When I first started this show I found it to be a really awkward mix of comedy and seriousness. It had some jokes thrown it at the most inopportune times as some kind of comic relief from a really serious situation. Perhaps the first half of the first season was actually a bit rough or maybe the show just grew on me, but by season 2 I found myself loving this show.
To me it seems as every bit as comfy, intellectually interesting and even funny as some classic Star Treks while still clearly being its own thing. I wish more comfy space shows like this would get made.
What are your thoughts on The Orville? Also I miss Alara.
I might give it a shot if it weren’t for Seth McFarlane. The dude is the antithesis of comedy.
There are funny moments to the show, but it’s not a comedy show and Seth rogen doesn’t play a comedy character. Show works
The Orville is the best science fiction show featuring complex moral questions of the last decade. And Seth McFarlane isn’t as prominent in the show as early episodes showed.
It’s much more focused on crew than other shows, specially Isaac, Bortus, Kelly and Claire. No surprise since they are better actors than Seth. I like Seth Krill episodes though.
He do be like that.
I don’t even mind Family Guy, I think it’s just his face.
Try watching an episode in the second or third series. I’m not keen on Seth either but seems like the “Sethisms” toned down as the show progressed
I get the feeling that he was forced to include Family Guy style jokes in the first series and was allowed to ease up after it was clear that they weren’t working.
spoiler
With the exception of that early episode explaining humour to the android character and the engineer wakes up with his leg cut off. That was pretty funny.
Better Star Trek than actual Star Trek.
Modern Star Trek, right?
EDIT By “modern Star Trek” I mean every show from Discovery to Strange New Worlds.
Ahhhhh Lower Decks came out between those two shows release dates and it’s a great show.
Yes I’ll die on that hill.
The Orville is my favorite Star Trek franchise. It’s canon - you can’t deny it. The Orville revived the Star Trek Franchise and gave it a pulse. It’s like blockchain. You can say it doesn’t belong, but it will always be there and nothing can change that. It has great attention to detail and decent story writing with that original “there’s a moral in this episode” that endeared ST in our hearts, something the newer ST franchises lack.
I really disliked it. I thought it was a really poorly constructed clone of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and not a subtle one at that. The cut scenes, the sounds… It was all so incredibly “old” feeling.
The relationship between the robot and the doctor was excruciatingly cringy. It was so insanely contrived, and I can’t conceive of why anyone tolerated it, let alone enjoyed it.
This said, it’s not all bad. I enjoyed one or two episodes, I liked the comedy aspect, and I also enjoyed many of the CGI special effects.
Whatever you think of the show, it gave us one of, if not the most, epic CGI space battle. It was so damn long and intricate.
Which one? I either don’t recall, or I need to check that out! I’ve seen something like 80% of the entire series, if I recall correctly. I did admittedly skip a few of the episodes, though.
Wow, i don’t know many people who dislike it. I think the TNG-clone feeling is deliberate. I think like science fiction holds up a mirror to our world… they chose to hold up another mirror and simultaneously copy The Next Generation. There is the doctor, a robot/android… you quickly catch many similarities… but further along things start to get skewed, sometimes your expectations get fulfilled or ruined and they play with the stereotypes. I think it’s kind of genius and often times gives it one or two additional layers of depth. Especially when they simultaneously discuss philosophical stuff and simultaneously play with TNG storytelling tropes. Like when they introduced people on the orville are vegan. and star trek still struggles with that today and people far in the future are super advanced, but randomly kill cows to eat them.
I also think the relationship between the android and the doctor has a certain cringy-ness to it. We currently see AI slowly becoming reality. It is very up to date to discuss people having relationships with machines. But they somehow do it in a weird and strange way. And too dramatic. But remember, there’s also Wesley Crusher. And Captain Proton and some weird robots on Voyager’s holodeck.
I don’t know why you associate that “old” feeling with something negative. It reminds me of good times, watching star trek series as a kid. And to this date i like those sounds more than the atmospheric sounds of recent Star Trek. And I also like the light and bright spaceships more than the recent tv shows that all happen at night and have dark and dimly lit sets. like Picard.
Like when they introduced people on the orville are vegan.
Malloy’s line delivery in Season 3 when he confesses to killing and eating animals really goes a long way to show how far the ethical mores of future society have moved. He basically felt like a murderer because, to him at least, that’s exactly what he felt like. Contrast that against his prior characterization as the goofy, prankster guy and you get so much more depth of character from him.
It’s like Marty McFly admitting to Doc Brown that he killed and ate Biff because the Doc left the two on a desert island and timey wimey weirdness meant he showed back up two months later than he expected. Heavy stuff.
