Well, your opinions. I found the "practical jokes" on Orvile absolutely groan inducing as opposed to the occasional Quark or Dr. Bashir humor.. to each their own.
The ship stuck in the dark matter storm. What TNG episode was it where they were stuck in a field of [?]somethings[/?]? Not the 2 dimensional creatures. It was similar to this when they lit them up and saw thousands of whatever they were.
It was a Troi episode, she lost her powers. Can't think of the name of it though? EDIT: "The Loss", I believe.
I was thinking the episode "In Theory" where the Enterprise was trapped in a dark matter nebula. It's completely understandable why this episode is forgettable. It is a romance episode, between Data and Jenna D'Sora. Orville did pretty well with this episode in emulating Star Trek. Romance episodes are among the worst in both. As a viewer, I know that there is a re-set button at the end of the episode, so why should I care about what this new relationship? it will be ended at episode's end and rarely, if ever, spoken about again. This episode was, for me, "meh".
I rewatched the episode and I love the visual effects on this show. The dark matter scene was almost animated in nature and it looked really cool.
I agree with the rest of your post, but not about Dear Doctor. It’s one of my top Star Trek episodes of all time.
The time travel stuff in Star Trek are always the worst episodes, and this wasn’t any better. But I am enjoying the show. Episodes 3 and 4 were great.
That was the one with the school of 2D fish. That's the one! Obviously more of that episode focused on Data and Jenna, but the B story in the dark matter nebula was what I was thinking of.
I voted four stars, though for me to give it a proper rating, it needs a ten-star system. I think I gave it seven stars on IMDb.
Yeah, I think the ten-star thing is too complicated. Endless nuance does not necessarily yield more clarity. Although, as a "C" student during so much of my secondary schooling I did covet and treasure that "+."
But it was because they saved her that they changed their course to begin with, to drop her off somewhere, and because of that they end up on a path that led to dark matter. They don't save her, none of that happens. In all honesty, DS9 is probably the funniest 90s Trek series. Interpret that how you will.
That's a strange episode to really like. You're not bothered by Phlox committing genocide through inaction because of an absurd misunderstanding of how evolution works? The very idea of a medical doctor saying "let nature take its course" is utterly beyond making sense. Not letting nature take its course is literally the purpose of his profession. If I was the captain of the NX-01, I would have asked Phlox to step out of the airlock and evolve resistance to vacuum or "let nature take its course", as supplying him with an artificial atmosphere in deep space was clearly in violation of his principles. Dear Doctor was the culmination of all the stupid Prime Directive episodes where for cheap false profundity the writers had Picard or Janeway sentence entire civilizations to death for the sake of adhering to a pedantic reading of the rule (even though in other episodes they'd arbitrarily break it). In the case of Dear Doctor, they didn't even have to the "strict Prime Directive constructionist" justification to fall back on, so they actually tried to defend this moral abomination through argument, and the argument was mystical drivel of the highest order. And then they try to have their cake and eat it too by having Archer object but respect Phlox's viewpoint because it's from a different culture. Usually when writers milk cheap drama out of a defense of moral relativism, they don't actually make the mistake of showing the really bad case studies (honor killings; ritual infanticide, etc.) because they'd clearly destroy the argument. But apparently Rick Berman (who insisted on this ending) thought a great case study of the enlightened position of moral relativism is literal genocide of a people begging for your help. The most important thing Star Trek lost with Roddenberry's death was its moral compass. While most of the episodes of the Berman-era shows did stick to a generally humanist viewpoint, some became muddled with truly misguided worldviews, born either of bad writing that didn't understand the implications of its cheap drama (Berman), or actual anti-rational cynicism (Moore et al). An actually great ENT episode is Cogenitor. It shows moral grey areas and the disastrous results of thoughtlessly applying your own values on a situation you don't understand, yet it never accepts that the Vissians treatment of cogenitors is morally blameless and shouldn't be rectified - just that Trip is not in any way equipped to do so. "About a Girl" did a similar thing so I'm confident Orville won't be going down the Dear Doctor path anytime soon.
I actually like Orville's humor sometimes, just the places the humor appears make it impossible for the show to have any dramatic impact. I just watch the show as a soft comedy and tribute to Star Trek. It's the TV show equivalent of a covers album. Seth MacFarlane is a cover band. He spent many years covering the Simpsons, and now he's covering Star Trek.
Cover bands try to emulate the original artist in every way possible, right down to the words and phrasing. Orville is not a Star Trek cover band. While the genre is definitely the same, the melody has been transposed, and the lyrics are different.
You can probably come up with a dozen TNG, VOY, DS9, or TOS references to this episode. "Cause and Effect" comes to mind, as the Orville would have suffered the same fate as the USS Bozeman. Since Brannon Braga is an executive producer, that shouldn't be surprising. I don't find the characters bland at this point. It took me several episodes, if not seasons, to warm up to characters such as Dr. Crusher, Kira Nerys, and Ezri Dax. I do feel that humor on the show feels forced sometimes, like watching an episode of Family Guy. Some gags are only funny the first time around. But it's probably safe to say that this series may still be in the process of finding its identity in terms of genre, and it's not easy to find the right balance. How many comedy scifi space operas are out there or have been done, for that matter? Instead of bitching about paying a premium to watch ST Discovery on CBS All Access, it's much easier for me to enjoy Orville as a Trek parody. I'm definitely on board with this show.