... The fact people would watch any of it given it's a prequel in the first place and there's nothing the prequel was really needing to address as nobody has been screaming and demanding for decades over massive plot holes that didn't exist enough for anybody to be caring significantly about... but prequels aren't really "my thing". At least I gave it a chance, many didn't. YMMV.
Or sfx such as in "Pria". The cell phone episode was largely done in TNG (computer extrapolates a personality from recorded data - Booby Trap/Galaxy's Child, 11001001, et al). A couple changes, one of which was pretty cool, but it's casual plotting to get the phone operational so quickly, and how fast the data could be uploaded despite being limited to the speed of the phone, never mind how they could figure out delicate voltage and amperage from an analogue of a lithium battery... never mind the show's main characters all use so much contemporary language that the claim they're dealing with an artificial reenactment of 500-something year old people who use largely the same vernacular... it just doesn't hold up or begin to outdo its influences at all. For me anyway, YMMV.)
No. Those shows shared part of a premise. This episode wasn't anything like the Trek episodes. It was both emotionally affecting and clever.
Huh, I don't even remember those. I'll have to rewatch at some point. I think what made it work for me was the difference in its delivery. Sure, thematically they might have been similar, but the execution was different enough to satisfy me.
Those episodes in question all involve someone falling in love with a holodeck character. In the Bynar episode, it's a fictional singer Riker falls in love with and in Booby Trap Geordi falls for the holodeck's extrapolation of a real person, who he learns in Galaxy's Child is in fact married in real life. But that's as far as the similarities go.
Yeah, I mean, I think at first glance they might be similar, but I think The Orville does a bit more with the concept. It goes in a bit deeper too.
That makes perfect sense, the idea follows naturally once you put children on the Enterprise-D. Now I'm disappointed we never got Romulans complaining about the Federation using kids as human shields.
Orville's "If The Stars Should Appear" was aping Heinlein's "Universe" (which TOS also borrowed from) with a bit of Asimov's "Nightfall" thrown in. Both stories predate Star Trek.