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The Orville |OT| MacFarlane's sci-fi com-, wait it's a drama!? That can't be right

berzeli

Banned
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Set 400 years in the future, the show follows the adventures of the Orville, a not-so-top-of-the-line exploratory ship in Earth's interstellar Fleet. Facing cosmic challenges from without and within, this motley crew of space explorers will boldly go where no comedic drama has gone before.

Cast:
The Orville stars the following actors:
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It also stars Seth MacFarlane:
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Reviews:
IndieWire: ‘The Orville’ Review: Seth MacFarlane’s ‘Star Trek’ Rip-Off is Creatively, Morally, and Ethically Bankrupt
NYT: Fox’s ‘The Orville’ is Star Trek, the Next Regurgitation
Vox: Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville isn't the spoof Fox advertised. It’s much weirder — and worse.
TVLine: Seth MacFarlane's Somber Sci-Fi Dud Crashes and Burns
Uproxx (Sepinwall): Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Isn’t A ‘Star Trek’ Spoof. It’s Just Bad ‘Star Trek’
Variety: "it exists so that creator and star Seth MacFarlane can do elaborate “Star Trek” cosplay"
berzeli: It's bad Star Trek fan fiction

Finally a message from our sponsor:
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I kind of liked what I watched so far but it's a show that needs to settle on what it wants to be. The comedy was hit and miss. Same goes for the drama. I might give it a chance.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Ohhhh a new Mass Effect.
On a side note I was actually Surprised by this, it's more Star Trek Nextgen than spoof and will probably end up being better than Discovery based on the first episode.
It funny but its Star Trek too.
 
Watch this ends up being a better Trek than Discovery. I'll probably check this out just to see, but impressions don't sound too hot.
 

osirisob

Neo Member
I kind of liked what I watched so far but it's a show that needs to settle on what it wants to be. The comedy was hit and miss. Same goes for the drama. I might give it a chance.

Exactly what I felt. It's stuck between being a comedy and drama, and having MacFarlane as lead doesn't help the issue, although I didn't mind him. You could tell this was going to be an issue with how the show was advertised - they didn't know what to focus on. Unfortunately, it probably won't have enough of a chance to find it's way on Fox b/c it has potential.
 

Justin Bailey

------ ------
I'll give it a chance. There is some potential with the lighthearted dialog between the crew. I think if they can mesh well then it will work.

Also needs to drop some of the running gags. They beat the "we're divorced" joke into the ground in the first episode.
 
I really liked this and can't wait for more. It definitely needs some tightening up in terms of tone and giving the characters more distinct personalities, but it's still a pilot.
 
Exactly what I felt. It's stuck between being a comedy and drama, and having MacFarlane as lead doesn't help the issue, although I didn't mind him. You could tell this was going to be an issue with how the show was advertised - they didn't know what to focus on. Unfortunately, it probably won't have enough of a chance to find it's way on Fox b/c it has potential.

I feel like it wants to be Buffy/Angel like where it's mostly an action adventure with comedic elements, but the style of comedy for most of the jokes is just wrong and doesn't fit. It needs to be less Seth MacFarlane humor and more Joss Whedon humor.
 

ZOONAMI

Junior Member
I watched the first episode last night. It's definitely a comedy, and actually had me chuckling quite a bit. I actually rather liked it. I think the critics are a bit overly harsh on it. It's an ode to star trek with more jokes (star trek actually is supposed to have some humor to it as well) which is fine by me.
 

aliengmr

Member
Really excited for the show, I think it has potential even though the pilot fell a bit flat in areas. I did like all the characters though, which I really think was the high point in the pilot.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Lazy. That's how I'd describe the premiere. It started off well enough but took an immediate downturn when he started addressing the senior officers. I'm not saying the show has to be funny, be a full on drama for all I care. But if you're going to use these tropes so openly, you either have to execute them well OR I don't know, make a joke about it because you're highlighting how it's so common in sci-fi. But this show doesn't do either. There's a deadspace where either the good dramatic moments should be or where the jokes should be.

And the line reads were awful in some spots. Some of the worst I've seen on network TV.

I've definitely seen worst shows overall, but this just got under my skin the more I think about it. It lacks any type of creative ambition. The playbook seems to be

1. Rip off Star Trek
2. ...maybe a joke or 2?

It's not even a clever or smart rip off. Just a ripoff.
 
It's pretty weird. The jokes clash with the tone the rest of the show is trying to set. It's not quite a self-aware Galaxy Quest - it's more just your usual Star Trek with characters (and a writer) who can't settle down and stop trying to be irreverent all the time. It stretches disbelief during the course of the pilot.

As for the pilot, it's also not conceptually interesting scifi in any way. It throws that out for the sake of the character relationships. The storyline is like a filler episode of Voyager.

I really appreciated how faithfully it nailed/ripped off the execution of 90s-era Trek down to the tiny details, but that made the humor that much more out of place.

How do you grow a redwood from a seed without sunlight, soil, and water?

Naming the robot Isaac is a nice touch. Do you think the helmsman, John LaMarr, is named after Phil LaMarr?
 

Jackpot

Banned
A big issue is that it's not a general "space show" parody but very much a Star Trek one. As in the show's so specific to Trek that every joke and visual is unavoidably seen in the context of Trek.

Also some of the humour is so dated.

"Only one gender, I guess you guys don't have many arguments about leaving the toilet seat up!"

"My species only urinates once a year"

Do ya geddit? He's talking about pee-pee and it's strange!
 
I thought the first episode was just mediocre-decent, but I like classic trek enough I'm going to stick it out for at least a few more episodes. The main appeal of this show is its potential to be a more upbeat and light-hearted take on the future more reminiscent of ToS, and TNG. This is just the pilot, so I feel like most of the time was dedicated to introducing the characters, and it had to inject humor to kind of sell its premise, hopefully in the future full production episodes we see a refocus on more trek and less comedy. The main thing I think is really going to hold this show back is that Seth couldn't resist the urge to cast himself as the main character.

How do you grow a redwood from a seed without sunlight, soil, and water?

They technically explained that in a scene earlier in the episode where they said it was engineered to grow without sunlight, water, or air. i.e. the energy for growth was contained in the seed itself
 

Slayven

Member
I can't get over how inefficient the design of the ships are. Big shuttle bay, tiny door that is blocked by the engines of your ship
 

adj_noun

Member
I've got the first episode saved on Vue. Not expecting the world, but I'll give it a shot if for no reason other than sci fi.
 
Watched pilot. Normally can't stand Seth live action. I was into this enough to give this a few more episodes. I hope the tone doesn't change. I like the balance between comedy and drama. If it shifts too much towards comedy, this will falter. They're playing it mostly straight and following the Trek template as closely as it's legally possible. I'm glad that they didn't do Galaxy Quest, and I'm glad that it's not the Farscape tone i was hoping for.

It's straight Trek, and I think I'd have more fun watching this show than Discovery to be honest....

But i'm still gonna give Discovery a shot.
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Say what I did in the last thread.

This comes off as an attempt to knock off Galaxy Quest, but without the smart humor or likable cast.


Only things I kind of enjoyed were the robot and the not-Klingon.
 
My take, having just watched the episode:

I feel like they borrowed a bit too heavily from Trek characters for their own good. We have a pair of roguish pilots (ala Tom Paris), the factual alien (ala a Vulcan or Data), the strong security chief (ala Worf, though the character feels a bit like Torres too), and the strong/motherly Doctor (ala Bones, Crusher, Pulaski). Even Seth's character has hints of Kirk and Archer in him.

The humor ranges from decent to badly juvenile. Some spots could have been done way better (like the dog scene, they could have had the pilot say "Did you see what I just saw?" and had the other respond in the fashion he did and it would have gone over better I feel, maybe even made people rewatch the scene to see what they were talking about, rather than just blurt it out and ruin it, imo). Some of the humor got a chuckle from me though
they encounter a sealed door that the Captain can't open, so he turns to the Security Chief and asks her to "open this jar of pickles for me". She steps back, takes a run and not only breaks down the door, but most of the wall it's built into. The Captain examines the destruction, clearly impressed, and quips "I loosened it for you." It felt like a very Kirk-like comment.

I was expecting more from the robot. When Seth's character said they were extremely racist, I was waiting for that to show through in its interactions with the crew, but the most it was shown was a throwaway line from it saying it would be his best officer (or to that effect).

The Krill feel like Klingon/Romulan stand-ins, and the name is rather poor. Also, chin-pincers. :p

I like that
not only the ship took serious damage, but the captain got shot too. It shows that the Orville isn't invincible and neither is it's crew, highlighting the fact that the ship is a mid-range exploration vessel like they repeatedly called it rather than the top of the line ship like the Enterprise
.

The special effects are not bad.

It's not horrible, it's below average Trek with a bit of mediocre humor thrown in. There's no Neelix (yet), and the characters at least have some personality to them (even if we've seen those personalities before). I'll be watching the next few episodes to see if it improves or falls on it's face, but I'll be watching.
 

Kevin

Member
Season premiere ratings are: 8.56 million. Keep in mind two things:

-Football was the lead-in.
-Hurricane was beginning to hit Florida leaving millions of people on the move and probably millions watching hurricane coverage on tv.

This almost certainly would have gotten more then 10+ million if it wasn't because of the hurricane madness. It moves to Thursdays I believe next week in which I am expecting a massive drop. I'm guessing 5-6 million if not lower. I think it would need to stay above 4 million by the end of the season run to get renewed and even 4 million would make them think twice about renewing. Gotham was renewed at just under 3 million by season end and Lucifer hovered between 3-4 million and got renewed but the Orville is likely much more expensive to produce.

I enjoyed the premiere. It's not perfect and the humor is very hit and miss but it's entertaining enough that me and my friends intend on continuing to watch.

I didn't expect much out the gate but a Star Trek spoof series is just such a funny concept that not many people have really tapped into beyond Galaxy Quest (which I own) and maybe Red Dwarf from the BBC. Still as far as tv shows go, this is the first US Star Trek spoof series that I am aware of and well I feel like it's entertaining enough for me to support it.
 

DiscoJer

Member
Quark was arguably the first Star Trek parody TV show. It was in the 70s and starred Richard Benjamin who played a space garbage collector. It's on DVD.

It had first officer that was a plant (his name was ficus) and a male and female character named Gene played by Tim Thomerson, a woman and her clone (played by twins), and an android.

I like that
not only the ship took serious damage, but the captain got shot too. It shows that the Orville isn't invincible and neither is it's crew, highlighting the fact that the ship is a mid-range exploration vessel like they repeatedly called it rather than the top of the line ship like the Enterprise
.
.

The thing is though, despite getting shot in the shoulder, he showed absolute no effects of being shot in the shoulder, except a small scene where he said ti really hurt and they made fun of him for that.

The aliens appeared to be using spring loaded BB guns as their weapons for all the power (and accuracy) they showed.
 

Aiii

So not worth it
The thing is though, despite getting shot in the shoulder, he showed absolute no effects of being shot in the shoulder, except a small scene where he said ti really hurt and they made fun of him for that.

The aliens appeared to be using spring loaded BB guns as their weapons for all the power (and accuracy) they showed.

Or, you know, they have more advanced medicine and are quickly able to heal such tiny flesh wounds.
 

DBT85

Member
I'm subbed to the thread and the show, but I don't know how long I'll last. I'm all over Trek/Wars/Gate/Farscape/BSG etc.

The jokes were crap so we'll see how it goes.
 

Sir Doom

Member
Seth feels out of place some writers or directors just need to stay behind the camera

The make up looks nice though especially the main bad guys
 

Jobbs

Banned
It has nice production values. It feels like a bunch of competent people are carrying out the orders of one crazy person who doesn't seem to know how to make a show. It reminds me of the Homer car.
 

lunchtoast

Member
I'll keep watching. I like the two characters in the red suits and their chemistry. The whole working with ex-wife is tiring as they'll having feelings for each other slowly over the series blah blah blah. With all of Seth's voice over work I'd wish he'd be more of a character than just saying lines.
 

Kin5290

Member
It's going to be tragically hilarious if this show turns out to be better than Star Trek Discovery, which is not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
 

jetjevons

Bish loves my games!
It was unexpectedly lifeless. Don't know if it was the direction or just "pilot problems" but the lighting is flat, the camera static and the editing pedestrian. The bridge is too 'clean'. Needs more beeping lights and sounds and shit. The ship itself needs more iconic sounds. Tone was all over the place. I feel like it honestly needs to focus on just being a comedy.

Oh and what's up with a smurf reference 400 years in the future?

Also the slick space CG seems strangely incongruous with the retro sets.

I'll stick with it because I really *want* this show to work but not off to a great start IMO.
 
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