So you finally came round to it?
The Orville. Anyone loving it?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
I heard enough praise that I finally gave it a try once it came to Disney+. It had a rocky start, but quickly improved. I'd say more, but I'm hoping people will want to subscribe and read my reviews. (I could really use the additional income.)
That's £4 a month?
It's $5 a month for the Reviews tier, which comes out to £4.67 according to Google.
I feel there's already way too much of that. I mean, yes, there were times in writing my own reviews where I noted that an Orville episode tackled a Trek subject matter even better than Trek itself usually has (like explaining how the moneyless economy works), or that it's guilty of some of the same worldbuilding oversights as Trek (like too few Asian people and the tendency to conflate the government and military), but that's just one aspect of what it is. I get tired of people discussing it exclusively through a Trek-centric lens. It's become its own thing, and that deserves to be acknowledged.
First Contact when the humans joined the Planetary Union? Not that I'm aware of. Maybe in season 3.
Season 2 I've finished, up to "Identity" pt 2. I recall pt 2 being a downer but, wow, the show was never before this plot-by-numbers pedestrian; only the season 1 episode redoing "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" comes close, but that one still had stronger moments. I recall later episodes being generally better, save for one... until then:
Ja'loja: 5/10. The Isaac/Finn subplot is incredibly strong. And needs to be because the parody of "Amok Time" is incredibly weak. It's the weakest story of the season so far, does the season get any better?
Primal Urges: 9/10. Not too much Trek cribbing in this one, the arc for Bortus is pushed a little farther and is surprisingly engaging. If Trek was purloined, it doesn't readily show and that's a good thing because that means they're trying to really do their own thing. In this viewing, I suspect they took a nod to Klingons with ritual killing, but the concept goes back longer than that... and it's all used in a refreshingly different way that doesn't scream "plot by numbers" or "hey, this old Trek episode did it and a lot more interestingly".
Home: 10/10.
Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes: 9/10. Nothing terribly wrong, this is yet another robust entry in this season that had me glued. Yeah, it's easy to see why the comedy is being sidelined but what makes up for it has been worth it so far. It's great they're following up with Teleya (whose pseudonym of "Janel TYLER" slipped right past me on initial viewing, so the reveal was that much more impressive. Not since The Portreeve has the old switcharoo trick been so effective.) The Gordon subplot is a little iffy at times, but nothing major.
All the World Is Birthday Cake: 7.5/10 A few plot points and oversimplifications don't do enough to ruin what is otherwise a shocking story. Both in originality, and going after astrology. I'm amazed the story didn't point out how stars and planets slowly shift position over time (e.g. our moon shifts away from Earth at approximately one long inch per year) so how they could rationalize the same notions centuries later as they always look at the stars with telescopes and mapping and never noticed... It's not implausible, but I dunno. But the story makes for any issues with solid acting with conviction by the actors and has proper moral points to play.
A Happy Refrain: 8.5/10. On first viewing this'll have anyone feeling tripped up with a huger WTFery. But there's a bizarre charm and every rewatch only has me liking the episode that much more. The comedy and humor are spot on and hilarious, and Orville actually succeeds in what TNG did not with "In Theory" and, more obviously, from "The Naked Now". Most points deduced because this is an episode one is more likely going to grow to appreciate, rather than loving it off the bat. But it's bold to revisit TNG concepts and more impressive as it worked. At least the ship's control panels are watertight. Not even going to think into that one and the story doesn't want you to because it wants you to say "Awwwwwwwwww" instead. And it didn't not work.
Deflectors: 8/10. A little weaker, but still a decent story - using a murder mystery trope too - and I appreciated what the story was trying to do with role reversals.
Identity: 9.5/10. It's too obvious that we know something big's going to go boom boom, but the music and acting more than make up for it. It's genuinely sad to see Isaac go, especially for the kids. I never understood how anyone thought "Kaylon are Borg" at the time as their backgrounds and motivations are so different, and by a width so big you can shove two solar systems through the gap... The revelation of mass extermination was outright horrifying and something we've never seen firsthand before. The Kaylon are more influenced by Cylons from the old Battlestar Galactica, and another change is that none of this involved or implied humanity. Much impressed. If anything, the BSery started toward the end as their claimed goal is to exterminate everything biological and yet they're also contriving to take prisoners to manipulate them. How will this conclude? Hmm...
Identity pt2: 2/10. Possible shark jumper. It's so "paint by numbers" and "connect the dots" and relying on part one's build-up and wave that it was inducing sleep at times. We see one Kaylon ship destroy an Orville-class ship with four blasts. The same size Kaylon ship later destroys a Krill vessel with two, if I recall... This is not just a problem of making the enemy "the big bad", since the song and dance in setting up subterfuge to throw Earth off guard doesn't make sense if all the Kaylon's enemies are this easy to exterminate. Come on. Plot development after plot development is right on cue. The EMP solution is even more BS, because nobody even began to have replacement parts for Isaac, much less any schematics to do the work with. It's not inconceivable that the ship itself would have shielding to prevent EMP damage, but how one can rig audible speakers to emit a sufficiently powerful EMP to (permanently destroy, these are walking circuit boards that don't "heal" or have "health") wipe out all the Kaylon yet leave critical ship components intact - nothing was designed ahead of time as a defensive measure. A battle that should have been in the Kaylon's favor based on the previous setup is somehow one that they lose thanks to joint efforts... of clearly weaker ships of which each can get destroyed after 2 to 4 hits, it still would have been no contest given the sheer size and power of the Kaylon. The episode also rushes closure with the reset button for later weeks as Mercer takes responsibility for the droid and Isaac apologizes to Claire and being alone (Primary's destruction cliche one-liner should have dramatic impact, but doesn't) and forgiveness and such and on with life they go. Maybe doing this one as a three-parter would have helped.
Okay, I have yet to see the remaining episodes, but from memory:
Blood of Patriots: 7/10. It's taking way too much from "The Wounded", but the introduction of Leyna (also quickly forgotten about later) and how her blood, when exposed directly to nitrogen, makes for a refreshing sci-fi style subplot that reminds that Orville can be more and other than a Star Trek rehash.
Lasting Impressions: 1/10. A painful and garbage copy of the TNG episodes with holodeck fantasies (read: Barclay, Geordi, Riker), which were done far more competently. It's pointless filler and the series is juggling rather a large number of arcs that are all far more worthy of development. It's not 1995 anymore where a 26 episode year can allow for one-offs. The technobabble used is pathetic. The items from the capsule are too pristine to be taken seriously. The episode painfully shows that humans in the 25th century act identically to those in the 21st, and yet one of the characters had the most unintentionally funny line of mentioning how they're so different in the future. I dare them to go back to 1600, 1066, or earlier, since at least prior to the 21st century the forms of communication were still evolving and not stagnating at a level that's arguably slightly de-evolved too, but this isn't English class or any language class so I'll move on: This episode makes Identity2 seem like 10/10 by comparison. Am adding 1 point for the cigarette subplot, as that was genuinely good, but I'd still say by far to scrap this episode and make Identity 3 parts to give it time to breathe and feel more authentic instead. Never mind a later episode using a variation of the theme of redoing things was used to far better effect.
Sanctuary: 8/10 Finally, a return to form. Great plot setup and execution. Huger plot arc move for the Moclans. If anything, at 10 episodes per season, rushing multiple arcs while still finding a one-off episode for pointless filler isn't doing much of a good thing. I probably would have held off on the Moclans and/or Krill and/or Kaylons and focus on just one, while keeping plot strands floating. Note that the idea of the Kaylon turning on the Union was originally to have been done in season 1 but was held back -- thankfully, as rushing that would have been a downer. I also recall the use of the song was a little overdone, but Family Guy was also known for keeping jokes running far longer than they needed and to be fair, if they're licensing the song it doesn't not make sense to use it as much as possible. Still, if Doctor Who from the 70s, 80s, and 00s licensed songs and used them for artistic flair, they knew when to turn the cassette player off. So, yeah, "9 to 5" was overused.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: 9/10 A couple weeks earlier we explored the notion of changing the past to change the future by using an egocentric person's still-working smartphone*, so now we're redoing it again. Only this time they're using creativity again and it's lovely to watch and be enthralled by. It also ends on a cliffhanger, and boom... I don't remember if it was this episode or an earlier one that that had Claire and Kelly chatting on what it's like to be single again.
* (if 8000nm-fabricated computers from 1974 begin to fail after decades of "regular use and storage" and the likelihood of failure increasing with each passing decade due to the pesky laws of physics, electromigration, etc, 20nm ones sold in 2015 where one RAM module became defective after two weeks seems less promising overall in terms of longevity, among other things...) /nerdMode
The Road Not Taken: 7/10. The different timeline more than ensured Earth is annihilated, down to even the microbes. What, no Kaylon is demanding they surrender for some "tactical advantage" again? Yes, it's shocking to see. Yes, it's shocking to see such inconsistency in the writing too. The floaty whizzy-bying Kaylon heads were unintentionally comedic, and may also have inspired a modern Doctor Who story to do the same for Cybermen (ugh). I was won over by the "let's hide in a black hole" subplot. Alluring Kitten is back again, it's great they got the actress back, but some of the dialogue and acting from all involved had a weird feel to it. Nice to see Evil Isaac. Everything is reset by the end, of course, with a cover-all line about how there might be subtle differences. It all feels slightly rushed, but holds its own - a pleasant surprise.
I will be rewatching these remaining episodes. I think I'll have better scores for Blood of Patriots and Road Not Taken. I anticipate the same scores for the others, but who knows. An episode one might have hated can be re-perceived later on if something was overlooked, or forgotten.... Or vice-versa. and that's part of the fun.
Entirely agreed! Where Orville feels authentic definitely needs to be mentioned just as much as when it feels like it's trying to do "Star Trek Greatest Hits" too much, and season 3 still does that. When Orville isn't outright copping, it's so much better as a result. (And, yep, Orville explained "moneyless economy" better too... when Orville is its own thing or genuinely improves on an idea, I've certainly no issue. But the flip side is when the attempts don't work as the show has proven, even from day one, it's capable of far more, thus making it feel disappointing at times.)
No, there's still been little to no exploration of the Union's origins. Although I assume that, like the Federation, it was spearheaded by humans.
It never struck me as a double entendre of any kind. Kitan is spelled with one T and pronounced "kih-TAHN," so it doesn't sound like "kitten," and "Alara" doesn't sound any more like "alluring" than it sounds like, say, "alarming." Halston Sage is definitely highly alluring, but I don't think that was the intent of the character name.
Astrology on Earth works the same way. The dates assigned to astrological signs in newspaper horoscopes no longer correspond to the actual positions of the Sun, planets, and stars, due to precession over time, but the system hasn't been updated to fit because it's what people are used to.
But I agree that it was implausible that Ed couldn't point out that different planets have different year lengths and see different constellations, so the "evil month" on this planet wouldn't automatically be evil on other planets.
Speak for yourself, not for the rest of us. I thought it was magnificent.
Although I do wonder how Isaac's human hologram works, how Claire can interact with him physically in that form, when his illusory human head and limbs are clearly smaller than his real head and limbs.
Again, I disagree massively. This was well-done and surprisingly philosophically rich for such a low-stakes episode.
There are 14 episodes in season 2, counting "Primal Urges," which was held back from season 1, reducing it to 12 episodes (though "Urges" had some scenes reshot to fit in S2). Only season 3 has 10 episodes, though they range from an hour to 90 minutes. I would've actually liked to see more "filler," because it's facile and wrong to dismiss low-stakes, character-driven stories as "pointless." I felt season 3 jumped from big event to big event and often asserted ongoing relationships without giving them adequate setup or room to grow, which a longer season would have permitted.
Nothing left on Earth, including fishes.
That was a bizarre mix of good physics and utterly nonsensical physics. Good that they acknowledged gravitational time dilation, but there's no way a ship said to be that fragile could have survived the intense tidal stresses near the event horizon, and it certainly couldn't have gone below the event horizon and emerged again without using quantum drive. The whole point of an event horizon is that nothing moving at or below the speed of light can escape from it. That's why it's called an event horizon -- because you can never see any events on the other side of it.
I loved that cellphone episode. It just struck a few beats for me here and there. But everyone is different thank goodness.
Oh absolutely. I feel that by the second season, it did more of its own thing, expanding on its own world, with its own take on things. I can't comment on the 3rd season seeing as I haven't seen it, but I can say that by the end of the second season, I felt like The Orville was way more than just a Trek parody and more of an homage with depth and morality tales of its own. And that's the other thing too. I find the show has tackled morality tales in ways that few shows as of late have managed to do, which harkens back to the way a lot of sci-fi shows were done in general.
Oh, it was never really a Trek parody. According to what I read on the show's wiki, MacFarlane wanted to do an actual Star Trek series, but when CBS turned down his pitch, he filed off the serial numbers and created The Orville as an approximation of what he'd wanted to do. But he figured that FOX expected another of his comedies, so he felt pressured to conform to that expectation and put jokes in what he wanted to be a straight sci-fi adventure-drama. As the series went on, he got more confident that he could do it without the crutch of comedy, and that the audience would accept it that way.
Which is great, because I despise his comedy, and I thought he was a talentless hack until I discovered how terrific he is at writing an adventure-drama show. Now I think he was just in the wrong line of work until now.
Oh, I know. I said parody, but I struggled to find a better word to describe it, but I really feel it's more of an homage with more humor. I think in a way, it helped it soldiify itself into its own thing.
I normally despise his humor too, but for some reason it more or less worked here in the context of what he was trying to accomplish with it. Which shocked me, as I was fully expecting to not like it. I think a large reason for why the show worked so well is that it had heart. I do agree about the action-adventure elements. It makes me wish he would do more action/adventure.
I normally despise his humor too, but for some reason it more or less worked here in the context of what he was trying to accomplish with it. Which shocked me, as I was fully expecting to not like it. I think a large reason for why the show worked so well is that it had heart. I do agree about the action-adventure elements. It makes me wish he would do more action/adventure.
If Identity doesn't sell it...
The MacFarlane-ish humor in season 1 and parts of season 2 was my least favorite aspect. I felt the subtler humor in season 3 generally worked better.
Yeah, like I said, I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it, but at least the humor set it on a path to being a different show.
If you don't like MacFarlane humor, what about Lower Decks?
Non sequitur. That's a different creator. Although I do think LD's humor has one of the same weaknesses, an extreme overdependence on pop-culture references (specifically Trek continuity references). And like The Orville, LD is generally better at the actual science fiction/adventure plots than it is at the comedy.
Did we ever get a confirmation either way on season 4? I know it's up in limbo but I thought we'd have heard something either way by now.
I enjoy it for the most part. 90s Trek with a sense of humor and acknowledgement of modern pop culture is surreal, but fantastic.
Hands down, the social media planet is my favorite episode. It's exactly the same "Twilight Zone"-esque social commentary classic Trek did, for the modern age. I'm almost depressed that this show did that idea before "Star Trek" proper could. I didn't find the cellphone episode that riveting, but again, I loved the premise of incorporating a modern object like an iPhone into a classic holodeck episode.
My one gripe has always been its slow, ploddy pacing, and by Q it's worse than ever in Season 3. Each episode feels like they're just playing the uncut, unedited footage of what would have been perfectly fine 45-minute episodes. Both the jokes and plot twists suffer heavily as a result, since I've had too much time to predict them, and am too irritated to care when they finally happen.
I also really don't like how Clair Finn's entire character now revolves souly around her romance with Isaac. She was my favorite character, and I'm fine with her an Isaac together, but their romance was just stretched so thin across the season. The only episodes where I still love her are the ones she's barely in, because that's the only time I'm not watching her and Isaac on candid cam.
If there's a season 4, I hope it picks up the pace, and gives Clair her character back. And I'd really appreciate if they came out with an edited version of the first 3 seasons, that cut the pointless filler that a normal show would.
Hands down, the social media planet is my favorite episode. It's exactly the same "Twilight Zone"-esque social commentary classic Trek did, for the modern age. I'm almost depressed that this show did that idea before "Star Trek" proper could. I didn't find the cellphone episode that riveting, but again, I loved the premise of incorporating a modern object like an iPhone into a classic holodeck episode.
My one gripe has always been its slow, ploddy pacing, and by Q it's worse than ever in Season 3. Each episode feels like they're just playing the uncut, unedited footage of what would have been perfectly fine 45-minute episodes. Both the jokes and plot twists suffer heavily as a result, since I've had too much time to predict them, and am too irritated to care when they finally happen.
I also really don't like how Clair Finn's entire character now revolves souly around her romance with Isaac. She was my favorite character, and I'm fine with her an Isaac together, but their romance was just stretched so thin across the season. The only episodes where I still love her are the ones she's barely in, because that's the only time I'm not watching her and Isaac on candid cam.
If there's a season 4, I hope it picks up the pace, and gives Clair her character back. And I'd really appreciate if they came out with an edited version of the first 3 seasons, that cut the pointless filler that a normal show would.
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