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.
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I really liked it.
The early seasons were less serious than later ones. But overall, it did well with serious social issues and addresses some very relevant topics.
The storyline with Topah was absolutely amazing. At every step, each character was portrayed well, and respectfully. It’s rare that there is a story like that that still has conflict without having a clear villain.
The time travel episode with Gordon was also especially brutal with some great performances from everyone on screen.
There were a few misses. I found the Isaac / Doctor relationship… forced, even if it did bring us the best line in decades (“As I am incapable of stuttering, I must conclude that you heard me.”). I also don’t think I’m alone with disliking the Charlie character in season 3.
I loved how Klyden grew through that story line, realizing what his prejudice was costing him and growing!
The Gordon/Time travel episode was brutal. It’s the episode I keep referring to when attempting to get my girlfriend to suspend her dislike of Seth McFarlane enough to give the show a shot. I will be very disappointed if there isn’t a 4th episode.
Best part of season three is Charlie’s death. Felt almost forced in a way, but not in a good way. Like Charlie is an ensign but is on the bridge because she’s really smart at 4d maneuvering or something, and they bring her everywhere. Definitely great when she finally went.
I didn’t think the Star Trek formula would work with silly jokes instead of everyone taking themselves super seriously.
I was wrong.
Love it, way better than Spores-are-actually-the-Force-now-all-of-a-sudden-Space-JesusIt’s the best Star Trek series since DS9.
I miss Alara, too. Lieutenant Replacement Goldfish isn’t nearly as good.
It’s BS that Yaphit got a medal for that business with the Kaylons but Ty Finn didn’t. He was the actual hero there!
Dolly Parton cameo had me friggin’ dying.
I bet Dolly was just tickled pink that her song is a revolutionary anthem
I think she got a kick out of it, she was smiling like a school girl the entire cameo.
I stopped watching shortly after Alara left. I mostly couldn’t stand the Captain and his ex, or any of their humor stuck in the year 2005, and the only other characters I really liked weren’t part of the ‘main team’.
After the first season, which was an obligatory “Star Trek Type Show Finds Its Feet” season, it really hit its stride to become the best Star Trek since DS9. Not in name, but certainly in spirit. So earnest, with a great message throughout. Sure it had some mediocre jokes here and there but so did TNG, let’s not forget. I was sitting around just the other day thinking how I missed watching The Orville
Always thought the whole parody aspect was just a means to get funding to just make a regular star trek series in disguise. If someone would just give the man money for exactly that we would have an awesome star trek series.
I haven’t caught up with the most recent season, but I really liked all adventures the crew went on. One thing I did remember wishing was for the show to drop the Ed and Kelly relationship subplot, since I liked the more friends and professional dynamic. And I miss Alara too, and wish she’d be part of the crew again.
Best show ever. I almost peed myself when Ed Mercer tried to eat those stones in the admiral’s office in the first episode. Took me like 5minutes of the first episode to love it. And it has so many good episodes, etical dilemmas and thought provoking stories. And I like the Moclans. And i like the storytelling. Especially that most stories take one episode.
One of my favorite moments was when they were trying to teach Isaac about pranks and he removed Malloy’s leg.
Up until Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, it was hands down the best modern Star Trek (like) show. It’s definitely a little clumsy early on, but after a few episodes it’s very clear that Seth is finally fulfilling his childhood dream of doing Star Trek even if it’s his own version of it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope season 4 happens.
Microwave reheated Star Trek. I feel like it started out being too humorous, hit the perfect balance, and then veered into trying too hard to be Star Trek. If your Star Trek parody isn’t a parody anymore I’ll just…watch actual Star Trek. Lower Decks filled the Star Trek comedy hole much better.
Bingo. It was kinda cute at first when it was still trying to be funny, but as the parody pretense slowly fell away it just got boring.
The strangest part about it is how each episode is a remix of a Trek episode and yet the remix makes it very clear that the writers just don’t get it. For example, season 2’s “Blood of Patriots” is a rearrangement of “The Wounded,” but the subplot about Mercer and Malloy being best friends forever trivializes what TNG successfully depicted as a nuanced dilemma.
There’s no accounting for taste, but it genuinely surprises me that there seems to be so many Star Trek fans who think it’s any good. On the other hand, it seems pretty safe to say that season 3 was the last, so clearly the actual numbers were unremarkable.
Orville season 3 has a few episodes that are easily up to par in the top 10-20 star trek episodes of all times.
we need a new season!
The Orville is what would happen if the offspring of Star Trek and Galaxy Quest married Lexx and had a baby.
It actually has a lot of the same style social commentary that really Trek ToS and TNG had, combined with the absurdity and humor of GQ and periods of no-punches-pulled raunchy. I mean, go Yaphit and we all know kinky shit happened in holedecks too but it’s something else to see on screen.
I am very much looking forward to the next season. It’s actually one of the very few sci-fi movies I’ve gotten my wife to watch with me that she enjoyed
Put me in the “like it don’t love it” camp. It is very clearly Seth MacFarlane’s love letter to 90s trek, pulled some good ideas from that era’s writers, and has more heart than it seems in the first couple of episodes. Some of the character work is actually quite touching, and it seems like they’re having fun with the show, so it’s rarely a slog. Overall though, it is way too uneven to be great or even really good.
Seth is not a great actor, and several members of the cast are MUCH worse than him, like “low-end dinner theater” bad. The set design, costume, and prosthetics are pretty weak, and Seth’s sense of humor just doesn’t work for me, so in a context where he’s trying to find the right balance with a Star Trek show, it hits even more awkwardly. It’s also very specifically SETH MACFARLANE’S love letter to Star Trek, so there’s way too much emphasis on 1980-2000 American pop culture, and I say that as someone who’s only a few years younger than him. It’s distracting how narrow the set of references are in a show that traffics in them so liberally.
There’s also something just a bit off about the messaging of many of the more serious episodes, like Seth feels a need to come down on a definitive answer to the moral questions that come up. I dunno, I am having trouble recollecting specific scenes, but it’s a lingering feeling I have. I almost imagine 20-something Seth in a dorm room at RISD screaming at Picard that he should have just shot that Romulan!
I thought it was the best comedic Star Trek until Lower Decks dropped. It’s still the best modern Trek show as a regular Trek show, albeit a lot more goofy than it needs to be since it’s made as a comedy first. I watch it because it’s actually about as good in the drama and set design as TNG was, but the humor, being driven by McFarlane, is just not my thing anymore. He’s just got too much shit that’s all over the place and I’m tired of it, not that it’s bad in and of itself.
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.
The main battle against the robots at earth, but one of the other ones as well was really good.
The earth one was exceptionally long for a space cgi battle.
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.
