THE ORVILLE Season Two...

[Romulan_spy]

Here's a recent article by a critic who trashed 'Orville' and clearly wishes it to fail. He's saying ridiculous stuffs about the show while it wasn't clear whether he actually saw any of its episodes yet

https://www.tvovermind.com/why-the-orville-probably-wont-make-it-past-season-2/

I find that article to be poorly written and the arguments to be incredibly weak.

1) It's an old idea in a new package.
There are a lot of Star Trek fans who love the Orville precisely for this very reason. They see it as a modernized TOS/TNG and that's what they want. They see it as a good thing, not a negative thing.

2) Seth is not good at live acting.
Well, Jerry Seinfeld was never a great actor either but the show "Seinfeld" has become an iconic, beloved show. It's possible to have a bad actor and still have a great show that people love.

3) Content just does not fit with the time allotted.
He argues Family Guy works because it a 20 mn show so there is very little filler between jokes whereas Orville needs more filler because it's a 60mn show but that argument only works if Orville were a clone of Family Guy which it isn't. Orville and Family Guy are completely different shows. Family Guy is an animated comedy show, Orville is a live action scifi show. Family Guy's whole premise is just telling jokes. Orville has humor of course, but it's not primarily just a comedy. He does not seem to understand what Orville fundamentally is. The strength of Orville has been that it has told some genuinely good scifi stories. The humor is really incidental to the story. Orville works precisely because it's not just doing filler in between jokes but is doing good scifi with endearing characters. So the space between jokes is actually critically important because it's where the best parts of the show happen.

 

[Astra]

Orville works precisely because it's not just doing filler in between jokes but is doing good scifi with endearing characters. So the space between jokes is actually critically important because it's where the best parts of the show happen.

Exactly!

Also that one comment: "but he’s deliberately dropped the constant funny lines and gags, just leaving drab preachy drama, which none of his fans are interested in."

Well, maybe his old fans might have expected something different, but I am pretty sure he has gained a lot of new fans who were not interested in his previous work.

Like, this girl:

<----------

(Edit:
I even watched "Ted" today. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be)

 

[Mudd]

I liked Ted. Didn't see the sequel.

I've gotten to like MacFarlane a lot. A couple of months ago I listened to a couple of his albums on Spotify. The fact that he's done a duet with Streisand is something in itself.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

That article was a huge waste of time. I could've trimmed my toe nails and had a much more rewarding experience.

 

[thribs]

Trek fans should see Ted 2 for the joke at the end.

 

[Mudd]

This is Seth MacFarlane's "Trek fan film."

TOS, of course.

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[John Clark]

Exactly!

Also that one comment: "but he’s deliberately dropped the constant funny lines and gags, just leaving drab preachy drama, which none of his fans are interested in."

Well, maybe his old fans might have expected something different, but I am pretty sure he has gained a lot of new fans who were not interested in his previous work.

Like, this girl:

<----------

(Edit:
I even watched "Ted" today. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be)

Indeed. There was some of his stuff I liked, but a fair bit wasn't my style. I do enjoy The Orville a lot though.

 

[picardjean-luc]

This is Seth MacFarlane's "Trek fan film."

TOS, of course.

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I picture this as a young Cadet Ed Mercer doing a simulator in Union Point

TOS was one of those 1950s/60s flicks he likes (just like "The King and I").

 

[tomalak301]

Just saw that the Orville soundtrack is on Apple Music and Spotify. I'm sure it's on the other streaming services too.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

I'm still waiting for my CD to ship but I'll stream it ahead of getting it. I just looked an it's on Amazon Music.

 

[thribs]

On Spotify as well

 

[LJones41]

There are a lot of Star Trek fans who love the Orville precisely for this very reason. They see it as a modernized TOS/TNG and that's what they want. They see it as a good thing, not a negative thing.

I am one fan who doesn't want it. I don't want to be stuck in the past, because I fear something new for the Trek franchise. And honestly? "The Orville" has been rocking my boat even less during Season 2, so far.

 

[Mudd]

Can't find it on Spotify.

 

[CaptainMurdock]

I am one fan who doesn't want it. I don't want to be stuck in the past, because I fear something new for the Trek franchise. And honestly? "The Orville" has been rocking my boat even less during Season 2, so far.

Why can't there be room for both?

 

[Mudd]

I am one fan who doesn't want it. I don't want to be stuck in the past, because I fear something new for the Trek franchise.

Thus far, there's nothing to "fear."

At this point, clinging to Star Trek is being stuck in the past.

Let me know if and when STD contributes something new for the Trek franchise, will you? Because so far it's produced bugger all. Thanks.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Thus far, there's nothing to "fear."

At this point, clinging to Star Trek is being stuck in the past.

Let me know if and when STD contributes something new for the Trek franchise, will you? Because so far it's produced bugger all. Thanks.

"Magic to Make Sanest Man Go Mad" is a good Star Trek episode.

....

Wow, that's damning with faint praise.

 

[CaptainMurdock]

I got my copy of the season 1 soundtrack today. It was a great listen. Candy for the ears. I love this classic bombastic style of music, It's very memorable and very refreshing.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Orville isn't stuck in the past any more than black-and-white photography or Jazz is stuck in the past. It's a style, an aesthetic, a genre. A genre may go in and out of fashion, but it's never outdated.

 

[Mudd]

"Magic to Make Sanest Man Go Mad" is a good Star Trek episode.

Yes, it was a good show.

 

[Mudd]

I was a Star Trek fan before I really got in to writing or talking with other kids who were into science fiction - Trek premiered on NBC when I was in junior high school, and was cancelled before I got to high school.

At high school there was a science fiction club. Surprisingly, the kids who ran it - seniors, of course, two years ahead of me and my friends (which seemed a tremendous gulf of experience, a life time, really) - were dismissive of Star Trek. They'd read a lot more prose sf than I had; the sf literary lions of the day were still the old pre-"New Wave" guard, people like Heinlein and Asimov and some others who are not really well remembered at all now (Clement, Anderson, Pohl). One senior who was determined to be a writer talked about Brunner and Ellison a lo.

Star Trek, as it turned out and according to the Big Kids, was made of stolen parts and, almost as important, didn't handle any of them very well. The failings of logic in the show and the scientific errors (as close to cardinal sins as one could get amongst ser-con fanboys of the day) were legion. It was badly written, etc., etc.

And, of course, Star Trek was also a big failure that gone off the air a year or two before and there was really no reason we should still be paying any attention to it, anyway.

Oh, and one guy* insisted that the whole series was completely stolen from a much better science fiction movie of some years before, Forbidden Planet. That meant nothing to me at the time. I remembered it years later when I first saw the movie on TV in a college dorm. And, yeah, it turned out that Trek pretty much was.

Anyway, I was reminded of all this last evening while paging through an old book about Trek written by David Gerrold. The first Star Trek convention was apparently put together by some New York science fiction fans at a hotel well-known there for hosting sf conventions. According to Gerrold, they were tired of being mocked and shooed off at gatherings like Lunacon for seeming to prefer the dumb TV show to the clearly superior and more varied material that the majority were into.**

That was a long time ago, and I don't guess any of it matters any more.

*There was one young woman in the club. I would learn later that this would be almost stereotypically true of science fiction groups I would find throughout my college years - except for Star Trek clubs. This may explain my throwing myself so completely into Trek fandom during those years.

**According to contemporary accounts, the first couple of episodes of Star Trek were shown at a Worldcon in 1966 and the science fiction fans were pretty excited about it. Well, at that time it was a couple of cool short films without a few thousand fanatics wrapped around it. Later sf fans probably really disliked Trekkies a lot more than they disliked Star Trek.