The Orville: new on Fox

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the pilot. It's a modern take on Star Trek TOS, with the hokey characters, swiss-cheese plots, light humor and low budget kept intact. It is exactly what I expected from a network-TV show helmed by Seth MacFarlane and Brannon Braga.

When I want a meaty space-opera with complex story arcs and nuanced characters, I'll go watch The Expanse (and I recommend you watch it as well, if only to see Shoreh Aghdashloo's character taking shit from no-one). The Orville is for when I just want to crash on the couch and de-stress after a long workday (without subjecting myself to the excruciatingly sappy teen-dramedy of a CW show.) The fact that it features a super-strong female character is just a bonus.

The expanse is good. The books are even better.

Sadly, unless their viewership goes up, I can't see how they get renewed. I can't see how the Expanse was renewed after season 1. A fraction of the viewers of the typical CW show even though it's better written, acted and with an arcing story.

AuGoose wrote: Watched the Orville pilot. Enjoyed it quite well. To the point were -- as usual, I suppose -- I was left wondering what the hell the haters wanted from it. The LOVE for Star Trek TNG on display was sincere and omnipresent. The music was intensely Trek.

To answer your question, the Expanse was mentioned below. That is outstanding SF at every level and an example of how good TV can get. It asks the viwer to get involved in the story and is serious drama.

Orville is a lightweight romp that could be fun, I hope anyway, but it asks nothing of the viewer except a bit of nostalgia. It makes Galaxy Quest look heavyweight.

In the end, there is TV that asks you to turn your brain on, and TV that asks you to turn it off. I pretty much put everything into those two buckets: smart TV or dumb TV. Both have their place. Both can be entertaining. Both fill different needs. Some folks need to turn their brains off for a bit.

Shadar

I thought the Orville was a lot of fun.
A lighthearted fun look at Star Trek, The Motion Picture and especially TNG

The ridiculous gun fight and space battle were not to be taken seriously and the super strong girl was icing on the cake.

Poor Adrienne Palicki.
She is so beautiful, funny and a good actress.
She can not catch a break on TV.
Her character was poorly written and she did the best she could with what was given her.

I will be back to watch more adventures of the crew of the Orville.

AuGoose wrote:

shadar wrote: To answer your question, the Expanse was mentioned below. That is outstanding SF at every level and an example of how good TV can get. It asks the viwer to get involved in the story and is serious drama.

...

I didn't find Orville stupid at all. It was people - relatively ordinary people - living in a Federation-style world. And frankly Star Trek has never done that well. In many ways it was right there on par with its inspiration... minus the stuck-up, sanctimonious BS.

I used to adore the stuck-up sanctimonious BS of Star Trek. I was inspired by the idea that humanity could overcome its darkest urges and humans (and aliens) could become something so much more than a bunch of clever ape-men. It was very utopian.

But it seems silly 50 years later given where we are today, poised at the brink of nuclear war and all kinds of other destructive possibilities.

But for a while, we could dream of a better tomorrow. That's what I loved about Star Trek.

That isn't where Orville is going. They take the setting and tech from Star Trek, tweak it a bit, but then drop characters into it who are very ordinary people. I can see why some would see the charm in that. But I see utopia lost. The good people of Star Trek were always better and smarter and more principled than the average person today.

Shadar

Starforge wrote: The expanse is good. The books are even better.

Sadly, unless their viewership goes up, I can't see how they get renewed. I can't see how the Expanse was renewed after season 1. A fraction of the viewers of the typical CW show even though it's better written, acted and with an arcing story.

It's basic cable; they're accustomed to much lower ratings than a network show.

The Expanse is the fourth-highest-rated show on Syfy; they aren't getting rid of it for a long while. It has already been renewed for Season 3.

grungykitten wrote:

Starforge wrote: The expanse is good. The books are even better.

Sadly, unless their viewership goes up, I can't see how they get renewed. I can't see how the Expanse was renewed after season 1. A fraction of the viewers of the typical CW show even though it's better written, acted and with an arcing story.

It's basic cable; they're accustomed to much lower ratings than a network show.

The Expanse is the fourth-highest-rated show on Syfy; they aren't getting rid of it for a long while. It has already been renewed for Season 3.

Hurray!!!

shadar wrote:

AuGoose wrote:

shadar wrote: To answer your question, the Expanse was mentioned below. That is outstanding SF at every level and an example of how good TV can get. It asks the viwer to get involved in the story and is serious drama.

...

I didn't find Orville stupid at all. It was people - relatively ordinary people - living in a Federation-style world. And frankly Star Trek has never done that well. In many ways it was right there on par with its inspiration... minus the stuck-up, sanctimonious BS.

I used to adore the stuck-up sanctimonious BS of Star Trek. I was inspired by the idea that humanity could overcome its darkest urges and humans (and aliens) could become something so much more than a bunch of clever ape-men. It was very utopian.

But it seems silly 50 years later given where we are today, poised at the brink of nuclear war and all kinds of other destructive possibilities.

But for a while, we could dream of a better tomorrow. That's what I loved about Star Trek.

That isn't where Orville is going. They take the setting and tech from Star Trek, tweak it a bit, but then drop characters into it who are very ordinary people. I can see why some would see the charm in that. But I see utopia lost. The good people of Star Trek were always better and smarter and more principled than the average person today.

Well, maybe except for Kirk, who was a throwback.

Shadar

Starforge wrote:

Helstar wrote: You guys have said already what was needed to be said and I agree with everything... but I wanted to add just one thing: did you notice the phasers (or whatever you want to call them) "battle" ... standing still in front of each other and never being hit (except -of course- the enemies and just Seth on a shoulder), and then the following scene "let's run in the middle of this water fountain, we should be faster & safer from the shots here" (?), non sense

I was cringing through those scenes. I really couldn't tell if they were doing it deliberately as a spoof or if someone really thought that those fights were a good idea. Like most, however, let's see if they can turn it around.

As to the space combat (mentioned in a later reply) I would say it was also cringe-worthy. The enemy ship had it's beams in the front and the Orville clearly had the mobility - why not just get behind it and stay there? Well, then we couldn't teleport a tree inside. Umm....ok.

Babylon 5 was (IMO) the last sci fi show to have decent space combat. You would think that after 30 years the technology and skill at generating such scenes would improve and they clearly haven't.

In my opinion it depends on what you're talking about in terms of 'space combat'. If you're looking for something flashy and with a lot of eye candy, Babylon 5 is probably the best you're going to get, but from a choreography standpoint I'd make the case for the Battlestar Galactica reboot having some phenomenal combat scenes in terms of keeping the fleet doctrines of the ships in play in effect. Much in the same way, The Expanse plays to the designs of its ships very well, with combat more resembling aerial dogfights in space than more grand 'tallship combat in space' that things like Star Wars or Babylon 5 would encourage.

That said, if I were looking for good space combat I'd go to a game rather than a TV show. Something like X or Elite (or even EVE if you want to substitute scale for substance) crushes nearly anything else on the entertainment market in terms of both spectacle and immersion.

one thing that just struck me was how similiar to another resent show: Inhumans.

Both are show for us have a little bit of ubergirl quality-not much but you know.

But both are realtivly big budget TV shows o that clearly based on 60s Sci fi properties. Orville on Star Trek, Inhumans on the comic from 63- and one thing i will grant inhumans is it really does capture that sence of having a world from the 60s. in its art character designs and general look).

Both To a large extent they are creating there world hole cloth.

Both are kind of trying to be semi light hearted action adventure shows.....

And one sucseed and one fails.

I did end up seeing the inhumans movie-and honestly i think i liked it more then a lot of people. the dog is cute for what we see of it. Ken Leung is one of those actors whose good at playing characters who are assholes that are in the end likable enough. And Anson Mount is maybe as good a Black Bolt as your going to see ever on screen. He expresses whats he feeling.

But yeah it is a terrible failure of a show.

But on the face of it you wonder why. As i ahve said before-TVs always a bit of a crap shoot especially shows like this. But i donno.

One of the things i have heard about Inhumans is that it is a show that came about very quickly-litterally this show did not writing a script until this year, which in stuff you put on film screens is real quick. And it shows. It was shot in may, so it didn't have the longest production cycle...and it shows.

The costumes look terrible, the wig looks terrible, the set design looks terrible-and worse yet the tricks people use to hide it they don't do-from what i gather tv schedule they didn't have the time.

. I have said before Orville is a show that looks Amazing. Its also obviously quite al ot of CGI-but it is good CGI, that they obviiosuly put a lot of thought and time to, There is a fairly long scene through a very impressive greenhouse set that exists to setup a not particulary good groaner of a joke-but you know what from a technical level its better by a long shot on anything we saw in inhumans-and maybe becuse
they did put more time into it, setting up its look. You can see the visual care they put into the show at least the pilot in every frame-and obviously when they shot it let it spend time in post.

Whether they did so much time on the script-ehh but there is somethign to it. it gets that its light hearted story, with a lot of humor silly characters and situations-and i vaugely get the same thing from inhumans. Its kind of part of the MCU and with that there is a sense that we vaugely know this is ridiculus, and its a test to see who starts to ghost first. The Inhuman comics themselves are dumb, and i do think it knows this-but it can't quite commit to it, it can't quite push that through. When it tries for jokes-like the girl whose a teenarger, or ken leung it ocasionally gets a chuckle-but yeah

. Maybe thats the script feels rushed and not a lot is explained or to much-it wants you really to have watched several seasons ago of agents of sheild to make sense, and if you haven't..well tough but not. Ovrille as a story has some of that-you get villians obviously but you don't know the first thing about them, which is a flaw-but well in 48 minutes tells a pretty complete story with a beggining middle and end-its not hyper complicated and gets into a lot of details of characters personal life-but its all there Is at as good as star trek best, or even its middling-maybe not but yeah. Inhuman is going for a diffrent more clifhangery style-but well in 88 minutes it gets next to now where, with not even a fake climax which a show like this should do if there presenting it as a movie..its a mess.

One thing i really do like about orville is that there is a sence of competence. You do get that the Orville is a good ship. Ed is a good captian and knows what hes doing as does his crew-even the screw up pilot is a good pilot who knows when hes going a little to far. And for a show about characters who are over 50 years old-you get that less from inhumans. Black Bolt is a bit of a putz, his brother the big villian i think they do the maybe clever thing of establishing that his cause is ritious-but comes across as a litle shit. Medusa looks terrible they take away her power i kinda think for budget and leave a pretty but not good actress behind. The other characters a re dumb and lockjaw makes a big mistake in the name of drama in the show that really feels stupid. This does feel like the superhero group that can't shoot straight more then straightup superhero parodies.

So yeah. Inhumans is skipable( Orville is not-and as i kind of hope more TV evolves into stuff like this-yeah its a good object lession somewhere here. i dono.

.

I was expecting the "replacement" would have been Bortus ... (no spoiler, you know what i mean)

Also, not sure how "they" both landed on that planet without being tracked/questioned. Big plot hole.

Helstar wrote: I was expecting the "replacement" would have been Bortus ... (no spoiler, you know what i mean)

Also, not sure how "they" both landed on that planet without being tracked/questioned. Big plot hole.

It's only been 2 episodes, but I get the sense that it's going to be a show that you can't spend much time thinking about. I'm still on the fence, but will continue to watch and see if the formula changes or if the characters get some well written development. It's worth a season to try it unless it takes a drastic turn for the worse.

Helstar wrote: I was expecting the "replacement" would have been Bortus ... (no spoiler, you know what i mean)

Also, not sure how "they" both landed on that planet without being tracked/questioned. Big plot hole.

They were tracked. When they visited the he mentioned that he heard that someone from Kaylon-1 was visiting. Considering the species' views, it's likely if they detected someone appearing on planet w/o them knowing how ... that means they possess superior technology and would be treated with deferment and respect. It's the flip-side of how they treat everyone else.

I know the kid was rescued. Did they free anyone else? I wasn't paying too close attention to that at the time and I'm not sure I'm motivated enough to go back and check.

The bargain reveal at the end of the episode had me laughing.
I thought that scene was very funny.
However I would think this would motivate the aliens to go out and sample more humans to try and recreate these situations live.

In episode 3 "About a Girl"

The alien Security Girl Alara steps in the boxing ring with a much larger alien named Bortus to "blow off some steam" and make a point.
Bortus lands several blows which would have crippled a human which Alara shrugs off.
When Alara makes her point she punches Bortus clear out of the ring with ease.

There is a silly scene later involving a chunk of titanium.

This is most definitely a Star Trek: The Next generation type episode.

I'm guessing every episode will have at least one strength feat performed by Alara. Episode 2 had her smashing the Captain's desk.

On a more general note, I didn't really like episode 3. I thought it was way too preachy.

So I just watched episode 4. Spoiler alert to a degree. When Kelly get injected, won't it been cool if the alien serum did not work the same on her. Instead of over activating all of her never ending, It would have over activated her muscle tissue.

Theron guest stars

Here is Alara in human form

This show has become enjoyable (despite obligatory moments of MacFarlane's pre-pubescent humor). Otherwise, it touches very lightly on some very interesting themes, such as Episode 4 ("If the Stars Should Appear"). The concept of people living for thousands of years in a bio-ship, yet not knowing they are in a ship. The resulting brutal theocracy that developed is a popular theme in SF.

That one episode could become a series of its own, and has been developed quite well in SF books in past. But it was classic Star Trek all the way.

And Alara is always fun. I'm even OK with MacFarlane's "Alara, can you open this pickle jar?" line that appears at least once in every show.

Episode 5 ("Pria") was nearly as good, and Charlize is always fun given she can actually act and she's still hot, and once again, that one show could be expanded into a whole series around time travel and wormholes and the morality/challenges of it.

Critics can and will continue to savage it, but if MacFarlane's stupid jokes were removed, it would be every bit as good as the earlier Star Trek series, and with superior special effects to any of them.

Shadar