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The Orville is Overrated Nostalgic Trek Fans

Styleset

Styleset

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
So yeah, I will watch this show because it is so close to TNG in many ways. It will remind me of my younger years and the realtively neat storytelling of that era. But The Orville is not only not as good as previous Star Trek, it pails in comparison to DSC. TNG had better acting and better writing, even when it's messages were bonk-bonk-over-the-head. The use of very contemporary humor and cultural references on The Orville pulls me out of the universe every time and reminds me it's just a TV show. DSC is contemporary Trek on an 8M budget per episode. The visual effects are amazing, the costumes or perfectly constructed, the direction is crisp and cinematic. Yes, DSC is a different kind of Trek. And yeah, I definitely think they missed some marks in all those areas along the way, but DSC Season 1 may be the best first season of Trek in all of the shows.

Would love to hear other thoughts!
 
Styleset said:
But The Orville is not only not as good as previous Star Trek, it pails in comparison to DSC.
Click to expand...

Wait a minute... so The Orville is overrated nostalgia, but Discovery, a show that can't go five minutes without referencing other parts of the Star Trek franchise, is somehow better? :lol:

Whether one wants to hang it on "overrated nostalgia" or whatever other non-sense of the day pops up, there's a reason I prefer The Orville to Discovery: it is fun with heart and optimism. I like these characters more than pretty much any others except the ones in the original Star Trek.
 
Styleset said:
So yeah, I will watch this show because it is so close to TNG in many ways. It will remind me of my younger years and the realtively neat storytelling of that era. But The Orville is not only not as good as previous Star Trek, it pails in comparison to DSC. TNG had better acting and better writing, even when it's messages were bonk-bonk-over-the-head. The use of very contemporary humor and cultural references on The Orville pulls me out of the universe every time and reminds me it's just a TV show. DSC is contemporary Trek on an 8M budget per episode. The visual effects are amazing, the costumes or perfectly constructed, the direction is crisp and cinematic. Yes, DSC is a different kind of Trek. And yeah, I definitely think they missed some marks in all those areas along the way, but DSC Season 1 may be the best first season of Trek in all of the shows.

Would love to hear other thoughts!
Click to expand...

To me nobody has beaten season one tos yet and discovery doesn't look to be doing so. TBF neither does the Orville. But while that's because I think they can do better and will do better I'm left looking at Disco the same way I looked at Ent. There's talent here but I'm struggling to see it.
To kind of echo Billj here; I think Disco would have done better if it had done a nuBSG and cut it's tie to old Trek outside of a few easter eggs. As it is it felt uneven and I definitely wouldn't have been happy if I was the states and had to buy a streaming service for it.
 
Turtletrekker said:
Agreed completely. When I'm watching the Orville, I generally wish I was watching The Next Generation.
Click to expand...
Yeah. But watching TNG normally makes me wish I was watching DS9...

I like Orville, but it's because I know where it's coming from. It's comfortable and it's reasonably well done. It's still a pale imitation though, and it's attempted humour grates a little.
 
Relayer1 said:
Yeah. But watching TNG normally makes me wish I was watching DS9...

I like Orville, but it's because I know where it's coming from. It's comfortable and it's reasonably well done. It's still a pale imitation though, and it's attempted humour grates a little.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I don't dislike the Orville, per se, Just I don't dislike Voyager or Enterprise. I've always said that even bad Star Trek was better than most of the stuff on TV.

And agreed on the humor. It takes me out of the story more often than not. People complain about the characters on Discovery using swear words, but I hear more people using the f-word in polite conversation in the real world then I do hearing the word "glory-hole". One person told me that they liked the conn and ops characters (whose name's escape me at the moment) because they were just like certain people that we knew in the real world. My reply was that I didn't really like those real world people that we knew very much either.
 
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I like both shows, but The Orville is slightly ahead of DSC for me. DSC started out a bit rough, but the Orville was good right from the start. I like most of the humor, and I like it's cast. The stories are fun, old style Trek, and they've even tackled some modern issues that Trek never actually got a chance to handle, and if they continue in the style of DSC probably won't for the foreseeable future.
 
Styleset said:
So yeah, I will watch this show because it is so close to TNG in many ways. It will remind me of my younger years and the realtively neat storytelling of that era. But The Orville is not only not as good as previous Star Trek, it pails in comparison to DSC. TNG had better acting and better writing, even when it's messages were bonk-bonk-over-the-head. The use of very contemporary humor and cultural references on The Orville pulls me out of the universe every time and reminds me it's just a TV show. DSC is contemporary Trek on an 8M budget per episode. The visual effects are amazing, the costumes or perfectly constructed, the direction is crisp and cinematic. Yes, DSC is a different kind of Trek. And yeah, I definitely think they missed some marks in all those areas along the way, but DSC Season 1 may be the best first season of Trek in all of the shows.

Would love to hear other thoughts!
Click to expand...

IMG_20180704_165511.jpg
 
Styleset said:
So yeah, I will watch this show because it is so close to TNG in many ways. It will remind me of my younger years and the realtively neat storytelling of that era. But The Orville is not only not as good as previous Star Trek, it pails in comparison to DSC. TNG had better acting and better writing, even when it's messages were bonk-bonk-over-the-head. The use of very contemporary humor and cultural references on The Orville pulls me out of the universe every time and reminds me it's just a TV show. DSC is contemporary Trek on an 8M budget per episode. The visual effects are amazing, the costumes or perfectly constructed, the direction is crisp and cinematic. Yes, DSC is a different kind of Trek. And yeah, I definitely think they missed some marks in all those areas along the way, but DSC Season 1 may be the best first season of Trek in all of the shows.

Would love to hear other thoughts!
Click to expand...
Overrated by whom? I love it, and since I'm all that matters when it comes to what shows I like to watch, I don't see the problem.
 
I simply wanted to get a conversation going. folks do not have to agree with me.
@Relayer1 gets what I am saying, "It's still a pale imitation though, and it's attempted humour grates a little." That's how I feel. It's just not as well written.

DSC is trying to do something different. It has the advantage and disadvantage of actually being in the Star Trek universe, which means people like all of us scrutinize it with a fine tooth comb. There are things that didn't work:

Reimagined Klingons went too far.
Should have stuck with TOS uniform colors.
Burnham/Spock connection felt forced, but now I am used to it so lets make it work.
Exterior ship shots were too dark. Trek fans want to actually see the ships.

But the production quality is excellent and I am pleased with that.
The writing is strong, even if sometimes too heavy handed.
The cast struggled with technobable at times, but who wouldn't at first. Sometimes, I think the technobabble is too much of a "aha, we've found an ingenious science-y solution!" Let's hope that gets better.

I also think that in order to communicate the utopian vision of Trek to modern audiences, characters need to struggle more to get there. Every one can't always be already there at the beginning. Character arcs are good! I think in 5-10 years Trek fans will look back very fondly at this period as another golden age of Trek!
 
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