News Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville
- Thread starter Kai "the spy"
- Start date
I have been doing a re-watch of the series. It has really started to grow on me, and I am enjoying the subtle touches I missed on the first passing. My only complaint is that the space scenes look amazing but the interior shots look ridiculously cheap. It's a jarring contrast, highlighted perhaps by the insistence on the 90's era bright lighting.
ETA: For example, in episode 2 they quietly and smoothly touch on the negative aspects of zoos...and even though they try to play off the joke, it really brought to the forefront the issues with caging animals for pleasure, and if anyone has ever seen a caged animal engage in stress related behaviors, you could quickly grasp the moral point of the story. Plus they freed the little alien kid - whereas on DSC he would have been someone's lunch.
ETA: For example, in episode 2 they quietly and smoothly touch on the negative aspects of zoos...and even though they try to play off the joke, it really brought to the forefront the issues with caging animals for pleasure, and if anyone has ever seen a caged animal engage in stress related behaviors, you could quickly grasp the moral point of the story. Plus they freed the little alien kid - whereas on DSC he would have been someone's lunch.
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A little upswing this week - 1.2/5 rating and share in the 18-49 demo, 4.15 million viewers.
That's pretty good for a show that took the week off. I thought the ratings would have gone down because of that. Momentum is still a thing and this show definitely has an audience.
I'm still kind of mind-blown over "Krill". NOT ONCE in the history of Trek, with all its many hundreds of episodes and movies, has a single character, main or supporting, ever considered there might be children on enemy vessels that they were about to destroy. Not only did they consider it in Orville, but went out of their way to prevent the deaths of innocents. Add to that the bonus of consequence, where the Krill female officer warned Mercer that he made enemies of the children that day, despite his noble efforts to save them. No pathetic reset button here that the cowardly and lazy Trek writers so frequently pressed.
There were even Borgified children shown one time on one of the cubes in TNG, but not a single consideration to their existence before potentially blowing them up with other cubes seen throughout TNG and VOY. Sure, the SF crews were threatened and had to fight back, nor would they have had the opportunity to mount a rescue mission every time they came across one, but never one mention of "Y'know there may be kids on that ship" in all the episodes that featured them? Weren't there also kids seen on some of the Suliban ships during Enterprise? I think so...
Yeah, the sets are kind of wonky and hearken a nostalgia for 90's kitsch, as you mentioned, but the writing in many ways is quite superior to most of those 90's shows, particularly TNG and VOY, and the CG production values are surprisingly high, IMO.
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Very true. The underlying hypocrisy of the Federation's actions (or Starfleet's actions I guess) has never been touched on other than brief asides on DS9 (the series that took the hardest look at the supposed utopia).
The CG is stunning really. The dark matter bubbles in "Pria" were phenomenal, and I like how they make it clean and neat and yet striking without all the visual crutches used by DSC like lens flares and colorising.
The Dark Matter Nebula scene was probably my favorite visual effect this year. It was almost animated and looked really really cool.
Yes, Pria was also a good one. I love how they tackled the usual gyrations of time travel. There were obviously a few paradox-causing flaws, particularly with the ending, but on the whole an excellent episode and, yes, I was quite stunned by how well they showed the dark matter scene. And the presentation of Pria's otherwise-yawn-worthy technobabble made sense and was appropriate in this context, being from the 29th century and fully aware of what kind of actions are necessary to recognize the threat and affect a mitigation.
I also really like Theron - great actor and quite believable in her role. She almost had me fooled as to her sincerity, too. McFarlane's connections in the industry have provided some really top-flight guest characters.
You know, that goddamned nebula in last week's STD was awful - it looked like an old Amiga TurboSilver effect of some kind, or shreds of red and green Christmas tissue wrap being tossed into a fan.
I like the Orville ship interiors quite a bit, although getting used to the spaciousness and high ceilings is difficult. It was a conscious decision, apparently, to give it all a less enclosed look than in later Star Trek.
I like the Orville ship interiors quite a bit, although getting used to the spaciousness and high ceilings is difficult. It was a conscious decision, apparently, to give it all a less enclosed look than in later Star Trek.
I thought "Pria" would have been better as a two-parter, but as the show is character driven, I understand why they cut big chunks out of the story to focus on the interaction between the characters.
I liked the color of the nebula. It was beautiful to look at.
The color was not my favorite thing, but mainly it looked like a lot of jagged little bits of clutter flitting through space.
And again, I think this works for me partly because of my advanced age.
Watch real old TV. While it may sometimes move ponderously slowly, the scenic structure is often quite schematic - a lot of interstitial action is elided for reasons of budget and time. I can't remember whether it was David Gerrold or someone else who described episodic TV as essentially the "dramatic highlights reel" of a motion picture.
And again, I think this works for me partly because of my advanced age.
Watch real old TV. While it may sometimes move ponderously slowly, the scenic structure is often quite schematic - a lot of interstitial action is elided for reasons of budget and time. I can't remember whether it was David Gerrold or someone else who described episodic TV as essentially the "dramatic highlights reel" of a motion picture.
Which is fine. The Orville is a solid throw-back to true episodic television, with stories that are neatly tied up every week. With "bingeable" multi-episode shows that require dedicated viewing now dominating the streaming landscape, its nice to have a respite, a show that doesn't require such intense dedication and time investment.
I enjoyed last night's episode busting on Facebook/Twitter.
That's all.
That's all.
Episodic, yes, yet they still nicely tie some of the episodes together with little bits of continuity moments. Mercer is always asking Alara to open the "jar of pickels", a regular euphemism for her extreme strength. When the Krill stabbed Maloy he complained about it being a brand new leg (the practical jokes in the previous ep were priceless)
I'm sure there are others, but those come to mind most readily. It's that attention to detail in the dialog that makes me appreciate the show. Even my mother-in-law got to liking it when she was visiting recently, and she has absolutely ZERO background in sci-fi. She was actually quite touched about the course of events that happened in "About a Girl" and was surprised she liked it so much and wanted to see a couple more before she returned home. That right there is quite telling of its potential longevity, to be able to bring in non-geeks to the fandom, of multiple generations and backgrounds.I genuinely hope the ratings continue to hold steady to clear the path for a second season. If Fox kills it, I really cannot fathom what makes the cut outside the vapid "reality" TV shows out there.
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DS9's Rules of Engagement
I feel the same. Fox for one will renew some lousy sitcoms that are horrible and aren't pulling the ratings, yet will give other shows that are good and have ratings that are good a harder time and cancel them.
One I always thought was a mistake for them cancelling was a spy series quite a while ago called Fortune Hunter. It was an honest-to-goodness child of Bond films and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It was well done and got pulled fairly quickly.
I understand that, but also Fox has had a history, especially with Sci-Fi series, of pulling them even if targets are being hit. It may be their standards for them or how they promote and market them, but Fox has been weird that way.
When have they done that?
Outside observers can't decide whether or not a series is meeting a network's expectations, because these vary based on many factors some of which are public and some of which are not. For example, two similarly costly shows pulling similar viewing numbers may represent different investments for a network depending on factors like who owns the shows and what the projected costs of keeping the shows on the air are. Are the ratings going up or down? What would a drop of half a rating's point in the next three months cost the network in terms of give-backs, etc?
Outside observers can't decide whether or not a series is meeting a network's expectations, because these vary based on many factors some of which are public and some of which are not. For example, two similarly costly shows pulling similar viewing numbers may represent different investments for a network depending on factors like who owns the shows and what the projected costs of keeping the shows on the air are. Are the ratings going up or down? What would a drop of half a rating's point in the next three months cost the network in terms of give-backs, etc?