News Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville

The current generation will hail MacFarlane as a god-- the next generation will vilify him as a deranged sexual deviant.

 

That's logical.

 

The generation after that will list Family Guy as "Classic Literature"...

 

College courses will be taught....

 

And in the 25th century, they'll be watching FG on their ship's viewscreen

 

By the 27th century a alien race that one of those ships visited and accidentally left copies of "Family Guy" around will shape their entire culture around it. Humans will return and laugh at how backwards they are. By this time humans have evolved to worship "Orville" and be confused by the weird alien society.


Jason

 

I have no problem with this. Simply because some of Family Guy is fucking brilliant.

 

They could have Space Pirate Gavin involved in a fling with Yapeth(or whatever the bugger looking guy is named)

 

I was flipping through World of Orville last night and the thing that jumped out at me is that, seen from directly above, the ship looks like a weird Greek theater mask.

 

I went to Barnes & Noble looking for World of The Orville this morning, but the employee I talked said they didn't have it, and it didn't look like they would be getting it. So it looks like I'll have to order it from Amazon.

 

The sets themselves occupy 14,000 square feet and actually are built on two levels - the bridge set is perched atop a lower level, all the way forward, and the concentric corridor that we see them in so often does run around the lower level at about the contours and position that you'd expect from the "windows" on the ship exterior.

The main viewing area is apparently a 90-foot LED screen, so they can run images like moving starfields (and presumably some of the back-and-forth with other vessels' crews that takes place in that smaller rectangular area to the fore) real time during filming. They say this in fact saves them time and money on "bread and butter effects" that they can then spend on the more spectacular vistas like wormholes, etc that are done in post.

 

I didn't realize that was a real screen. I'd just assumed it was a blue screen like in the Star Treks.

 

Me too. That's quite surprising and equally awesome all at the same time.

 

Just ordered The World of The Orville from Amazon. Should be here on Friday.

 

Tonight's episode on FOX UK is "Krill".

Mercer does some badass captain stuff at the start, which doesn't work. You can take a badass character like SG1's Jack O'Neill, gradually turn him into a buffoon and still have him pull out badass moves occasionally. But you can't take a buffoon like Mercer and suddenly have him pull badass space battle tactics out his ass. It should have been a team effort, where the whole team came up with the attack plan together.

Loved "Chris and Devon". Lots of funny little moments, especially the way they photographed pages of the book like it was a 1960's spy film. Couldn't help but notice the Krill living every waking moment in battle armour. Are they expecting a fight to break out at dinner?

And do they have universal translators on Orville or does everyone everywhere just speak English?

Surprisingly weighty finale, saving the kids and killing everyone else on the Krill ship.

Decent episode. Not great, not bad.

 

They do have UT, but just call it a translator. It was acknowledged on one episode.

 

Mercer was not a buffoon. You misinterpreted that. He spiraled the year before getting Orville because of "personal problems". But he was a competent officer before that. And now he's regaining his skills.
As far as the "funny" things he comments on, it seems the whole Union is a little lightened up than the Federation.

 

Yep. An up-and-comer who was crushed by his wife cheating on him and the divorce that followed.

 

Mercer has never been a buffoon. That's sort of the point of his character. He's been capable since the pilot.

He is socially awkward, which is the real running joke of his character. MacFarlane pulls that off a great deal more plausibly than Stewart did the "not good with children" thing, but that's mainly because the Trek writers didn't know how to do anything as subtext in those days.

I enjoyed seeing Mercer improvise to take out the Krill ship; it worked fine. That kind of thing was why Kelly was able to successfully lobby to have him made captain to begin with; as Admiral Halsey pointed out, up until the divorce he was fast-tracked because he was so good.

HALSEY: Honestly, we would've offered you a command earlier, but you haven't really inspired anyone with all that much confidence this past year...Ed, I remember when you were at Union Point. You were at the top of your class. Your teachers all thought you'd be captaining a heavy cruiser before 40.

 

The World of The Orville just showed up. Probably most excited I've been for this kind of book since Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series.