Yes and more interesting because...no Prime Directive.
Yes, in Trek. There's no PD other than in Trek, which is part of its calcification and one reason Orville is more entertaining.
Will The Orville ever get transporters?
- Thread starter MarsWeeps
- Start date
Yes and more interesting because...no Prime Directive.
Yes, in Trek. There's no PD other than in Trek, which is part of its calcification and one reason Orville is more entertaining.
Transporters only existed because TOS didn't have the time, or budget, to have characters constantly taking shuttles everywhere. So there's no logical reason for Orville to have them.
The only problem with the prime directive is when the writers interpret it as a genocide pact with the universe.
Orville was never a parody of Star Trek, more of an homage.
Orville was never a parody of Star Trek, more of an homage.
Well, maybe. I believe they can't contact species who haven't asked for contact.
That's a regulation; there's no indication that it's Holy Writ on the level of the PD.
They did have a variation of the prime directive in the episode. It's the reason they couldn't bust in guns blazing to save Kelly and Bortus. They are bound to follow local laws even if they're ****ing stupid ones.
No, they're not. The importance of establishing good relations with these people was more important in this case than getting the officers out quickly. The admiral acknowledged that they had to take into account that they were on Regor dealing with local laws, but that the situation was complex. He compared going back in force to what the Krill would do.
The reason we see these conversations repeatedly is that these things are evaluated case-by-case.
Picard is bound, OTOH, by what's virtually unappealable and might-as-well-be religious edict.
The Orville mirrors the real world quite a bit more closely than Trek does, in this respect. Which is a low bar, yeah.
The Union was sending a diplomatic envoy to Regar. It would have been their responsibility, among many things, to see what could be done to get the officers returned. Remember, these two were not facing execution for being Jilliac; they were under indefinite detention.
The reason we see these conversations repeatedly is that these things are evaluated case-by-case.
Picard is bound, OTOH, by what's virtually unappealable and might-as-well-be religious edict.
The Orville mirrors the real world quite a bit more closely than Trek does, in this respect. Which is a low bar, yeah.
The Union was sending a diplomatic envoy to Regar. It would have been their responsibility, among many things, to see what could be done to get the officers returned. Remember, these two were not facing execution for being Jilliac; they were under indefinite detention.
Last edited:
I imagine the lack of transporters is their Big Thing that they can wave around the prove that The Orville is legally distinct from Star Trek. Should the need ever arise.
Indeed.
Orville is to Trek as Police Squad! is to Quinn Martin Productions.
Why would the need arise? Even if Orville had transporters, there wouldn't be any legal conflict. Although they would probably use a different term, just out of professional courtesy.
It's like why Babylon 5 didn't have an EAS Enterprise. AFAIK, they would have been allowed to use one (I'm pretty sure the copyright on the use of fictional ships named Enterprise is limited to the USS prefix), but there's no way JMS would have actually done this. It's just good manners, as it were - leave the name "Enterprise" to Trek, even if you don't have to. Probably the same story with Orville and transporters.
Last edited:
No.
That's looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope.
You stay away from transporters so the issue of copying won't arise in any legal sense to begin with. Even in combination, the rest of the elements that Orville uses are not unique to Trek; they predate it. The transporter alone stands out in that regard.
I'd go as low as 10%.
Technically, the transporter predates trek.
The first use of a matter transporter in science fiction was in the original The Fly. Ironically, so was the first transporter malfunction, so if Orville wanted to use transporters, they have the legal cover of being able to say while Trek is known for transporters, the concept is not unique to the franchise.
I prefer the original argument. The Orville doesn't have transporters because the writers don't need them to tell the stories they want to tell. This is a very good thing.
Yeah, but the real reason does have more to do with the imitation issue. Both MacFarlane and Braga have acknowledged that the transporter is too much Trek's "signature" for them to want to use it.
Nothing in Trek is unique to Trek, really. It's the overall pattern.
Frankly, if I were making one of these shows and I was concerned about similarities to Trek the first thing I'd do is ditch the transporter - BUT I would never have gone for uniforms of the sort the Union officers wear. They resemble only two things: Star Trek and Galaxy Quest.*
*Okay, and Space Patrol, kinda. But who remembers?
Right down to the mini-skirts.
To go back to the original question, I'm glad they don't have transporters. As cool as they are in the Trek shows, it does make things a lot more interesting when they have to actually travel from place to place. It also save them having to constantly come up with excuses for why it won't work when they want someone trapped somewhere.
I never minded the Prime Directive that much, I think it makes sense for a society as advanced as Starfleet and the Federation to have a rule like that. It did kind of get in the way a few times, but I think there were a lot more interesting episodes dealing with it than there were times it held back the story, in fact the last episode of Discovery was a great Prime Directive episode.
Maybe, but you could also go the SG-1 route and just say, "Yeah, we're using transporters. What's it to ya?" They didn't get dinged for copying because the show was different enough (and the other stuff they cribbed from trek they made fun of relentlessly).
But I agree. I wouldn't use transporters either, but mainly because there are other ways to get my characters onto a planet that aren't limited by budget the way they were when trek was first produced. Being accused of copying is far down my list of worries.
As for uniforms, I don't mind the Union's duds, but I would go more naval.
Nah. I can't think of three Trek episodes that turned on the Prime Directive that have been worth a spit. Occasionally a good show contains an evocation or acknowledgment of the PD as one of its elements, but building a central conflict around whether or not the PD ought to apply is just masturbation: it will always be held up in the end, one way or another, as some kind of Eleventh Commandment. Boring.
As with most of Roddenberry's Revised Vision, the Prime Directive conjures a fairy tale utopia that somehow exists without plausible explanation or any historical antecedent.
Netflix's Lost In Space Features Surprising Recognition of Race
Last edited:
If they do, they'll likely only use it as a plot device for an episode, ala Voyager's Tuvix episode. Bortus and Gordon beam down to a transporter mishap, finding that their personalities have been swapped.
Last edited:
Yeah, I could see the Orville doing a genital/gender swap story or something like that involving transporters.
Last edited:
Similar threads
