You know I'm usually able to resist the lure of the member berries but damn it this series is sending me back to my childhood every week and I guess I'm along for the ride as long as it lasts. I'm just glad at the speed at which they dialed back on the MacFarlanesque humour.
Yeah, I'm surprised how much I like this series. I wasn't expecting to like it all, I was sure MacFarlane's brand of humor would ruin it for me but, dammit, the show has charm and does take me back to the "Watching TNG Days."
The humor's still there and doesn't always land for me, but thankfully isn't as low-brow or obvious as I originally expected, and MacFarlane being a Trek fan seems to want to really do this "right" on some level or another, probably why some of his broader humor isn't there. Like, say, a gay-panic joke when he meets the Second Officer guy. (Sorry, still learning names,) Instead we get an awkward joke about bathrooms which as kind of humorous. Then later the way he reacts when he learns SOG has laid an egg and needs some paternity leave it just feels nice and genuine how he reacts warmly, grants him the leave, and congratulations on the newborn. (Then an awkward joke about consuming the next, unfertilized, egg.) But the moment in the "ready room" with the Kermit the Frog doll and all.... It was just.... Nice. Something I'm not sure I remember Trek having a scene like that since sometime in TNG's days with Picard being welcoming and inviting to someone in the RR.
The moments with the two in the alien zoo cell was good stuff, there's just some interesting, entertaining and well done stuff here and sometimes it's slightly overshadowed by lame humor.
The episode with the trial on the baby was really good and I liked the SOG having his revelation after watching
Rudolph. It's that sort of stuff I like about this type of sci-fi, with aliens seeing some piece of human culture, latching onto it, and finding some deeper meaning in it. It's easy for us to pick fun at the Rudolph story about Santa being a bit of an ass and how the ending message seems to be "you're useless until your disability can help the very people who spurned you" but fir SOG to get a message about his child in it that completely changes his position on the situation is just...
Charming to see. A, to them, centuries old TV movie about a character made-up to increase customer traffic in department store inspires an alien to rethink his culture's entire way of operating! And for the show to have the guts to
not have this all work out and for an entire civilization to not change because of this one incident was also pretty inspired. And I have to say it was a bit touching to see them give the baby the Rudolph plushie at the end. I mean, again, that goes back to just my liking of alien cultures taking more from human culture than there probably is. It was just.... Magical, almost.
The show has a lot of problems but, really, there's some good stand-out moments in it that makes me into it and I hope the show lasts for a while. I hope it's tepid ratings mixed with MacFarlane's FOX pull is able to keep it around. The show looks like it's "cheap" to produce, the make-up isn't all that fabulous, they're doing some model work for the effects and any CGI effects sort of stand-out, their robot is practically in a Halloween costume and swear there's some scenes that look like they're being filmed a'la FMV game. (Standing out to me is when Super Strong Security Girl is in the "ready room" vomiting we see another crewman peering into the open door, the view of the corridor behind him looks badly green-screened in.) So hopefully it'll be around for a short while.
The show has charm and I'm kind of digging it.
